He turned, relenting. He knew that she was right, and scared, but he couldn’t answer her question. Perhaps it had all ended when he left the police station; perhaps it hadn’t even begun. If it hadn’t been for Senechal’s parting threat—because that was surely what it was—he would have expected nothing more than to keep quiet for a few months and avoid traveling to Italy, but now? Now he simply couldn’t say. He hadn’t had time to think it through.
“As far as I know, it’s fine. Really. Stupid charges, no evidence. They don’t have anything.”
“How good is your lawyer?”
“Good, apparently.” The first real lie.
“And he thinks you’ll be all right?”
“He thinks it’ll just go away. If it doesn’t, the Italians will have to extradite me, and their case is feeble. It won’t happen.” He paused, waiting for her to respond, then tried a smile. “We may have to holiday somewhere else for a while.”
But Elsa wasn’t ready for the mood to lighten. She continued to frown, her eyes lit with that light he knew so well.
“What did you do out there?” she said at last.
“I went to see Qazai.”
She shook her head. “No. Back then. What did you do?”
“Are you asking me if I’m guilty?”
She didn’t reply.
“Jesus. This isn’t about what I did.” He had a sudden, childish urge to smoke. And to get out.
Elsa watched him for a moment, unmoved. “That’s good. That’s all I wanted to know.”
He shook his head. “Do you know what? Forget it. I’ve been interrogated enough for one day.”
“Where are you going?” she said after him, as he left the kitchen and started wheeling his bicycle toward the door.
“Just out.” But he knew. He was going to see Ike. “Why you can’t just trust me I don’t know.” He looked over his shoulder at her, a righteous, fraudulent challenge.
“I want to. But if you were telling me everything you wouldn’t be running away.” Elsa’s arms were crossed and her eyes steadily on his. When he couldn’t look at them anymore, he left.
ABOUT HALF A MILE from his house Webster stopped pedaling, pulled over and reached down awkwardly to tuck the flapping trouser leg of his suit into his sock. The rain, which had been light, was now full and steady and as he bent over he could feel his thighs and shoulders cold with wet.
He should turn around, of course, apologize to Elsa, tell her everything—or more, at least. But he knew what her advice would be, saw its sense and had no intention of taking it, because it clashed with the plan lurking in his thoughts. So he cycled on, furious with himself, past Queen’s Park, slowly climbing across the Finchley Road and then the last, sheer push straight up into Hampstead, the houses growing older and richer beside him all the while. It was cooler now. Water dripped from his forehead and his calves burned with the work. Through the clouds and the plane trees overhead the last light barely found its way, and in his dark suit, made darker by the rain, with no lights on his bike, he felt pleasantly invisible after a day of scrutiny. He didn’t like attention, never had. The cold air and the exercise began gradually to sort his thoughts.
Hammer’s house was over by the heath on the prow of Hampstead where it fell away down to Kentish Town and the city beyond. He had lived in it for twenty years and under his ownership it had taken on something of its original eighteenth-century air: he had reinstated its oak paneling throughout, kept his one television out of the way in an upstairs room and favored low light and log fires, so that on a night like this the only way of telling whether he was inside was by looking for a faint glow around the edges of the shutters. But for his housekeeper, who occupied the attic floor, Hammer lived alone.
He was at home tonight and that, Webster had the sense to realize, was a relief. Ike had a way of making the complicated and unpleasant seem manageable, and there was no one better to see when you were feeling disordered. I’ve fled from one therapist into the arms of another, Webster thought as he chained his bike to the railings, because I didn’t like what the first was going to say.
He knocked briskly with the brass knocker. The door, when it opened, was on a chain; it jarred, somehow, that someone so pugnacious should consider such things as home security. Hammer pushed the door to, unhooked it and looked down on Webster with mild surprise in his eyes.
“My God. They waterboarded you. Come in, come in.”
It was warm in the hall and Webster could see orange light flickering on the gray-green walls of the study on the left. Hammer was wearing his reading glasses, more delicate than the thick-framed tortoiseshell he wore in the office, and in the near-dark looked more delicate himself, and older.
“Did you walk?”
“I rode.”
“Elsa has the car?”
Webster only smiled.
“You look like shit. Take that jacket off. I have no trousers that will fit but a sweater I can manage. Luckily we have a fire. Go on.”
He started up the stairs. Webster took off his jacket, which was wet through, hung it on a coatrack in the corner and went into the study. On a table by Ike’s chair, a high-backed affair with wings, stood a spotlight, an empty glass and a copy of Livy’s History of Rome, open, pages downward, its spine cracked about halfway through. Webster stood over the fire for a moment, looking at the books on the shelves either side of the mantel.
“You caught me lighting fires in June. I’m ashamed. The truth is I wasn’t feeling too good but the sight of you is enough to make anyone feel better. Here, try this.” Hammer passed Webster a thick brown cardigan with a shawl collar, not unlike the one he was wearing himself. “No one’ll see you. There. Now, do you want a drink?”
Webster shook his head. “I shouldn’t, thanks.”
“You should. I’m having beer.”
Webster asked for whisky, put on the cardigan, which was tight and heavy, and sat down on the far side of the fire. He should have phoned Elsa before coming in. He looked at his watch and realized with a lingering sting of regret that by the time he got home she would be in bed, either asleep or pretending to be.
“Here. There’s a drop of water in it.”
“Thank you.”
He watched Hammer pour his beer from a bottle into the long glass, failing to tilt it so that it ended up with a thick head of froth. They drank.
“So,” said Hammer, licking foam off his top lip. “You owe your freedom to Mr. Senechal.”
“I owe everything to him.”
“What happened? I was expecting another call.”
“I wanted to leave it to tomorrow. Let it settle. Which wasn’t a great idea, as it happens.” He took another drink; it was good whisky and he relished the burn in his throat. “They set me up. Or they took advantage of a gift-wrapped opportunity. I think they set me up.”
“They had you arrested?”
“Why not? It’s Italy. He’s had that house for twenty years. Enough time to put down roots.”
Hammer frowned. “They did a nice job. If it was them.”
“They’ve been checking me out. I’m sure of it. The other morning all our rubbish had gone by six. Our recycling’s gone missing. And I had a call last week from Lester at GIC after he had a call from a headhunter wanting to know why I’d left.” He paused. “It’s them.”
Hammer took a deep breath in through his nose. “You think Darius Qazai is going through your bins?”
“Wouldn’t you in his position?”
Hammer raised his eyebrows and nodded. His fingers thrummed on the arm of his chair as he continued to nod, a slow, gentle bobbing that meant he was really thinking.