Every Secret Thing

by Susanna Kearsley

  But Guy sent my requests to Anabela, regardless, and she set to work at her end while I carried on digging at mine.

  I was glad of the work, to be honest. The research gave me something I could cling to, pass the time with, in a week that was, without a doubt, the worst one that I’d ever spent. No fault of Tony’s, or his wife’s – they both did their best to make me feel at home, to cheer me, to treat me as part of the family. But I was achingly aware that I no longer had a family. I had no one. Grandma Murray had been my last surviving relative, and now, at twenty-six, I was alone.

  Oh, I had friends, but that wasn’t the same thing come Christmas and holidays, special days, days when you wanted the comfort of people around you who’d watched you grow up from a baby, who knew your shortcomings and loved you in spite of them; wouldn’t stop loving you, no matter what.

  I missed Grandma. Missed her with a pain that, in the darkness of the night, became unbearable. I only got through it by focusing hard on the hands of the clock at my bedside and counting the minutes, till sleep, at long last, surged to claim me again like a merciful tide.

  My initial state of shock and disbelief had given way to a slow-burning anger, turned inwards, at first – at myself, for still being alive, and for being the reason that someone had shot at my grandmother’s house to begin with. And then my anger spread, took aim at other targets – Scotland Yard, and Whitehall, and whoever else might be involved in what was going on. And there was Deacon. If it hadn’t been for him, I thought, I wouldn’t have a problem. If he hadn’t come to speak to me… There were moments I thought he must surely have known that he’d put me in danger; other moments when I felt equally certain he must not have known…when I recalled the way he’d acted on the morning that we’d met, not nervous; stepping off the sidewalk without looking, not expecting any trouble…when I thought about James Cavender, and Grandma, and I knew that Deacon wouldn’t have done anything to bring them harm. I knew that. But it didn’t stop me cursing him from time to time, the way a man who learns he’s caught a terrible disease might curse the thoughtless person who infected him.

  I kept thinking of the funeral, Grandma’s funeral. Guy had tried to reassure me with the promise that it wouldn’t be immediate.

  ‘They’ll have to do an autopsy. They always do, for murder,’ he had told me, ‘so there won’t be any funeral for a while yet.’

  The lawyer, I knew, would arrange things. Grandma had made him joint executor. Not because she didn’t trust me, but because she hadn’t wanted me to deal alone with her estate, with all the hassles and the headaches and the tax returns. Besides, I travelled so much, I might not have been here when it happened. There had to be somebody else. So the lawyer would do it. He had all the details: what church to use, what readings, and what hymns. She’d left that all in writing. Still, it bothered me beyond expression that I couldn’t do this one last thing for her. I couldn’t even give her that.

  And going to the funeral would be out of the question as well. The police were bound to be there, looking for me. And even if it wasn’t the police I had to fear, I knew whoever was behind this would be there, as well. Unless, I thought, I managed in the meantime to uncover them. Expose them.

  So I pushed on, reading every reference I could find to Ivan Reynolds’ company, and Lisbon in the war years, and the British Secret Service, for whom Deacon had been working, all the while keeping my fingers tightly crossed that the Reverend Beckett would have good news for me when I phoned the vicarage that weekend.

  But he didn’t. As I’d feared, the thieves had ravaged Deacon’s papers; there’d been nothing left for him to find. And Anabela hadn’t been in touch with Guy, and Guy still hadn’t been able to get near my briefcase, and I still couldn’t get in touch with Margot, or with Patrick, and it seemed to me that I had reached rock bottom, that there wasn’t any way things could get worse.

  But I was wrong.

  TUESDAY, SEPTEMBER 26

  Guy came at breakfast, without any warning. He looked like he’d slept in his clothes.

  I was starting to tell him as much when he cut me off.

  ‘Someone broke into your grandmother’s house,’ he said.

  ‘What?’

  ‘Last night. You know your neighbour to the north – the old guy who’s always looking out his window, never sleeps? Well, he saw someone sneaking out the back door of your grandmother’s house around midnight, so he called the cops, but by the time they got there, of course, there wasn’t anyone around.’

