‘You should go home. Get some sleep.’
She shook her head. ‘Sleep is for when you have nothing better to do.’
‘It’s been a long day, Romy.’
They had stopped at a kerb, waiting for a horse and cart to trundle past, piled high with sweet-smelling hay. She glanced up at Martel and found him looking at her, his large features softened by the yellow blur of a street lamp.
‘You have something better to do?’ he asked.
‘Yes.’
He didn’t ask what. He didn’t need to. For a while they walked on in silence. She could feel how tense the long muscles of his arm were.
‘Is there a chance that the Ebro army will succeed in driving back General Dávila’s Nationalist forces?’ she asked.
‘Every chance.’
‘Honestly?’
His pause was so slight, most others would have missed it. ‘Honestly.’
‘Poor Grégory. He loves his brother so much and worries himself sick over him. I would be the same,’ she declared, ‘if my sister went to war.’
Martel gave a snort of laughter that startled a rat out of the gutter. They turned a corner into a narrow street where the street lamps were not all working and the air felt as soft and black as velvet on her cheek. She didn’t mind. It was easier to say what she had to say in the darkness.
‘Is there someone watching us?’ she asked. ‘Watching me?’
She heard him inhale. ‘Why do you ask?’
‘Because I noticed a black Citroën parked within spitting distance of a shop that I was in this evening. Then it appeared at the corner of the block where we had our meeting, just up from the café. When we left, it had moved to the opposite corner.’
‘You are imagining things, Romy. There are thousands of black Citroëns in Paris. They are like crows. You can’t tell them apart. Don’t worry about it.’
‘Merde! Don’t treat me like a fool.’
‘I’ve never thought you a fool.’
‘You know how when you’re flying, you have to be aware of everything around you. I mean everything. At all times. The weather, the clouds, the wind direction, your speed, your instruments, your fuel, the pitch of your engine, other aircraft in the sky or on the ground, railway lines, rivers, fields where you can crash-land if necessary, church spires as markers, the condition of a landing strip, where the trees are, the state of your—’
‘I know, Romy.’
Of course he knew.
‘What I’m saying is that I notice everything. That’s one of the reasons I’m a good pilot.’
He turned his head to her. In the darkness she couldn’t see his face. ‘I know,’ he said quietly.
‘I’m telling you that it was the same black car each time. That’s all.’
Martel said nothing. The only sound was their footsteps echoing over the cobbles and somewhere the faint plaintive wail of a violin. The people of Paris loved their music. He wrapped his arm around her shoulders, drawing her closer.
‘So where,’ he said in a voice that rumbled up from deep inside his broad chest, ‘is the bar you’re heading for tonight?’
He watched her drink. He didn’t have one himself, so she ordered a glass of wine and made herself take it slow. What she wanted was a whisky. The bar was tired-looking, nondescript, but as familiar as an old shoe. The patron and several customers greeted her by name. They were seated in a corner at a small wooden table with wonky legs.
‘So?’ she asked. ‘The black Citroën.’
‘I wish I were the one flying aircraft to Spain instead of you.’
Romy experienced a ripple of shock, which she kept off her face. Martel had made it clear long ago that the subject of his own piloting experiences was strictly off-limits. She had come to work for him four years ago and at that time he walked heavily with a stick and his face was tight with pain. He’d looked much older than his thirty years. Martel himself never referred to his stick or to his limp, but his devoted shadow, Jules Roget, had told her. About the crash.
Léo Martel had been a stunt pilot. One of the best. Even flew a Curtiss P-01 Hawk in the dogfights in Wings, the 1927 Hollywood Gary Cooper film, and competed in pylon races and flew circus wing-walks. He lived and breathed flying. Jules swore he had aviation fuel running through his veins. Just after dawn on his twenty-first birthday in 1925 he had been crazy enough to risk his neck in a wild stunt – flying a Blériot biplane right through the archway of the Arc de Triomphe. Just the thought of it made Romy’s heart hammer fast as a piston engine. He’d got away with that one.
