Untold Story (33 page)

It crossed his mind that Esther was deliberately going out of her way to protect her employee’s privacy. But what did she imagine there was to hide? It was impossible that anyone knew Lydia’s true identity. Over the years she must have woven the most incredible web of lies.

He parked a distance down the street and approached the driveway on foot. The car had gone. She had finally come to her senses and left. Taken the sporting chance that he’d given her.

About three hours had passed and she could be stepping onto an airplane soon. The passenger manifests would turn her up, unless she’d chosen simply to drive off and hole up. Maybe she had other aliases. It would all come out in the end. He approached the front door. It was locked. He tried the back door and it was locked as well. Then he tested each ground floor window to see if she’d left any open. A few interior shots would cap it all off brilliantly. It was worth searching the rooms as well for any clues she’d left behind in her haste. It wasn’t as though she’d spent the morning preparing.

There was a stack of firewood by the shed. He jogged over and selected the largest, heaviest piece. Standing at the kitchen window he hesitated for barely a second. In the maelstrom that was about to explode, the detail of a little breaking and entering was not going to be high on the agenda. He smashed the window and heaved himself up and inside, straight onto the counter.

The ground floor was open plan and he’d already shot it through the window. He wasted little time, quickly reeling off a few more angles. The best place to start searching would be the bedroom. The best shot to get would be of the bed that she had slept in. As he walked upstairs he was working out which way to turn on the landing. He’d seen her several times at her bedroom window so he already had a mental map of the interior geography. This humble home, he thought, captioning the photograph of the simple beech wood kitchen cabinets, this humble home . . . he reached the bedroom door, began to turn the handle. This humble home has witnessed . . . no that wasn’t right. He walked into the bedroom. For a moment he thought he must be hallucinating. He let the camera fall from his hand and it swung on the strap around his neck and hit his chest with a thud.

“Hello,” she said, leveling the gun at his head. “Were you looking for me?”

There was no hurry now, that was the thing. It was a relief. She waited patiently for a reply, and while she waited she looked him closely up and down. His pants were torn across the right thigh, his shirt was crumpled, one of his cuffs hung loose and the other was buttoned. He was unshaven and although his hair was gray, his stubble was black as an old bruise across his jowls. There was a leaf sticking out from the sole of his loafer. Grabowski had never been what she’d call a sharp dresser but today he looked as if he’d spent the night in the bushes. That wasn’t unlikely.

“Were you looking for me?” she repeated.

He raised his arms slowly, responding to the gun she supposed. It hadn’t occurred to her to say, put your hands up.

It looked as though he was trying to speak and she encouraged him by nodding.

He managed a single word. “No.”

“I see. Not looking for me.” She lowered the gun to her lap. His arms floated down in slow motion.

She raised the gun again, her finger on the trigger.

“No,” he cried, this time in alarm.

“Why are you here?”

Beads of sweat were beginning to pop up on his forehead. “I’m . . . I’m . . .” he stammered.

“Sit down on the floor with your legs crossed,” she said. “And put your hands behind your head,” she added. Since she was seated on the bed, it would be better if he was down lower and in no position to spring at her.

When he was down, she continued, “You were saying?”

“I wasn’t looking for you,” he said. He never took his eyes off the gun.

“Then what are you doing in my house?” she said. “If you don’t mind my asking.”

“I mean, I wasn’t looking for you before . . . before I found you. You were dead. It was an accident.”

He was quite handsome, she’d always thought. He was getting a bit of a belly. A drop of sweat had run down into his eyebrow. She had to concentrate. “You’re not explaining very well.”

“I was here by accident. I’ve been traveling around and I saw Kensington on the map, and then . . . and then I saw you.”

His right eye was stinging with sweat but he didn’t dare move his hand to rub it. As he’d walked up the stairs to her bedroom he’d thought he was high on adrenaline. That was nothing. Right now he was so pumped he could feel his pulse in every limb, every finger, every toe.

“But I’m dead,” she said. “You can’t have seen me.”

She was sitting on the edge of the bed, in her faded jeans and a pale pink shirt. Her hair was clipped back off her face and she was side-lit from the window and she looked calm and beautiful.

“I’m dead,” she repeated.

She was crazy. She was still pointing the gun at him.

“Okay,” he said, “that’s right.”

She started to laugh, a small giggle, then another and another, until she was holding her free hand to her stomach, shaking and laughing and bobbing the gun up and down. If it went off she could kill him. She couldn’t mean to kill him. He twisted away and ducked his head as her hand wavered around.

“I’m sorry,” she said, drawing her feet up onto the bed and steadying the gun on her knee. “It’s not funny.” She wiped away a tear. “I don’t know why I was laughing. The tension. All the tension. Me saying I’m dead, you thinking I’m crazy and you have to agree so I don’t shoot you.” She paused. “I’m not, you know.”

He didn’t know whether she meant not dead or not crazy. “I know,” he said. “I know.”

She gazed at him intently. The tiny flecks glinted in that deep blue iris. At this instant they shone not green but gold. “That’s our whole problem, isn’t it?” she said. “Until a few minutes ago it was only my problem. The fact that you know. But now it’s your problem as well.”

How the fuck had he walked into this? Is this what she was setting up? How had she lured him in here? Always the manipulator, always pulling strings. His mouth was dry and his heart was still racing. It was difficult to think with that gun pointing at him. Why the fuck hadn’t he gone straight back to London?

“You know what they say,” he said. “‘A problem shared is a problem halved.’”

“Does it feel like that to you?”

“I feel like there’s a lot to talk about,” he said. Out of the corner of his eye he saw a little white and gold heap on the bed vibrate. Her dog had stood up and was giving himself a good shake. He’d been so focused on her and the gun that he hadn’t even noticed the dog was there.