  My mind was racing, making the connection to the break-in that had happened back in England, at The Laurels – Deacon’s cottage – and the level of damage the vicar had hinted at.

  ‘What did they do?’ I asked. ‘What did they take?’

  ‘Not much. In fact, the officers were saying that, if it hadn’t been for your neighbour, they might not have noticed anything themselves, not right away. It was only because they knew someone had been in the house that they took a look around, to see if anything was missing.’

  ‘And?’

  He sat beside me, shifting to get comfortable. ‘They didn’t let me in the house, you understand. I didn’t get a chance to see for myself. But I was right there on the porch – I could hear the cops talking to each other, and from what they were saying, it sounded like the only rooms that really got touched were the bedrooms upstairs. It was carefully done, as though whoever it was didn’t want to draw attention to the fact that they’d been there. And they left all the obvious stuff – the TV, and the DVD player.’ He looked at me straight. ‘But your briefcase is gone, from the hall.’

  ‘Damn.’

  ‘I know. Sorry, Kate. And this time, the cops do think it was you. They think you probably came back to pick up things you needed – clothes, and things like that. They still don’t view you as a suspect in the shooting, but they’re thinking maybe you know who it was, that’s why you’re hiding. And they’re sure somebody’s helping you. They asked me a whole lot of questions this morning.’

  Tony, who’d listened in silence till now, spoke up. ‘What did you tell them?’

  Rubbing his neck with a weary hand, Guy said, ‘I told them they needed to speak to her boss, on the business desk. She knows Kate better than I do, I said. We don’t work much together, I said. Kate’s away a lot.’

  ‘And they believed that?’ asked Tony.

  ‘They seemed to. They’re down at the Sentinel building right now, asking questions.’ When he saw my concerned frown, he said, ‘Hey, don’t worry. They won’t find out anything except maybe that you were there that night – Security will have a record of that. But no one saw us talking, and we left the building separately.’

  That wasn’t what had me worried. I could think of one reason, and one reason only, why someone would risk breaking into the house just to search through a couple of rooms and make off with my briefcase: They were looking for something. For Deacon’s report, or whatever it was that they thought he had given me, and, more disturbingly, maybe for clues as to where I might be. ‘So, it looks like our theory was right. Someone really is after me.’

  ‘Not to worry,’ said Tony. ‘You’re safe enough here.’

  ‘But for how long?’ I asked him. ‘Whoever’s behind this, they’re not going to stop, are they? Not until they’ve managed to get rid of me, to know I’m not a threat. They’ll keep looking. If they’ve got my briefcase, they’ve got my address book, the names of my friends. And they’ve also got the letters. Deacon’s letters. There were names in those, as well, of people Deacon knew in Portugal. Even if those people aren’t involved, and don’t know anything, the killer might assume they do.’ I should have kept those letters with me, I reproved myself. I should have never been so careless. I looked away, and clenched my fingers on the table. ‘Deacon’s secretary, if she’s still alive, would be about my grandma’s age. And I’ll be damned if I’ll stand by and let her be a target too, because of me.’

  The windows in the kitchen were al
l shuttered tightly – Tony and Marie’s attempt to make me feel a little more secure – but I could not escape the sense of something ominous and dark approaching, seeking to get in. I said, ‘It’s up to me to try to end this. No one who knew Deacon will be safe unless I do. Besides, I want to make them pay, whoever did this. I want justice. For my grandmother. For Cavender. For Deacon.’

  Guy said, ‘Kate, you’re doing all you can. And now that you’ve got Anabela over there to help you—’

  ‘She’s not finding anything,’ I said. ‘And this isn’t how I work, you know that, Guy. I don’t have other people do my research for me, and I don’t just sit locked in a room on the Internet, either. I need to be out in the field, on the front line. I need to be talking to people.’ Suddenly it all seemed very clear to me, just what to do.