But five years ago his luck ran out. On a cold breezy morning. Landing at Le Bourget in a Caudron Luciole, a nippy little two-seater firefly of a plane with a seven-cylinder radial engine. Not even Jules would talk about it. But Romy caught the bare bones. It seems Martel was about to touch down when an ancient Caproni dropped out of the sky on top of him like a dead cat. The Luciole flipped. Tail over nose. Smashed his legs to pieces. Each year since then he took the medical for his pilot’s licence and each year he failed.
Romy couldn’t imagine what it did to him. Not flying. She leaned her elbows on the table and pushed her glass of Bordeaux towards him.
‘Here,’ she said and shrugged.
His slate-grey eyes stared at it for a long moment before he curled his fingers around the glass and knocked the wine straight back in one swallow. Almost immediately the rigidity of his large jaw slackened and his deep-set gaze lifted to Romy’s face. She wanted to say, Order another. You’ll feel better, I promise, but she wasn’t in the habit of telling Léo Martel what to do.
‘The Citroën?’ she prompted.
His eyebrows were thick, almost black, and always expressive. They swooped down now in disapproval.
‘Forget it,’ he said.
‘Forget it? It could be a threat to—’
‘It’s one of ours.’
‘What do you mean?’
‘It’s there to watch our backs. After the murder of those two in the other group, we need to be more careful.’
She blinked. The last thing she wanted was some hard-eyed stranger hounding her footsteps, making notes on the dark paths she chose to tread.
‘Who are they?’
But before he could reply, a door at the far end of the bar flew open and a young woman carrying a tray of empty glasses on one hand flounced out of the back room. She was wearing a dreary black waitress dress, but she had cinched it tight at the waist to show off her abundant curves. Her hair was a startling fox-red that made Romy smile. She knew it could be creamy-blonde or raven-black tomorrow. Éloise was easily bored. She managed the tray and the swing of her hips with equal skill as she wove her way over to Romy’s table where she put down the tray and embraced Romy warmly.
‘Where have you been, mon ange? They have been expecting you?’
Romy’s glance flicked towards the back room. Someone had already shut the door, but she felt her heartbeat quicken. Something stirred in her, the first knife-edge of excitement. She could taste the adrenaline, as tantalising as the first hit of whisky.
‘I said I’d be here,’ Romy murmured.
But already Éloise’s easy smile had slid to Léo Martel and her hand took the liberty of ruffling the short dark hairs at the back of his head.
‘My darling Romy, who is your handsome friend?’
Romy grinned at Martel’s discomfort. ‘He’s my boss.’
‘Well, boss, what can I get you to drink?’ Éloise’s smile was like honey. She knew how to make it look as if she’d been saving it up all night just for you.
Martel removed her hand from his shoulder and rose to his feet. He was too big for a tiny bar like this. ‘Romy, may I remind you that you are flying tomorrow. You need a good night’s sleep.’
She nodded. ‘I know. I’ll just stay for a chat with Éloise and then I’ll head off.’
The lie slipped off her tongue so smoothly, she almost believed it herself. But even above the rumble of voices from the other drinkers
she heard Martel’s sigh, saw disappointment cloud his face.
‘Goodnight, mademoiselle,’ he said to Éloise.
He walked out of the bar with no goodnight for Romy. She should have minded. She should have listened. She should have picked up her jacket and left at his heels. She knew all that. But it was not enough.
‘How many are in tonight?’ she asked Éloise.
‘Four of them.’ The waitress leaned closer. ‘One is a newcomer. He’s just your type.’
‘I don’t have a type.’
It was true, she didn’t. All shapes and sizes, colours and creeds. She liked whichever showed courage. And nerve. Yes, they were the best, the ones who knew how to ratchet up the excitement. She walked towards the back-room door. Kept it nonchalant. As though she were in no hurry at all.
