The Stranger on the Train (24 page)

He'd done it. Done it! She was coming in.

“No problem,” he said.

Philippa Hunt paused again, then opened the front door wider. Rafe was looking everywhere as soon as he entered, taking in as much as he could. The hall was double height, with cream and pale-blue tiles on the floor. An iron chandelier with wax candles hung from the ceiling on a long chain, almost low enough to touch. A marble table with ornate gilded legs stood under a massive, gilt-framed mirror. The rest of the furniture was dark wood: a hatstand and a chest of drawers, and what looked like a church pew along one wall.

“If I could have a contact number for your referee?” Philippa was standing before him with a pen. Rafe gave her the number of the landscaping agency he'd been with in England. He hoped she'd be happy with that and not insist on a reference from France as well.

As he'd guessed she would, the first thing Philippa did was to call directory inquiries to confirm that the number he'd given her belonged to the address he said it did. Then she went off to a room somewhere to ring the agency. Rafe used the opportunity to continue his recce of the hall. Five doors leading off, including the one Philippa had just gone through. A polished stone staircase with an iron banister. Halfway up, the staircase curved to the right, so he couldn't see all the way to the top. No child visible or audible anywhere. No photos. And then, just as Philippa's footsteps came tapping back into the hall, he glanced under the marble table and spotted a pair of tiny red wellies, scuffed with mud.

Philippa appeared, closing her phone.

“Your reference is satisfactory,” she said. “When would you be able to start?”

Rafe said calmly: “Today, if you like?”

“Excellent.” Philippa opened a drawer and took out a set of keys. “I'll show you where the gardening things are kept.”

She led him out again through the big front door.

“I see you have children,” Rafe said, indicating the boots under the table as they passed.

“Yes, we do.”

Philippa closed the door behind them. Rafe followed her down the steps, unable for the moment to think of a follow-up child-related question that wouldn't sound too nosy.

They went around the side of the house, past a grassy fenced-off area, like a dog run, with a tree on a small hill in the middle. Then they crossed a paved area to a low white building.

“This is where Frank”—Philippa pronounced it Frrronk—“keeps the gardening equipment.”

She turned keys in two separate locks. Inside, the building consisted of a long, white-painted room with shelves all down one side. Fronk seemed to have been very organized. Sets of shears hung on hooks in order of size, all of them gleaming and clean. Hoes and rakes lined up against the wall. Boxes of weed killer and fertilizer on the shelves. The hoses were stored beneath. Dimly, Rafe glimpsed their dark-green coils.

“Through there you'll find a kitchen and lavatory,” Philippa said, indicating a door. “The kitchen is quite basic, but there is a microwave in case you need to heat up anything.”

In other words, no reason for him to go back into the house.

“What would you like me to do?” Rafe asked.

“Frank tends to keep to a list.” Philippa showed him a printed page on the wall. “He carries out the jobs in rotation, but as it's been a while, you might find that just about everything needs doing.”

The list was in French. Rafe nodded, arms folded, sucking his lower lip. He couldn't read a word of it.

“As you can see,” Philippa said, “it's mostly mowing and weeding the areas around the house, and tending to the vegetable garden at the back. Through those trees over there is the goose farm, and Frank doesn't garden there, obviously.” She looked at him. “My husband said you thought a couple of days should be enough?”

“That's right,” Rafe said. “Say if I aim to finish by Monday?”

“That's fine.”

Philippa turned to leave.

“When are you planning to move?” Rafe asked, hoping to keep her talking.

She paused.

“In a couple of weeks.”

“Going anywhere nice?”

Mrs. Hunt glanced towards the shelves.

“The lawn mowers are in a separate shed at the back,” she said. “The sit-on was giving trouble, but I think Frank has fixed it. Any problems, do let me know.”

She tapped across the paving stones, back to the house.

Right, Missus. I hear you.

Rafe took another look around the room. What he was looking for, he wasn't sure. Children's stuff, maybe: old cots or prams in storage. Boxes with useful photos. But all he could see was weed killer and watering cans.

