In The Presence Of The Enemy (28 page)

What
had
been unusual was everything that followed that initial approach.

Her name had been Tarp. Diana Tarp, she said, although Eve could read that well enough on the press pass she wore on a chain round her neck. She represented the
Globe
and she wanted to arrange an interview with the Undersecretary of State. As soon as possible, if Ms. Bowen didn’t mind.

Eve had been so surprised by this frontal approach that she stopped in her progress to the door where she could see her Rover and its driver waiting at the kerb. She’d said, “I beg your pardon?” And before Diana Tarp could respond, she continued with, “If you want an interview, Ms. Tarp, may I suggest you phone my office and not accost me like a streetwalker with a proposition? Excuse me, please.”

As she moved past the journalist, Diana Tarp said quietly, “Actually, I’d thought you’d be grateful for a more intimate approach, rather than have me go through your offi ce personnel.”

Eve had turned towards the door, but she slowed, then stopped. “What?”

The journalist gave her a level look. “You know how offices work, Ms. Bowen. A journalist phones in but won’t leave a precise message. Five minutes later half the staff knows.

Five more minutes later and the rest of the staff is speculating why. I thought you might like to avoid that. The knowledge and the speculation, that is.”

Eve had felt a chill with her words. But it was followed by an anger so wild that for a moment she didn’t trust herself to speak. So she shifted her briefcase from one hand to the other and looked at her watch as she instructed her blood not to wash across her face.

At last she said, “I’m afraid I haven’t the time to accommodate you at the moment, Ms.—” and she gazed at the other woman’s identifi cation.

“Tarp,” she said, “Diana Tarp,” in a voice that told Eve she was unconvinced by and unimpressed with her performance.

“Yes. Well. If you have no wish to arrange an interview through my office, Ms. Tarp, then give me one of your cards and I’ll phone you when I can. That’s the best I can do. At the moment, I’m already overdue at my surgery.”

After a pause in which they examined each other as potential opponents, Diana Tarp handed over a card. But she’d never moved her eyes from Eve’s face as she pulled that card from her jacket pocket.

“I do hope to hear from you,” she said.

In the back of the Rover, as she rolled towards Marylebone, Eve inspected the card.

It bore the woman’s name, her home address, her work phone, her office phone, her pager, and her fax. Clearly, if there was a story to be got from any source about any subject, Diana Tarp had made herself available to get it.

Slowly Eve tore the card in half, then in quarters, then in eighths. When she had reduced it to the size of confetti, she spread the pieces across the palm of her hand and, when the Rover drew up in front of the constituency association office, she dropped them into the gutter, where a rivulet of bronze-coloured water was trickling in the direction of a drain. So much for Diana Tarp, Eve thought.

It had been nothing, she concluded now.

The journalist’s approach was unusual but that, perhaps, was merely her style. She could be working on a story about the growing numbers of women in Parliament, about the need for more women in the Cabinet. She could be investigating any one of a dozen areas that were the responsibility of the Home Offi ce.

She might want to know about changes in immigration policies, about centralised policing, about prison reform. She might wish to discuss the Government’s position on refugee resettlement, on the movement towards a permanent cease-fire with the IRA. She might be digging into something potentially nasty regarding MI5. It could have been anything.

It could have been nothing. It was merely the timing that had unnerved her.

Eve returned her spectacles to her nose and adjusted her hair so that its fringe did the job to cover her scar. She said to her image in the mirror, “Member of Parliament. Undersecretary of State,” and when she had those elements of her persona in place, she returned to her office and buzzed in her next constituent.

That meeting—a convoluted conversation with an unmarried mother of three who had a fourth on the way and who had come to protest about her current position on the list for council housing—was interrupted by Nuala.

She didn’t buzz this time. Rather, she tapped discreetly on the door and opened it as Miss Peggy Hornfisher was demanding, “So, zit s’posed to be
my
fault they’ve all got the same dad? Why’s that disqualify me? If I slept round and popped out kids without a blink as to who their dads were, I’d be at the top of that list and don’t we both know it. And don’t tell
me
to talk to the councillors. I been talking to the councillors till I’m blue in the face.
You
talk to them. That’s why we voted for you, isn’t it?”

