‘She wondered - we both wondered - if you’d like to come to dinner. She was fascinated by your work.’
‘I would like that,’ lied Claudine, with no other choice.
‘Why don’t you call Françoise at home? Fix a date?’
‘I’ll do that,’ said Claudine, without any intention of doing so.
‘We’ll both look forward to it.’
She returned early to the apartment with the lake view, refusing to be distracted by yet another peculiar episode with the French commissioner from something more immediate. She wasn’t, she knew, allowing a private consideration to supersede a professional demand because there was nothing professional - although there might well be a demand - about a dinner invitation from Françoise Sanglier.
She consciously relegated it in her mind, wanting to prepare herself. She spent some time at Warwick’s carefully indexed collection of tapes and CDs before selecting Ella Fitzgerald singing with Billie Holiday at the Newport festival. She remained unmoving for several tracks and then turned down the volume to call Lyon. There was no reply from the upstairs apartment but her mother responded at once on the restaurant extension. She was feeling wonderful and arguing with Foulan about the need for either radio- or chemotherapy. She was spending every evening at her table and hoped in the next few days to get a definite date for a meeting with the notaire about the will. Gerard sent his love.
Claudine listened to almost the entire reverse side of the wonderful duet, actually hearing the words although with her eyes on the telephone, before abruptly reaching out to switch the tape, just as quickly lifting the receiver a second time.
She had an inhaler close at hand, expecting a reaction, but her chest remained quite clear as she dialled. There were only two rings before the cultured voice said, without any greeting: ‘Paul Bickerstone.’
CHAPTER TWENTY-THREE
‘Claudine Carter.’
‘Claudine! How are you?’
‘OK. You?’
‘Couldn’t be better.’
‘That’s good to hear.’
‘I’m so glad you called.’
‘I was surprised to hear from you.’ Her chest was still free. She was pleased. Curious, too, at the effusiveness and the word stress.
‘You’ve every reason to feel like that.’
‘Like what?’
‘Annoyed.’
‘I’m not annoyed.’ He was testing her, as best he could.
‘I can’t believe that.’
‘Why should I be?’ Come on, you bastard.
‘Warwick.’
‘What about Warwick?’
‘Not getting to the funeral. Writing even. It’s unforgivable.’
‘It’s all in the past.’ She couldn’t lose the image of a man in a gorilla suit and wanted to laugh. She swallowed against the urge, concerned at the lapse.
‘I’m really very sorry. Bloody work. Which is no excuse.’
‘It’s over now.’ There was nothing to be gained or earned dancing around the regret maypole.
‘It was shocking.’
‘Yes.’
‘You must be wrecked.’
‘I was. Not now.’ Had she ever been wrecked? Not really. Offended was the word that came to mind. After the annoyance at herself for not seeing Warwick’s need: offended that he should have done it to her. She couldn’t remember crying at the funeral. But then she couldn’t remember much about the funeral at all.
‘Resilient. That’s what Warwick always said about you.’
‘When?’ She kept any eagerness from her voice at the first opening.
‘When you first got together.’
‘In the early days?’ But not latterly, she thought.
‘Something like that,’ he said dismissively. ‘Good idea to get away. New life.’
Another opening was coming. ‘We’ll see.’
‘Not missing England?’
‘Hardly.’
‘Sorry. That was a stupid question. Of course you wouldn’t miss England.’
‘That’s all right.’ Come on! Come on!
‘What’s The Hague like?’
‘Pleasant enough. Small.’ She had to do it, she decided. ‘I’m intrigued you were able to track me down.’
‘Least I could do, after missing the funeral.’
‘How did you find I’d moved?’
‘Asked my people. Don’t know how they did it. But they did. That’s what they’re paid for.’
A brick-walled cul-de-sac, Claudine recognized: as she recognized the I-can-do-anything arrogance. The idea of being searched for, presumably by an enquiry agency, was unsettling, although hardly as unsettling as being told by Peter Toomey she was being investigated. ‘Why did you want to find me?’
