Devil's Breath

by G. M. Malliet

  “We could start by simply asking to take a look at their computers and mobiles,” he said.

  “And anyone who refused might just warrant a closer look,” Patrice agreed. “No pun intended.”

  The thought of victims and families led Max to ask, “Is no one turning up in the search for Margot’s family?”

  Cotton pulled up a file on his own computer with a practiced swipe. “There is a widowed aunt in Providence, Kansas. One of my team spoke with her by phone the other day. The local police found Aunt Sarah—easy enough, since where Margot was born and raised was included in her official studio biography. The dates were wrong, however. It seems Margot had shaved off a few years. It was and probably still is common practice in that field of endeavor.”

  “Where youth, as we have said, trumps all. So, who is the aunt and what did she have to say?”

  “Her name is Sarah Wackenhut,” said Cotton, with a verifying glance at his computer screen. “Actually, she was helpful because she and her husband Mr. Bill Wackenhut were the ones who raised Margot, whose parents were killed in a car accident when she was five. Margot was in the backseat, and even though she wasn’t wearing a belt it was one of those freak accidents in which not wearing a belt worked in her favor. She was thrown clear, unharmed, and the car caught fire. Sarah was the sister of Margot’s mother, Beth, and it was Sarah who arranged a formal adoption. She had three children of her own.”

  “Had she seen Margot recently?”

  “Not in years. It wasn’t, Sarah assured me, because she disapproved of Margot’s lifestyle, but my sergeant caught strong whiffs of precisely that. I think calling someone a painted strumpet qualifies as disapproval, don’t you?”

  “I do.”

  “The name ‘Jezebel’ was also invoked. So, we can take it that Sarah is deeply religious, if you can call it that: she belongs to a sort of fundamentalist sect most people have never heard of. Reformed Church of the Traveling Sheep or something like that. Perhaps it was Reformed Sheep of the Wandering Chosen—my sergeant had trouble following her, said she spoke quite rapidly in an accent he wasn’t familiar with. Anyway, to hear Sarah tell it, the distance between them, her and Margot, was the vast philosophical distance between Hollywood, California, and Providence, Kansas. Sarah and her husband were ‘working people’—she told my sergeant that no fewer than five times—and I gather ‘money for nothing’ didn’t sit well with them. Yes, that was how she, at any rate, seemed to view Margot’s career—a way of earning piles of tainted money that no decent sort of person would have any truck with.”

  “She was well off, was Margot?”

  “Yes and no: I suppose it depends on your point of view and your own circumstances. Not to mention the cost of living where you live compared with that of Hollywood. I don’t have the impression overall that Kansas is a land of fleshpots and opium dens. Anyway, Margot was highly paid at one point in her career for her films—that lasted about a decade. She did not store the money away for the winter as her thrifty family surely had taught her, however—we’ve seen her bank statements and they confirm she was living a rather lavish lifestyle, one that she had no hope of sustaining into old age. The bills for the facials and facelifts alone were astronomic.”

  “Which is probably why this part in Romero’s movie meant so much to her. She was running out of cash.”

  “Undoubtedly,” said Cotton. “But she did own her own home in Hollywood. Paid cash for a bungalow in the Hollywood Hills during her heyday, which turned out to be a smart move. She may have taken the advice of a financial adviser, as it doesn’t sound like something practical she’d think of on her own.”

  “Or perhaps having lost her parents so young, the one thing she most wanted in life was a secure roof over her head,” said Patrice.

  Max nodded his agreement. This was Patrice’s training showing, as well as her engrained instincts. MI5 drummed into its agents to observe not what people said but what they actually did. What and who they spent their money on and what and who they scrimped on are big clues to personality. Margot’s first priority when she came into money had been to try to establish the solid home that had been taken from her when her parents died. “What was she like as a child?” Max asked. “At least, according to Aunt Sarah?”