Nuala’s “Excuse me, Ms. Bowen,” saved Eve from having to explain the fi ner points of qualification for and distribution of council housing to Miss Hornfisher. And the fact that Nuala had interrupted in person suggested a matter that required immediate attention.

Eve went to the door and joined Nuala outside her office. The secretary said, “Your husband’s just phoned.”

“Why didn’t you put him through?”

“He didn’t want to be put through. He said you’re to come home at once. He’s on his way and you’re to meet him there. That’s all.”

Nuala shifted uncomfortably from foot to foot.

She’d spoken to Alex in the past. She would know how unusual it was for him to give his wife a directive without talking to her personally. “He didn’t say anything else.”

Eve felt the touch of panic, but she reached for what Alex had reached for on Wednesday night. She said with perfect sangfroid, “His father’s not well,” and returned to her offi ce.

She made her excuses to Miss Hornfi sher, followed them with promises, and began to stuff her belongings into her briefcase as Miss Hornfisher lumbered from the room. She tried to remain composed even as her mind careened

from one thought to the next. It was Charlotte.

Alex was phoning about Charlotte. He wouldn’t have told her to come home otherwise. So there was word. There was news. Luxford had relented. Eve had held firm, she had refused to cave in, she had been unmoved by Luxford’s performance, she had stood her ground, she had shown him who had balls, she had—

The phone rang. She snatched it. “What?”

she snapped.

“It’s Joel Woodward again,” Nuala said.

“I can’t talk to him now.”

“Ms. Bowen, he says it’s urgent.”

“Oh damn it, put him through,” she said and in a moment heard Joel’s voice saying with uncharacteristic insubordination, “Shit! Why haven’t you answered my calls?”

“Exactly who do you think you’re talking to, Joel?”

“I know who I’m talking to. And I know something else. Something dodgy’s going on over here, and I rather thought you’d be interested in knowing what it is.”

The Friday night traffic was bad. The month of May, the beginning of the season’s largest influx of tourists, the rush to get to the theatre: All these elements combined to clog the streets.

St. James rode with Luxford, following Stone. Luxford used his car phone to speak to his wife, delaying his arrival home. He did not tell her why. He said to St. James, “Fiona doesn’t know about any of this. I can’t think how to tell her. God. What a cock-up.” He kept his eyes on the car in front of them, his hands low on the steering wheel. He said, “Do you think I’m involved in this? In what’s happened to Charlotte?”

“What I think isn’t important, Mr. Luxford.”

“You regret your own involvement.”

“Yes. I do.”

“Why did you take this on?”

St. James looked out the side window. They were passing Hyde Park. Through gaps in the great plane trees, he could see that people still walked along the pathway in the fading evening light. With dogs on leads. With arms about each other. With small children in push-chairs. He caught sight of one young woman lifting a child high into the air, the sort of play that a baby loves. He said, “It’s rather too complicated to explain, I’m afraid,” and he was grateful when Luxford said nothing more.

When they reached Marylebone, Mrs.

Maguire was just leaving, with a yellow pon-cho slung over one shoulder and a plastic bag dangling from her arm. She spoke to Alexander Stone while Luxford pulled into a vacant spot farther down the mews. By the time they walked back to the house, she was gone.

“Eve’s home,” Stone said. “Let me go in fi rst.”

They waited outside. The occasional car passed on Marylebone High Street. The muffled babble of conversation drifted in their direction from the Devonshire Arms on the corner. Other than that, the mews was silent.

Several minutes passed before the door opened. Stone said, “Come in.”

Eve Bowen was waiting for them in the sitting room. She stood next to the sculpture from under which she had taken the kidnapper’s note two nights earlier. She looked poised the way a warrior is poised before hand-to-hand combat. She was a picture of the sort of equanimity that is intended to intimidate.

“Play the tape,” she said.

St. James did so. Eve’s face didn’t alter as Charlotte’s voice piped among them, although St. James thought he saw her swallow when the little girl said, “_Cito, I had to make this tape_
in order that he would give me some juice ’cause I
was so thirsty
.”