‘Guilt, I guess.’
‘What have you got to be guilty about?’
‘Warwick and I were good friends.’
‘So?’ She wondered if he would introduce Gerald Lorimer into the conversation.
‘Felt I let him down.’
‘How?’ It was her stomach that knotted, in expectation, not her chest.
‘Not doing anything to help when it happened.’
‘We didn’t see much of you, after the wedding.’ Had he even been to the wedding?
‘Bloody work. But I felt I owed it to him.’
‘Owed him what?’
‘To get in touch.’ There was a pause. ‘Particularly after Gerald.’
‘Who?’ She could explain it away later as mishearing the name.
‘Gerald. You know Gerald Lorimer?’
‘Of course.’ That wasn’t a lie: he’d spoken in the present tense.
‘Awful.’
‘Awful?’
‘Killing himself … sorry … Dying like Warwick …’
She couldn’t avoid lying. ‘When?’
‘Just after Warwick. A month or two. You didn’t know?’
‘I came here almost immediately after Warwick’s funeral.’
‘It was the same … I don’t want to upset you …’
‘You mean he hanged himself ?’
‘Yes.’
‘Why?’
‘Gave way under the pressure of work: that was the gist of the inquest.’
‘I never quite understood what he did?’
‘Treasury. Some high-powered job.’
‘There was evidence at Warwick’s inquest about overwork.’
‘I read it.’
‘Poor Gerald. He didn’t have a family, did he?’
‘No. I thought you might have read about it: there were stories in the newspapers.’
‘I don’t bother much with English papers. I never did.’
‘Not interested in the old country?’
Was she imagining relief in his voice? ‘It was never really my country.’ She didn’t want the conversation to drift any further. ‘It’s a dreadful thing to have happened. Awful, like you said.’
‘I thought you might have heard officially.’
At last! ‘Why should I have heard officially?’
‘It was pretty odd … two friends … the same circumstances …’
‘No, I wasn’t told officially.’
‘No reason why you should have been, I suppose.’
‘None at all. It could only have been a horrible coincidence.’
‘Of course.’
‘Did you see Gerald, after Warwick died?’
‘He was devastated.’
He’d been well enough controlled at the funeral, Claudine remembered. And only spoken to her once afterwards, although there had been a couple of answering machine messages she hadn’t felt like responding to, unlike this one. ‘Didn’t he give any hint of being pressured at work?’
There was a hesitation. ‘Not specifically. Said there was always too much to do, the sort of thing that people always say.’
‘You saw him a lot then? More than Warwick?’
‘We got together from time to time.’
Not the reply sh
e’d wanted. ‘Did you ever get the impression from Warwick that he had trouble at work?’
There was another hesitation. ‘Not really.’
Still not right. ‘I certainly didn’t.’
‘I’m sure you don’t want to talk about it.’
Better, she thought. ‘I do. I want to know. I still don’t understand why.’ Which wasn’t a lie.
‘He never said anything, the few times we were together.’ Few times! ‘So you don’t know, either?’
‘I wish I did … that I could help you.’
Claudine decided she had to force things forward again, risky though it might be. ‘It was good of you to call.’
‘I’ve no excuse for not doing so before,’ he said, hurried by the deliberate finality she’d intruded into her voice.
‘You said that already.’
‘Say, do you ever get back to England?’ He spoke as if an idea had just occurred to him.
‘I have no need. There was no point in keeping the Kensington house. Why?’
‘I thought we could meet up. Lunch? Dinner maybe?’
‘Pity.’ For the first time Claudine had to breathe deeply, against a vague tightness.
‘Then it’s fortunate you called now! How far’s The Hague from Paris?’ He spoke as if he didn’t know.
Her breathing became easier. ‘By air, about an hour. It’s Amsterdam and then about twenty minutes on the train that actually runs through the airport. Why?’
‘I’ve got some business in Paris that I can fit in, whenever I want. I could come up to see you.’
‘I’m sure you’re too busy. It would be a chore.’
