Every Secret Thing

by Susanna Kearsley

  I was more relieved to see him than I would have cared to say. Relieved to not be on my own. ‘I heard footsteps.’ I glanced behind a second time, to make sure that the square was truly empty.

  ‘They must have been mine. An echo, or something.’ He grinned. ‘Or a ghost.’

  ‘I don’t believe in ghosts,’ I said. ‘Do you?’

  He shrugged. ‘It’s hard to spend any time in a place like this, and not believe in ghosts.’

  I didn’t disagree. I only said, ‘It’s getting cold.’ The peace of my surroundings had been spoilt for me, and it was time to leave.

  I would have found my own way down, but Matt was there already, offering his hand to help me balance on the steep descent. It wasn’t the first time we’d touched. Only this time the contact was different – it lingered, even after I’d been solidly delivered to the ground. And when he finally took his hand away, I missed it.

  He was watching me. I felt the angle of his gaze and raised my chin to meet it, and we stood a moment looking at each other in the shadow of the temple. The pousada, and the room where he was staying, were just steps away, but he made no attempt to use the moonlight, or the moment, to his own advantage.

  When he spoke, he only said, ‘You’re shivering. Come on, I’ll get the car, and take you back to your hotel. You’ll be warmer if we drive.’

  I didn’t say much in the car. The drive was a short one, and I spent it mostly reminding myself that this wasn’t the place or the time.

  If I’d met Matt a month ago… But I had been a different person then.

  And this was not a man like Patrick, not a man – or so I sensed – who saw relationships as games; who cast them off without a care. To be involved with Matt would be to be involved, and on a level that I couldn’t reach, just now. Not when my energies were focused so consumingly on searching for the truth, and on survival.

  And that passing thought of Patrick helped me find and keep my level. Patrick might be dead now, on account of me. I had no way of knowing. Guy was keeping up enquiries at his end, but I’d been warned I shouldn’t try to call, myself. You never knew who might be listening.

  But as of Thursday evening, when I’d left, I’d had no word of Patrick, or of Margot. So however tempting it might be – and it was very tempting – to stay close to Matt, to go on feeling safe, and keep the comfort of his company, I knew I shouldn’t do it. I’d been wrong to bring him into this at all. I didn’t want anyone else that I knew getting hurt, and even the armour of a white knight was no shield against the aim of an assassin.

  I looked at him more closely, at the slightly rugged features and the laugh-lines at the corners of his eyes, and wished again it could have been another time, not this – a time when we could both have met as simple tourists.

  He, of course, blocked from the tangle of my thoughts, continued on as if we were exactly that – two people on a holiday, connecting. As we pulled up at the front of my hotel, he said, ‘So you’ll be going back to Lisbon in the morning?’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘I was wondering…’ He paused, and killed the engine. ‘I’ll be back there myself, in a couple of days, and I wondered if you’d maybe like to have dinner.’

  It took me a minute to sort through my answer, to find the words to turn him down politely, and in the end he must have mistaken my silence for indecision.

  ‘Think it over,’ he said. ‘Let me know. I’ll be back Monday night. Not at the York House, though. I needed something closer to the airport. Here, let me give you the number.’ He took a pen from one of his coat pockets and dug into the other with a frown. ‘Damn, I don’t have anything to write on. Do you have a piece of paper?’

  My tidy speech of refusal wouldn’t have the same effect now, I decided, so the least offensive thing to do would be to take his number, and say thank you, and just leave it at that. I’d failed to show up once already, for that coffee in the hotel bar – I doubted he’d be shattered if I didn’t call, this time.

  I rummaged in my own pockets, in search of a suitable scrap of paper, and found my rental car receipt. ‘Here,’ I said, but when I tried to draw it out, my hand dislodged another, smaller paper from my pocket, and Matt caught that as it fluttered to the seat.

  ‘Thanks. That’ll do.’ There was writing already on one side, so he flipped it over, scrawling down a few lines in a firm, decisive hand. ‘There you go,’ he said, handing it back to me.

  ‘Thank you.’ I took it without looking at it, trying to say thank you in the larger sense, for everything. There wasn’t any way, I knew, that he could understand. No way for him to know the value of the role he’d played, as bodyguard, this evening.

