The English Girl: A Novel Page 21

  “Jeremy got the dream job as his reward,” Samantha Cooke said. “Jonathan appointed him chief of staff and gave him more power than any other chief of staff in British history. Jeremy is Lancaster’s gatekeeper and enforcer, a deputy prime minister in everything but name. Lancaster once told me it was the biggest mistake he’d ever made.”

  “On the record?”

  “Off,” she said pointedly. “Way, way, way off.”

  “If Lancaster knew it was a mistake, why did he do it?”

  “Because without Jeremy, the Party would still be wandering in the proverbial political wilderness. And Jonathan Lancaster would still be a lowly opposition backbencher trying to make a name for himself once a week during PMQ. Besides,” she added, “Jeremy is completely loyal to Lancaster. I’m quite confident he would kill for him and then volunteer to mop up the blood.”

  Gabriel wished he could tell her how right she was. Instead, he walked on in silence and waited for her to resume.

  “But there was more to their relationship than just a bond of debt and loyalty. Lancaster needed Jeremy. He truly didn’t believe he could govern the country without him at his side.”

  “So it’s true, then?”

  “What’s that?”

  “That Jeremy Fallon is Lancaster’s brain.”

  “Actually, it’s complete rubbish. But it didn’t take long for that perception to take hold in the public. Even the Party’s own internal polls showed a majority of Britons thought Jeremy was the one who was truly running the government.” She paused thoughtfully. “That’s why I was so surprised when Jeremy was at Lancaster’s side the day he finally called the election.”

  “Surprised?”

  “Not long ago there was a nasty rumor running round Whitehall that Lancaster was planning to push Jeremy out of Downing Street.”

  “Because he had become an electoral liability?”

  Samantha Cooke nodded her head. “And because he was so unpopular within the Party that no one wanted to work for him.”

  “Why didn’t you report it?”

  “I didn’t have the sourcing necessary to take it to print,” she replied. “Some of us do have standards, you know.”

  “Do you think Jeremy Fallon heard the same rumors?”

  “I can’t imagine he didn’t.”

  “Did he and Lancaster ever discuss it?”

  “I was never able to confirm that, which is one of the reasons I didn’t write about it. Thank God I didn’t,” she added. “I would have looked very foolish right about now.”

  They had reached Waterloo Bridge. Gabriel took her by the elbow and guided her toward the Strand.

  “How well do you know him?” he asked.

  “Jeremy?”

  Gabriel nodded.

  “I’m not sure anyone really knows Jeremy Fallon. I know him professionally, which means he tells me things he wants me to put in my newspaper. He’s a manipulative bastard, which is why his performance at Madeline Hart’s funeral was so peculiar. I never would have dreamed Jeremy was even capable of shedding a tear.” She paused, then added, “I suppose it was true after all.”

  “What’s that?”

  “That Jeremy was in love with her.”

  Gabriel stopped and turned to face Samantha Cooke. “Are you saying that Jeremy Fallon and Madeline Hart were having an affair?”

  “Madeline wasn’t interested in Jeremy romantically,” she replied, shaking her head. “But that didn’t prevent her from using him to advance her career. She rose through the ranks rather too quickly, in my opinion. And I suspect it was all because of Jeremy.”

  A silence fell between them. They were standing on the pavement outside the Courtauld Gallery. Samantha Cooke was watching the traffic rushing along the Strand, but Gabriel was wondering why Jeremy Fallon had introduced a woman he loved to Jonathan Lancaster. Perhaps Fallon had wanted to create leverage over the man who was about to end his career in politics.

  “Are you sure?” Gabriel asked after a moment.

  “That Jeremy was smitten with Madeline?”

  Gabriel nodded.

  “As sure as one can be about something like that.”

  “Meaning?”

  “I had it from multiple sources I trust. Jeremy used to make up the flimsiest excuses to contact her. Apparently, it was all rather pathetic.”

  “Why didn’t you report it when she disappeared?”

  “Because it didn’t seem the right thing to do at the time,” she replied. “And now that she’s dead . . .”

  Her voice trailed off. They entered the gallery, purchased two tickets, and climbed the staircase to the exhibition rooms. As usual, they were largely empty of visitors. In Room 7 they paused before the empty frame commemorating the theft of the Courtauld’s signature piece, Self-Portrait with a Bandaged Ear by Vincent van Gogh.

  “A pity,” said Samantha Cooke.

  “Yes,” said Gabriel. He guided her to Gauguin’s Nevermore and asked whether she had ever met Madeline Hart.

  “Once,” she replied, pointing toward the woman on the canvas, as though she were speaking about her rather than a woman who was dead. “I was doing a piece on the Party’s efforts to connect with minority voters. Jeremy sent me to Madeline. I thought she was rather too pretty for her own good, but smart as a whip. Sometimes it seemed she was interviewing me rather than the other way around. I felt as though I was . . .” She lapsed into silence, as if searching for the right word. Then she said, “I felt as though I were being recruited—for what, I haven’t a clue.”

