The Traitor's Story (5 page)

Chapter Six

Grasset invited him in and offered him a drink. He’d been watching the news, but left Finn in the hall as he went in and turned off the TV. As he came back he said, “Bombs in Iraq, bombs in Pakistan—none of it makes any sense.”

“Religion, Monsieur Grasset. We did it here in Europe too, remember.”

“And it didn’t make any sense then, either.” Grasset smiled. “Now, how about that drink?”

“How about it,” said Finn, and they walked through and sat at the kitchen table. Grasset seemed to have a predilection for industrial-strength schnapps and grappa, but with some relief Finn saw that there was an open bottle of red wine, probably left over from his lunch—the old man always drank good Swiss wine.

After Grasset handed him his glass and they drank and Finn nodded his approval, Grasset said, “I apologize, Monsieur Harrington, if I was intrusive when you arrived back this morning. It was not for me to say, and actually none of my business.”

The apology was hollow because Grasset loved to know what was going on in people’s lives. This in itself was probably an attempt to get Finn talking about Adrienne leaving.

“Don’t worry about it. Anyway, Adrienne leaving isn’t the worst thing that happened while I was away.” Grasset looked blank for a moment, so Finn said, “The Portmans?”

“Of course, their daughter! She’s a beautiful girl.” He shrugged as if dismissing his failure to bring up the topic himself. “I forgot that you were a friend of theirs.”

“Well, they’re Adrienne’s friends, really. But I’ll do what I can for them.”

Grasset nodded and waved his hand at a family photograph of himself and his late wife and their three grown-up children, two boys and a girl.

“They say boys are more likely to die or be in an accident, but one always worries more about a daughter—of course, my children all have families of their own now, so the worry is theirs.” He laughed to himself as if sharing a family joke.

Finn smiled, too, and allowed a suitable pause to insinuate itself before saying, “Monsieur Grasset, I wanted to ask you about the apartment beneath mine. Who lives there?”

Grasset looked confused, perhaps suspecting this was a complaint about noise, and said, “Nobody. The man who lived there was Gibson, but he left . . . four days ago.”

“Four days ago? The day before Hailey Portman disappeared?”

The question hung there for a moment.

“
Oui
,
mais
 . . .” The implication had shocked him into French, and then into a further silence.

“Who was he?”

Grasset shrugged. “I don’t know. The apartment is owned by a company.”

“Called?”

“BGS, that’s all. I think probably financial—Monsieur Gibson I could imagine in finance, or hedge funds perhaps. Today, everyone is in hedge funds.”

“What did Gibson look like? Was he friendly, did he have family?”

“He was average height. Quite a young man, but he was losing
his hair already. He wore a suit when he went out . . . he was friendly. One day he was wearing glasses and he stopped to tell me he had no more contact lens fluid.”

“When you say ‘young’?”

“Thirty? Maybe younger.”

“Good-looking?”

Grasset looked bemused, as if asking how Finn expected him to judge that. The real question for Finn was whether Gibson was young or attractive enough to appeal to a fifteen-year-old girl. He’d have to speak to Ethan and Debbie again, find out how much they’d had to do with their neighbor.

And Jonas—
he
clearly thought Gibson had something to do with it, or that the apartment did. Finn was briefly struck by the thought that Hailey might not have run very far, that the clothes and the passport might be a distraction from a less glaring truth.

“I imagine you have a key to that apartment, Monsieur Grasset. Would it be possible to take a look inside?”

“I have a key to your apartment, Monsieur Harrington, but I would not have allowed anyone to go in there while you were away.”

Finn smiled. “Of course, I respect that, but this is a corporate owner, not a private one. Last week Mr. Gibson—next week someone else living there. If there was a complaint, you could say one of the neighbors had a concern about the apartment.”

“But they don’t.”

“Actually, they do. See, I think I can hear water running down below.”

Grasset laughed politely, but then grew serious. “Monsieur Harrington, I know you wouldn’t ask if you didn’t think it was important, and as the apartment is empty . . .” He finished the wine in his glass. “But you don’t think this Gibson has something to do with Hailey’s disappearance?”