  He turned his head, and held my gaze a fraction of a second, and he smiled. ‘Anytime.’

  I’d known he wouldn’t try to kiss me, just as I’d known that he’d get out before me to come round and open my door. While I waited in my seat, I looked down at the paper I held in my hand and tried to read what he had written, by the half-light of the streetlamps. He had given me the name of the hotel where he’d be staying, and the phone number. But all I really noticed was his name. His full name.

  Matt Jankowski.

  He was at my door. He opened it, and cold night air rushed round me with a paralysing force. I counted two heartbeats, then three, before I pushed myself to move, to stand, to step clear of the car.

  The car…

  I hadn’t paid too much attention, before, to what I’d been riding in. Now, from the sidewalk, I turned to look down at the gunmetal-grey Renault Clio.

  Matt slammed my door shut and stepped onto the sidewalk beside me, his presence no longer a comfort, but something else. ‘You want me to walk you to the door?’ he asked.

  My fist clenched round the paper with his name and number on it and I thrust it deep into my pocket, so he wouldn’t see the shaking of my hand. I fought to keep my voice unchanged. ‘No, thanks. I’m fine from here.’

  ‘All right.’ He smiled. ‘Goodnight, then.’

  I had never felt the urge to run as strongly as I felt it at that moment, and it took all my control to turn my back on him and calmly walk the twenty yards or so across the street to my hotel’s bright entrance.

  Matt stayed standing where he was and watched me, all the way. I know he did, because when I’d passed through the doors I glanced behind and saw him there, arms folded, leaning on his car.

  I knew he wouldn’t follow any further. Not tonight.

  But I felt anything but safe.

  It was cold on the balcony.

  I had angled my chair on the hard floor tiles so I could sit with my back to the sliding glass door and have a view over the street and the sheltered outdoor café near the hotel’s covered entrance. Here I saw everyone, coming and going.

  Two balconies over, and one floor below me, a woman came out, smoked a cigarette, went back inside. I heard laughter. It seemed very far from my world.

  My world, now, was reduced to one name: M Jankowski.

  It wasn’t an everyday name, and it wasn’t very likely there’d be two of them touring round Portugal at the same time. And the grey Renault Clio was more than coincidence. It had undoubtedly been Matt who’d pulled up to the kerb in the rain yesterday, when I’d flagged down my taxi. He’d been there, at the cemetery, close enough to follow me; it would have been easy for him to have followed my cab to the York House Hotel. As easy as it would have been for him to follow me today, to Evora.

  He hadn’t needed to use Anabela’s police friend to track down Regina Marinho’s address – I had led him straight to her front door.

  I’d tried phoning to warn her, just now, but the voice that had answered had been a new one – neither hers, nor the housekeeper’s. A man’s voice, middle-aged, and having trouble speaking English.

  ‘No, she is not here,’ he’d said. ‘Is gone.’

  I’d shifted the receiver. ‘When will she be back?’

  ‘Not here,’ was all he would tell me, before han
ging up.

  That had worried me. Matt had been with me all evening, true enough, but he might not be working on his own. As Tony had once pointed out, who knew how many people might be in on this? Perhaps the woman who had spoken to me in the street this afternoon…perhaps a stranger, faceless, blending with the crowd. And while Matt had been keeping me occupied, someone else could have been killing Regina Marinho.

  Maybe she’d taken my warning to heart, I thought. Maybe, being ex-Intelligence herself, she’d recognised the danger and had gone to ground somewhere where she’d be safe. I hoped she had. But still, I couldn’t shake my sense of paranoia.

  The wind bit chill. I drew my knees up to my chest and hugged them, tightly. I’d been certain all along, of course, that those who’d murdered Deacon, and his nephew, and my grandmother, would send someone to Portugal, to track and kill the few remaining witnesses who might lend their support to Deacon’s story. And if Matt was among the assassins they’d sent, then so be it.

