The Traitor's Story (22 page)

Chapter Twenty-Seven

They didn’t speak on the journey home. Hailey sat looking at the closed Moleskine, tears streaming down her cheeks, though she was still and silent. Finn looked out at the city streets and thought of nothing.

As they entered their building, he noticed that Grasset’s door was slightly ajar, and at the sound of their steps, Grasset looked out and said, “Ah, Monsieur Harrington . . .” Then he saw Hailey and stopped. “But it’s nothing, a matter I wanted to discuss with you in private.”

“Okay. I’ll just see Hailey home and I’ll come back down.”

Grasset nodded, but to Finn’s eyes the old man looked troubled.

Hailey said, “Go now. I traveled right across Europe on my own, I’m sure I can manage the elevator in my own building.”

Finn smiled, but though he had no reason for it, he didn’t want her to go up on her own. He’d said she wasn’t in danger and he believed that, but something, perhaps just the fact that Grasset wanted to speak to him, had put him on edge.

“I know that. I was thinking of your parents. I think if we put on a show of being extra-vigilant, at least for the next few days, it’ll make them sleep easier.”

She knew she didn’t have a response to that, having only returned from her unsanctioned road trip a few hours earlier, so she shrugged and headed to the elevator.

Finn saw her almost to the door and then headed back down. Grasset’s door was still ajar, and he knocked lightly on the woodwork.

“Come in, Monsieur Harrington.”

Finn stepped inside, and Grasset came out of his living room and gestured toward the kitchen. Now that he thought of it, he’d been in Grasset’s apartment a dozen or so times and he didn’t think he’d ever seen the living room. He was curious about it, and realized that what he had seen of the apartment was too old-fashioned for the building it was in, as if in some way it predated the current construction.

“Please, sit down.” There was already a bottle on the table with two shot glasses. “A drink?”

Finn tried to see what the bottle was, some sort of grappa, and said as he always did, “That’d be great, thanks.”

Grasset sat and poured two glasses of clear liquid. It had an odd viscosity about it that Finn mistrusted. They raised their glasses and drank, and Finn felt the fire lingering in his mouth and throat long after he’d swallowed.

“Good, no?”

“Yeah, it’s powerful stuff.” He showed a cursory interest in the bottle, as if he wanted to memorize the label for the next time he was out shopping, then said, “What did you want to speak to me about, Monsieur Grasset?”

“Ah yes, Monsieur Gibson’s apartment. Yesterday evening, I came in and noticed a light was on. I thought maybe we had left it on so I took the spare key, but when I got there I could hear footsteps inside. I knocked. And a man from the company, from BGS, was in there.”

“You mean he’d moved into the apartment?”

“No, he said he was inspecting it. I asked if someone new would come soon but he said he wasn’t sure.”

“What did he look like, how old?”

“Your age, perhaps. He looked average. Dark hair and, er, a suntan.”

“He wasn’t foreign? I mean, Arabic or—”

“No, and I mentioned it and he said he’d been on vacation, to the Caribbean.” Grasset shrugged nonchalantly, as if he and Finn shared a dim view of people who holidayed in the Caribbean. Finn
wasn’t sure what the view was, but as if countering the disapproval, Grasset said, “But he was friendly, very much wanting to talk and ask questions about the building.”

“You hadn’t seen him before?”

“Never.”

“Okay, what kind of questions?”

Grasset topped up both glasses, even though Finn had drunk hardly any of his, then said, “That is what I wanted to talk to you about. He asked about the kind of people who lived here, but then—it was strange the way he changed the subject—he said he’d heard the neighbor’s daughter had run away and he hoped she would be found. I asked him if he had spoken to the neighbors, and he said Monsieur Gibson had told him about it.”

“Gibson left the day after, so he might have heard about it before he went.”