“I hope not. What I was actually thinking was that Hailey might be using the apartment—that she might have run no farther than across the hall.”

“Ah!” Grasset was impressed.

Finn drained his glass while Grasset went and got the key, and they took the elevator up to the floor where the Portmans lived. Grasset remained silent until they were inside the apartment, perhaps worrying about being seen. Finn was relieved, having feared that the sound of a conversation might have drawn Ethan and Debbie out.

“The removal people came the same day as Monsieur Gibson left,
and I checked the apartment—it was as you see now, quite empty.”

Finn walked through into one of the bedrooms, then the other, then a procession through all the rooms with Grasset behind him. The apartment was the same layout as Finn’s, and he ended up in the living room. The entire place was empty, with nothing to indicate someone might have been bedding down here for a few nights.

The rooms were almost more than empty, without even the telltale shadows and fittings on the walls to suggest that pictures had once hung there. The polished wooden floorboards completed the effect, giving the apartment a desolate acoustic.

“Isn’t this odd, Monsieur Grasset? When a company owns an apartment, there’s usually some furniture left in place—or at least pictures? Isn’t it quite unusual for a company to give their employee a completely unfurnished flat?”

“No,” said Grasset, unimpressed by the theory. “Perhaps he wanted no furnishings from them.”

Finn pointed at the walls. “He didn’t appear to have a single picture hanging on his walls—not a mark in here.”

“So he didn’t like art, or he was a minimalist. There is nothing suspicious in that.”

“True.” He didn’t want to tell Grasset about Jonas, but the boy’s interest in this apartment had convinced Finn that there was a link, even if only tangential, between Gibson and this apartment and Hailey’s disappearance. “Did the company . . . BGS . . . Did BGS have anyone in here before Gibson?”

“Yes, Gibson was here for a year. Before that, a woman—I can’t remember her name. She was also here for a year. Not very friendly.”

“And before her?”

“No, BGS bought the apartment then. Before that was Madame Schafer . . . you must remember her—such a lovely old lady, but fierce!”

“Yes, I think so.” Finn had no memory at all of Madame Schafer, nor of any old ladies at all—it wasn’t really that kind of building. “There’s nothing suspicious here, I suppose. But I’ll speak to the Portmans again tomorrow, find out how much they had to do with Gibson. Hopefully we can rule him out.”

Except for Jonas, he thought to himself—unless the kid was completely unhinged, his behavior seemed to suggest there was a connection.

“If there is a link, at least we know how to find him.” Finn looked at Grasset, who said, as if stating the obvious, “Through his company, through BGS.”

“Of course.”

They parted in near-silence at the elevator. Grasset descended, and Finn took the stairs back to his apartment. He tried to work but couldn’t, his mind flashing back again and again to the memory of Jonas standing out there in the cold, of his loyal and lonely vigil.

Nor did he sleep well. Having toured Gibson’s empty apartment, he kept hearing noises. At one point, as he slipped into sleep for the first time, he thought he heard footsteps on the wooden floors below, the sound so realistic that he got up to look over the edge of his balcony, to make sure there was no light coming from Gibson’s living room.

He stood for a moment then, braced against the cold, shocked and exhilarated by it, and looked out across the dark lake to the mountains beyond, with their snowy peaks standing out like a painted glass backdrop.

He couldn’t help thinking of Hailey Portman. She should hardly matter to him, because he hadn’t really known the girl, and the family were Adrienne’s friends, not his—and, anyway, nothing much had mattered to him for a long time. But he thought of her all the same.

If she was still alive, then she was out there somewhere. Was she traveling, sleeping rough or in a cheap hotel? Had she reached the place and person she was aiming for? Was she scared and alone—or happy, liberated from a life she’d come to resent or simply tired of?

They were compelling questions, appealing to his natural intellectual curiosity. It was as if, in becoming a mystery, Hailey Portman had become interesting to him in a way she had never been as the lively girl who lived on the floor below. He was intrigued, but also aware that the questions only applied if the first part of it were true—
if
she was still alive.

