A Deceptive Devotion

by Iona Whishaw

  “Oh. I wonder if he somehow saw Oxley talking to the motel owner and decided it was unsafe to return. But that would only be because he trusts no one but you. It looks like you will be the go-between tomorrow. I should be there.”

  Lane considered this. Something wasn’t right, but did it follow that it was anything more than the usual secrecy? Having more people there wouldn’t help. According to Hunt, Oxley was an agent of the Canadian government, so there was nothing more to do. Just make sure Aptekar understood he was in safe hands and let them all get in a car and go away.

  “No need, thanks. We have lots. Happy supper yourselves.”

  It was only when she’d hung up that she remembered about the rifle. Well, she couldn’t have said anything anyway. Besides, she hadn’t yet had a chance to talk with Kenny. She would slip out later and ask Kenny about it. If it wasn’t his, he could call the police without fear of being overheard.

  Chapter THIRTY

  “It’s go. I’ll meet you at the airfield. Between one and one thirty, just in case of loose ends.” Oxley listened to the voice on the other end.

  “Da, tovarich. Spasiba. Pakah.”

  Kenny held the piece of paper Lane had given him and hovered over his phone. He was not comforted by her reassurances about the rifle. He had told her in no uncertain terms that the rifle had nothing to do with him and certainly had not belonged to his mother. Lane had told him that it could not belong to Orlova because she had only the suitcases when she arrived. Fretfully, Kenny took up the phone and asked to be put through to the police. His request to speak to either Darling or Ames was unsatisfied, as both were no longer at the station.

  “Listen, it’s critical that they get this note the minute they come in the morning. Tell them Miss Winslow . . . yes, Winslow, has found an old rifle in a closet in her house . . . no, wait, say ‘in her guest’s closet in her house.’ Do you have that?”

  Eleanor looked at him when he came back into the kitchen.

  “I’m not at all easy in my mind,” he said. He repeated this observation to Alexandra when she came and jumped onto his lap wiggling and wanting to lick his face.

  Lane and Orlova sat with the remains of glasses of wine in front of their empty plates. There was a feel of The Last Supper about the lingering silence between them.

  “Countess. The secrecy must stop. I know who you are; at least I think I do. And I know why you are here. I would prefer if you told me yourself. I’m not an enormous fan of guessing games.”

  Orlova smiled and handled the stem of her glass.

  “You remind me of myself,” she said. “When I was young. I was beautiful, smart, inventive. I was even in love, only once, and forever.”

  “With whom?” Lane asked.

  “With a wonderful young soldier, I told you, I think, before. I had his baby, though my husband did not suspect. At least, I assume he didn’t. It is so hard to know, is it not? I never told him I had been in love with Stanimir, and I could never love anyone else the same way, but he was a good man, Orlov. I didn’t want to hurt him.”

  Lane tried not to register the surprise she felt. “Stanimir Aptekar?”

  Orlova shrugged and gave a slight nod.

  “Obviously you are not a countess. Were you an agent of the Soviet government?” Lane asked.

  Orlova shook her head, as if at fate. “I would have been a countess, you know, if not for the revolution, on my own family’s account and on Orlov’s. He would have inherited his father’s title. It’s funny, I was wild to throw off the aristocratic trappings when I was a girl. Now I feel almost wistful, looking back on that vanished world.”

  “And the brother? I suppose there is no such man?”

  “You must have some things that are true, do you not think, when you are undercover? My brother is real, but he is dead. He worked for the MGB as I did, but he was shot in the street. They told me it was a counterrevolutionary, someone who had lost a family member perhaps. I don’t think so, myself. He had become difficult? Maybe. I don’t know. But I had to become more loyal, do you see? So I would not be tainted by whatever he had done. It becomes quite a game, trying to stay alive. But you see, I made it. I think being small, and a woman, makes one less important. And now I am here to help with Stanimir.”

  “Is that why you are here? Because you will recognize him?”