  “Flighty, irresponsible, flirtatious, manipulative—affectionate only when she wanted something out of you,” Cotton replied. “Given to meltdowns and drama when she didn’t get what she wanted. Pretty, of course, as even Aunt Sarah grudgingly admitted. ‘Then she had to go and spoil it all with the tantrums.’”

  “It would appear not a lot had changed,” said Patrice.

  “Aunt Sarah is the disapproving type, so we can season what she thinks with a grain of salt. She is not someone you’d turn to later in life when you’d made a hash of things, expecting a sympathetic hearing. These two may have made a poor pairing—Sarah and Margot—but it sounds as if Sarah and Bill were Margot’s only option for guardians when she was orphaned. Not that, at that young age, Margot had any choice. As Aunt Sarah put it”—here Cotton swiped to a different page of the interview document—“she ‘saved Margot from the orphanage and from having to make shoelaces in the workhouse,’ proving that Margot came by her sense of melodrama legitimately.”

  “Yes. I doubt there is a shoelace factory in Providence, particularly one that ever used child labor. And Bill?”

  “My sergeant came to perceive Bill as much less unyielding than Sarah, when he was alive, that is. He died when Margot was still in her teens.”

  “What a bleak picture. How long did Margot live with them, then?”

  “Let’s see … Margot kept on living with her cousins and her aunt until she turned eighteen and graduated from secondary school. One cousin, a girl, was similar in age, and there were two boys, one three years older than Margot and the other five years older. I gather that without the leavening influence of Bill’s more open-minded approach, the real estrangement from the family began. That’s a nice way of saying they all grew to cordially loathe one another. Margot was on the first bus out of town, literally—she left the day after graduation. In her official bio, this was her turning point—the die was cast and she was never coming back, and she never did. That much we can take as true. She’d studied drama in secondary school—they call it high school over there—and a teacher encouraged her dreams. So Margot, quick as she could, joined the flock of hopefuls that descend on Hollywood each year. All the clichés about waiting tables and parking cars while waiting for the big break are true. The dreams of acting start to fade at different times. I have always gathered that the odds of making it in show business are astronomically against, almost regardless of looks or talent.”

  “This was about forty years ago,” said Max. “Are any of the cousins still around?”

  Another swipe of the screen. “The two male cousins both died not long ago, about a year apart. The family on the male side seems to suffer from sudden heart problems. There is a sister, Clarice Merriweather. She still lives nearby with her husband.”

  “I’d like to talk with her,” said Max. “It sounds like your man got everything there was to be got out of Aunt Sarah.”

  “Blood from a turnip,” agreed Cotton. “Certainly, I can organize a call for you.”

  * * *

  Minutes later, Cotton left to hand out assignments to his team, as well as help put the pressure on the yacht’s chef. Max stood as if to leave also, but Patrice held out a hand to stop him.

  Awkward. They hadn’t been alone since the case began.

  Max found he was at a bit of a loss. There was really only one thing he wanted to know, apart from whether or not Patrice was happy in her life, facing the momentous changes ahead. But the direct route—“So, who’s the daddy?”—didn’t seem quite the best way to go about asking.

  Patrice, he knew, could sense what was worrying him. That perception had always been her strength, which she used to great advantage working for MI5—as shown in her guess ab
out Margot’s need for a home of her own. She also could read the bad guys as well as the good, seldom tainting observations with her own prejudices.

  “I made up my mind, Max, that the father might go or stay but that I would keep the baby. Not everyone has that luxury, of course. I feel very lucky.”

  “Does he know? He does know—right?”

  Typical Max, that honest concern suffusing his face. No wonder she had loved him. And loved him still. He looked like he might go and fetch a shotgun and perform the ceremony himself.

  “He does. He would, he thinks, make a lousy father, and his first instinct was to bid me adios. I agree with his assessment, although he seems to be changing a bit lately. He’s a lovely man but I’m still not sure he would be an asset to the situation. We’re taking it a day at a time.”

  Max looked at her. Competent and serene as always—yes, she was all that. But there were many single mothers in his parish, at all different levels of education and income, who were struggling. His own housekeeper was one of them. Her two children were raising themselves most days, despite all the resources of the village being made available to help them out.