Chapter Seven

Finn called on the Portmans the next morning, and could hear voices even as Ethan let him in. He was introduced to a sympathetic-looking policeman, who was just on his way out. The officer assured them before leaving that the police were as keen as anyone to find Hailey.

Once Finn was on his own with Ethan and Debbie, he looked at them properly and felt an ever more urgent need to find their daughter. They seemed to have aged a few years during the course of the night, a decline so rapid that he wondered how long they could go on like this.

For want of anything better, he said, “Well, at least the police are taking it seriously now.”

Debbie’s expression didn’t so much as flicker.

Ethan gave a sardonic smile. “I think the embassy probably put some pressure on them, that’s why we got the visit—the message was still pretty much the same.”

“Oh, I see.”

Debbie emerged out of her torpor and said, “Have you heard from Adrienne?”

Ethan looked at her as if at someone he suspected might be an impostor, so odd did he find the change of subject.

“No. I left her a message yesterday morning, but let’s keep focused on finding Hailey. Me and Adrienne can sort our problems out after that.”

“Of course,” said Ethan, looking a little embarrassed.

Debbie appeared to sink away again, and Finn wondered if she was medicated. They both needed medication by the look of them, but he supposed the last thing they wanted when their daughter was missing was to take sleeping pills.

Wanting to get out of there as quickly as possible, he cut straight to it: “How well did you know your neighbor . . . Gibson?”

“Not particularly well. Not at all, really. We would say good morning to him, that sort of thing, but we hardly ever saw him. You know how this building is.”

Finn nodded, feeling vindicated somehow by Ethan suggesting it wasn’t the kind of place where neighbors became friends.

“He moved,” said Debbie. “I think it was the day before Hailey disappeared.”

She didn’t appear to grasp the meaning of what she’d said, but Ethan looked and sounded sickened as he said, “Oh my God, you don’t think he had anything to do with it?”

Finn was quick to respond. “No, not necessarily. It’s more than likely just a coincidence. But I wanted to know what he was like, whether he ever had visitors, whether Hailey ever spoke to him. From what I’ve heard already, Gibson doesn’t square with the image Hailey was building for herself, but I’d still like to rule him out.”

“Sure,” said Ethan, still looking very much in doubt. He visibly assembled his thoughts before saying, “He was English—no, I mean, he was a Scot. Single. I’d guess in his late twenties. His hair was receding at the temples but he had it cropped short so it wasn’t that noticeable. Don’t remember him having any visitors, ever. I’d see him leaving in workout clothes a few evenings a week, but don’t recall him going out much beyond that.”

“And Hailey?”

It was Debbie who answered, as her orbit crossed briefly into theirs again. “I don’t believe she ever spoke a word to him. She would laugh sometimes . . .”

Ethan smiled at the recollection and said, “Yes, a couple of times she was standing by the window and saw him go out. He had a road bike—I’d forgotten that, he’d carry it up and down in the elevator—and Hailey found his cycle clothing amusing. You know what kids are like.”

Debbie said, “I found it quite amusing, too. All that spandex—it wasn’t a flattering look for him,” She seemed almost back to herself, but then sounded oddly insistent as she said, “Hailey has a great sense of humor.”

Finn found a response running around in his thoughts, but kept it to himself and said instead, “You said Jonas was spoken to and didn’t know anything? It seems odd that they were such close friends and he didn’t have any inkling.”

“We thought the same,” said Ethan. “When we first realized she was missing, Jonas was the person we called. He didn’t know where she was, didn’t know she’d run away. Then once it was clear she’d disappeared, the police spoke to her closest friends, including Jonas.”

“You don’t think he might have been lying, maybe because she’d asked him to?”

“I doubt it. You know we talked about the possibility of him being, or rather—”

“Having Asperger’s, yes, I remember.”

Ethan looked uncomfortable, as if he was now doubting their casual diagnosis, and certainly regretting that they’d mentioned it to someone else.

“Yes, well, one of the things that makes it seem . . . You see, he doesn’t hold back, he can’t help but say what he’s thinking. He’s just not the kind of kid who lies, and Hailey wouldn’t have asked him to lie because she knows that.”

“So as close as they are, Hailey probably wouldn’t have told him anything about her plans?”