“It’s possible.” Unspoken was Grasset’s suspicion, even based on the little knowledge he possessed, that the visitor to Gibson’s apartment had a specific interest in Hailey’s disappearance. “Monsieur Harrington, people talk to me all the time, and so often they talk about one thing when they want to know another. What a beautiful day, Monsieur Grasset . . . oh, and I haven’t seen Madame Harrington lately. Or they ask directions and then suddenly they wonder if any apartments might be available.” Finn smiled, because it was the truth, and because Grasset was a master at it himself. But Grasset grew serious as he said, “This man last night, he humored me, but he wanted to know only about Hailey Portman.”

“What did you tell him?”

“I told him everything I know—that the police are not involved, that Hailey ran away, as teenagers sometimes do, and God willing she will come back when she realizes it’s not nice to be alone in the world.”

“That’s good,” said Finn.

Grasset was dismissive of the comment, but said, “When did she come back?”

“Only today.”

“I almost didn’t recognize her.” He tipped the grappa in his glass, first one way, then the other, as if studying the meniscus. “I don’t understand very much of . . . of anything anymore, but if Hailey was my daughter, I would be concerned. This man from BGS, he was very friendly, but why would he be so interested in a young girl like that?”

Finn nodded, appreciating Grasset’s instincts, particularly as he probably didn’t know yet that Hailey’s friend was dead, a boy he’d probably seen here countless times. The real question was whether they were curious about Hailey, wondering how much she knew, or whether they were erring on the side of caution, intent on eliminating her no matter what.

It seemed inconceivable, but then it seemed inconceivable that they’d killed Jonas, a boy who wouldn’t have known what to do with the information he’d found. It was something Finn had seen in the people he’d once contended with, and sometimes even among his own colleagues—a policy in which killing was the first option rather than the last, because lives counted for nothing against the security of guaranteed silence.

And now he had to rethink his position. He’d told Hailey several times that she was safe, but he no longer knew that. As if to reinforce that fact, he saw something that had eluded him at first—the timing of this visit to Gibson’s apartment.

Jonas had most likely been killed shortly after arriving home from school, and then later the same evening, someone from BGS had turned up here. Had this been the person who’d killed Jonas, calling by in the hope of being able to finish the job?

Finn thought of how tall and rangy Jonas had been, how easily he’d outrun him that first night. He imagined that if the visitor to Gibson’s place had been faking the suicide of a kid like that, he wouldn’t have taken the risk of doing it alone.

“Was he alone, Monsieur Grasset?”

“In the apartment, yes.” He opened the bottle again. Finn hadn’t touched his drink since the last refill, so he obligingly drained the glass and watched as Grasset filled it again. “I saw him to the door and he waved. He walked away. But along the street there, he got into a car, in the passenger seat, and the car drove away.”

“Did you see who was driving?”

“I couldn’t be sure. You know, if I was talking to the police, I wouldn’t like to say, but talking to you I can say it looked like Monsieur Gibson.” He paused. “You think they mean harm?” Finn nodded, his thoughts settling into a greater clarity than he’d experienced for a long time.

“Yes, they do, but I’ll deal with it.”

Grasset smiled, as if Finn had just confirmed a long-held suspicion of his own. Maybe Adrienne had spoken to him, too. Finn knocked back the shot in one and stood.

“Thank you, Monsieur Grasset. This is a great help.” He headed for the door, then stopped. The flow of information had diverted him from asking a key question, but he asked it now: “This man who called, did he give you a name?”

“
Mais oui!
” Grasset stood, embarrassed at having forgotten to mention it himself. He crossed the kitchen and picked something up, holding it out to Finn. “He gave me his card.”

Finn took it and looked at the thick card, the glossily embossed black lettering: the BGS logo, an office phone number, and the name of the person who’d come calling. Finn looked at the grappa bottle, and if he’d still been sitting he would have poured himself another shot, because the name on the card was Harry Simons.

Chapter Twenty-Eight

Finn stood outside the Portmans’ apartment but didn’t press the buzzer. He could hear the soft muffle of voices somewhere inside, the family perhaps finally talking over Hailey’s disappearance or the events that had overtaken it. There were no raised voices and it was a comforting sound somehow, none of the words distinct enough to make out.