  “I volunteered,” Orlova said, “when I heard he had disappeared.”

  “Who are you working for?” Lane watched Orlova’s face.

  The countess smiled and shook her head very slightly. “I know, it seems crazy to you, after all these years, I am sure. But I got tired of . . . I don’t know . . . how intense the Soviets are. Life looked more relaxed on the other side. I have long since lost all my status, and I am now being handled by one of the many people who live in this country and work for us, but my life is more peaceful, not so violent. After this I will retire, well and truly.”

  Lane looked down, hiding a smile of her own. How typical that answer.

  “So you work for the British.”

  Orlova inclined her head. Suddenly breaking into English, she said, “You have been a remarkable translator. It is a sign of your great integrity, I think. Never a line I didn’t speak, never a joke. I have come to respect you. I already liked you of course. You have aristocratic manners.”

  Lane laughed at hearing her guest speaking English.

  “Touché. You had me completely bamboozled.”

  “What is this word, bamboozle?”

  “It means completely deceived.”

  “Ah. Bamboozle. Though when I finally become just a painter, I will not need it. I will be bamboozling no one.”

  “I like you too, Countess. It would be hard not to. But I cannot help feeling that you continue to deceive me.”

  Orlova regarded Lane. “Of course, you are a spy. Well, an ex-spy. Suspicion never leaves, does it? I must remember this. I don’t want to live my remaining days looking over my shoulder. But why should you be suspicious? I have told you everything.”

  Lane shook her head and reverted to Russian. “I don’t think so. How did you engineer being placed here with me?”

  “That was child’s play. My Canadian contact, Oxley, nicely disguised, picked me up at that train station pretending to be a taxi driver. He merely dropped a hint to the nice priest about ‘the lady up the lake who speaks Russian.’ And here I am.”

  Lane reached for the wine bottle and offered some to her guest.

  “How easily we were all duped.”

  “No, thank you. Not for me. Do not think of it as being duped. You sell yourself short. Look at you now. You seem to know everything, and we can go forward on an honest footing. You have searched my room, I have looked at your mail and listened to your phone calls, but here we are, all cards on the table. Your phone calls, by the way, are charming. All your lovely neighbours calling about carrots. That is the life I want. You have done well for yourself. I would like such a life. I could not live out here, however. It is so far from everything. But perhaps in Ontario, or even Britain.”

  “If our cards are on the table, perhaps you can tell me where you were doing your transmitting? I honestly believed you were off painting, until I saw your radio.”

  “There was a troublesome problem. The mountains are a difficulty. But I did eventually find a meadow where I could make a connection. It was clear of trees, with a good outcrop and high enough to make the connection.”

  “As it happens I found it. Do you know it is where the dead hunter was found?”

  “But that is remarkable!” Orlova exclaimed. “If I had known I am sure I would have tried to find another place. When the killer was arrested, I felt safe to return there, knowing there was no madman on the loose. It never occurred to me—”

  “I’m surprised you didn’t see the dried blood
there.”

  Orlova shuddered. “I’m glad I didn’t. How gruesome!”

  “And what did you talk about, you and Oxley?”

  “Nothing very much. The radio was to alert him when Stanimir came, so before that we experimented until we could get a good connection, and we made a few calls to make sure it was working. I told him what he could expect out here, a little bit about you, of course.”

  “Like that I was getting married?”

  “Yes, certainly. That was important, no? You are marrying the police inspector. Oxley needed to know that.”

  Lane let this sit. “Why is it so important for Aptekar to be picked up? Why can he not be left alone?”

  “I know. I wish for this as well, but after the last time . . . ” She sighed, shrugging.

  “After what last time?”

  “Ah, yes. Well, you were not to know. You were not here, yet, I believe. It happened right after the war, in ’45. It was discovered that this country had many people working for the Soviets. A defector told your government everything. Now he too has disappeared. That’s all I can say, really. But I suspect Stanimir must have something or he would not require protection.”

