“Come, Mr. Webster,” said Senechal. “Let me drive you to the airport. We should be able to get you on a flight back to London tonight.”
Webster tried to imagine what had just passed between them. With a short sigh and a shake of his head he stood, stiff from a day’s sitting, and as he followed Senechal, his uninvited savior, out of the room, he turned to the detective.
“Don’t think I won’t find out what happened here today.”
The detective smiled, his full cheeks sweating and dimpled.
• • •
IN THE BACK OF Senechal’s car on the way to the airport conversation was sparse. His host didn’t seem to expect any thanks and Webster expressed none. He called Elsa and Hammer, but his mind was turning on the question that Senechal had left unanswered. It made no sense.
In the end he repeated it, his eyes straight ahead, watching the road past the driver’s ear.
“How did you know where I was?”
“We had a call. From the police. They wanted to know if you were indeed working for us.”
“I never mentioned Qazai.”
“Well, they knew. It is good that they did.”
As the car slowed onto the slip road to Linate Senechal turned to him.
“I do not believe you will hear from them again, Mr. Webster. They are interested in those private detectives, not you. Not for now. But it would be well for you to express your thanks to Mr. Qazai. In any way you believe appropriate. I do not need your gratitude but he is a man of honor and likes his acts of kindness to be recognized.”
Webster blinked slowly. Now he understood. He turned his head to look at Senechal, frail but energized beside him, and found nothing to say.
“So,” said Senechal, “I am not sure that the police will pursue the matter. But if they do I am quite certain that Mr. Qazai would be happy to offer the same assistance again. For the good of our project.”
Our project. Now there really was no such thing.
12.
KENSAL GREEN, after a day in the cells, felt almost comically sheltered and still under its dull summer clouds. The first rain in weeks was falling and through the open window of the taxi came the stony smell of hot pavements being washed of their dust. Webster paid the driver early so that he could walk the last few streets to his house, turning his face up to the sky and stretching some of the stiffness from his neck, and as he turned off the Harrow Road the city noise dropped until all he could hear was the magpies chatting at each other across the rooftops.
In that brief interval he breathed deeply and tried to clear the day from his head, but it sat there, obstinately refusing to quiet down. He regretted phoning Elsa. It would have been better to have kept the whole incident from her, but of course he hadn’t known at the time that it would be over so soon. As it was, the thing that he feared most—puncturing the perfect safety of their home—he had already half done, and he knew that no matter how much he made light of it and no matter how much she acquiesced, unease would now be sitting in the house like a canker.
If Elsa was downstairs that meant the children had gone to bed, and he found himself wishing keenly that bath time and stories had taken a little longer than usual so that he could properly wish them goodnight. He badly wanted to see them. With luck, he could slip into bed beside Nancy and read her one last story. But even as his key turned in the lock he could hear cooking noises coming from the kitchen and knew that he was too late. Putting his bag down in the hall he gave a matter-of-fact “hello” to the house, conscious that this was what normal people do when they get home from work and, threading his way past the bicycles and over the children’s shoes, he joined Elsa, who was drying her hands on a tea towel and looking at him like a mother whose son has been in a fight.
“Come here,” she said, setting the towel aside and drawing him into a close hug. Holding him around the waist she leaned back, looked at him and smiled. “You don’t look too bad.”
He snorted. “It was a bit like a day in the office. One big long meeting.” But he knew she was being kind. Tiredness sat across his shoulders and he could sense the bags under his eyes.
“Do you want a drink?”
“God, yes.”
She took a bottle of whisky from one cupboard and two tumblers from another and poured an inch into each.
“Water?”
He shook his head, took a glass and leaning back against the kitchen counter raised it to her and drank. Neither said anything for a moment.
“So you’re free,” said Elsa, a hesitant question in her voice.
“It’s a good thing you didn’t come.” He tried a smile. “It was nothing in the end.”
She took a drink. “It wasn’t nothing earlier.”
“No. I’m sorry. They were putting the wind up me.”
She raised her eyebrows and looked at him.
“Some Italian policemen enjoy it,” he said.
“Just a game?”
“Something like that.”
She pushed her lips out and nodded. “What did they want from you?”
“I don’t know.” With his free hand he rubbed his brow from temple to temple. “They were fucking about. I got caught up in their latest project. You’d have to be an Italian to understand the rules.”
A pause.
“Why drag it all up again?” Her eyes were guarded, screening off some pressing anxiety. GIC had sacked Webster three months before he and Elsa had been due to marry, and that unforeseen reverse, he knew, had played on her mind ever since as something that might one day be repeated; but despite this he felt a flash of resentment that his problems couldn’t simply be his own.
“I don’t know.” He shrugged. “Really. Because they can, I suppose.”
Elsa turned away and checked a pan on the stove, stirring its contents before replacing the lid.
“Can I do anything?” he said, watching her turn down the heat. She shook her head. “I might look in on the children.”
“Don’t, Ben.” She turned to look at him. “They’re asleep.”
“I’m just going to look around the door.”
“You’ll wake them.”