  “I’m glad, then, Patrice,” he said. “I guess things work out the way they’re meant to, even if we can’t see it at the time.”

  “And you, Max. I drilled out of Cotton your current situation. Awena—of course, I know her from that fantastic cooking show on the telly but I’d no idea she was yours. What can I say? She is absolutely charming. You have my permission to live happily ever after.” A beat, and then she added: “I’m truly happy now, Max. Happier than I deserve to be. I know all this”—and here she waved a hand across her stomach—“all this will come right.”

  How Patrice thought this would come right, in her line of work … it was absurd, really. They’d likely take her out of undercover work after the birth and put her on a desk job—something in analysis was likely, and it was something she would be good at. But her real strength was in bridge-building, and in being able to coordinate with MI6 and GCHQ to get things done, to get answers to the questions political leaders in Whitehall needed to have answered, to head off the next looming threat to security. She might become a reports operator, passing information in a chain leading to the desk of “C”—the chief, the only person ever allowed to sign papers in green ink. But Max suspected she would hate all that. Patrice was designed for undercover work, not for pushing papers along. She might, he guessed, be put on recruiting at some point to take advantage of the charm and gift for improvisation that might otherwise go to waste—so much of the job was pure theater.

  Financially she might be stable, but …

  But what could he do? Offer to talk to the “boyfriend” in some older brother capacity? Hardly. What a cringe-worthy thought. For one thing, she didn’t seem to mind whether he decided to stay or go. And that had to speak volumes. Patrice was nothing if not a sterling judge of character.

  “I’m sure you will make a lovely mother,” he said, and he was sincere in saying it. “Perceptive and kind.” Again, that consciousness of other people and their needs would serve her well. It was the practicalities that might bedevil her. He and Awena had a nearly perfect system going, whereby Owen could be handed off to one or other busy parent, and they’d all be together at the end of most days. Owen generally spent his daytime hours in a cot either in the vicarage or in Awena’s kitchen or her shop Goddessspell. This time away in Monkslip-super-Mare was the exception to their little domestic routine, and Max was chafing to get home and pick up his predictable, happy schedule where he’d left it off.

  He wished the same sort of home life for Patrice—a partner who was anxious to see her and their child at the end of the day. And he was annoyed with the fellow for not seeing it that way immediately.

  She smiled. “Max, I am one of the lucky ones. I can afford to hire help when and as I need it. I’m even thinking I can swing hiring a nanny, at least in daytime. I have a large extended family. My own sister has two of her own and says she’ll be right there to help.”

  “It’s not the same,” he said stubbornly.

  “What’s not the same?”

  “This fellow of yours—does he have a name?”

  “Byron.”

  “Seriously?”

  “Yeah, I know.”

  “Well this Byron will be missing out on the best thing that has ever happened to him. You be sure and tell him that from me if you like.”

  “Okay. Will do. That will certainly bring him round.”

  “Listen, Pat. You may think you’ve got it sussed but you’ve no idea. Even good and well-behaved babies like my Owen are nonstop.” He was thinking that the child of anyone named Byron was unlikely to be well-behaved. But he recognized his bias, too.

  “Are you really happy?” he asked her. “Truly? Because I can’t think of anyone who deserves it more than you do.”

  “I’m ecstatic,” she said simply. “I’m thirty-five—hardly over the hill, but they told me years ago I couldn’t have children, and I just built my life around that belief. No problem, no big regrets. But once I found out I was pregnant—everything in my landscape just shifted. All the neatly labeled bins of how my future would look—gone. Everything I believed or thought my life was going to be changed. Overnight, and for the better. I’ve never looked at the future before with so much hope. And, trepidation, yes. But hope running right alongside the worry.”

  She paused at the sound of a gull outside, and stopped to watch it sweep by. She was glowing, breathtaking in her beauty, her profile a cameo carved into the sunlight from the window. Light spilled across the folds of her dress, and made her luxuriant hair into a nimbus of highlights. She turned her attention back now to Max.