“Like old friends?” she said. “Like old friends catching up?”

As soon as he’d said it, she realized that of course that was what he would want. There was no end to her stupidity. When she’d watched him walk into her bedroom and seen his face convulse with disbelief, she’d thought that at least she could slow down and think, that he wasn’t in charge of her anymore.

Of course he’d want to keep her talking. He’d sent all his pictures of her to the newspapers and they’d all be on their way here.

“When did you send them?” she said.

“What? No, I haven’t. I swear I haven’t. I haven’t sent anyone anything.”

“Get up. I want you to stand up.”

“I have to use my hands to help me,” he said. “Is it okay to put my hands down?”

He didn’t look in the best of shape. He’d probably hurt his knees if he tried to get up from cross-legged without giving himself a push. “Yes, but move slowly. Don’t make my finger twitch.”

When he was up she said, “Okay, hands behind your head again. Now two slow paces towards me. I don’t want your body blocking the door when you fall.”

“I swear to God,” he said. “If you let me go I’ll give you my camera. You can wipe the memory. No one else has got anything.”

How would it feel to kill him? If she pulled the trigger now it would be done. “The problem is,” she said, “you have no way of proving that. It’s difficult to prove a negative.”

He looked a little unsteady on his feet, and there was a vein crawling down his temple like a fat green caterpillar. “My camera and my laptop,” he said in a creaky voice. “It’s all on there. I didn’t e-mail. I was going to fly home today. I didn’t e-mail because . . .”

“Why not? Why didn’t you do that?” If he believed she was going to kill him would that force him to tell the truth? Would it force him to lie with all his might?

“Because I don’t trust anybody,” he said. “It’d be all round the Internet before I’d even touched down at Heathrow.”

She remembered something from one of their little chats in the early days. “You’re Catholic, aren’t you, John? Would you like to say your prayers?”

“I’ve got a rosary in my pocket,” he said. “Is it okay if I get it out?” It would give him time to think as he pushed the beads through his fingers.

“Which pocket? Okay, very slowly, and keep the other hand behind your head.”

He should have gone back last night. But he always went the extra mile, it’s what made him so good at his job, it’s what earned him his reputation. Right now it was what might have earned him a bullet. He let his eyes stray from the gun and work carefully over the room as he moved his lips as if in silent prayer. The dog was standing at her hip. The bed was neatly made, with embroidered cushions and bolsters along the headboard. There was a dressing table with some perfume bottles and a few necklaces strung over the mirror. The lid on the window seat was up, partially obscuring the glass. He couldn’t dive out the window anyway, he’d kill himself. If there was something he could pick up and throw, he might be able to overpower her.

He said a Hail Mary out loud. He looked straight in her eyes as he said it. His heart rate had slowed, just having the beads in his fingers. She wasn’t going to kill him. If she killed him she’d have the police chasing her, how would that be better than photographers?

“Why don’t you put the gun down?” he said. “Put the gun down and then we can talk properly. There’s nothing to be afraid of. I’ll let you have my camera.”

“Do you think I’m not going to kill you?” she said. She sounded disappointed.

“I think . . . I think you wouldn’t be so stupid.”

“You broke into my house,” she said. “I’m a woman living alone. You broke in through—which window?—the kitchen, let’s say, and crept up to my bedroom. You saw me for the first time a couple of weeks ago and since then you’ve become obsessed. It’s all there—all the evidence on the camera, taking pictures of me in the street, at my work, even through my bedroom window. Am I right? Am I hitting the spot? I think your face is saying so.”

“Mother of God,” he said. She had it all planned. She’d set him up.

“Who else will see what you saw? Was it the eyes? Is that what struck you? Did you spend hours comparing them? Yes, well, I don’t think anyone else is going to be doing that, do you? To finish the story—you come in here and attack me, try to rape me. I manage to get the gun out of my drawer and I warn you, but you just keep coming at me, you leave me no choice.”

His tongue seemed swollen, perhaps he had bitten it, and it got in his way when he spoke, so that every word was labored. “It’s not too late,” he said. “You don’t have to do this. Just let me go and I’ll give you everything. I leave the country—I leave and I never come back.”

She sighed and stroked her dog’s ears absently. “For that to work, I’d have to trust you.”

“You take all my equipment,” he said. “You go anywhere you like. I’ll have nothing and no way of tracing you.”

“That just raises another problem, John. You see, I like it here. I don’t see why I should leave, I’d like to stay.”

Chapter Twenty-seven

He looked as though he might pass out so she told him to sit down again. Shooting him had sounded like a remarkably practical solution.

“We can both walk away from this,” he said, looking up at her. “It can be over and done. I didn’t send anything to anyone, there’s no one I trust, not even my agent.”

She wondered if he’d cut his leg when he’d climbed through the window. She said, “That’s a sad state of affairs.”

“Gareth’s all right,” he said, “but you never know, someone in his office . . .” He trailed off. His breath sounded heavy, uneven.

“You forced me to act in self-defense,” she said. In a way it was true.

“I worked with a partner once,” he said. His shoulders were rounded, his back was hunched, as if he was slowly collapsing into the fetal position. “Tony Metcalf, he was sort of a mate. Trip to Mauritius. We got some shots of you at the pool looking fabulous. This was before digital and we developed them in the bathroom.”

“You did this to yourself,” she said. It would still be murder.

He talked faster, and he was looking up at her, always seeking her eyes, hunting for any sign of weakness, of compassion. “Stunning photos,” he said, “front-page stuff, really glamorous. We persuaded a tourist to take the photos back to London, because we were staying on with you, used to do that a lot in the old days. I let Tony do all the negotiating, we’d have a joint byline.”

“How many cameras do you have with you?” The way he was wittering on now was making it hard to think.