Romy had studied her own face in the mirror with indecent frequency. She had peered closely at its curves and kinks, knew intimately each sweep of bone and blemish of skin. She was only too familiar with its faults. The muddy colour of her eyes and the angular chin that had a habit of jutting forward when she was angry and forgot to restrain it. But she knew her face’s good points too, one of which was the calmness of her facial muscles, smooth and silky. They fooled people. Their stillness was a mask. Most people didn’t see beyond it, and that was the reason she examined her face so minutely. To look for cracks.
Tonight she put on her poker face.
The cards came and went through her fingers, the stakes rose and fell, and the small pile of chips stacked in front of her rose and fell with them. She started slowly. To get the feel of the game. To test out this stranger. But the more she won, the more she risked and the pile grew steadily.
A pair of kings.
Ace high.
A low flush.
Nothing spectacular. Just enough to keep her in the game. Her face never changed, her expression a stone wall, her focus pin-sharp. Observing. Listening for the smallest quickening of breath. Between hands, she smoked cigarettes, eyes narrowed against the fog of Gitanes as she watched the other four players set out their own poker faces.
A straight flush. Better.
The other three players she knew well. Old adversaries, accustomed to duelling to the death. She knew how to read them and their plays. But Anton? The new one.
Who was he?
He was thin, with long manipulative fingers that fidgeted with his chips like a beginner, and a high-angled forehead that made her wary. Too much room for clever thoughts in there. Good-looking, if you like your man overconfident and snappily dressed. He sat on Romy’s right, talking too loud and losing badly. He made it too easy. But she wasn’t stupid, she knew his brashness could be a false tell.
Romy bluffed one hand and scooped the pot. The whisky glass in front of her filled, emptied and refilled without her noticing.
She folded the next.
Poker is a game of skill. Of tactics. Of deceit. That’s why she was good at it. She had an instinct for it. She told herself she only cared about the money, but she knew that wasn’t strictly true. There was more than that to these nights spent in smoke-filled back rooms. Much more. When the adrenaline hit like a train, ripping the breath from her lungs. When she knew she held a winning hand. When she had out-thought her opponents. It brought out the best in her. And the absolute worst. She knew that. Some days when she hit a downswing and saw her hard-earned cash slide into another’s greedy pocket, she vowed on her sister’s life never to play again.
Play. As if it were a game.
But when the cards were flying and the winnings were piling up in front of her, when the cards danced in her hands, well, then it was different. All-consuming. She could think of nothing else. No one else. That’s what she craved. She saw only the sad and implacable faces and crowned heads of the red and black kings, bloodless and bearded between her fingers.
‘Romy.’
It was Anton. The newcomer. He was staring at her. His eyes darted from her face to the chips stacked in front of her and back again.
‘You play well,’ he murmured. ‘You’re allowed to smile now.’
She pasted a smile on her face for him, a teasing one, and circled her chips protectively with her hands. She cast a glance at the paltry few left in front of him. ‘You should quit now,’ she told him with a small show of teeth, ‘before I win the shirt off your back.’
The flicker of irritation in his dark eyes was gone in a flash, but she’d registered it. Maybe now the loudmouth would cease his chatter. Opposite her, Georges, the beer-bellied owner of the bar, had risen from his chair, taking a break from the table, and was hunched in a corner, inhaling white powder with a swift sharp sniff. After a moment he returned, brushed specks of cocaine dust from his moustache with no embarrassment, and declared, ‘En avant, mes amis.’
Romy heard Anton echo under his breath, ‘En avant. Forward.’
From that moment, he started winning. With a speed that sent a chill through the swill of whisky in her stomach, he turned the game around. She started losing. She tried tightening up her game, taking fewer chances, but even then Anton always seemed to have the upper hand. Somehow his straights always went a little bit higher, his sets were just a little stronger.
The darkness outside slid into the room like oil, stifling the air, and as he dealt, Georges muttered something she didn’t catch, because all she heard now was the whisper of the cards. The soft snick as they brushed against the table. The loose grunt of satisfaction when the others leaned forward to draw the pot towards them. Because the others were winning. All of them – Georges, Xavier, Didier and Anton. Especially Anton. Only she was losing. Hand after hand.