  I turned, and my gaze went to Tony, who sat like a rock at the head of the table, impassively taking things in. His expression barely changed, and yet I knew that he was quick enough to know what I was asking. ‘Kate…’

  I met his eyes. ‘I need to go to Portugal.’

  CHAPTER THREE

  Portugal

  Yet digged the mole, and lest his ways be found,

  Worked under ground,

  HENRY VAUGHAN, ‘THE WORLD’

  FRIDAY, SEPTEMBER 29

  Halfway over the Atlantic, in the dark of night, the plane ran into turbulence. I tried hard not to take that as an omen.

  For all the miles I’d travelled, I had never completely made peace with the concept of flying. I hated the feeling of takeoffs and landings, and still got a knot in my stomach whenever the ride got a little bit bumpy. And this was considerably more than a little bit bumpy. At times it felt as though the very bottom of the plane was falling out from underneath me, as though nature itself was attempting to point out how foolish I had been for leaving the security of solid ground.

  I closed my eyes and put my head back, took a calming breath, and turned my mind to other things.

  The memory of Guy’s face at our last meeting rose accusingly. ‘I’m just not sure you’ve thought this through,’ I heard him say again.

  This had been yesterday, as I had done my final round of packing before leaving for the airport. He’d been serious, very direct. ‘You are crossing the line here. You do understand that, Kate, don’t you?’ he’d said. ‘I mean, hiding from the police is one thing, but once you go through that airport security gate with a passport that’s fake, you’ll be breaking the law.’

  ‘Yes, I know that.’

  ‘Then why go? You don’t need to. You’ve got Anabela to do your legwork. Look, she found the marriage all right, didn’t she?’

  The fax had come through just that morning – a newspaper clipping announcing the wedding of one Alvaro Marinho, a clerk at the British Embassy, to Regina Sousa. There could be no doubt. Ivan Reynolds was listed as one of the guests.

  ‘But,’ I argued, ‘she hasn’t found anything else.’

  ‘Give her time.’

  I didn’t have time. And Anabela was already doing more than I could ask of her. She had her own job, after all; she couldn’t spend her own days playing phone tag with officials at the British Embassy in Lisbon, trying to access their personnel records. As soon as I landed, I knew, I could go there in person. If I could find out where Marinho had lived when he’d married Regina…well, I’d gotten fairly accomplished at tracking down people for interviews, finding them through their addresses, their relatives. All that it took was a starting point. ‘Besides,’ I’d said to Guy, ‘I’ll get to meet your Anabela face to face.’

  That was to be tonight, at my hotel. Tony’s travel-agent contact, who was brilliant with last-minute deals, had found me a room at a hotel not far from the Embassy district, a good place to start my enquiries, and Anabela had agreed to meet me there for dinner.

  But Guy still hadn’t thought I should be going in the first place.

  I’d tried explaining. ‘Guy, whatever’s happening, it all began in Portugal.’

  And he’d said, ‘You don’t know that. All you know is Deacon wanted to tell you a story. You don’t even know that same story was in his report.’

  ‘But it was,’ I had argued. ‘It had to be. Cavender told me that Deacon was angry about Whitehall’s lack of action. That was why he came to London to see me, so I’d make things public. And he sent a copy of that same report,’ I’d said, ‘to Portugal. Why would he do that if it didn’t all tie back to when he was in Lisbon?’

  He hadn’t had an answer.

  ‘Guy, it’s all I have to go on. I have nothing else. I have to try. I’m running at the end of my rope here.’ I’d given him a small smile. ‘At the very worst, I’ll get a week’s vacation in the sun. I sure could use that.’

  That week seemed very distant from me now. The airplane heaved and shuddered, dropping once with such a force that several people further up the cabin shrieked.

  Involuntarily, my hand went to the tiny unfamiliar weight that lay against my collarbone – a little silver medal on a chain. Tony’d put it round my neck as I was leaving. ‘It’s St Christopher,’ he’d said. ‘I gave my daughter one of these when she went off to do her thing in Europe, after high school. St Christopher, he keeps her out of trouble. She comes back all right,’ he’d told me. ‘So will you.’

