Lovers and Liars Trilogy

by Sally Beauman

  She knelt down and tried to identify them by feel. An empty tin candlestick, a box of matches…and a package of some kind. She felt the outline of this package. It was flat and stiff, a reinforced envelope about twelve inches by eight. It had been opened; she could feel the neat slit, made with a knife.

  She held it out to the thin light coming from above, and could just see that there was something written on the envelope, but she could not make out the words. She was starting to shiver again. She listened to the silence fearfully. She could feel something inside the envelope, something stiff and smooth.

  She felt around on the floorboards, felt under the sleeping bag, but she could find nothing concealed. Clutching the envelope, she made for the stairs.

  In the light of the downstairs room she breathed more easily. She must hurry, hurry….She stared down at the envelope’s computer-printed address: James McMullen, c/o Dr. Anthony Knowles, Christ Church, Oxford. No stamp, so it must have been delivered by hand.

  Inside there were photographic prints, masked by a sheet of thick white paper. When she saw what had been typed on the paper, she gave a low cry of astonishment. The signatory was John Hawthorne’s father; the message was brief, and to the point: Mr. McMullen, it read. You have been making some very unwise allegations concerning blondes. I feel you should know the truth. These photographs were taken in the final three months of last year, in each case on the third Sunday of those months. Good-bye, Mr. McMullen: I shall not expect you to trouble this family again.

  Gini gave a low cry; she stared at this message in confusion. She thought: I was wrong, and Hawthorne lied. She hesitated, unwilling to look at these pictures, then she lifted the covering letter aside. She had a sick premonition of what she might see, but she had not expected this, and she was not used to hardcore pornography. When she saw the three images, October, November, December, she gasped, and let them fall from her hand.

  She bent down, and retrieved each month’s picture in turn. All three were in black and white. In all three the woman wore a black, tight-waisted corselet, which left her breasts almost bare. She wore long black gloves, black stockings, and black patent leather stiletto-heeled shoes. In all three pictures the woman was kneeling in front of a man. Each of the men was different, though all three were young, in their late teens or early twenties, and all had blond hair. Gini recognized none of the three. Each had his hands cuffed behind his back. Each of the men wore work clothes—coveralls or dirty jeans; each had the heavy muscular build of the manual laborer. One of them had scratch marks on his face. The November man had removed his shirt to reveal heavy arms covered in tattoos. In each of the three photographs the man’s fly was opened, and his penis was exposed.

  In the first picture the woman held the man’s penis in her hand; in the second, she was sucking the man’s penis, her eyes closed; the third picture, and the worst, was what Gini knew was called a come shot in the trade. It had been taken the instant after the man’s orgasm. The woman’s uplifted face, black hair, and bared breasts were gluey with semen. Her expression was ecstatic: She appeared to be looking at someone else, perhaps the person who had taken these pictures; she was giving a glance of triumph and delight to someone not inside this frame.

  Sickness welled in Gini’s stomach. She picked up the photographs and the letter and pushed them back in their envelope. She stood there, trembling with revulsion, and closed her eyes. The technical quality of the pictures was only too good, and there was no possible mistake. On the darkness of her retina she saw gender switch and a scenario reverse. It was a man who was handcuffed, a man who was blond. It was not John Hawthorne who liked sex with strangers once a month, it was his wife. The photographs were of Lise.

  She felt an overpowering need, now, to be out of this house, to run back to her car, to catch that train and to rejoin Pascal. She crossed the room and switched out the light. She had to hurry, but she still had time.

  She opened the door and peered into the darkness outside. The wind was stronger now, the moon rising like a splinter of silver. The stars were splashed across the heavens. Low, small tight clouds moved fast across the sky.

  The light outside was deceptive, intermittent, giving the inanimate a deceptive wavering life. She stood on the threshold, suddenly afraid, watching shadows suggest shapes. She thought: McMullen received those pictures; McMullen isn’t dead, he’s alive. She took one step forward, and then she heard it: It might have been something, it might have been nothing. A brushing, whispering sound, the tiniest of noises, but she knew what it was. Someone else was out there, in the darkness to the side of the cottage, and something they were wearing, or carrying, had brushed against its wall.