“I won’t.” He put down his drink and walked toward the kitchen door.
“Ben. Leave them. Please. It took an age to settle them. I know you’ve had a bad day but so have I. They’re not a comfort blanket. They need their sleep.”
He stopped short of the door, closed his eyes and took a deep breath, his fingers pinching the bridge of his nose.
“They’ll be there in the morning,” she said softly. “In the meantime you can tell me how worried I should be by all this. Because I just don’t know.”
He turned, relenting. He knew that she was right, and scared, but he couldn’t answer her question. Perhaps it had all ended when he left the police station; perhaps it hadn’t even begun. If it hadn’t been for Senechal’s parting threat—because that was surely what it was—he would have expected nothing more than to keep quiet for a few months and avoid traveling to Italy, but now? Now he simply couldn’t say. He hadn’t had time to think it through.
“As far as I know, it’s fine. Really. Stupid charges, no evidence. They don’t have anything.”
“How good is your lawyer?”
“Good, apparently.” The first real lie.
“And he thinks you’ll be all right?”
“He thinks it’ll just go away. If it doesn’t, the Italians will have to extradite me, and their case is feeble. It won’t happen.” He paused, waiting for her to respond, then tried a smile. “We may have to holiday somewhere else for a while.”
But Elsa wasn’t ready for the mood to lighten. She continued to frown, her eyes lit with that light he knew so well.
“What did you do out there?” she said at last.
“I went to see Qazai.”
She
shook her head. “No. Back then. What did you do?”
“Are you asking me if I’m guilty?”
She didn’t reply.
“Jesus. This isn’t about what I did.” He had a sudden, childish urge to smoke. And to get out.
Elsa watched him for a moment, unmoved. “That’s good. That’s all I wanted to know.”
He shook his head. “Do you know what? Forget it. I’ve been interrogated enough for one day.”
“Where are you going?” she said after him, as he left the kitchen and started wheeling his bicycle toward the door.
“Just out.” But he knew. He was going to see Ike. “Why you can’t just trust me I don’t know.” He looked over his shoulder at her, a righteous, fraudulent challenge.
“I want to. But if you were telling me everything you wouldn’t be running away.” Elsa’s arms were crossed and her eyes steadily on his. When he couldn’t look at them anymore, he left.
• • •
ABOUT HALF A MILE from his house Webster stopped pedaling, pulled over and reached down awkwardly to tuck the flapping trouser leg of his suit into his sock. The rain, which had been light, was now full and steady and as he bent over he could feel his thighs and shoulders cold with wet.
He should turn around, of course, apologize to Elsa, tell her everything—or more, at least. But he knew what her advice would be, saw its sense and had no intention of taking it, because it clashed with the plan lurking in his thoughts. So he cycled on, furious with himself, past Queen’s Park, slowly climbing across the Finchley Road and then the last, sheer push straight up into Hampstead, the houses growing older and richer beside him all the while. It was cooler now. Water dripped from his forehead and his calves burned with the work. Through the clouds and the plane trees overhead the last light barely found its way, and in his dark suit, made darker by the rain, with no lights on his bike, he felt pleasantly invisible after a day of scrutiny. He didn’t like attention, never had. The cold air and the exercise began gradually to sort his thoughts.
Hammer’s house was over by the heath on the prow of Hampstead where it fell away down to Kentish Town and the city beyond. He had lived in it for twenty years and under his ownership it had taken on something of its original eighteenth-century air: he had reinstated its oak paneling throughout, kept his one television out of the way in an upstairs room and favored low light and log fires, so that on a night like this the only way of telling whether he was inside was by looking for a faint glow around the edges of the shutters. But for his housekeeper, who occupied the attic floor, Hammer lived alone.
He was at home tonight and that, Webster had the sense to realize, was a relief. Ike had a way of making the complicated and unpleasant seem manageable, and there was no one better to see when you were feeling disordered. I’ve fled from one therapist into the arms of another, Webster thought as he chained his bike to the railings, because I didn’t like what the first was going to say.
He knocked briskly with the brass knocker. The door, when it opened, was on a chain; it jarred, somehow, that someone so pugnacious should consider such things as home security. Hammer pushed the door to, unhooked it and looked down on Webster with mild surprise in his eyes.
“My God. They waterboarded you. Come in, come in.”
It was warm in the hall and Webster could see orange light flickering on the gray-green walls of the study on the left. Hammer was wearing his reading glasses, more delicate than the thick-framed tortoiseshell he wore in the office, and in the near-dark looked more delicate himself, and older.
“Did you walk?”
“I rode.”
“Elsa has the car?”
Webster only smiled.
“You look like shit. Take that jacket off. I have no trousers that will fit but a sweater I can manage. Luckily we have a fire. Go on.”
He started up the stairs. Webster took off his jacket, which was wet through, hung it on a coatrack in the corner and went into the study. On a table by Ike’s chair, a high-backed affair with wings, stood a spotlight, an empty glass and a copy of Livy’s History of Rome, open, pages downward, its spine cracked about halfway through. Webster stood over the fire for a moment, looking at the books on the shelves either side of the mantel.
