‘What’s in her eyes?’ Pagan asked wearily.
‘The weight of grave secrets. If you saw her, you’d understand what I’m trying to tell you.’ Deirdre Chapman brandished her glass of sherry as if Pagan’s obtuseness exasperated her. The nut-brown little face seemed to develop a snout as she tilted her head upwards to survey him.
Pagan slumped into silence. He’d let Foxworth pick up the slack. Foxie had more patience with dotty people anyway. He had better manners in general.
‘When did you last see her, Mrs Chapman?’ Foxie asked.
‘It’s Madame Delacroix, actually. But you wouldn’t be expected to know that. How could you?’
Foxie smiled gently. You could see Foxworth guiding tour parties of aged persons round ancient monuments, answering questions in a measured manner.
‘Well. I saw Auders only yesterday. It must have been late afternoon. Let’s say it was five o’clock. Yes. She was coming down the stairs in a great rush. Which was rather unusual, I must say, because she’s normally an unhurried sort of person. I asked her where she was going in such an ungodly hurry and … This is very uncharacteristic of her. She was actually quite brusque with me. Normally we’d have a little chat, nothing of great import, don’t you know? But yesterday …’
‘So she said nothing?’ Foxie asked.
‘Well she muttered something about having to buy oils before the art shop closed and then she was gone! Just like that!’ Deirdre Chapman clearly found the recollection unsettling, a major disturbance in a life that was otherwise routine.
‘Oils,’ said Foxie.
‘Oils. She dabbles in painting. Oh, lord, great dreary things, all blacks and browns. I don’t believe she’s picked up a brush in months. Showed some of her work to a dealer and he wasn’t encouraging. Big blow to her ego. American, you see. They always seem to have ego problems, don’t you think?’
‘So you haven’t seen or heard from her since she left,’ Foxie said.
‘No, I haven’t.’
Deirdre Chapman poured herself another glass of sherry, a tiny amount. She offered the decanter. Both Pagan and Foxworth declined.
‘Was she carrying any luggage?’ Pagan asked.
‘A handbag, I do believe. That’s all. The cats worry me rather. She has about six or seven of them upstairs. And if she didn’t come back last night, how are the animals to be fed? It simply isn’t like her to leave the cats alone.’
Pagan set down his empty glass on the table. Fatigue gnawed on him. When had he last slept? ‘Has anyone been asking for her?’
‘Apart from yourselves, no.’
‘Are you sure you have no idea where she might have gone?’
‘Well. She does have a little studio not so very far away. She might have gone there.’
‘Do you have the address?’ Pagan asked.
‘I can tell you where it is, but I don’t have the actual address.’
‘We’d be obliged,’ Pagan said, and took out his notebook, anxious to be gone from this room, which was having a deleterious effect on his senses – the stench of mothballs, stale feathers, furniture wax, the ghostly photographs of long-dead smiles. The crypts of other people’s keepsakes made him uncomfortable.
‘Fire away,’ he said, pencil poised over open notebook.
Deirdre Chapman stood up. Her feathers appeared to wilt, as if the imminent departure of her unexpected visitors made her unhappy.
‘Now then. Let me see. Do you know this city?’ she asked.
Pagan shook his head.
‘Do you have a car?’
‘No.’
‘Then you’ll need a taxi. Ask the driver for Vieux Lyon. Get him to drop you off at the Place St Jean. Are you getting this down?’
Pagan said he was. Deirdre Chapman went on, ‘There’s a narrow street just beyond the Place. Now I can’t quite remember its name, but on the corner of the street is a café called Bip. Write that down. Pass the café, keep going, oh, perhaps twenty metres or so, and you’ll come to a small shop that sells puppets.’
‘Puppets,’ Pagan echoed in a dutiful way.
‘The window’s filled with all kinds of dolls and puppets. Guignol and the like. Above the shop is Auder’s studio.’
Pagan shut his notebook. Foxworth, sensing Frank’s growing impatience, seeing his look of quiet weariness, thanked the woman. Reluctantly, she escorted them along the hall to the front door. Rain still pounded the street demonically.
‘This has been fun,’ Deirdre Chapman said. ‘I do so hope you find what you’re looking for.’