But that wasn’t why Finn had failed to press the buzzer. He was thinking about Harry Simons. Harry Simons, he reminded himself again, was dead. And if by some medical marvel they had managed to keep him alive, he would not have become the kind of person who killed fifteen-year-old boys, no matter who ordered it.

But Harry Simons was dead, and though the description given by Grasset could have easily fitted Harry, one odd little detail assured Finn that it hadn’t been him. In the couple of years they’d spent together in Northern Europe, Harry had never once complained about the cold—the colder it got, the happier he became—but he’d never been able to stand the heat.

Finn was as uncertain of most things as Grasset claimed to be, but he knew with an unwavering conviction that Harry wouldn’t have been on vacation in the Caribbean. It only served to back up what he already knew, that if Harry were part of BGS, whatever BGS was, they wouldn’t be digging around in the dirt trying to identify Jerry de Borg, because Harry knew already.

Harry was dead, had been dead for six years. Even thinking it brought a reminder of the guilt he’d felt at hearing of his friend’s death, because he’d doubted him in those final days, that business about falling for the girl.

But if Harry was dead, that in itself raised another question—could it just be a coincidence, another guy with the same name, or a pseudonym picked out of the hat that just happened to be linked to Sparrowhawk? It seemed unlikely, and certainly less likely than the other explanation . . .

Whoever had given that card to Grasset—or rather, whoever had ordered someone to give that card to him, had calculated that Grasset would in turn give it to Finn, or at least pass on the name. They were goading Finn, perhaps in the hope of bringing about the breakthrough they’d been working toward for at least two years.

He felt sick at the possibility that even Jonas’s death and the implied threat against Hailey had been part of that goading. For a few moments he weighed up the possibility, setting it against the other scenario of information paranoia, first one seeming more likely, then the other.

Finally he let it go, realizing that it hardly mattered, that in one way or another Jonas was dead because of him. He’d inadvertently set that death in motion six years ago and had given it traction with every year he’d allowed to slip past, believing that doing nothing and living beneath the radar would be enough.

They had come after him, though, even earlier than he’d realized—at first passively and now actively. And it wouldn’t stop unless he made it stop, or gave them whatever it was they wanted.

He reached up and pressed the buzzer. The muffled conversation stopped, there were soft footsteps, and Hailey opened the door. She smiled and he wanted to tell her that she wasn’t to open the door anymore, but he held back as he saw how strained that smile was, and the fragility that lay beneath it.

He smiled back and said, “There are some things I need to discuss with you and your parents.”

“Sure, come in. I told them Jonas was killed—is that okay?”

“Of course.”

As he walked into their living room, Ethan stood and shook his hand and said, “This is a terrible business, just terrible.”

Finn wasn’t sure he liked Ethan’s tone, but then Debbie settled any doubts about what they were thinking when she said, “You must feel awful.”

“Mom!”

Finn said, “I do feel awful. If Jonas and Hailey hadn’t spied on Gibson, none of this would’ve happened. True, six months from now it might have been Adrienne and me who were killed out of the blue, but at least I’d have felt good about myself.”

Ethan looked defensive. “Steady, Finn, Debbie didn’t mean anything . . .”

Finn shook his head. “You’re right, I’m sorry. And the truth is, it does all lead back to me. I’m the common denominator, and I’m trying to fix it, but nothing I do now solves the problem of that boy lying in the morgue.”

Hailey made a barely distinguishable sound—a whimper, possibly even a word—and sat down. He looked at her. None of them appeared able to reply, and Ethan gestured for Finn to sit and lowered himself heavily into an armchair.

Still nobody spoke and so Finn said, “And while you’re holding that thought, while you’re still heading from being grateful for me bringing your daughter back to wishing you’d never met me, there’s something else I need to tell you.”

They all looked at him, but it was Hailey who said, “It’s what Monsieur Grasset wanted to talk to you about, isn’t it?”