Ethan shook his head, acknowledging what he presumably thought was a roadblock. Finn thought it was anything but—Jonas knew something, or suspected something, about the “how” and the “why” of Hailey’s disappearance. The fact that he’d been staring at an empty apartment suggested he didn’t know the “where,” but he still knew more than anyone else.

Finn stood and said, “Okay, I have a few things I have to do this afternoon, and some things to check out this evening. As ever, if you learn anything in the meantime, please let me know.”

Debbie looked up at him. “It’s only when things are bad that you learn the truth about people, and who your friends are.”

He wanted to tell her the real truth, that he didn’t even know why he was doing this, that if Adrienne had still been here he almost certainly wouldn’t have been helping them—he’d have been criticizing Adrienne for getting too involved herself. Perhaps it was simply that his curiosity had filled the gap left by Adrienne, rushing into the vacuum caused by the rather mundane collapse of his own domestic certainties.

“I’m sure anyone else would have done the same.”

Ethan showed him out, and Finn drifted back to his apartment. He had nothing to do except wait for the evening and, he hoped, the return of Jonas. He spent a couple of hours reading a densely written book on Pope Innocent III, making notes, knowing he’d use almost none of it.

After lunch he phoned Mathieu, but Adrienne’s sister-in-law answered.

“Hello, Cecile—it’s Finn.”

Cecile’s English wasn’t great, but it was better than she pretended and Finn was certain she used it as an excuse to avoid talking to him. In his present mood of self-reappraisal, he could hardly hold that against her.

Even so, it rankled slightly when she said, “Hello, Finn, a moment please.” And she was gone, the phone placed down heavily.

A few moments later, Finn heard footsteps approaching, a labored sigh, the phone being picked up again, and Mathieu saying, “Hello, Finn, what can I do for you?”

His tone was disarming, and Finn briefly wondered if Debbie had been mistaken about Adrienne’s whereabouts, given everything else that was going on in her life, but even with a missing daughter it was the kind of detail Debbie Portman wouldn’t get wrong.

“Mathieu, I know she’s with you—her friend told me.”

There was silence, then another sigh—Mathieu was thirty-four, nearly two years younger than Finn, yet he had a way of sounding like a weary parent—and he said, “Yes, Adrienne is here, but she doesn’t want to speak to you.”

“Okay. Am I at least allowed to know what I’m supposed to have done, why she left without a word?”

“That’s none of my business,” said Mathieu, his tone ambiguous, suggesting an extra level of meaning that Finn couldn’t quite decipher. “But you know, Finn, when a man has a problem with his wife and he thinks he’s done nothing wrong, sometimes what he’s done wrong is nothing.”

“Well, thanks, I’ll give that some thought. But let her know I called, and that I would like to hear from her.”

He didn’t get any more effusive than that, in part because he refused to pour his heart out to a man who wasn’t even his brother-in-law, in part because there wasn’t a great deal to pour out. Far from asking her to come back, he had to resist the urge to ask what he should do with the rest of her stuff.

But something about his response seemed to mollify Mathieu, and he sounded sympathetic as he said, “Just give her some time.”

It seemed as if he was about to go on, but he stopped abruptly, and Finn knew that Adrienne was standing there listening. He could imagine the look she was giving her brother right now.

“She can take as long as she needs,” said Finn, unable to stop himself, despite knowing how those words would be interpreted. He ended the call and took both phones through to the living room, doubting that she’d call back or send a message, but not wanting to miss it if she did.

And he fell asleep there on the sofa, deep and fast, as if finally making up for the research trip and the confusion since. When he woke, it was already growing dark and he was disoriented, unsure of the day or time. He went to the bathroom, washed his face, brushed his teeth, trying to shake the grogginess out of himself.

Before making coffee, he decided to close the curtains in the living room, making it easier for him to spy on the street below without being seen. But he stopped short of closing them fully, and stood back to one side, because there Jonas was again, walking up
and down on the opposite side of the street, occasionally looking up
at Gibson’s apartment.

Finn took another step back, completely out of sight. The coffee
could wait, he supposed—it was time to find out what Jonas thought he knew.