Lovers and Liars (83 page)

it took hours. For hours, she worked away at that one loose nail, that tiny section of board. She levered it just a fraction, first with the knife blade, then when the gap between board and window frame was a fraction wider, with the fork. As she worked, concentrating on that tiny section of wood, she thought carefully back over the events of that day, One by one they clicked into place. McMullen was not dead, she was now certain of that. He had been here. It was he who had bought that newspaper, lit the paraffin stove, and opened that envelope of photographs. It was McMullen, she thought, who had been here when she herself arrived, and McMullen who had locked her in. Now he had left which suggested the place was of no further use to him. He had left, but where would he have gone?

She stopped her levering for a second, and stared straight ahead. Her skin went cold. He had received the photographs,

and they must have been a devastating blow to him. He had left them behind, but he had taken with him both that heavy army rucksack, and the container of gun-oil.

She looked down at her watch. It was past eight o’clock. Only four hours of Saturday remained. Why would McMullen stage his own death - and she was now certain that he had done just that unless he wanted to buy himself a little time, lull John Hawthorne into a false sense of security? Suppose, as Pascal had suggested, McMullen had decided to kill Hawthorne? When would he have the best opportunity? When everyone believed him dead. Of course, she thought, on the Sunday, on the third Sunday of the month - that date n-dght well appeal to McMullen, and that Sunday was now just four hours away.

She levered frantically at the board again, then steadied herself. She suddenly remembered something Hawthorne had said to her, the previous evening. It was after she had mentioned Venice. Don’t believe all the lies, Hawthorne had said. Just give me a fetv more days.

She stared at the board in front of her. When he said that, Hawthorne must have already known about that body on the railwayline, and must have assumed McMullen was dead. He must have believed that, with McMullen dead, the rest of the lies and allegations could be quickly cleared up - that was why he had felt able to speak to her as openly as he did. But if McMullen was not dead, then Hawthorne could be in danger: he might have not a few days, but only a few hours, left.

As she thought that, she pushed hard on the board, and at last, at last the loose nail was now dislodged; she could get more purchase on the board. She began to work at it, first with the fork, then with the can-opener, the handles of which were stronger, then - when the gap widened - with her fingers. The board creaked, resisted, cut into her hands. Gini cried out, almost fell, tugged harder, and the board split.

Even then it was still a slow, hard task. She had to break the board away from the window bit by bit. Sometimes a large chunk could be ripped away, then only a tiny sliver. But gradually she could see moonlight outside, then an angle of wall through the glass, then the flagstones. Her hands were bleeding now, and stiff with cold and exertion, but she fought with the board, hating herself for being a woman with weak muscles, bitterly aware that a man, Pascal, could have ripped this board away in minutes. She tugged and ripped and pulled and pushed: freedom felt so

close. She could see the moonlit yard clearly now, and beyond it the darkness of the woods. Her car was there, just sixty yards down that slope. In another half-hour, she could be in that car and away from this place. She could find a phone, call Pascal, call Hawthorne too, yes, she must do that. Hawthorne had to be warned that McMullen was not dead.

She caught hold of the last large section of board remaining, and hauled on it with all her strength. Suddenly it buckled, and broke off in her hands. She half-fell, almost toppled to the floor, then steadied herself. The window was now clear, surrounded by a jagged edge of broken board. She grasped the catch, levered, pushed - and nothing happened. It was fastened, she saw, in three places, with security bolts.

She climbed down. Her legs and arms were shaking from her exertions. She could smash the glass, but the window - narrow and upright, with two panes of glass separated by one horizontal bar - needed to be broken open completely. The actual panes were too small to squeeze through. She would have to break the glass in both panes, and smash out the bar between them. Then, at last, she could climb out.

The gas was burning alarmingly low now. She turned it up a fraction. It sputtered and hissed. I must be quick, she thought, I must be quick.