‘So do I,’ Pagan said.
‘And I do hope Auders isn’t in any deep bother.’ Deirdre Chapman raised her face, cheek turned toward Pagan, for a farewell kiss. Thinking the matter more than a little theatrical, Pagan bussed her quickly, and Foxie did the same, and then the door was closed and Deirdre could be heard singing ‘My Funny Valentine’ as she went drifting back to her room of memories.
Foxie opened his wet umbrella and held it aloft.
‘I think we should find a bloody taxi before we drown,’ Pagan said.
‘Strange old thing, Deirdre,’ Foxie said.
‘Strange is right. I kept resisting the urge to feed her breadcrumbs.’
They were obliged to walk several blocks before a taxi appeared to take them to the Place St Jean, where they looked for the Café Bip. Pagan tried to imagine himself into another season, Lyon in high summer, the pavement tables crowded by tourists, parasols, carafes of wine being lazily drunk in the sunlight. It was difficult: you couldn’t foresee this rain – so merciless, so severe – ever stopping. The city had an abandoned feel to it despite the lights in restaurant windows and the people who hurried into doorways for shelter and the occasional gust of music that blew out into the night.
They walked past the Café Bip into a narrow street, hardly more than a passageway, where they found the shop Deirdre Chapman had described. In its palely lit window a variety of wooden puppets gazed out with a certain malign indifference. They had a disquieting effect, as if they were simply awaiting an infusion of some dreadful life: a windowful of small zombies. Pagan surveyed them a moment, then followed Foxie, who had paused outside a door adjoining the shop.
‘This would appear to be the place,’ Foxie said, and he looked up, seeing a lit window across which a thin curtain was drawn. He examined the door, couldn’t find a bell, only a large iron knocker in the form of an animal’s paw. He banged it a few times against the wood, waited. Nothing happened. Pagan, who stood beneath the umbrella, stared in a morose way at the sturdy door.
‘I don’t think it’s the kind we can just kick in, Foxie.’
‘I’d say not.’
‘Keep hammering.’
Foxie repeated the act of raising and dropping the iron upon the wood. Pagan moved to the edge of the pavement and stared up at the curtained window. Nothing was visible, no shadow moved.
‘What now?’ Foxie asked.
Slicks of rain dripped from a spoke of the umbrella and slid round Pagan’s nostrils. ‘Let’s wander round behind the building,’ he suggested. ‘There might be some rear access.’
They walked to the end of the street, turned into another passageway, fumbled down a darkened lane which appeared to be the back of the building in which Audrey Roczak had her studio.
‘This would be it, I think,’ Foxie said. He indicated a short flight of ancient stone steps that rose to a door. Pagan considered the aesthetics of rear entrances, how unlike their front counterparts they usually were, poor relations, places where garbage was stacked and concealed. You could have roses and ivy and bloody Doric columns at the front and all manner of rusty detritus at the back.
They climbed the crumbling steps to the door. Above the door was a darkened skylight. Foxie tried the handle. Locked. ‘We could use a flashlight right now,’ he muttered. ‘This might be the wrong place. What would happen if we battered the door down only to discover a harmless bourgeois family dining away quite merrily on
potatoes lyonnaise?’
Pagan gave the handle a twist. There was a certain amount of play in the lock, a space between jamb and catch. If he had a strong object he could insert into the tiny space … He was considering this when abruptly a light came on and the door flew open and a stout red-haired woman in a long skirt stood there with a gun in her hand.
‘Fuckers,’ she said. She levelled the pistol directly at Pagan who, assaulted by the glare of electric light, flinched and stepped back. Looking directly into a gun was like gazing into an infinity of darkness. Your own.
‘Miserable fuckers,’ the woman said. She held the gun in such a way it was obvious she knew how to use it, and even more apparent that she wouldn’t think twice about pulling the trigger. Pagan looked more closely at her now, conscious of large earrings, a wide-lipsticked mouth hardened in anger.
‘Miss Roczak,’ he said.
She raised the gun very slightly, directing it toward Pagan’s head. He looked at her: Audrey Roczak, one-time minor operative in the grim cities of Eastern Europe, a carrier of messages, letters left in drops, passwords and codes and safe houses, an imagination fevered by the temperature of the times.