  As the sound of her words died, Gabriel heard footsteps and, turning, saw a middle-aged couple enter the room. The man wore tinted eyeglasses and was bald except for a monkish tonsure. The woman was several years his junior and carried a museum guidebook open to the wrong page. They moved from painting to painting without speaking, stopping before each canvas for only a few seconds before moving mechanically to the next. Gabriel watched as the couple entered the adjoining exhibition room. Then he led Samantha Cooke downstairs, to the vast internal courtyard at the center of the building. In warm weather it was a popular gathering spot for Londoners who worked in the office blocks along the Strand. But now, in the chill rain, the metal café tables were empty and the dancing fountain splashed with the sadness of a toy in a nursery without children.

  “You wrote well of Madeline after her disappearance,” said Gabriel as they walked slowly around the perimeter of the courtyard.

  “And I meant every word of it. She was remarkably composed and self-confident for someone of her upbringing.” She paused and furrowed her brow thoughtfully. “I never understood the way her mother behaved during the days after she went missing. Most parents of missing persons talk to the press constantly. But not her. She was tight-lipped and insular throughout. And now it seems she’s vanished from the face of the earth. Madeline’s brother, too.”

  “What do you mean?”

  “When I tried to contact her for that piece,” she said, nodding toward the newspaper article in Gabriel’s coat pocket, “there was no answer at their house. Ever. I finally drove out to bloody Essex and sat on the doorstep. A neighbor told me that Madeline’s family hadn’t been seen since shortly after the funeral.”

  Gabriel said nothing, but in his thoughts he was calculating the driving time between central London and Basildon, Essex, at the height of the evening rush.

  “I’ve done a great deal of talking,” Samantha Cooke was saying. “Now it’s your turn. Why on earth is the great Gabriel Allon interested in a dead English girl?”

  “I’m afraid I can’t tell you yet.”

  “Will you ever?”

  “That depends.”

  “You know,” she said provocatively, “the very fact you’re in London asking questions is quite a story.”

  “That’s true,” Gabriel admitted. “But you would never dare to report it or even mention our conversation to anyone.”

  “Why wouldn’t I?”

  “Because
it would prevent me from giving you a much better story in the future.”

  Samantha Cooke smiled and looked at her wristwatch. “I’d love to spend about a week talking to you, but I really have to be going. I have a piece in tomorrow’s paper.”

  “What are you writing about?”

  “Volgatek Oil and Gas.”

  “The Russian energy company?”

  “Very impressive, Mr. Allon.”

  “I try to keep up with the news. It helps in my line of work.”

  “I’m sure it does.”

  “What’s the story?”

  “The environmentalists and the global warming crowd are upset about the deal. They’re predicting all the usual calamities—major oil spills, melting polar ice caps, oceanfront property in Chelsea, that sort of thing. They don’t seem to care that the deal will generate billions of dollars in licensing fees and bring several thousand badly needed jobs to Scotland.”

  “So your piece will be balanced?” asked Gabriel.

  “They always are,” she shot back with a smile. “My sources tell me the deal was Jeremy’s pet project, his last big initiative before leaving Downing Street to run for Parliament. I tried to talk to him about it, but he spoke two words that I’d never heard come out of his mouth before.”

  “What were they?”

  “No comment.”

  With that, she gave him a business card, shook his hand, and disappeared through the arched passage that connected the courtyard to the Strand. Gabriel waited five minutes before following. As he turned into the street, he saw the man and woman from the gallery attempting to hail a taxi. He walked past them without a glance and continued to Trafalgar Square, where a thousand protesters were engaged in Two Minutes Hate directed against the State of Israel. Gabriel plunged into the throng and moved slowly through it, pausing now and again to see whether anyone was following. Finally, a heavenly cloudburst sent the demonstrators scurrying for cover. Gabriel fell in with a troupe of pro-Palestinian actors and artists who were heading off to the bars of Soho, but in Charing Cross Road he broke away and ducked into the Leicester Square Underground station. As he was riding the escalator downward into the warm earth, he called Keller.

  “We need a car,” he said in rapid French.

  “Where are we going?”

  “Basildon.”

  “Any particular reason?”

  “I’ll tell you on the way.”

  34

  BASILDON, ESSEX

  It had been created after World War II as part of a grand scheme to reduce overcrowding in the bombed-out slums of London’s East End. The result was what the central planners called a New Town—a town without a history, without a soul, without a purpose other than to warehouse the working classes. Its commercial center, the Basildon town plaza, was a masterpiece of neo-Soviet architecture. So, too, was the tower of council flats that loomed menacingly over one flank, like a giant slab of burnt toast.

  A half mile farther to the east lay a tattered colony of apartment blocks and terraced houses known as the Lichfields. The streets all had agreeable names—Avon Way, Norwich Walk, Southwark Path—but cracks split the pavements and weeds thrived in the courts. A few of the houses had small front lawns, but the tiny unit at the end of Blackwater Way had only a patch of broken concrete where a worn-out car was usually parked. Its exterior was pebbledash on the ground floor and brown brick on the second. There were three small windows; all were curtained and dark. No light burned over the inhospitable little front door.

  “Does anyone work?” asked Keller, as they drove slowly past the house for a second time.

