What Men Say (32 page)

“John Tracey, doesn't he work for one of the Sunday papers? How do you know him?” Inspector Queen sounded suspicious.

“I used to be married to him.” Loretta leaned forward and pressed the “store” button so the messages would not be erased.

Blady appeared in the doorway. “Nothing, ma'am.”

“Nothing at all? No note?” The Inspector glanced at Loretta.

“I went through the post, it's on the kitchen table.”

“What about upstairs?”

“No, ma'am.”

The Inspector's shoulders sagged; all the animation went out of her and she looked drained, middle-aged. She stared into space for a moment, her eyes half-closed,
then said tiredly to Loretta: “Will you be here for the rest of the evening, Dr. Lawson? You're not going out?”

Loretta shrugged. “I suppose.”

“You'll ring us if you hear from Dr. Bennett?”

Loretta said nothing.

“You do know the penalties for obstructing the police?”

Loretta lost her temper. “For God's sake, why don't you leave me alone? You grab me at the airport, force me back here, search my house—what more do you want? Blood?”

Inspector Queen flushed, but she kept her temper. “Blady,” she said curtly, nodding towards the door. “I'll see you outside.” She folded one arm across her chest, supporting her chin on her clenched fist, and remained in this contemplative position until they heard the front door close. Then she lifted her head and looked directly at Loretta.

“You won't help her, you know. Not by doing anything stupid.”

Loretta turned away, walked to her desk and stared out of the window.

“Where do you think she can hide? She's pregnant—there's the baby to think of.”

Loretta breathed heavily, struggling against tears.

“She needs medical treatment, I've talked to the hospital. You're not doing her any favors, her or the baby—”

“Get out.”

“Dr. Lawson—”

“
Get out
.”

To her surprise, the policewoman did not argue. Loretta heard her move to the door, pause as though she wanted to say something else, then walk down the hall
to the front door. She waited until she heard footsteps on the path, the clang of the gate as it opened and closed, then snatched up the phone. Her hand was trembling so much that she misdialed, gasping with frustration as she attempted John Tracey's direct line at the
Sunday Herald
a second time. Behind her the cat leapt onto a filing cabinet and let out a series of yowls, furiously demanding attention, but she barely heard him.

“Come on, come
on.
That's not John Tracey, is it?”

“No, I was passing his desk. Rosie, has John left? Sorry, love, you've missed him.”

Loretta pressed down the rest and tried Tracey's home number. It rang three or four times and then the machine answered: “Hi, John Tracey speaking. I'm also taking message for Terese McKinnon.”

“Oh,
God,
” Loretta moaned as he listed his other numbers, unable to contain her impatience. “John, it's me, it's”—she looked at her watch—“it's ten to eight on Wednesday evening. Oh, God, where
are
you? Ring me as soon as you get in, I've got to speak to you—” She swallowed air, choked and put the phone down.

There was a noise in the hall and she ran to the front door, almost tripping over the cat who followed and entangled himself in her legs. She seized the sheet of paper lying on the mat, read the first line of a flyer advertising an itinerant knife-sharpening service and crumpled it into a ball. In her study the phone rang and she ran to answer it, her heart pounding.

“Laura? You sound out of breath—is everything all right?”

“
Jenny.
” Disappointment flooded through her and her one thought was to get her sister off the line. “Can I ring you back? I'm sorry, I can't explain—”

“You sound
awful.
What's happened?”

“Jenny, I can't talk now.”

“Hang on, Laura, I am your sister, if something's wrong—”

“
Please,
Jenny.” Loretta could hardly believe that Jenny, who was usually preoccupied with her own domestic concerns, was suddenly and inopportunely offering sympathy. “I'm expecting a call and I'll ring you tomorrow. Bye.”

