Perhaps Qazai had had no choice but to damage his son. Perhaps the anxieties that propelled him had inhibited the confidence that might have set Timur free. The Qazai project could not be seen to end with Qazai; his legacy was as important as his own achievements. That, more than mere riches or power, might explain why great men found it so difficult to pass on happiness to their children: that they could never stop to know it themselves. Webster smiled at the notion that he was unlikely to encounter this problem himself.
Deep in thought, he felt the cigarette grow hot in his fingers and flicked it over the low balustraded wall into the night.
Faint footsteps behind him on the grass made him turn and there was Ava walking toward him, almost silhouetted against the lights from the house. A shawl was pulled closely around her. She stopped in front of the bench and smiled as he made to get up.
“Don’t be silly. Sit. Could you spare a cigarette?”
Webster pulled out his pack and tapped one free.
“May I?” she said, taking it.
“Please.”
She sat beside him at an angle and he struck a match for her. Her face glowed as she bent over it.
For a moment or two they sat and Ava smoked.
“I’m sorry about lunch,” she said at last. She held the cigarette delicately between the last joints of her fingers and turned her head away from him each time she exhaled.
“Don’t be. It was much more interesting than dinner.”
She turned to him and smiled. “God. I don’t know which was worse.”
“Is Senechal often here?”
She shook her head and sighed, looking out at the lake. “Today was the first time in months I’ve seen them apart. It’s not healthy.”
Webster said nothing.
“The hold he has on my father. Since my mother ran off. I think that’s when it started. It’s getting worse. I don’t know how it must make Timur feel.”
Webster watched her profile as she drew on the cigarette.
“What do you mean?”
Ava sat up and back on the bench, crossing her legs. “My father treats Timur like one of his treasures. He’s on display, to be admired. The most important piece in the collection. But he tells him nothing.” She shivered. “But that freak knows the lot. I’m sure of it. Ever since… My mother didn’t behave well. Since then my father has closed up. He was never easy, but no one’s allowed in now. Except that man. Like he’s the only person that can be trusted anymore. Because he’s paid. He’s a professional.” She shook her head and looked past Webster out to the lake. “He’s the one you should be interviewing.”
“What is there to tell?”
She looked at him, raising her eyebrows and plucking a piece of tobacco from her lower lip with her thumb. The intensity he had seen earlier had returned to her eyes. “You tell me, Mr. Webster. You probably know more than me by now.”
He smiled. “I wouldn’t bank on it.”
She took a long drag, coughing as the smoke filled her lungs. “God, these are strong.”
“Sorry.”
She dropped the cigarette half-smoked on the grass and trod it out with her toe. Behind them the lights in one of the downstairs rooms went out, casting the terrace into deeper darkness.
“Are you going to be able to give him what he wants?” She moved to the edge of the seat and turned to him as she said it.
“I don’t know yet.”
She hesitated. “What have you found?”
“I can’t say.”
She nodded to herself. In the half-light her eyes were intensely on his. “Something bad?”
“Not obviously.”
“So you think there’s something?”
“I didn’t say that. Do you?”
“No. Of course not.” She shook her head, a tiny movement, and looked down at her hands in her lap. “It’s just… He needs this work. He needs you.”
“Are you sure?”
“He’s not a vain man. He’s not what you think. He’s practical. Always practical. Everything he does is for profit or power. You’re here because he needs you.”
“Why?”
“I don’t know. I thought you might have found out.”
“And if I had?” Webster was finding it hard to tell whether Ava had come out here to grill him or warn him. Or to seek comfort.
“You wouldn’t tell me.”
“I shouldn’t.”
She nodded gently, sat up straight on the bench, collecting herself. He thought she was going to leave but instead she turned to him.
“My father is a very arrogant man. He thinks he’s better than everyone else. At everything that matters to him. It’s that simple. The best trader, the best businessman, the best collector. I’ve never seen him depend on someone before. First Yves. And now you, here.” She shook her head. “He would never have had someone like you here before. This is his special place. It was never for business.”
Her voice, which had been calm, was now uneven, and Webster thought he could sense unexplored anxieties there, close to the surface.
“I’m sorry,” she said. “I didn’t mean to be rude.”
“Is there something else?”
“No. I’m just worried about him.”
“Are you worried about Parviz?”
She bit her bottom lip but said nothing.
“Anything you tell me can stay with me. I’m not a policeman.”
She shook her head, suddenly resolute, and stood. As she looked down at him her face was set again, the trust gone. “Nothing I know will be of any use to you. Goodnight, Mr. Webster. Tread carefully.”
As he watched her walking back to the house through bands of floodlit grass Webster shook his head; how he wished Elsa could have heard this conversation. She might have understood it. She might have known whether Ava was desperate to say something or terrified to let it slip.
11.
TO KNOW THAT HE was more or less an impostor in the house lent the rest of Webster’s short stay a certain piquancy. He didn’t know whether to be pleased or put out that the room he had been given, he had assumed on merit, had in fact been intended for grand acquaintances—diplomats, colorful entrepreneurs, heads of minor states, dignitaries of the Iranian diaspora—and not for English detectives, if that’s what he was, who billed by the hour and spent their time rooting around in other people’s affairs. But of all the hints and signs that Ava had given him the night before, by design or not, one thing was really striking: he had assumed since they had first met that Qazai found their work necessary, but not critical—serious, but not grave—and the growing realization that it was for some reason essential to him began to cast everything in a different light. Webster had gone to sleep feeling that the many and conflicting pieces of this project, not least his own feelings toward it, were beginning to align.
He slept well, in the vast white bed, and woke early to find the lake overcast with low cloud. As he came downstairs he was shown by one of the servants into a yellow breakfast room where eight settings had been laid on a long table, at one of which sat Senechal, neatly pressed in black suit, white shirt and gray tie, reading a document in a plastic binding and drinking a cup of black coffee. He didn’t appear to have had anything to eat.
Webster wished him good morning and sat down opposite, cursing the fact that he hadn’t brought his book. He ordered coffee and two poached eggs and taking his BlackBerry from his jacket pocket started looking at his e-mails, all of which he had already seen, while Senechal, for his part, returned the good morning without cheer and continued to read, every now and then raising his cup to his lips to take a tiny drink but never taking his eyes from his work. Webster did his best to decipher the document from across the table but managed only to work out that it was in French.