“Yeah. Apparently last night someone from the same outfit as Gibson was looking around the apartment next door—”

Debbie said, “I knew it, didn’t I, Ethan? I swore I heard someone in there.”

“Grasset went to investigate, but the guy was asking about Hailey, saying he’d heard she’d disappeared, had they found her, that kind of thing, pretending to be concerned, as you’d expect.”

Debbie looked desperate. “But . . . I think I spoke to Mr. Gibson the day he was leaving.”

“I don’t think you did,” said Ethan. “I saw him, but I don’t think I spoke to him.”

“Even so, he might have heard about Hailey, so it could have been a normal thing for his colleague to ask about her.”

“It could have been,” said Finn. “But it wasn’t. Grasset thinks he saw Gibson driving the car that the guy left in. I think the two of them probably killed Jonas earlier in the evening, then came over here. They might have had other reasons for coming, but I think it’s a matter of some concern that they wanted to know about Hailey.”

Ethan looked at him accusingly and said, “What are you talking about? Hailey doesn’t know anything. They killed Jonas because he was poking his nose in, but there’s no reason for them to want to harm Hailey.”

“Ethan, there was no reason for them to kill Jonas—these are not reasonable people we’re talking about. Now, it’s possible I’m being overcautious, but I’d rather be overcautious and assume that Hailey might be at risk than let our guard down.”

“You kept telling me I wasn’t in danger.”

He looked at her and said, “And that’s what I believed. It might also still be true, but I’d prefer to play it safe.”

Debbie took the development on trust and simply asked, “What do you propose to do?”

Ethan cut in quickly, saying, “We go to the police, that’s what we do. Finn, I don’t care what you claim to have been in your previous incarnation, but I can’t entrust the safety of our daughter to you, not if there are people who actually wish to harm her. That’s a job for professionals—we have to go to the police.”

Finn was bemused by the rapid development in Ethan’s thinking. Already he’d gone from suspecting Finn of having been a spy, to accepting it as fact, and now to doubting it.

“What will you tell them?”

“Excuse me?”

“You heard me, what will you tell them? Let’s think . . . your daughter who you previously told them had been abducted, but who had actually run away to live with a guy she met online, is now in danger from the people who murdered her best friend, a murder which the police believe is a suicide—and incidentally, the Frosts aren’t challenging that belief—so you think the police should investigate BGS or put protection in place around Hailey. And all of this is based on the word of your neighbor, an historian who may or may not have once worked for British intelligence. Sounds good, I’m sure they’ll buy it.”

He thought Ethan might respond with anger, and Hailey was looking on slack-jawed, but he actually produced a nervous laugh and said, “Now that you put it like that, I guess we would look like the neighborhood fruit loops.” Then he looked more serious again as he said, “So what do we do?”

Debbie said, “Should we go away?”

Finn shook his head. “People are easier to hit in transit. I think the best thing is to be secure—that means, Hailey, no school on
Monday, no going out, no answering the door, no being left on
your own.” He turned to Ethan. “I’ll go to Geneva on Monday, so you might only have to act like this for a couple of days.”

“Why, what will happen then?”

He sensed Hailey’s eyes fixed on him.

“I’ll deal with it, and if I don’t, I’ll let you know.”

Debbie looked confused. “I don’t understand, Finn. How will we—”

“Mom, it’s probably best we don’t ask any more questions. I’m sure Finn will tell us what we need to know.”

Finn looked at her, acknowledging the intervention, then stood and said, “Just be vigilant, for the next couple of days at least.”

Ethan stood, too. “Of course, and we won’t ask you any more questions, but please, if your plan . . . What I mean to say is, if there are any setbacks, do let us know.”

“Of course,” said Finn, knowing what Ethan was really asking, to let them know if the threat became imminent.

He left then, turning over the use of that word, “plan.” They would have been even more alarmed if they’d known that he didn’t really have one. He’d attempt to track down the people who’d killed Jonas, and he’d need to speak to Naumenko at some point, but beyond that, there was no plan. How could there be, when he didn’t even know who these people were or what they wanted?