When the tape finished playing, Eve said to Luxford, “Thank you for the information.

Now you may leave.”

Luxford’s hand shot out as if he would touch her, but they stood at opposite sides of the room. “Evelyn—”

“Leave.”

“Eve,” Stone said, “we’ll phone the police.

We don’t need to play the game his way. He doesn’t need to run the story.”

“No,” she said. Her face was as stony as her voice. St. James realised that she hadn’t taken her eyes off Luxford since they’d all walked into the room. They stood about like actors upon a stage, each having taken a position from which none of them moved: Luxford by the fireplace, Eve across from him, Stone by the entry to the dining room, St. James by the sofa. He was nearest to her and he tried to read her, but she was as guarded as a wary cat.

“Ms. Bowen,” he said and he kept his voice low, the way one would speak to maintain calm at all costs, “we’ve made progress today.”

“Such as?” Still, she looked at Luxford. As if her look were a challenge, he did not avoid it.

St. James told her about the vagrant, about the sightings of him that had been confi rmed by the two residents of Cross Keys Close. He told her about the policeman who had run the vagrant off, saying, “One of the constables at the Marylebone station is going to remember that man and that description. If you phone them, the detectives won’t be starting from nothing in an investigation. They’ll have a good lead.”

“No,” she said. “Try your best, Dennis. You can’t have it your way.” She was communicating something to Luxford with the words, something beyond merely her refusal to act.

St. James couldn’t guess what it was, but it seemed to him that Luxford could. He saw the editor’s lips part fractionally, but he didn’t reply.

Stone said, “I don’t see that we have a choice, Eve. God knows I don’t want you to go through this, but Luxford thinks—”

He was silenced by her look, so swift it might have been shot from a gun. Treason, it said to him, treachery, betrayal. “You as well,”

she said.

“No. Never. I’m on your side, Eve.”

She smiled thinly. “Then know this.” Her gaze went back to Luxford. “One of the lobby journalists requested an immediate interview with me this afternoon. Convenient to the circumstances, wouldn’t you say?”

“That means nothing,” Luxford said. “For the love of God, Evelyn, you’re a bloody Junior Minister. You must get requests for interviews all the time.”

“As soon as possible, she said.” Eve continued as if Luxford hadn’t spoken. “Without mentioning the fact to any of my staff because, she told me, I might not want my staff to know she was talking to me.”

“From my paper?” Luxford asked.

“You wouldn’t be that foolish. But from your former paper. And I fi nd that fascinating.”

“It’s just coincidence. You must see that.”

“I would have done had it not been for the rest.”

“What?” Stone asked. “Eve, what’s going on?”

“Five journalists have phoned since half past three this afternoon. Joel took the calls.

They have the scent that something’s up, he told me, they all want a word, so do I know what it is they’re after and how would I like him to handle the sudden influx of interest in…‘What
is
it they’re suddenly interested in, Ms. Bowen?’ ”

Luxford said urgently, “No. Evelyn. I haven’t told a soul. That has nothing to do—

”

“Get out of my house, you bastard,” she said quietly. “I’ll die before I cave in to you.”

St. James spoke to Luxford outside, standing next to his car. The last person in the world he would ever have expected to feel a stirring of pity for was the editor of
The Source
, but he felt pity now. The man looked haggard.

Patches of damp the size of dinner plates soddened his natty blue shirt. His body was rank with the scent of perspiration.

He said in a shell-shocked voice, “What next?”

“I’ll talk to her again.”

“We’ve no time.”

“I’ll talk to her now.”

“She won’t give.” His gaze went to the house, which told neither of them anything other than the fact that more lights had been switched on in the sitting room and another in a room upstairs. “She should have aborted,” he said. “All those years ago. I don’t know why she didn’t. I used to think it was because she needed a concrete reason to hate me.”

“For?”

“Seducing her. Or making her want to be seduced. The latter, I suspect. It’s terrifying to some people when they learn to want.”

“It is.” St. James touched the roof of Luxford’s car. “Go home. Let me see what I can do.”

“Nothing,” Luxford predicted.