‘You think they did it purposely, brought us this way?’
‘Maybe. Don’t let it get to you.’
‘How the fuck can I avoid that?’
‘By not letting it get to you.’
‘Don’t you start double-talking, like everyone else!’
‘That’s not double-talking. That’s straight-talking. You ready? We’re almost at the house.’
‘I hope I’m ready.’
‘So do I.’
The Bethesda cottage was secured by yellow police tape and there was an obvious police black and white parked outside, the driver and observer competing for boredom-of-the-year awards.
As they assembled from the two cars, Parnell said: ‘I thought Metro DC were off limits?’
‘They are,’ said Dingley. ‘They’re just here, by court order, to stop anyone who isn’t authorized going near the place.’
‘That’s going to piss them off.’
‘It can’t piss them off any more than they already are.’
‘So, how do you know they’re doing their job?’ demanded Jackson.
‘We got temporary – but inconspicuous – CCTV in every room. And external, in every direction. And a tap on the telephone.’
‘You didn’t tell us that,’ complained Jackson.
‘I’ve got all the court orders,’ said Pullinger.
‘We should have been told!’ insisted the other lawyer.
‘The house isn’t your jurisdiction,’ said Pullinger.
‘Ed, it’s our co-operation you’re asking for. You’re not doing a lot to encourage it,’ warned Jackson.
The three FBI men began to move off towards the house but Jackson didn’t move, keeping Parnell with him. Softly he said: ‘You want to go through with it?’
‘Don’t you think I should?’
‘I don’t think we should look as if we’re accepting it.’
‘Your call,’ said Parnell.
The others had stopped, about ten yards away. Pullinger shouted: ‘Is there a problem?’
‘We can’t hear you,’ Jackson yelled back.
There was a hesitation before the three men walked back. Pullinger said: ‘I asked if there was a problem?’
‘Yes,’ said Jackson. ‘We going to operate on level ground or we going to fuck about?’
‘You want me to say sorry?’ asked Pullinger.
‘I want you to do it right, like we’re doing it right.’
‘You’ve made your point. I’ve taken it,’ said Pullinger. ‘Shall we go on inside?’
Jackson held them for another moment or two before moving towards the house, bringing the rest with him. It was Dingley who opened the door, standing back for Parnell to go in first. The last time – when? he thought, unable to remember – had been with Rebecca, hurrying in ahead of him, carrying the lightest of the grocery shopping, him the packhorse behind, she talking as she always talked, butterflying from point to point, never properly, fully, finishing what she was saying before fluttering to something else, queen of her own castle, self-proclaimed queen of his, dropping the bags, gesturing where she wanted him to drop his, turning on lights, music, opening windows, hurrying him back to the car for what they hadn’t been able to bring in the first time. No, he thought suddenly, moving through the living room into the kitchen. Rebecca hadn’t been neat and tidy. Organized, certainly, written-out shopping lists for stores and markets listed in convenient order, but not like this, not as if the house had been made ready, prepared, for a prospective buyer. In quick recollection he looked into the double sink, then the empty dishwasher and finally to the coffee pot, opening it to confirm the filter chamber was clean.
‘What?’ asked Benton.
‘On the Sunday morning, when Rebecca came to pick me up,’ remembered Parnell. ‘I asked her if she wanted coffee, because I was just making some. She said she’d already had some. And juice. There’s no cups or glasses…’
‘And the coffee pot’s empty and clean,’ Dingley accepted.
Parnell led the way into the den, dominated by the television and music system and saw the regimented books and the orderly magazine arrangement and then up to the bedrooms – the bedroom he and Rebecca had occupied and loved in and partially discovered each other in first – and made himself look around it and open and close drawers, although he didn’t know now what for, and then he looked around the other two bedrooms, knowing even less what he was supposed to find out of place – or, rather, wrongly in place, before he retreated downstairs.
‘Well?’ demanded Dingley.
‘It’s an impression,’ said Parnell. ‘That’s all it can be.’
‘That’s all we’re asking for.’
‘No,’ said Parnell. ‘It’s not right. Doesn’t feel right. That’s all I can say. This doesn’t look, feel, like the house that Rebecca left that Sunday morning to pick me up…’ He stopped, at another recollection. ‘That’s why the coffee pot’s wrong… no cup in the washer. She was late, said we had a drive to get where we were going – she wouldn’t tell me where we were going – in time. It was in time to get a table, for lunch, although she wouldn’t tell me that, either. If she was late, in a hurry, she wouldn’t have cleared away, would she?’
‘Not unless she was particularly fastidious,’ said Benton.
‘Rebecca wasn’t particularly fastidious,’ said Parnell.
‘Then no, she wouldn’t.’ agreed Dingley.
‘Where’s this all got us?’ demanded Jackson.
‘We don’t know, not yet,’ said Pullinger. ‘We’re looking forward to something we can understand that does get us somewhere.’
Once more it was pointlessly too late for Parnell to drive out to McLean. He telephoned from the apartment that he would be in the following morning before going out again to shop uninterestedly for essentials, bread and milk and packaged meals he could heat in seconds in the microwave. He also, just as uninterestedly, bought three litre-sized bottles of screw-topped red wine, which he thought was as much as he could carry. On his way back to the apartment he saw one man whom he thought might be watching him, but there wasn’t any longer a stomach lurch. Before he reached him the downtown bus arrived and the man got on it.
Back in the apartment Parnell unpacked and opened one of the bottles of wine, slumping with the glass between his cupped hands, reviewing the day. He hadn’t done well – he had, in fact, been stupid, losing his temper. Too late now, for self-recrimination. He’d got it wrong, again, and deserved Jackson’s rebuke, and next time he’d try to remember and behave better. He had little doubt there would be a next time: maybe even a time after that. Bethesda had disorientated him, although not in the way Jackson suggested the FBI agents had expected him to be disorientated. He hadn’t suddenly collapsed, said anything or done anything, on being somewhere where he’d been with Rebecca, to indicate any guilt or awareness of something he hadn’t told the investigators. The disorientation had actually been far deeper than any of them had imagined. On the near-wordless return to Washington, Parnell had confronted a truth he hadn’t wanted to admit to himself, let alone to anyone else. He didn’t think he’d loved Rebecca. He had feelings, of course – maybe, in time, he would even have come to love her, although that was the most scourging of uncertainties. But not that Sunday when he’d unthinkingly talked of their living together. And not now, not ever. So, he had a lie to live, pitied by the few who knew him here, as someone who’d lost a woman whom he’d planned to marry. How difficult, he wondered, would that be to live with? Something else he didn’t know, like so much else.
He jumped, startled, at the telephone, recognizing his mother’s voice as soon as he’d answered. ‘What’s going on?’ she demanded at once.
‘You know. I told you. It’s all right.’
‘It’s not all right! I’ve been questioned. So have people at Cambridge.’
‘What!’ Some of Parnell’s wine spilled, with the urgency with which he came up out of his chair.
‘Two Americans. FBI, from the London embassy. They wanted to know if you were political. If you belonged to any organizations. That’s what they asked the people at Cambridge. I’ve had two calls, one from Alex Bell, your old tutor. Everyone here is worried about you.’