There was another door, besides the one to the toilet and kitchen. He went to check it out. Behind the door was another large room, with shelves and a counter along one wall. The shelves were stacked with empty jars and plastic containers, all with dust on the top. A plastic sheet covered something on the counter. He lifted a corner to have a look. A cash register. Obviously the place was used, sometimes anyway, as a shop. Some of the containers had labels on the sides: “Ferme des Chasseurs: Huile de Noix,” “Ferme des Chasseurs: Foie Gras.”

Foie gras. Well, so that explained the geese. Poor things. But a small country farm like this wouldn't make the Hunts the money they seemed to have. Possibly David was something or other in the City, and this was Philippa's thing on the side.

Anyway. Time was passing. He'd better look as if he was doing something. He took the lawn mower out, deciding to concentrate for today on the area at the back of the house. Beyond the lawn were orchards of walnut and apple trees, and beyond them again, fields of dark maize. No child's toys anywhere that Rafe could see. No slides, swings, trucks, balls, cars. Nothing. It was as if no kid had ever lived here. Or maybe they had everything all packed up already.

After cutting the grass, Rafe took the hoe to the walled-in vegetable garden. More evidence of Fronk's impressive organizational skills. Carrots in rows like a passing-out parade. The tomatoes, however, were falling off the vine and lay, overripe and rotting, in the soil. The pumpkins were in better shape but needed restaking and harvesting. Rafe didn't plan to bother too much about harvesting. His brief for now was just to make things look good. He dug weeds and cleared rotted fruit, and took the lot to the compost heap near the garden room. Each time he wheeled the barrow past the house, he took a different route so he could look in as many windows as possible. At first he just glanced in, turning his head in a casual way as he passed. But then, as all the rooms seemed empty, he stepped closer, staring frankly in. Where were they all? The house was deserted. Philippa, at least, must be somewhere, surely. She was either upstairs, or in some inner room with no windows; or perhaps she'd gone out altogether without him noticing.

As late in the evening as he reasonably could, he put away the hoe and barrow and rang the doorbell to let the Hunts know he was leaving. No answer. Well, whether they were out or hiding, with the gardening things put away he couldn't risk hanging around here much longer. Anyway, he was starving. He'd had nothing to eat all day.

• • •

He left the house and drove to a village a prudent twenty miles away. He booked himself into a guesthouse, under the walls of yet another ancient castle. In a pizzeria under a stone arch, he more or less inhaled two portions of garlic bread and a twelve-inch pizza with extra toppings. Then he took a bottle of lager to a table on the outside terrace, looking down over some fields. The sun sank behind distant trees, turning the castle walls orange.

All right. What the hell was he doing here?

Even if he saw this kid, how was he going to know whether he belonged to the Hunts or to Emma? He didn't have a photo of Ritchie, though he'd seen a couple. Now it seemed moronic not to have brought one. Emma had mentioned he looked like her ex, who naturally Rafe had never met. And despite what he'd naively thought, it didn't look as if he was about to witness any incriminating conversations between Philippa and her husband—but then, what had he been expecting? To burst in on them throwing their heads back and shouting:
Mwa-ha-ha, we got away with it at last
? This was one couple who kept themselves very much to themselves. Which of course you would do, if you'd just kidnapped someone; but it could also be the reserve of the English upper middle classes, walking around all day with a pinched expression on their faces, as if someone had put a clothes peg up their backside.

Rafe took a mouthful of beer, swishing it thoughtfully through his teeth.

Emma. Emma Turner. What was it about this woman? Why was he so convinced that she knew better than all of these people here? Better than the Hunts, in their silent stone house; better than their family, the neighbors, the police. The DNA lab, for Christ's sake! Emma, who was so defensive and so suspicious of everyone, so hostile and prickly and angry. It was only now occurring to him that his bringing her here might have done her no favors at all. It might have been premature to have been so encouraging about the word “Bergerac.” She might have heard it wrong. That woman in the café might have said something else entirely. She might have been a different woman entirely.

The Kronenbourg seeped down his throat. Rafe tipped his head back. His shoulders were killing him from today. He found himself looking straight up into the sky. Blue ink and orange. No moon tonight.