She carried a chair from the living-room, and smashed at the glass with all her strength. One pane broke, the other cracked. She hauled herself up onto the draining-board, and began to hammer at the glass, half-sobbing, breathing hard with the effort. She wrapped the dishcloth around her hand, and began to snap off the jagged shards of glass piece by piece. She hammered the chair against the dividing bar, then rammed at it with her shoulder as hard as she could. It gave a little, but still held. She went on, fighting with the bar, fighting with the shards of glass. Her arms were trembling with the effort, and her hands were cut and bleeding. She mopped at the blood, which was making her hands slippery, and saw that her watch-face was smashed. The watch hands were jammed, unmoving. She held the watch-face close to her face and peered at it in the semi-darkness. Hours had passed - far more time had gone by than she’d realized. According to her watch, it was now half-past eleven - but how long ago had the watch stopped?

She gave a moan of anger and frustration. It could be Sunday now. She must get out of this place. She threw herself with her

full weight against the dividing bar, and at last it splintered, then snapped. The sense of freedom was intoxicating. She drew in a deep breath of icy air. Leave the heater, leave the gas, but bring the photographs, she thought, and began to struggle through the broken window. She pulled her thick coat around her, but it caught on the jagged glass. She felt glass catch at her hair, and cut her face. Then, awkwardly, painfully, she was free. She dropped down the few feet onto the flagstones of the yard, and almost collapsed.

Her whole body ached with strain; her legs were unsteady, but she could feel a rush of exhilaration now, pumping through her body. Her car was close, very close, just ahead of her through the trees and down the slope. She ran across the yard and into the undergrowth, peering ahead of her for the track.

She ran down it, slipping, and sliding. Twice she tripped and fell full length. She heaved herself up, ran on, and reached the clearing. Then she stopped, staring around her wildly. She could feel blood running down her face; she could taste blood on her lips. it hurt her to breathe - She staggered forward a few more steps, peering into the darkness under the trees, unable to accept the obvious. She ran this way and that; she ran a little further down the track, then turned back, breathing hard. Moonlight and shadows moved around her. The car was not there. The car had been taken.

It was Sunday now, it must be Sunday, and it was a good three miles to the nearest road. An hour, she thought; it takes an hour to walk three miles at an ordinary pace. Then she turned, and halfrunning, half-stumbling, began to make her way down, the track. She saw the lights, and heard the noise, when she was only halfway down the track. It was coming from her left, from the valley below to her left, from the direction of John Hawthorne’s house. She could not see the house from here, halfway down the hill, surrounded by pine trees, but she could hear cars, men’s voices; she could glimpse lights moving beyond the trees. She hesitated, then plunged off the track to her left, making for the voices, making for the lights. She ducked under branches, and felt brambles catch at her clothes. She shielded her face from the brambles, tripped on tree roots, and ran on. She came out on the slope of the hill, at the edge of the woods, and stopped.

Open fields lay between her and Hawthorne’s house. That house was as bright as an hallucination. The road in front of it, the gates, the drive, the house itself were all floodlit. The buildings stood out in an unearthly greenish halogen glow, staining the sky above.

And there were people -.so many people. She could see police cars, and other cars slewed across the road below, parked in the driveway; she could see three, no four, long black vehicles drawn up in front of the house itself. She could see men too, moving along the road, moving across the lawns either side of the drive. She stared, and gave a low cry of panic and fear. Something had happened; something was happening. Could McMullen already have made some attempt on Hawthorne’s life? Was Hawthorne here, in Oxfordshire tonight? If so, was he alive, or dead?

She began to run then, faster and faster, struggling for breath, across the ploughed fields, making for the road below. But the fields were wet and muddy from weeks of rain, and the mud sucked and pulled at her feet. She took a more indirect route, keeping close to the hedge, where the ground was firmer. Down through one field, then a second. She could see the road ahead now, and the entrance gates to Hawthorne’s home. She staggered, slipped, and increased her pace.

The men in the roadway heard her approach. She was dimly aware of them turning, looking up, beginning to move towards her. She heard a voice say something sharply, and heard the sound of running footsteps, but all she could think of was the field gate straight ahead of her, the road, the entrance, and the drive beyond that.