‘Not at all. I’ve got amends to make.’
Was this how an angler felt, landing a catch? Except this fish wasn’t fighting very hard. ‘When, exactly, will you be in Paris?’
‘I really can make my own time. Fit things to your convenience.’
Claudine hadn’t expected it to be this easy. ‘I’m involved in something at the moment: things come up unexpectedly. Can I reach you on this number?’
‘Involved in what?’ he asked, the anxiety echoing in his voice.
Alone in her apartment Claudine smiled openly. ‘Work. Which of course I can’t tell you about.’
‘Of course not. I’m sorry.’
‘We were talking about getting back to you,’ she prompted.
‘On this number, any time. It’s my personal mobile. Always in my pocket. Beside my bed.’
‘I’ll call.’
‘Make sure you do. I don’t want to lose touch again.’
After replacing the receiver Claudine reached briefly to where the jazz duet had been playing earlier. Her breathing was much more pronounced when she tensed for the reply to her second call, but when it came she recognized Rosetti’s voice. There was the distant sound of music, something classical, but not of anyone in the room with him.
‘He’s desperate,’ declared Claudine at once. She didn’t have a mental image of a face in a gorilla costume any more.
‘You sure?’
‘If you don’t believe me you can listen to him yourself. I taped the whole thing.’
‘Half an hour,’ said Rosetti. Her entry bell rang in twenty minutes.
Rosetti wore jeans and loafers and a wool shirt: whatever he’d eaten for dinner had been cooked in a lot of garlic. He looked curiously at the elaborate electrical set-up with all its earphones and remote control and extension recording paraphernalia, along with its racks of discs and tapes. Claudine said: ‘It was Warwick’s hobby. He was a jazz fanatic. It’s the only thing I kept, apart from some personal items.’
‘It looks like you could speak to the moon on it.’
‘You probably could.’
‘And it records?’
‘Perfectly. He taught me how. I got the idea from the office. Every discussion we have there is automatically kept, so I thought I’d do it when I spoke to Bickerstone.’
‘You checked that you got it?’
‘I waited for you.’
She had got it. They strained forward, side by side, although it wasn’t necessary because the quality was excellent. When it finished Rosetti said: ‘You’re right. He’s anxious about something.’
‘Desperate,’ insisted Claudine.
‘All right, desperate.’
‘Is it a conversation between two conspirators?’
‘No,’ he agreed again. ‘But I don’t think it’s evidence that would be admissible in a court, either.’
‘It’s going to keep me out of any court.’
‘It’s not enough, Claudine.’
‘It’s a bloody sight more than I had two hours ago. And there’ll be more.’
‘It won’t be so easy meeting him face to face.’
‘It will be if he comes here, where I can tape him again. And there wouldn’t be anything wrong in inviting him. According to him he’s a friend, making amends. He might even expect to come here.’
‘You any idea the sort of spin Toomey would put on that?’
‘Toomey won’t know, until I choose to tell him.’
‘When - and how - are you going to try to arrange it?’
‘I don’t know,’ she admitted. ‘Something could break in the investigation. So it isn’t going to be easy.’
‘You’re not going to listen if I argue against it, are you?’
‘I’ll listen. But I’m going to meet him. I never guessed he’d be as shaky as this.’
He sat back, looking around the apartment for the first time.
Claudine said: ‘I’m afraid I haven’t anything to drink.’
He smiled at her. ‘Not even coffee? The Italians invented the espresso machine, don’t forget.’
‘Coffee I have, although not espresso. Filter.’
Rosetti came to the door of the kitchen while she ground the beans. ‘Brought up in France and you don’t even drink wine?’
Further revelation time, she thought. ‘I drank wine, once.’
‘But didn’t like it?’
‘My father drank. All the time when he stopped work. I didn’t want to inherit that from him any more than I wanted to inherit anything else.’ Trying for the ease they’d briefly shared in Rome and which she would have liked again, she said: ‘Time to be fair.’
‘Fair?’