That day on the sand dune. The evening he'd driven her back to Bergerac, and they'd stood in the hall outside her room with the moonlight coming in. Those few seconds when all of her hostility had been suspended and just for that short time he'd seen . . . something so valiant and slender and vulnerable and sweet that . . .

Rafe lifted his head. He took another mouthful of beer.

All right. If he was going to continue with this, he should try to get into the house. Poke around a bit. See if he could find out where the Hunts were moving to. He could say he'd accidentally cut through a pipe and wanted to check that their water still worked. Or that he'd electrocuted himself on the mower and thought he might be having a heart attack.

Or he could just chuck the whole thing and catch his flight to La Paz.

Another sip of the lager. He looked at the bottle. Where did they make this stuff? He'd drunk it in London, but it had never tasted this good. The light on the castle walls deepened to red.

No. He wasn't ready to leave here yet. He'd stay until he finished what he'd come to do.

• • •

The next morning, he was at the house by seven. He tackled the sloping lawn at the front with the sit-on mower, keeping a close eye on the house as he worked. Still no sign of anyone. In bed, in the house, gone out already for the day, who knew?

One day left. The frustration was getting to him. It was looking more and more as though Ritchie—if it
was
Ritchie—wasn't here. At this rate, he mightn't even get to see Philippa or David again either. Okay, he'd have to meet one of them to get paid, but that would likely be a quick handover of an envelope and good-bye. There had to be some way to start up a conversation. Get some decent information without coming across as seriously inappropriate or obvious.

No point hanging around the house if no one was in. He took the hedge trimmer down to the gate and began to cut away the heavier branches that hung over the walls, keeping a sharp eye through his goggles for any cars coming in or out. His mind worked as he chopped. Which of the two of them might be easier to crack? Philippa or David? He had an idea from the phone that David might be the type to cave in and reveal more. But so far, Philippa was the only person he'd actually met.

He could always just break into the house. But what would that gain him? Apart from getting felt up under a tree by a couple of gendarmes.

It was after eleven. The sun was beating down. Rafe's throat prickled with dust and bits of hedge. He turned the trimmer off and trudged up the drive to the garden room to get some water.

He was pulling a splinter out of his thumb, concentrating on his hand as he reached the house. Just as he rounded the corner, he glanced up. Then he threw his arms out, leaping back with a yelp, as if he'd just spotted Damien from
The Omen
.

There in the grassy, fenced-off enclosure, sitting under the tree, a yellow plastic soother jammed in his mouth, was Ritchie.

• • •

“It nearly finished me,” Rafe admitted to Emma. “I'd been thinking about toddlers all morning, and obviously sensitized myself so much that when I saw one I got a serious shock.”

“How did he look?” Emma whispered.

Rafe had painted the picture so perfectly. She was there, not in an egg-and-bacon-smelling café near Victoria station, surrounded by the chatter of tourists and the shriek of milk being steamed, but right there, right there in the garden in France.

Rafe said: “He looked great.”

He said: “He looked exactly like you.”

• • •

Emma had said he resembled her ex, but he looked like
her
. A mini, male, blond her. The same eyes: dark blue, kind of tipped down at the sides. The same mouth, the lower lip fuller than the upper.

The last time, the time he'd been here with Emma, Philippa Hunt's arms had been in the way and Rafe hadn't been able to see the child. This time he had a ringside view. He watched the child playing with something in the grass, and all vestiges of doubt left his mind.

This was him. This was Emma's baby.

Rafe coughed to clear the dust from his throat. The sting made his eyes water. It was strange, seeing the kid here like this. Knowing the enormous injustice that had been done to Emma, and how much she would have given to be here and see him too. He cleared his throat again. Still dusty.

Now what?

The enclosure had a gate with thin wooden bars. Rafe watched Ritchie through the bars. He was still poking at the grass, rather aimlessly, just sitting there. His legs stuck out in front of him. His head was down, his chins on his chest. He looked grave and thoughtful. Not like you'd expect a kid that age to look, all happy and crawling around.