  She put her hand to her mouth to stifle any cry. She went rigid with fear. Could she hear breathing? She thought she could hear breathing. Very slowly she inched back inside the cottage and edged back behind the door.

  She stood the, listening, listening. A rustle of dead leaves, the creak of a branch, silence.

  Perhaps she had imagined that noise, she thought, and took a careful step forward. She reached out in the darkness toward the faint light at the edge of the half-open door. Then, without warning, out of total silence there was movement. Air rushed past her face. The pale slice of moonlight, the last light visible, vanished. Someone had slammed the door.

  He was locking it, even now. She gave a low moan of fear as she heard first one, then two locks engage. She could hear footsteps now, moving around to the back of the cottage. She felt her way toward the kitchen, bumping painfully into the table as she passed. The back door was locked, but there was no key on the inside. She could hear someone clearly now, beyond those boarded windows, moving around the yard. The door to some outbuilding was dragged open, then closed The footsteps approached the back door. There was another noise, as if something heavy were being dragged, then lifted.

  She clamped her hand across her mouth and pressed herself against the door, listening. She could hear breathing just through the panels.

  Whoever was out there was waiting—waiting for what?—on the other side of the door.

  Chapter 34

  SIX O’CLOCK CAME AND went. In that pink upstairs bedroom Pascal sat and waited. At six-fifteen he went downstairs and listened intently for the approach of a taxi in the street. For half an hour, three quarters of an hour, an hour, his mind was inventive: It came up with explanation after explanation for Gini’s delay. She had arrived at Paddington on time, but there were no taxis available. No, her train was delayed. He imagined some trivial delay, ten or fifteen minutes perhaps. Then he imagined a more serious holdup. At seven-thirty, when these inventions began to fail him, he called Paddington direct. The four-thirty train from Oxford had arrived on time, he was told. Pascal felt the first symptoms of alarm. He tried to remain calm; he took down the arrival and departure times of the other Oxford-London trains that evening and began to make calculations. If Gini had missed the first train but taken the next, he could expect her around eight. For a while this possibility buoyed him, then eight came and went.

  He returned upstairs to the dark back bedroom, bent to his viewfinder, and scanned the cul-de-sac beyond. Still silent and deserted. Not one of the houses showed any lights. He scanned the entrance to the gothic villa, then its rear windows. Nothing: The curtains remained undrawn; the pale rooms beyond dreamlike, empty and still. It was as if they were waiting for something, as he was waiting.

  If Gini had been this much delayed, she would have called, surely? It was now almost nine, which meant she had missed two trains. If she had aimed to be at the Oxford Station at four, there were, he now realized, five missing hours of time to be explained. Only two further trains left Oxford for London that evening. One was due in around ten, the other shortly after midnight. He sat in the darkness, feeling time inch its way forward.

  His hearing was acute, and the darkness intensified it. The cul-de-sac beyond might remain dark and silent, but he heard the tiniest sounds from his own street. A do
g whining in a house two doors away; the sound of footsteps, of car doors opening and closing, the swish of tires down the road. A normal Saturday night: people going out and returning. But no telephone call, and no taxicabs. He found it impossible to be still. He began to pace, then went downstairs again.

  He was unwilling to use the telephone, in case Gini should be trying to contact him, but by nine-thirty he could stand it no longer. He saw Gini in a frail rented car, taking a corner too fast on a wet country road; he saw her wheels lock, start to skid. He called the police accident and emergency line, and a slow-voiced, calm, and sensible woman ran some checks: No, she informed him after a long and agonizing delay, there had been no road accidents in the vicinity of Oxford that night. Pascal tried the Oxford hospital emergency rooms: No one of Gini’s name or description had been admitted that night. Then he had an inspiration: Gini had said she’d picked up a car from the station. Pascal called the station, found out the name of the firm, dialed that. A woman took his call, and she sounded impatient. She’d been waiting for one last customer on the London-Oxford train, she said, otherwise she’d have packed up and left an hour ago—it was Saturday night.