  “Whether Byron comes round or not is up to him. It makes no difference to me, and I am well on my way to deciding I’m—we’re—better off without him. Yes, I’m happy. Never better. And I can see that is the case with you, as well. You should see your face when you talk about your little family. I expect I’ll be the same. Photo albums everywhere, my wallet stuffed with pictures of the little one. Grabbing complete strangers on the street and forcing them to look at the drooly pictures on my mobile phone.”

  He nodded. “Life is passing strange, isn’t it?”

  “Yes, it most certainly is. What is that, more Hamlet?”

  “No. Othello. It’s just that Cotton has got me thinking.” He turned aside for a moment, his thoughts chasing a scenario that had just come into his mind. He said, “Sit down a moment.”

  “I am sitting down. And I’m not moving again until the midwife comes for me and my great whacking stomach.”

  “Okay. Perfect.” He pulled up a chair closer to her. “Let me run an idea by you.”

  Chapter 30

  CLARICE

  Clarice Merriweather turned out to be one of those people who believed that because the phone call came from across the Atlantic she had to shout in order to be heard. Or perhaps she was hard of hearing, even though she was no great age. She was in fact fifty-eight years old, the same age as Margot; the two cousins had very nearly shared a birthday. Margot’s mother and her Aunt Sarah must have been pregnant together, perhaps in a friendly competition over who would deliver first.

  It soon became clear, however, that the nearness in birthdays Clarice shared with Margot had been one of several grievances—unforgiveable crimes for which Margot had been found guilty, particularly by this member of her family.

  “I never had a birthday party of my own growing up,” Clarice shouted at Max. He had been introduced to her in advance by one of Cotton’s men, the same sergeant who had talked with Margot’s aunt previously. Sergeant Jones had rung Max at the hotel to relay the number and to tell Max the woman had agreed to accept the call.

  “Good luck, mate,” the sergeant had said. “She’s not what they call in the States a happy camper. More a professional whinger. Don’t, if you value your own life, ask about her health. You’ll never get he
r off the line if you do.”

  “I never even had my own birthday cake,” Clarice continued now, in a theme that had gone on uninterrupted for several minutes. “They gave us one cake with both our names in frosting on it, and her name always came first, although alphabetically my name should have been first, and the cake was always chocolate, because ‘chocolate is her favorite.’” Clarice was mimicking someone with the last phrase, it wasn’t clear who, the adult who had provided the offending cake, presumably. It was a ridiculous theme for a woman of her age. It was difficult, in fact, to think of the last age at which such a childish diatribe might be forgiven. Max had already recognized a situation not uncommon to him in his vicarly calling. He had learned to cultivate great patience with such people, people who spent too much time alone, some with no friends or family, people who were finally getting the chance to be in the spotlight for a moment—these were the people who were unstoppable. They had years of outrage to offload.

  “It was always all about Margie, Margie, Margie,” she told him. “That’s what my father called her. ‘My little Margie.’” That mimicking voice again. “It used to make me sick, I tell you. What was so special about her?”

  Max felt they had quickly arrived at the nub of the problem, for which injection of Godspeed he was grateful. Good old jealousy, rearing its ugly head. Two little girls, close in age, one thrust upon the other by a tragic loss of parents, thrown into the other’s house, the accident making her an object of deserving pity. Initially, young Clarice might have been sympathetic to Margot and her wrenching tale of loss. But that may have been the problem—Clarice was very young, too young to sort out the emotions her cousin’s arrival would stir up. Bad enough she had to share her parents with her siblings; now she had to share them with this beautiful stranger.

  He would be willing to bet also that Clarice had been less beautiful than her cousin—most women were, so that was a safe enough bet. And it sounded as if Margot had been taken under her uncle’s wing, quickly becoming a favorite—at least, that may have been Clarice’s perception. How had Clarice’s brothers reacted? They, too, were close in age to the young girls.