‘You know practically everything about me there is to know.’ She put the coffee on and he backed away from the doorway to allow her from the kitchen. When she reached the room with its distant view of the lake he’d gone back to the music system and was pretending to examine the tape selection. He wasn’t doing it very convincingly. Shit! thought Claudine. Shit, shit, shit! ‘The coffee won’t be long.’
‘Good.’
‘I’m a rotten cook but you can’t really go wrong with coffee, can you?’
‘I suppose not.’
‘Why don’t you choose something? The reproduction is wonderful.’
‘I don’t know much about jazz. Why don’t you choose?’
Because she hadn’t replaced it, merely changed it for a blank tape, she put the Ella Fitzgerald-Billie Holiday duet on again. It left her with the recording of her conversation with Bickerstone in her hand. ‘I’d better keep this somewhere safe.’
‘There’s your office safe,’ he reminded her.
‘That’s a good idea.’
‘This isn’t my sort of music but I like it.’
The perfectly harmonized rendering of ‘Lover Come Back’ did nothing to fill the silence between them.
Claudine said: ‘I’ll see if the coffee is ready.’
‘Yes.’
It wasn’t but she waited. Why had she said it? she demanded of herself angrily. He hadn’t asked to become involved. When he had - virtually given no choice - he’d been sympathetic, over-kind maybe with the lakeside dinner and his offer to help. But at no time had they been anything more than work colleagues: she didn’t want them to be anything more than work colleagues, for Christ’s sake! So why h
ad she come on like some gauche virgin wanting his life history? To apologize would just exacerbate his obvious embarrassment. Hers too. She had to get through the next hour - less, if it could be curtailed without even more embarrassment - and not involve him again. Get everything back to how it should be between them, working partners mutually respecting each other’s professional ability. She inhaled deeply, although only to prepare herself, before re-entering the main room. He’d abandoned the music exploration and was at the window.
‘In the daylight you can see the lake.’
‘I’m nearer the centre. No view but it’s convenient for the railway station.’
Claudine didn’t understand why that was important. ‘How do you like your coffee?’
‘Just coffee, nothing else.’
The job, decided Claudine: that was the safest subject. The only subject. ‘Sanglier’s planning a press conference. He asked me to take part but I said I didn’t want to.’
‘What’s there to talk about?’
‘The amnesty, I suppose.’
‘I would have thought a simple announcement would have been sufficient.’
‘Sanglier doesn’t believe we’re getting as much back-up as we should from national forces. He wants to stage a public protest, I think.’
‘I haven’t been fair,’ declared Rosetti abruptly, tired of the charade.
‘I’m sorry I said what I did. I’m embarrassed,’ admitted Claudine, tired of it too. ‘Let’s forget it.’
‘No,’ said Rosetti. ‘My wife’s name is Flavia. Our daughter was called Sophia. She was three. It was my fault. Flavia’s in Rome.’
It was a life story but on a postage stamp, thought Claudine. Which was how it would remain unless he wanted to say more: this much had been visibly hard. Rosetti had put his coffee cup down and was leaning forward with his arms on his knees, not looking at her: not looking at anything.
Haltingly, the words so spaced that sometimes Claudine thought he didn’t intend continuing, Rosetti said: ‘It had been a party, at Ostia … Flavia’s parents live there … I hadn’t drunk anything … driving too fast … a roadwork lorry had stopped, on a bend … I didn’t see the other truck
… Sophia died at once … she wasn’t in a proper seat … Flavia’s arms … she was asleep … never woke up …‘This time the pause was longer than the rest. Claudine didn’t speak. ‘The doctor said she wouldn’t have felt anything … that isn’t true, of course … trying to help me … Flavia’s skull was fractured … a week before she woke up … I told her … she could talk that first night … said it was her fault for holding her … she stayed conscious for two days, that was all … she sleeps … I mean her eyes close … otherwise she just stares … sometimes she cries but there isn’t any sound … the neurologist says it’s a form of catatonia … she won’t recover …’
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