  Pascal could tell she was about to hang up. He launched himself on a desperate and incoherent charm offensive. Finally she was persuaded to check, and—yes, Ms. Hunter had returned her rented car, it was parked outside right now, and the keys had been returned. No, she couldn’t say exactly what time it had been returned and she herself hadn’t actually seen Ms. Hunter, but she thought probably in the last twenty minutes or so, because one of her colleagues had dealt with it while she took a coffee break. No, this colleague had now gone.

  Pascal hung up. He looked at his watch. Ten-fifteen. He began to hope, began to feel relief. That meant, that surely meant that Gini must have reached the station safely. Had she been trying to call him while he talked to hospitals and to the police? She was probably on that last train right now, for it would have left Oxford just three minutes before, and would now be making its way slowly back to London. She would be due at midnight, she must be due at midnight, she must be safe.

  For a while this hope cheered him. He went into the kitchen and made himself more coffee. He sat at the table with his head in his hands. He had eaten nothing all day, and he had no appetite whatsoever. He sat there dosing himself with caffeine, but that and the cigarettes only made him more tense. He suddenly remembered the list of belongings found on McMullen’s dead body. If McMullen had died, Gini had said.

  He took the list out again now and looked at it. If Gini had not said that, if she had not explained the discrepancies in the account of McMullen’s movements given to the police, he would not have seen so quickly what was wrong with this list. But because she had told him all that, the two oddnesses leapt out at him. Looking at them now, his anxiety escalated.

  The list was meticulous. It detailed precisely the amount of change found in the deceased’s pockets. It described the crest on the signet ring worn, the make of wristwatch, the make of lighter—a Dunhill—the types of credit cards, and the exact brand of cigarettes. Benson and Hedges Silk Cut, a common enough English brand. But it was not the brand McMullen had been smoking, nor the type of cigarette. McMullen had smoked unfiltered Camels, a habit now so unusual that Pascal had noted it at once. And he had not used a lighter either. He had used matches instead.

  So, had McMullen staged his own death? Or had an attempt been made to kill him, and some stand-in, some helper, been mistakenly killed instead? Pascal tried to think. He tried to remember the details Gini had given him of her conversation at Mary’s with Hawthorne the previous night.

  Hawthorne had appeared to know nothing of the meeting with McMullen in Oxford, although he had known of the meetings in Regent’s Park and the British Museum. Yesterday, Pascal had been convinced that this was simply guile on Hawthorne’s part, a technique for extracting information from Gini. It had seemed to Pascal so obvious: He and Gini had been followed to Oxford, just as they had been followed, and listened to, for almost two weeks. They had led McMullen’s enemies to him, just as Pascal had feared—and sure enough, within hours of their leaving him, James McMullen was dead.

  Hawthorne had himself been in Oxfordshire that same night. Pascal and Gini had watched him arrive, and Pascal had assumed his visit had one very obvious purpose. Hawthorne had been there to insure that this time McMullen was silenced finally. The scenario had been clear to him, but now he began to doubt. What if McMullen were not dead? Could Gini conceivably have been right in her instincts? Was it possible that John Hawthorne was innocent, or partially innocent—that he was not guilty here?

  At that Pascal felt a new idea and a different doubt come sidling forward from the back of his brain. It was an idea that sickened him, that made him go cold with fear. But once there, it would not go away, so he forced himself to look at it. After all, he had no way of knowing now whether Hawthorne was in London or not. Suppose he were in Oxfordshire? Suppose Gini knew that? It would explain her insistence on going to Oxford today—and if she had met Hawthorne there, then that meeting would explain the length of this delay.

  Pascal rose abruptly and began to pace the room. No, he told himself, that was impossible: Gini would not lie to him directly. If she had known for certain that Hawthorne would be in Oxfordshire, she would have told him. On the other hand, he could imagine Gini, on impulse, contacting Hawthorne, and on discovering where he was, arranging to meet him. And then…Pascal covered his face with his hands. He tried to control his own jealous imagination, but he could not damp it down.