She replaced the receiver, breathed out heavily and wondered what on earth to do next. Tracey might not ring for hours; he often ate out in the evenings instead of cooking for himself, or he might even have got his Russian visa and be on his way to Moscow. She ran through a mental list of the people she could ring—Christopher Cisar, Audrey Summers, various friends of Bridget in Oxford—but decided she didn't know any of them well enough to tell the truth. Anyway, she didn't want to block the line in case Tracey arrived home and found her message. She stood irresolute, drumming her fingers on the desktop, horribly frustrated by her inability to act.

The phone rang again and she snatched it up. “John?”

“No—it's me.”

Loretta let out a yelp.
“Bridget.
Where are you?” A thought occurred to her and she said rapidly: “No, don't say. They may be—it's not safe.” She knew nothing about phone-tapping, whether it took days or hours for the police to get a warrant, but she didn't want to take the risk. “Oh, God, Bridget, the police were waiting for me at Heathrow, they've only just left. I don't know how to tell you—”

“I
know.
I played back the messages on your machine.”

“You what?”

“Christopher, then John Tracey . . . I knew they'd think of you and I just ran.”

Loretta's relief at this news was swiftly replaced by anger. She blurted out: “Where
were
you that Thursday? What are you trying to hide? Don't you trust me?”

“Loretta,
stop.
” Bridget began to cry. “I'm so frightened and I don't know what to do. You've got to help me.

“All right, wait a minute.” Loretta tried to think clearly. If Bridget had left the house at lunchtime she could be anywhere—the other end of the country. What they needed was a code, a way of conveying information which would mean something to the two of them but give nothing away to an eavesdropper.

Bridget seemed to be thinking along the same lines for she suddenly said, in a calmer voice: “Remember Professor Lai, Loretta? I'm at his house.”

“Professor who?”

“Professor
Lai.
”

“No, I don't think—” Comprehension dawned and she said triumphantly: “Yes, I do, I've got it. I'm on my way.” In a hasty attempt to throw any listeners off the scent, to mislead them about where she was going, she added: “It'll take me, what? A couple of hours?”

“A couple of hours?”

“Oh, never mind.”

“What do you mean, a couple of hours?”

“Oh, God, forget it.” She would be able to explain the subterfuge face-to-face in a matter of minutes. “Look, I'm leaving now, OK?”

“OK. Loretta, come round the back, won't you? I daren't open the front door.”

The line clicked and Loretta put down the phone. She hurried into the hall, knelt by her carpetbag and removed her purse and checkbook. She opened the purse
and took out a wad of notes, pulling a face when she saw that most of them were useless French francs; Bridget would need cash, but there was no time to waste on finding a cash dispenser. Two minutes later she was ready to leave, her purse transferred to a small shoulder bag and no clear plan in her head beyond getting to Bridget's side. She opened the front door, started down the path and froze: there, parked three or four car lengths up the street, was a police patrol car. The house was still under observation; Loretta turned and darted back inside, appalled that she had not foreseen this complication. She stood in the hall, trembling and uncertain whether she had been seen. Thirty seconds, then a minute, passed without incident and she began to relax, turning over the problem of how to get out unobserved. The house formed part of a short terrace, with no access to the road apart from the front door; there was a row of semis further down Southmoor Road and she briefly considered a route over her own garden fence and those of her immediate neighbors until she came to a house with a side gate.

She looked down at her jeans, thankful that she was dressed for such an excursion, but her face clouded when she realized that her plan would still bring her out in view of the police car. She put a hand up to her face, close to despair, and moved into the study to ring Bridget and explain the hold-up. Her hand was actually on the phone when she heard a loud splash from the bottom of the garden, lifted her head and saw a man and a woman exchanging places in a rowing boat. Loretta watched for a moment, let out a loud exclamation and ran from the room, clattering down the stairs and hurling herself through the kitchen and dining room to the French windows. The key was in the lock, a piece of carelessness on her part for which she was
heartily grateful, and she took the steps up to the lawn two at a time, careering across the grass and coming to an abrupt halt on the landing stage.

“Hey,” she called after the rowing boat, which was now pulling sedately northward. “Hey, can I have a lift?”

The man who had taken over the rowing stared at her, oars in mid-air. “You talking to me?”