  Lane tilted her glass this way and that. Should she put one of her last cards down? She was afraid to, she knew. It was almost comforting and certainly convenient to believe what she was being told now, though it was discomfiting to know that Orlova even knew she had arrived in Canada in ’46. But she would not be safe, Aptekar would not be safe, if she did not know the whole truth, or at least have enough to guess at it.

  “You see,” Lane said, “the one thing in all of this that I don’t understand is how the British agent in Vancouver knew I was going to marry.”

  Orlova sat on her bed with her hands folded in her lap. She could feel her chest rising and falling with her own breath. The only emotion she could discern was a layer of anticipation somewhere under the stillness. She would see Aptekar, after all this time. She saw herself, suddenly, at eighteen, her hair pulled out of its pins, falling over his face, his arms around her bare back. It was like a picture of some other people now, so long ago was it, filled with passions she had long since lost. Only something did remain, not that youthful ardour, something almost more primal, a physical need to be with him, like lovers who are buried together. It was likely they would be.

  She had volunteered for the assignment and they had accepted her immediately. What she told them about how she would manage it had made sense. She could pose as an émigré, paint her pictures, keep an eye on things, and protect the mission if need be. She had done that. She felt some regret about the man. She had never quite squared the idea of killing in peacetime, but in a way, it was a war still.

  It was too bad about Miss Winslow. She had not lied to her. The girl did remind her of her younger self. She had heard they had tried to bring her over. Winslow’s excellent Russian, her disaffection for her wartime employer. She would have been a catch. And she was clever. Orlova unclasped her hands and stroked the bedcover briefly, the only sign that she was unsettled. The girl was on the verge of understanding. She could tell by the kinds of questions she asked. And she had found the rifle.

  She contemplated killing her now, while she slept, but that would have impractical ramifications. If Aptekar did not find her on the wharf, he would be suspicious. He might be armed. She lay back on the bed fully dressed, pulling the blankets over herself. Her bags stood by the door, packed. They had agreed. They would wait until she met him, and then they would take him. His papers had been prepared as had the cover story that he was ill and had to return to Vladivostok. She knew he would be sent back to a gulag, but he would be alive. That was the bargain she’d struck. Sparing one last thought for the girl, she slept.

  Ames sat at his desk. He liked the mornings; they felt settled, and he could think better than he could later in the day when things that needed attending to started crowding in. He had laid the shirt with the dried blood out on the desk, and the knife to one side on a piece of paper, and he was looking at them with distaste. Gilly had performed some sort of test on them and they were waiting for the results. He looked at his watch. It was eight thirty. Gilly would have something any moment. Ames shook his head. If he had cut someone’s throat, he’d have thrown the knife as far into the bush as he could and burned the shirt.

  Perhaps Taylor had been planning to burn the shirt, but it was found before he got the chance? But why not toss the weapon immediately?

  He would have a go at Taylor. Maybe after all these days in the clink he’d be more willing to talk. He stood up and stretched—and then something about the shirt came into focus from this new perspective. Frowning he leaned forward, and then sat down again. He was about to try to sort what he’d seen when Gilly appeared at his door. He hadn’t even heard him coming up the stairs.

  “It’s Brodie’s blood on the shirt, all right, as near as we can tell. So I expect you have the murderer’s shirt there,” he said. “But the knife? I’m not convinced. This blade is quite thick. I’m pretty certain the work was done with a much slenderer sort of blade.”

  “Wait, are you saying this is not the murder weapon?” Ames struggled to understand what that meant.

  “I wouldn’t say so, no. That shirt’s pretty messy as well.”

  Ames looked at the shirt, frowning. “Come here a minute. Turn around. Now if I’m going to cut your throat . . . wait, Brodie was kneeling down or something, according to you. What was he doing?”

  “He was squatting or kneeling. The assailant was above him, from the way the cut was angled. Why? And do I have to start my day having my throat cut? The wife is expecting me home for lunch.”