‘Miss Roczak,’ he said again. The gun could go off. Quite easily. ‘We’re looking for a man called Jake Streik.’
‘Never heard of him,’ she said.
Pagan sighed. ‘Try a little harder,’ he suggested.
‘You’re not listening to me, fella.’
‘On the contrary. I’m listening hard. But I’m not believing.’
‘You don’t quite get it, do you? I never heard of Jake Streik. Never. You’ve got thirty seconds to back off before I employ this,’ and she waved the pistol at Pagan, then at Foxie.
‘You and Streik,’ Pagan said. ‘Old comrades in arms. Prague, was it? Warsaw? Come on, Audrey. You’re not going to fire that gun. You know it. We know it. All we want is some information about your old pal Jake. We believe he’s in trouble—’
‘Yeah, right, and you want to help Streik, whoever he is.’
‘If we can,’ Pagan said.
‘Twenty seconds,’ she said.
Pagan raised his hand. ‘I’ll show you some identification.’
‘All the ID in the world wouldn’t make a damn bit of difference to me. Keep your hand away from your pocket. Don’t take chances, I’m not in the mood.’
Pagan said, ‘We’ve come from London. From Scotland Yard—’
‘And I’m Anastasia.’
‘Audrey,’ Pagan said. ‘You know Jake’s in trouble. We know he’s in trouble. The Undertakers want him, don’t they?’
Audrey Roczak was quiet a moment. She kept the gun level, but the expression in her eyes altered just a little. The mention of The Undertakers appeared to have softened her somewhat, caused her a small flash of doubt.
‘OK. Let’s see your plastic,’ she said. ‘Do it slowly.’
Pagan took out his wallet, handed it to the woman, watched her flip it open and glance at it in the light.
‘Frank Pagan,’ she said. ‘Good old Special Branch.’ She looked at Foxworth. ‘Who are you?’
Foxie produced his own ID, passing it to Audrey Roczak, who scrutinized it carefully, as if all forms of laminated identity cards were suspect: hers was a world in which plastic could be made to say anything. Pagan wondered how many times in her own history she’d used false documents. She clutched both cards and looked from Pagan to Foxworth, then back again. You could see uncertainty working through her, little fissures opening.
‘You’re not from The Undertakers,’ she said.
Pagan shook his head. ‘All we want is to talk to Jake Streik.’
She was silent for a long time. With her face tilted to one side, she appeared to be listening to the rattle of rain falling on plastic rubbish-sacks. ‘You say you want to help him.’
Pagan nodded.
Audrey Roczak, with a slight gesture of the gun, indicated for them to step inside. She kicked the door shut quickly, then walked to the foot of a staircase, where she paused.
‘You’re probably too late,’ she said in a dry manner.
Knock knock knock. Streik thinks the sound is coming from the unspeakable pain in his chest but then in a moment of clarity understands it issues from the external world, whatever that is nowadays. Edges are fudged, things come and go, there are tidal movements in his head. Pain has this diabolical way of diminishing your humanity, you dwindle until you’re nothing more than the goddam embodiment of your hurt, you’re a tiny figure spied through a keyhole of agony. Knock knock knock. The sound changes along the way to Rap rap rap, thunderous, echoing, urgent, and although he is possessed by the desire to get up and do something about it – what? he doesn’t know – he finds he’s crippled, incapable of moving, his mouth and throat dry, limbs wasted, and even his heartbeat, to which he tries to listen, is as faint as the footfall of a mouse. I am dying, he supposes. The thought, initially so gratifying, turns around, and then he panics, opens his eyes, looks round a room he’s never seen before, unlit candles stuck in dusty wine bottles, stalactites of wax, easels, jars of paintbrushes, old crushed paint-streaked newspapers on the floor.
Dying. Well. It isn’t so good. You couldn’t say a lot in its favour. You wouldn’t want to write home about it. Hello, folks, wish you were here. His head slumps back against what is presumably a pillow, then he calls out hoarsely for Audrey – he remembers Audrey now – but there isn’t an answer. He gazes feebly into light from a ratty fringed lampshade hanging low from the flaky ceiling. He’s never, never in his entire life, felt so utterly alone.