  “The mother works a few hours a week at the Boots pharmacy in the plaza,” answered Gabriel. “The brother drinks for a living.”

  “And you’re sure no one’s in there?”

  “Does it look occupied to you?”

  “Maybe they like the dark.”

  “Or maybe they’re vampires.”

  Gabriel eased the car into a common parking area around the corner and switched off the engine. Just beyond Keller’s window was a sign warning that the entire area was under twenty-four-hour CCTV surveillance.

  “I have a bad feeling about this.”

  “You just killed a man for money.”

  “Not on camera.”

  Gabriel said nothing.

  “How long are you planning to stay in there?” asked Keller.

  “As long as necessary.”

  “What happens if the police show up?”

  “It might be a good idea if you let me know.”

  “And if they notice me sitting here?”

  “Show them your French passport and tell them you’re lost.”

  Without another word, Gabriel opened the car door and climbed out. As he started across the street, a dog began to bark somewhere in the estate. It must have been a very large dog, for each deep, sonorous volley echoed from the crumbling facades of the apartment blocks like cannon fire. For an instant Gabriel considered returning to the car—surely, he thought morosely, the beast had designs on his throat. Instead, he silently crossed the Harts’ concrete garden and presented himself at their door.

  There was no alcove or shelter from the steady rain. Gabriel tried the latch and, as expected, found it was locked. Then he withdrew a thin metal tool from his pocket and inserted it into the mechanism. A few seconds was all it took—indeed, a stranger might have assumed he was merely fumbling for his key in the dark. When he tried the latch a second time, it yielded without resistance. He eased the door open, stepped into the darkened void, and closed the door quickly. Outside the dog unleashed one last barrage of barks before finally falling silent. Gabriel returned the lock pick to his pocket, removed a small Maglite, and clicked the power switch.

  He was standing in a cramped entrance hall. The linoleum floor was strewn with unread post, and on his right several cheap wool and oilskin coats hung from hooks. Gabriel emptied the coat pockets of litter—matchbooks, receipts, business cards—before following the beam of light into the sitting room. It was a claustrophobic little space, about eight feet by ten, with three shabby armchairs arrayed around a television. In the center of the room was a low table with two overflowing ashtrays, and on one wall hung framed photographs of Madeline. Madeline as a young girl chasing a ball across a sunlit field. Madeline receiving her degrees from the University of Edinburgh. Madeline posing with Prime Minister Jonathan Lancaster at Downing Street. There was also a photo of the entire Hart family standing unhappily along a gray seashore. Gabriel stared at the broad, flat features of Madeline’s parents and tried to imagine how they had been combined to produce a face as beautiful as hers. She was a mistake of nature, he thought. She was the child of a different God.

  He left the sitting room and, after passing through a small dining room, entered the kitchen. Stacks of dirty dishes stood on the countertops, and in the basin was a pool of greasy water. The air was heavy with the stench of rot. Gabriel opened one of the foot-level cabinets and found a rubbish bin overflowing with spoiled food. There was more in the refrigerator. He wondered what could have possessed them to leave the house in such chaos.

  Gabriel returned to the front entrance hall and climbed the narrow stairs to the second floor. There were three bedrooms—two tiny cells on the left side of the house and a larger room on the right, which he entered first. It belonged to Madeline’s mother. The double bed had been left unmade, and a cold draft was pouring through an open window overlooking the dirt patch that was the rear garden. Gabriel opened the paper-thin closet door and shone the beam around the interior. The rod was hung with garments from end to end, and more clothing was stacked neatly on the shelf above it. Next he went to the dresser. All the drawers were filled to capacity except for the top left—the drawer, he thought, where a woman typically kept personal papers and keepsakes. Crouching, he shone a light beneath the bed but found nothing but clouds of dust. Then he went to the telephone. It stood on one of the matching bedside tables, next to an
empty glass. He lifted the receiver to his ear but heard no dial tone. Then he pressed the playback button on the answering machine. There were no messages.

  Gabriel crossed the hall and poked his head into one of the smaller bedrooms. It looked like the aftermath of a car bombing. Only the walls remained intact. They were plastered with the usual fare—football stars, supermodels, cars the occupant would never be able to afford. On the air hung a foul male odor that, thankfully, Gabriel had not encountered since leaving the army. He searched the room quickly but discovered nothing out of the ordinary—nothing except that it contained no object or slip of paper that bore the name of the creature who resided there.

  The last room Gabriel entered was Madeline’s room. It was not the Madeline who had been Jonathan Lancaster’s lover, or the remnant of Madeline whom Gabriel had encountered in France, but the Madeline who had somehow survived a childhood spent in this sad little house. It seemed to Gabriel that she had accomplished it the same way she had survived a month in captivity, with neatness and order. Her bed was crisply made; her tiny schoolgirl’s desk was ready for inspection. On it stood a row of classic English novels—Dickens, Austen, Forster, Lawrence. The volumes looked as though they had been read many times, and their pages were filled with underlined passages and notations written in a small, precise hand. Gabriel was about to slip one of the books, A Room with a View, into his coat pocket when his mobile phone vibrated softly. He picked up the call and brought the phone quickly to his ear.