She tightened her grip on her dwindling pile of chips. When Anton dealt, she fixed her eyes on his quick clever fingers. Could spot nothing. She drew three cards. He drew one. Which meant he most probably had two pairs. She had a pair of tens. Nothing else. Reluctantly she decided to give up on the hand. The way things were going, he probably had her dead in the water before even drawing that last card. She tossed her cards on the table. Anton grinned, turning over his cards. King high.
Putain.
She swore. He laughed.
‘Enough?’ he asked.
‘My deal,’ she said and shuffled the cards.
When she checked, another hour had passed. Bit by bit, he stripped her bare. Left her nothing. Not even a shred of pride. Anton was cheating, she was positive, but she couldn’t spot the hell how. She knew she should have quit when the chips were dancing her way. It was gone midnight now. She pushed her chair away from the table. ‘I’m done,’ she announced and resisted the urge to snatch a handful of the wretched chips that gathered like a swarm of black flies in front of Anton. She finished off her whisky.
‘Bonsoir, chérie,’ Georges chuckled. ‘Better luck next time.’
She left. Concentrating on walking straight. Outside the bar, she leaned against the wall in the dingy street, lit a cigarette and dragged in the smoke to suffocate her foul mood. She waited. No black Citroën saloons in sight. She exhaled heavily into the damp night air, the taste of disgust sour in her mouth.
He made her wait nearly an hour. When the tall figure with the sloping forehead and the felt fedora finally emerged from the doorway, she fell into step beside him in the darkness and slid her arm through his.
‘Now, Monsieur Anton, let me walk you home.’
CHAPTER EIGHT
The sex was fierce and brief. With a stranger she liked it that way, wild and abandoned. With a stranger she had nothing to lose.
The moment they stumbled into his apartment opposite Galeries Lafayette on Boulevard Haussmann their hands were on each other. Tearing at clothes, seeking out bare flesh. His lips hard on her mouth, his fingers encircling her throat, tight, painful. He cursed her trousers when they thwarted his desire for her, but she would not let him rip them and she stepped out of them with ease, her limbs naked.
Instantly the same long-fingered hands that had played his cards
so cunningly began to play her body with equal skill. Where they touched, stroked, teased, her skin burned. His mouth closed on her breast, sending heat coursing through her, and he tangled those long fingers in her hair. Pinning her there. His tongue circled her nipple and swept up the curve of her breast to the hollow of her neck. He sank his teeth into her collarbone and she heard herself cry out, but whether from pain or from hunger for him, she couldn’t tell.
She abandoned the bed, threw his pillows on the floor and pulled him down on to them where she straddled him. Blood was pounding in her ears, deafening the voices that had whispered and scuttled through her day. With no inhibitions, she and Anton kissed, clawed and devoured each other, welded together by sweat and need, as though trying to tear each other’s skin off.
When finally it was over, their bodies shuddering and heaving for breath, the heat still throbbing deep inside her, her hand reached up and gently stroked his cheek. She could feel the rasp of his stubble against her palm and smell the black tobacco on his breath. He was a person. Not just a card sharp. Not just a drug she craved to take her out of this world for even a few frenzied minutes. She climbed into his bed and he followed. To her surprise he wrapped his long arms around her waist and tucked his knees up tight against her.
‘You’re a rotten poker player,’ he whispered with a chuckle, as he kissed her ear and instantly fell asleep.
She listened to the easy rhythm of his sleep and smiled in the darkness. She was grateful. As her heartbeat slowed and her skin felt warm and soft, she told herself the words that she’d told herself a thousand times before.
Surely tonight she would sleep. Surely tonight the dreams would not come.
The dream came at her, violent as a mountain storm. It battered her. Shook her. Left her nowhere to hide. The books stared out at her, they always watched her, mute and musty witnesses to her crime. Her father’s study was smaller, stuffier, so cramped it seemed to squeeze her. Her bones ached and she heard them crack and creak with each movement, as though ice lay where the marrow should be.
The rug was there, exactly the same.
The pool of blood was there, exactly the same.
The Betrayal Page 5