But here she is. Here’s Audrey now. She comes to the sofa where he lies and stoops over him, fusses with the sheet that covers his body, a red sheet in fact, and her earrings dangle forward from her face and create glassy flickers of light.
‘Jake,’ she says, and she’s a long way off, oh babe. ‘Jake. Can you hear me?’
He nods his head, but what an effort.
‘Jake, listen. This man is from Scotland Yard. Special Branch. He wants to talk to you.’
Streik raises a hand, but it falls back. The trap of gravity. Scotland, he thinks. His head is filled with confused images of lonesome mountains and bagpipes and whisky, then he makes the true connection. The guy who looks down at him is OK, concerned grey eyes, firm mouth, but Streik sees his own death in the man’s look of pity.
‘Aud,’ Streik says. ‘Something. For the pain.’
Audrey looks helpless, goes away, comes back with tablets which she places on his tongue. A bolt of pain – you couldn’t call it pain, it’s gone way beyond that now – crucifies him to the sofa.
‘Frank Pagan,’ the guy says.
The name’s remotely familiar to Streik. But then again, any name might be remotely familiar when you’re dying, when your memory’s shot. How can you say for sure you’ve ever heard the name before?
‘Can you hear me, Jake?’ Pagan asks.
Streik moves his head, blinks, licks his lips. He sees Audrey in the background somewhere, her big reliable body shimmering under the light.
‘You and Bryce Harcourt,’ says this Pagan.
‘Bryce,’ Streik mumbles.
‘I need to know what you were involved in. Can you tell me that, Jake?’
Audrey says something in a tone of voice that is one of vague complaint. Streik can’t catch the words. Anyway, he’s thinking about Bryce, about London.
‘Bryce,’ he says. ‘He OK?’
‘Bryce is dead,’ says Pagan.
Dead? Streik wonders. Somehow he isn’t as surprised as he wants to be. He feels only a slight regret. When you’re dying, maybe you want everybody else to join you. Come, share the amusement of it all, participate in the big black party, this way to the horrors.
Pagan leans closer. ‘Can you talk to me, Jake?’
‘Yeah.’ Streik’s voice is a croak.
‘What did you and Bryce do together, Jake?’ Pagan’s breath has a faintly sweet smell, a
light boozy aroma.
‘Money,’ Streik says.
‘Money?’ Pagan seems to be bringing his face closer all the time to Streik.
‘Millions.’
‘You took it to Bryce, is that it? You took it to The Undertakers.’
Streik tries to nod, thinking how complicated this dying is, it isn’t the simple business everybody tells you it is, but under that there’s the deeper complexity of communicating to Pagan the intricacies of arrangements between himself and Bryce, the trips from America to London, the diplomatic bag routine, they were sacks not bags, sacks and sacks, all tagged, all secure, beyond the penetration of customs agents. Property of the United States of America. He panics again, and says, ‘Aud, help me, Aud, I’m fucking dying, I’m dying.’
She is holding his hand. He thinks of priests and sickbeds and last rites and the smell of death and suddenly he wants absolution for the German hitch-hiker, but priests are like cops, you can’t find one when you need one.
“You’ll pull through,’ she tells him.
The lie is enormous in her eyes.
‘Yeah yeah,’ Streik says. The second yeah – that’s a wasted word, a ruined breath.
‘Who gave you the money in the first place, Jake?’ Pagan asks.
Streik thinks Bryce is suddenly in the room, he sees Bryce’s face float above him, a pale looming balloon. ‘Bryce,’ he says. ‘What’s it like, old buddy? What’s it like?’
Pagan says, ‘Try and concentrate, Jake. You were saying where the money came from. Remember?’
‘Money?’ Back to earth, bump, no Bryce, no cheery word, hallucination.
‘Where did you get it? Who gave it to you?’
‘Yeah, well,’ Streik says. Lips cracked. Tongue swollen. ‘Different … guys.’
‘You know any names?’
‘Guy called Monty Rhodes …’
‘Rhodes? Is he connected to The Undertakers?’
Streik groans. ‘Runs the US end.’
‘Anyone else? Any other names?’
Jigsaw Page 34