  I only hoped that he was right.

  Schiphol Airport, Amsterdam, was full of travellers going somewhere else. I’d passed through countless times myself, en route to various assignments, and I knew my way around.

  So even though I was on a rather tight schedule to connect with my Lisbon flight, I knew that I had time enough to stop off in the ladies’ room along the way, to tidy up. The long, bumpy hours I’d already spent in the air had left me feeling wilted and dishevelled. The mirror showed a stranger. I’d had two days to get used to it, but still, my new appearance caught me off my guard and made me look more closely.

  Gone was the red hair my father had loved…truly gone, in the literal sense, cropped quite short, like a boy’s, and dyed medium brown. Tony’s wife had done quite a professional job, even tinting my eyebrows and lashes to match. I was wearing no make-up, which ought to have made me look younger, but didn’t. It made me look tired.

  I peered at my reflection through the glasses that were part of my disguise. Tony’d had them made with lenses that reacted to the light, becoming darker when I went outside. An added screen to hide behind. I pushed them up, now, to the top of my head, as I hoisted my carry-on onto the counter. Rummaging, I took hold of the bright blue travel wallet that held my tickets and my passport. It felt odd to have a passport in somebody else’s name. Tony had managed that, of course – I didn’t know the details and I didn’t want to know, but I had credit cards and traveller’s cheques to match the passport, in the name we’d chosen: Katherine Allen.

  ‘You always keep your first name,’ Tony’d told me. ‘Makes it easier. You’re less likely to slip up, that way; make a mistake.’

  Setting the travel wallet carefully beside the sink, I dug deeper for my toothbrush, which had settled at the bottom of the bag. One of the stall doors behind me clanged shut, but I took no real notice, only shifted a bit to make room at the counter. A minute had passed before I became aware that I was being watched.

  The woman one sink over met my eyes with recognition in the mirror; then she hesitated.

  Oh, of all the luck, I thought. Of all the rotten luck.

  Because the woman was Anne Wood, who’d sat across from me that night at Patrick’s parents’ house. The international lawyer, who was probably here in the Netherlands now on account of her trial at the Hague. I had long ago learnt that the world was a very small place.

  Sliding my glasses back over my eyes, I gave her the brief, non-specific smile suited to meeting the gaze of a stranger, and went on with what I was doing, head down.

  The water taps ran. Stopped. I glanced up again. She was still watching.

  ‘Sorry,’ she said this tim
e. ‘Only…you look so familiar.’

  I forced another smile, more friendly. ‘You know, a lot of people tell me that. I must just have one of those faces.’

  As I quickly capped the toothpaste and tossed it back into my bag, she said, ‘You’re not Canadian, by any chance?’

  ‘American.’ I trusted that she, like most people, would not have an ear for the difference in accents. I saw her hesitate, and knew my looks had changed enough that, though she might wonder, she wouldn’t be sure. And then, because she looked about to ask another question, I zipped up my carry-on bag and excused myself, making a getaway out of the bathroom and back into the reassuring anonymity of airport crowds. Stepping onto the conveyor-belt ‘sidewalk’, I settled myself with gratitude against the rail and swung my bag forward again as I felt for my passport and boarding pass.

  I couldn’t find them.

  Damn, I thought, and hauled the bag more firmly up against my stomach, peering down inside it. All my documents and traveller’s cheques and cash were in that travel wallet – brilliant blue, to make it easier to find inside my bag…except, it wasn’t in my bag. I felt panic rising like bile from the pit of my stomach, and forced it down, turning my mind back to where I had last seen the wallet, and what I had done with it. Then I remembered – I’d taken it out in the bathroom, to get at my toothbrush. It must still be there, by the sink, on the counter.

  It would still be there, I assured myself, jogging the few steps to the end of the section of moving sidewalk and heading back along the centre carpet at a run – I’d left it there less than five minutes ago.