  How he’d known who I was, I could only guess. Maybe, despite Tony’s caution, my cover had been blown in Toronto, and my enemies had known exactly where to find me, where I’d be. Or it might have simply been back luck, that Matt had overheard me talking to Joaquim in the church porch at the English Cemetery. I had mentioned Deacon, and Regina – it would not have taken more to make him wonder who I was. A disguise like the one that I wore – just the glasses, and haircut and colour – would not, I thought, hold up to really close scrutiny. And he’d seen me not wearing my glasses.

  His interest in me made more sense, then. By making me think that he found me attractive, he doubtless was hoping to lower my guard. He could turn up whenever he liked, and I wouldn’t ask questions. He could follow behind while I led him, unwittingly, straight to the people who might know what Deacon had known – the people whom he had been sent here to silence. And then, with my usefulness over, he’d just have to smile and persuade me to meet him as I’d done before, just the two of us, on our own. And he would strike.

  I didn’t know how much was real, of what I’d just imagined, but I knew it didn’t matter. If I was to stay alive, and do the work I had to do – find justice for the murders, past and present, and reclaim my life – I couldn’t let my feelings cloud my judgement. It was difficult, admittedly, to picture Matt Jankowski as a killer. But why couldn’t it be him, as well as anyone? I couldn’t forget Deacon saying, about the little man who’d been the subject of the trial I’d been covering in London: He doesn’t look the type, but then they don’t, always.

  The chill I felt when thinking that felt colder than the breeze upon the balcony, but still I didn’t leave my chair to go inside. I sat there till well after midnight, unnoticed; keeping watch, all the while, on the brightly lit front of the hotel. I counted some twenty-eight cars pulling up the long curve of the drive, but no gunmetal-grey Renault Clio.

  That should have reassured me; but it didn’t.

  SUNDAY, OCTOBER 1

  First light found me on the highway, heading back to Lisbon.

  If my theory was right – that Matt was using me to lead him to the few surviving witnesses, my only consolation was the almost certain knowledge that he didn’t know I knew. For the moment, that gave me an edge, and I meant to exploit it.

  He thought that I was heading back to my hotel. He wouldn’t be expecting me to go to ground. To keep one step ahead of him, I only had to make it back to Lisbon before he did, and then do my best to disappear.

  I only had one person left to see in Lisbon, anyway – I wouldn’t need much time. I’d tried to call ahead to Roger Selkirk, let him know that I was coming, but his answering machine had been switched on. That hadn’t worried me, considering the early hour, but still, I knew the sooner I could make it back to speak with him, the better.

  The traffic wasn’t heavy, and my confidence was rising, when the grey hatchback slid like a predator into my rearview and settled itself three cars back.

  Damn, I thought. I tried pushing my own car a little bit faster. I shouldn’t have. Something clunked warningly under the hood, and the engine stalled. Quickly, I steered to the side of the road. The car behind me had to veer out sharply to miss hitting me. It didn’t stop. The next car did though, pulling in to offer me assistance.

  As it did, the Renault Clio shot past like a bullet.

  While I watched it out of sight, I heard a knocking at my window. ‘You all right?’ A woman’s voice, a British voice, and speaking in the loud, slow way that people did when they weren’t sure that they’d be understood. ‘Do you need help?’

  I rolled my window down.

  In keeping with the smallness of my world these days, I found myself confronted by the woman who’d been eating with the older couple last night, at the restaurant, and whose father – I assumed it was her father – had been playing the piano.

  She looked fiftyish, herself. Her hair was blonde enough to mask the grey, clipped short to frame a firm-jawed face without a hint of make-up. Her figure, too, was lean and tough. A woman not to mess with.

  Staying safely in my car, I said, ‘No, thanks. I’ve only stalled. I’m sure I can get it restarted.’

  But when, after several minutes of trying, it became obvious that I couldn’t, she said, ‘Might as well give up. We’ll take you to a telephone, so you can call out the Automobile Association, or whatever people do here for breakdowns.’

  I hesitated. It seemed a bit coincidental, that the woman who should stop and offer help to me should be a woman I’d already seen, of all the tourists who were roaming round in Portugal. I didn’t trust coincidences. But I also knew that they could happen sometimes, and it seemed unlikely that a paid assassin would have brought her ageing parents on the job – I saw them clearly in my rearview mirror, waiting in the car.