“You caught me lighting fires in June. I’m ashamed. The truth is I wasn’t feeling too good but the sight of you is enough to make anyone feel better. Here, try this.” Hammer passed Webster a thick brown cardigan with a shawl collar, not unlike the one he was wearing himself. “No one’ll see you. There. Now, do you want a drink?”
Webster shook his head. “I shouldn’t, thanks.”
“You should. I’m having beer.”
Webster asked for whisky, put on the cardigan, which was tight and heavy, and sat down on the far side of the fire. He should have phoned Elsa before coming in. He looked at his watch and realized with a lingering sting of regret that by the time he got home she would be in bed, either asleep or pretending to be.
“Here. There’s a drop of water in it.”
“Thank you.”
He watched Hammer pour his beer from a bottle into the long glass, failing to tilt it so that it ended up with a thick head of froth. They drank.
“So,” said Hammer, licking foam off his top lip. “You owe your freedom to Mr. Senechal.”
“I owe everything to him.”
“What happened? I was expecting another call.”
“I wanted to leave it to tomorrow. Let it settle. Which wasn’t a great idea, as it happens.” He took another drink; it was good whisky and he relished the burn in his throat. “They set me up. Or they took advantage of a gift-wrapped opportunity. I think they set me up.”
“They had you arrested?”
“Why not? It’s Italy. He’s had that house for twenty years. Enough time to put down roots.”
Hammer frowned. “They did a nice job. If it was them.”
“They’ve been checking me out. I’m sure of it. The other morning all our rubbish had gone by six. Our recycling’s gone missing. And I had a call last week from Lester at GIC after he had a call from a headhunter wanting to know why I’d left.” He paused. “It’s them.”
Hammer took a deep breath in through his nose. “You think Darius Qazai is going through your bins?”
“Wouldn’t you in his position?”
Hammer raised his eyebrows and nodded. His fingers thrummed on the arm of his chair as he continued to nod, a slow, gentle bobbing that meant he was really thinking.
“So,” he said. “Their plan is to make you beholden to them. The carrot is they stop beating you with the stick.”
“That’s the second carrot.”
Hammer looked quizzical.
“Senechal tried to offer me a bribe. He told me good work would not go unappreciated.”
“You’re sure?”
“If I’d looked greedy they’d have told the Italians to stand down. No question. It was a test. The whole Como trip.”
Hammer sat thinking a little longer. “It seems a lot of effort. I had no idea he cared so much.”
“Quite. His daughter thinks that we’re more important to him than we might imagine.”
“She was there?”
“Oh, they were all there. I suspect so that it wouldn’t look like the visit was all about me.”
Another deep breath. “If you’re right, we stop the case.”
Webster put his glass down and shook his head. “We can’t stop until we know what he’s scared of. What it is he thinks we’ll find. Otherwise he’ll carry on, and so will the Italians.”
Hammer paused to take a long sip of beer. “What have they got on you?”
Webster blinked and tried to hold Hammer’s look, but it was no use. “This and that.”
“What, precisely?”
“The PIs I used were . . .” H
e sighed. “They were thorough.”
“How thorough?”
Webster hesitated. “Some hacking.”
“In 2004? Pioneering work. Is that it?”
Webster looked up at him and after a pause gave his answer. “All the usual stuff. Banks. Phone records. I think they paid someone in the Polizia for his file. And they broke into his office.”
“Whose office?”
“Ruffino’s. Photographed everything they could get their hands on. You could say they exceeded their brief.”
Hammer’s fingers thrummed and his head bobbed. “The police know about that?”
“From something they said yesterday, it could come out, yes.”
“And you didn’t know what these idiots were doing?”
“None of it. Not until they gave me their report. But I’d have a job proving that.”
A pause. “When I hired you, you said all this was dead.”
“It was.”
Hammer took a drink and thought for a moment. “Why come here? If you don’t want to stop the case?”
Webster hesitated. What he had wanted was a blessing to fight fire with fire, to do anything necessary to expose Qazai; but he had expected Ike to be as exercised by the day’s events as he himself had been, and this coolness gave him pause.
“To talk it through. To get your support.”
“For what?”
Ike, as ever, knew what he wanted. “Nothing. I thought you should know our client—the one you were so keen to sign up—is a crook. After all.”
“You’re sure?”
“Jesus. How much do you want? They’re blackmailing me, for Christ’s sake. And they wouldn’t bother unless they saw me as a threat.”
Hammer stopped tapping. In the firelight his eyes were serious now, emphatic. “If you’re right, find something to nail him with. And if you can’t, you need to let go. I haven’t seen anything that convinces me either way. Did Senechal try to bribe you? I’m sure he did. He would. But set you up?” He paused. “Sounds to me like they may not have needed to.” He let the words register. “Your job is to tell the world whether he’s OK or not. But not on a hunch. You don’t get to crush a man like that without something really good. Meanwhile, he’s our client. He’s paid us a lot of money, and we owe him more than suspicions in return.”
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