“
Yes.
Please, can you turn back?”

There was an agonizing moment of indecision while the man leaned forward to consult his girlfriend, then he dipped an oar into the water and began to turn the boat.

“Thanks,” said Loretta, scrambling aboard. “I'll get out at the bridge.” She crouched in the middle of the boat and smiled encouragingly over her shoulder at the oarsman as he pushed off.

“That your house?” asked the woman.

Loretta nodded. “I'm having a bet with a friend,” she improvised, “he's walking to the bridge and I said I could get there quicker by boat.”

“Oh.” The woman accepted this unlikely explanation without question and Loretta remained where she was, clutching the sides of the boat, until the bridge came into sight.

“You can let me off here,” she cried, rocking the boat and almost losing her balance in her eagerness to reach dry land. She stumbled onto the towpath and made for the bridge without a backward glance, congratulating herself on the ease with which she had outwitted the watchers in Southmoor Road, and broke into a fast trot as she crossed the canal into Aristotle Lane.

Loretta Paused At The End Of Frenchay Road, looked over her shoulder to make sure she wasn't being followed and turned left into Woodstock Road. She walked quickly but not too fast, anxious not to draw attention to herself, and started wildly when a cyclist shot past, ringing her bell and calling: “Hi, Loretta!” The rider was twenty yards up the road by the time Loretta recognized the loud voice and flying hair of Lucy Wilkes, a bright but lazy sixth-former whose parents had sent her to Loretta for extra tuition in English before her A levels. Loretta waved belatedly and allowed Lucy to dwindle to a speck before she turned into a front garden concealed from the road by a high hedge. There was no car in the drive but the garage door was firmly closed and Loretta guessed Bridget's car was inside. She made for the narrow passage between the garage and the white-painted house, hardly noticing the familiar acrid smell which drifted over from a nearby factory when the wind was in the right direction. Stepping out onto the paved area behind the house, she observed the garden long enough to notice that the grass was knee-high, then
tiptoed past the drawing room window to the conservatory.

She tapped on the glass. “Bridget?
Bridget?”

Nothing happened for a moment, then the door from the dining room opened and Bridget appeared. She unbolted the conservatory door, stood back to allow Loretta inside and then threw herself into her friend's arms with such force that Loretta nearly toppled backward. She held Bridget close, thinking again how thin and vulnerable she was, and almost at once Bridget dropped her head onto Loretta's shoulder and began to sob. It was a desperate, inhuman sound, even worse than the bout of crying Loretta had listened to on Tuesday night, on the phone from Paris, and she felt helpless in the face of so profound a grief. She stroked Bridget's hair, murmured loving words and felt behind her with her free hand for the handle of the conservatory door; the last thing she wanted was a curious neighbor coming round to see what the commotion was—not even Audrey Summers, whose house adjoined Bridget's.

“Come on,” she said gently, sliding an arm round Bridget's shoulders and guiding her towards the dining room. “Let's get inside.” The garden wasn't overlooked, it was long and bounded by trees, but she didn't want to take any chances. The dining room was dark, most of its natural light stolen by the conservatory, and Loretta felt for the light switch only to discover that the power was turned off. She peered round the room, which she had not seen since Bridget moved out, and repressed a shiver at its shadowy emptiness. There were lighter patches on the wall where pictures had hung; and a corkboard full of postcards, photographs, seminar lists and programs from the Phoenix cinema. Loretta remembered a picture of herself and Bridget drinking champagne on the grass at St. Frideswide's, celebrating the
publication of Loretta's biography of Edith Wharton. It had been taken by a friend of Bridget's whose name Loretta could not remember although she clearly recalled Bridget thrusting the camera at him with a stream of confusing instructions on how to focus it; they were both amazed when it came out so well.

“Has all the furniture gone?” she asked uneasily, peering through the open door into the drawing room.

Bridget sniffed and moved away from Loretta's supporting arm. “There's a bed upstairs and a couple of chairs. The man who cleared the house didn't want them, so I just left them.”