  It sent up little images, little tongues and darts of flame. He still did not know exactly what had happened with Hawthorne the previous evening, and he began to fear now that he never would know, or understand. He could see in his own mind Hawthorne touching her, and the ways in which he did so, or might have done so, were agony to him. He began to see that Gini might have responded to Hawthorne, and been unwilling and ashamed to admit that, to herself or to Pascal. If she had responded to him then, and saw him this evening, might she not respond again?

  He could see Gini very clearly now in another man’s arms, an image lit like lightning by pain. He saw Hawthorne touch her breasts and part her thighs. He turned, with a despairing gesture, and tried to force the vision out of his mind.

  He knew Gini so intimately. Every part of his body knew every part of hers; it was not just his eyes and ears that recorded the ways in which she made love, but his hands, his genitals, his mouth, and his heart. Stop, he said to himself, but his mind would not stop, there were the lightning images, one by one, the expression in her eyes before he entered her, the transfixing of her face as he did so, the lift and movement of her body against his, the slackening and opening of her mouth when he slowed their rhythms, that blind, quick fierceness he both witnessed and shared when he knew he had to move only once, perhaps twice, and she would come. These gestures, movements, touches, and tastes he saw as his alone, reserved for him only. He could not even glimpse those details in his mind without experiencing the sharpest, most immediate desire. For a second, turning his face to the wall, he felt and saw the damp strands of her hair, the salt taste of her breasts, and the exactitude—this was always very arousing to him—with which her gray eyes registered shock and want when he entered her.

  She had a way of moving then, a way of kissing. There were certain things she would say, and Pascal had always believed these his: It made no difference how many other lovers she had had, who they were, or what she had done with them. They were as shadowy, as distant, he had believed, as were any of the women he had had in his past. It had never occurred to him, not for one instant, that those past men had possessed her as he did, and as she possessed him. But now, suddenly, with an agonizing sharpness, he saw that belief as an illusion, or a failure of imagination on his part.

  Now, one by one in those lightning flashes, he saw Gini with Hawthorne yesterday, Gini with Hawthorne today, and she said the same things, ga
ve the same things, to another man, to that man, in exactly the same way.

  If this was jealousy, it was a kind he had never experienced before. It shot through his body; he felt it as a physical wounding, a knife in the heart and the groin. He was ashamed of and appalled by these imaginings; he saw them as alien to him, as invading him, but he could not force them away. He stopped pacing and stood in the ugly kitchen, very still. He looked unseeingly at clinical white surfaces, at shining chrome. He forced himself to note the meaningless detail in front of him, the shape of shelves and implements: This cup, this white plate, that knife, those spoons.

  Gradually, he grew calmer, and he felt the jealous images recede. It seemed to him a betrayal, even to have thought in this way. He thought: My mind is lying to me. He thought: Let her be on that last train. Then, suddenly alert, he swung around, listening. He moved quickly out into the hall, and—yes—he had been right. It was eleven-twenty now, and he could hear the distinctive chug of a London taxi. It had just drawn up, its engine idling, outside.

  Relief surged through him. He moved quickly to the front door, Gini’s name on his lips. He was about to throw it open, when he heard the voices of strangers—a man and a woman discussing some party they’d just left. He heard their footsteps go past this house. The dog’s whining two doors away turned to a rapturous bark. A door opened and closed; silence returned. Soon, Pascal said to himself; let it be soon. He would check his cameras again, check the cul-de-sac was still empty—any action that kept his imaginings at bay.

  The rooms upstairs were in darkness. Downstairs he had left one light on next to the telephone in the hall, and one in the kitchen. As he moved across to the stairs, both lights failed.

  Pascal froze. He stood absolutely still in the dark, thinking fast. He moved silently to the door and drew the bolts across. He felt his way from light switch to light switch. None operated. He edged into the kitchen and opened the refrigerator door: no light. He moved quietly back into the hall and lifted the telephone receiver: The line was dead. No telephone, no light, no power.