She pushed the gate open, and half-fell into the roadway, gasping for breath. The light was now dazzling; three, no four, five dark figures were in front of her. She stared at them, and they stared at her. One of them, she realized, the one to her right, was wearing ordinary police uniform. She began to turn towards him to speak, but a man not in uniform, a man in a dark suit, moved quickly between them. He took her arm, and looked down at her face. He was very tall, heavily built, crew-cut.

‘Ms Hunter, ma’amT He was still staring at her. ‘It is Ms Hunter, yesT

Gini looked up at him. The air gusted; the road dipped and swayed. Then she recognized him. He had an alert, an intelligent face. It was the security man who had been at Mary’s party, Malone. His grip on her arm tightened as she swayed. She thought the police officer to her right said something, but Malone cut him off.

‘Get a car,’ he said to one of the dark-suited men next to him. She saw the man move away fast, and the others bunch around her. Then the car was there, and Malone was helping her into it. He

slid into the back seat beside her, and before his door was closed the car was already moving off. Through the entrance gates, into the drive of Hawthorne’s house.

Gini began to speak, and with a quick gesture Malone cut her off.

‘Not here, ma’am,’ he said quietly and firmly. ‘It’s all right. Wait. Let’s just get you into the house.’

XXXV1

PASCAL HAD lost all sense of time. It could have been one in the morning, or two, or twelve-thirty when he shot back the bolts, and slammed out of the St John’s Wood house. He stood outside in the street, breathing in the cold night air, staring up unseeingIy at the night sky. In the Gothic house in the cul-de-sac beyond, John Hawthorne and his wife remained. Pascal no longer cared what they did to each other behind closed shutters; he no longer cared whether they remained there five minutes or the rest of the night. Disgust washed through him, with Hawthorne, with Lise, but above all with himself.

His immediate instinct, as Hawthorne closed the shutters with that small tight smile of derision, had been to smash his own cameras, to lay waste to that aspect of his life. Never again, Pascal said to himself, never again will I allow myself to do this.

If Hawthorne had intended to teach him a lesson, he had succeeded, he thought. He crossed furiously to his hire-car, began to unlock it then stopped. Never had he felt more like a voyeur. He felt tainted, sickened, by his own actions that evening, by his own actions these last three years of his life. He slammed his fist against the bodywork of the car, and felt pain shoot through his hand and arm, punishing himself for what he had done, for continuing to take pictures tonight, even in those few short minutes when he

had still believed the woman with Hawthorne was Gini. Even then he had continued - how could he have done that?

This is what I have become, this is what I have allowed myself to become, he thought, and his mind went black with self-disgust, and self-hate.

He had cut his hand. He drew in a deep breath to steady himself, then another, and this time the icy air steadied him. He lifted his hand, and looked at his watch. It was past one. He stared at the hands. Past one, and Gini was not back.

He began, then, on a frantic and crazy pursuit. He drove to an almost deserted Paddington Station, and ran along the platforms, questioning porters, ticket clerks, any passer-by who would stop. The last Oxford train had arrived, on time, more than an hour before. Pascal could not let go of the conviction that Gini must have been on this train. He started searching the station, running this way, then that.

Then he saw this endeavour for the foolish thing it was. He drove back to the St John’s Wood house at crazy speed, and burst through the door. His cameras were still there. His empty coffee cup was still there. But Gini was not. He ran upstairs and downstairs, then upstairs again. He saw, but did not care, that the Gothic house opposite was empty once more. The shutters in that rear room were open once more. The house was in darkness.

He ran back down the stairs, leaving all his cameras and equipment where they were. He could not bear to touch them or look at them. He stood in the hall,breathing fast. The lights here were still non-operational. The telephone was still dead.

A new mad conviction gripped him then. Gini must have returned. She must be in London, but she had gone to the Hampstead cottage, or perhaps to her Islington flat. He scrawled an incoherent message, left it in a prominent place, and ran out.