  In the end, it was their presence that decided it. I climbed out, pocketing my keys. ‘All right. Thanks.’

  ‘Wendy Taply,’ was her brusque self-introduction, but her handshake was friendly. ‘Don’t worry, I’m a very safe driver, though my dad will tell you otherwise. He’ll tell you lots of things, no doubt. He likes to talk.’ Walking me back to her car, she pulled open the door and announced, in a raised voice, ‘We’re going to give her a lift to a phone.’

  Her father, in the front seat, turned. ‘No need to shout.’ He had a strong voice himself, for an elderly man, and a decidedly belligerent chin. No doubt Wendy Taply got her firmness from him. ‘I’m not deaf.’

  ‘No one said you were, Dad.’ Then, to me, ‘My parents, Len and Ivy.’

  Ivy Taply, soft in every aspect, shared her daughter’s English accent, but her husband, Len, spoke with a different cadence that I couldn’t place, until I’d introduced myself and he, repeating my name back, pronounced it ‘Ketherine’. Then I pegged it.

  Smiling, I said, ‘You must be South African.’

  ‘That’s right.’ He seemed quite pleased. ‘From Cape Town. Do you know it?’

  ‘No. I worked with a South African,’ I said. ‘I’ve never been there.’

  ‘You should go. There’s no place like it. I remember, when I was a boy, I’d go out on my dad’s farm and pitch a tent under the stars and the animals, all the wild animals, they’d be around you so close you could—’

  ‘Not now, Dad,’ Wendy said. Strapping herself into the driver’s seat, she looked me up and down, her eyes assessing. ‘Are you travelling alone, then?’ There was something in her voice, I thought, that sounded rather envious.

  I replied that yes, I was.

  Len Taply said, ‘A risky business, these days, travelling alone, when you’re a woman.’

  He had no idea, I thought in silence, as we pulled back out onto the highway.

  Wendy bristled. ‘Women are allowed to travel, Dad.’

  ‘I didn’t say they weren’t. I meant it’s harder for them, that’s all.’

  Any doubts I might have had about my safety with the Taplys disappeared. This wasn’t put on for my benefit – the
bickering was real. They were exactly what they seemed to be: a family on a holiday.

  Len Taply looked at me. His eyebrows had the white and wiry overgrown appearance some men’s eyebrows got with age. They made him look quite wise and knowing. ‘You’re American,’ he said, and because he seemed so certain and he seemed to get his way so little with his wife and daughter, I said, ‘Yes, I am.’

  ‘My best friend, Jack, he married an American. They live in Cleveland. We go a good ways back,’ he told me, ‘Jack and I…’

  Beside me in the back seat Ivy warned, ‘Now, Len,’ but he paid no attention.

  ‘Joined up on the same day, so we did. They sent us to North Africa. Oh, I could tell you stories…’

  ‘There’s a restaurant,’ Wendy cut him off. ‘They’re bound to have a telephone.’ She looked at me. ‘You’ve had a near escape, you know. His stories last for days.’

  I glanced at Len Taply. His head had lowered slightly, and he’d sunk back into silence. Looking at him now I thought of Deacon, and my grandmother, and all the nameless others who’d had stories of their own to tell, to whom I’d never listened.

  ‘Oh, that’s all right,’ I said. ‘I only wish I had the time to hear them.’

  I had time, as it turned out, to hear a few of them. Having put my call through to the emergency number listed on my car rental contract, I let the Taplys drive me back again to where my car sat stranded. And because they wouldn’t hear of leaving me alone to wait, I stayed where I was sitting, in the back seat of their car, and let Len Taply talk.

  He told a lot of tales about the years that he’d spent farming in South Africa – tales of coming face to face with lions and with rhinos, and he seemed to enjoy telling them so much that I kept listening, encouraging him to go on when his daughter would have stopped him.

  Then the tow truck came, and I got out to deal with it. The serviceman from the rental company seemed to take my car’s refusal to start as a personal challenge. He spent several minutes beneath the hood, stubbornly searching for what had gone wrong. I waited with growing impatience, my eyes on the highway, aware of each car that was passing. I felt too exposed.