  “This’ll only take a minute. I need your expertise. If you prefer, you can cut mine. Yes, let’s do that. You’ve seen the cut, you’ll know exactly how it was done.” Ames kneeled on the floor. “Like this?”

  “Good enough.” Gilly pulled Ames’s head back by the hair, eliciting an “ow” and then made a swiping motion. “Okay, fall forward.” Gilly stood up and watched Ames fall over. “Ah!” he exclaimed. In the position that Ames had been in on his knees, he tumbled forward and then sideways, because his bent knees prevented him from lying flat.

  “‘Ah’ what?” asked Ames, getting up and dusting off his knees and arms.

  “I have a photo of the body taken at the scene. It was lying flat out, face down. Even if he was squatting instead of kneeling, he’d have ended up on his side.”

  “Convulsions?”

  “There is no time for convulsions with a cut like that. Death would have been instantaneous. Is this why we’ve done this little charade?”

  “No, but it adds to my puzzlement. I wanted you to cut my throat and then tell me where all the blood would be on that nice white shirt of yours.”

  “If I’m a professional, which I am, by the way, if the cut is anything to go by, there won’t be much blood on me. It will all have poured outwards and onto the ground. Photos show that to be the case. Once the victim was down, the rest of the blood would drain away. Now, the victim’s shirt would be a right mess because he’d be lying in it.”

  “But the victim was wearing a shirt when he was found. Look at this thing. This is the shirt with, you now tell me, the victim’s blood. Look where it is. It looks like whoever was wearing this was dancing the tango with the victim.”

  Gilly smiled thinly, and then went serious again.

  “It’s perfectly possible that having committed the murder, the killer regretted it and turned the body over, wept over it, turned it back. That would account for the way he was found. Didn’t you say they used to be friends?”

  “Good point. I just can’t square why there’d be this practically assassin level of clean, efficient murder, and then all this folderol with the body. I’m going to talk to him again. And the knife is a whole other barrel of
fish, if what you say is true.”

  Taylor sat with his hands clasped, chewing his bottom lip. He knew why he was there now, with this policeman he’d never seen. They’d charge him officially now.

  “I’m Constable Ames, you know O’Brien, I think?”

  Taylor nodded, and looked at the table.

  “I just need to go over some things, if you don’t mind.”

  “Are you going to charge me, or what?”

  “Probably, but you need to answer some questions.”

  Taylor shook his head. “The one question you can ask is, did I kill Brodie, and the answer is still no.”

  Ames leaned forward. “I know, you’ve said that before. However, our pathologist, Mr. Gillingham, has told me this morning that the blood on the shirt found in your cupboard belongs to your old friend Brodie. If you didn’t do it, how can you explain that?”

  Taylor was silent. He rubbed his right thumb over the knuckles of his left hand. Finally, he said, “I didn’t do it. I wanted to often enough, but I didn’t.”

  “Then you need to adequately explain this shirt business. Your shirt, his blood, your cupboard.”

  “And that knife that was with it has nothing to do with me!” Taylor exploded, and then turned away with a groan.

  “There we go. Now we’re cooking with gas. How did it get there then? And if you didn’t kill him, why is the shirt covered with his blood?”

  “Look, if I tell you this, she can never know. You have to promise me.”

  “Can’t do too much in the way of promises, I’m afraid. When things go to trial it all tends to come out. If, as you say, you didn’t do it, you won’t need to worry about a trial.”

  “I did go up there that night,” Taylor said quietly.

  O’Brien shifted forward in his chair against the wall by the door to the interview room.

  “I did. And I was going to kill him. He’d come around threatening me, and he’d hurt Cassie one time too many. I knew where he usually made camp. I took my revolver and hiked up. It was getting dark, so I had my flashlight. Only when I got there, he was already dead. I nearly passed out at the sight of him. His head hanging like that, blood everywhere. I—”