The Company of Strangers (23 page)

His voice cracked, and he coughed against the emotion in his chest.

‘We pushed the car to the edge. Lazard gave me the matches. He was holding the steering wheel. I lit the match and as the wheels went over I tossed it in. I tell you – it went up like a bomb.

‘We drove back to Pé da Serra. I got drunk. I got so drunk I woke up in the stables, lying on the cobbled floor in the morning fog and I didn’t know who or where I was.’

Anne started to struggle but Wilshere crushed her to him so that she thought her chest wall would collapse
under the pressure. She went limp. Fell across him. He kissed her temple, stroked her hair. She sobbed into his shirt.

‘Why are you crying?’ he asked.

She couldn’t speak. She held on to him and wept. He cradled her, strangely…paternally.

‘Lazard will be here soon,’ he said.

Anne sat up, still choking. She drank the brandy down in two gulps, wiped her face with the back of her hands.

‘Don’t run away,’ said Wilshere, who got up and brought the brandy bottle over.

He poured her a large measure.

‘No soda,’ she said, and lit one of his cigarettes.

Wilshere put the bottle on the table, breathed in the still night with a sense of relief, as if he’d come to terms with something. The brandy glass rattled against her teeth. He took it from her. She brought her heels up on to the edge of the bench and hugged her knees.

‘I’m going to tell you something now,’ said Anne. ‘I’m going to tell you something you won’t believe.’

‘Then why tell it?’

‘Because it’s the truth and it’s something you should know, even though you might find it hard…you might find it unbearable.’

‘Believe me, Anne, when I tell you that I can bear anything now. Anything. Nothing is unbearable to me.’

‘But not this,’ she said. ‘Not this.’

‘Tell me.’

‘The report I made to Sutherland on Monday afternoon about my first weekend in your house…the first part of it…was all about Judy Laverne. You know why. You knew what you were doing. I was very worried about the significance of your actions. I thought I was vulnerable. Sutherland, to try and calm me down, told me what he knew about Judy Laverne. He said that she used to work
for American IG where Lazard was an executive until after Pearl Harbor. The OSS decided that the company represented a security risk because of its German connections and had to be cleared of all spies and vetted. Judy Laverne subsequently lost her job, probably because of her link with Lazard, who’d been asked to leave on suspicion of dealing for the Germans. When Lazard heard, he invited her over to Portugal to work for him.’

She stopped. Wilshere had drawn up a chair and was sitting opposite her, staring into her as if she was a prophet and every word counted towards his salvation.

‘Go on,’ he said, desperate to hear more about Laverne. ‘Go on.’

‘She arrived in Lisbon, started working for Lazard, and the OSS made an approach. They asked her if she would pass on information about Lazard’s business dealings. She refused point-blank. She was totally loyal to Lazard, who’d helped her out with a new job. The OSS didn’t have anything on her. They left her alone. I asked Sutherland about her deportation order. He said the Americans categorically denied that they had anything to do with it. The first time I met the contessa, you remember I helped her to the car, and as I closed the door for her she said: “Be careful with Senhor Wilshere or Mafalda will have you deported, just like she did Judy Laverne.”’

Wilshere’s chair shot back away from him. He stood holding on to his head. Anne was not sure whether he was trying to stop hearing what she was saying or whether he was trying to wrench out what he’d just heard. The lines of his face deepened in his agony, as if he’d felt that first tightening in his chest, a prelude to what could only possibly mean death.

‘How conclusive was Lazard’s proof to you that she was a spy?’ asked Anne. ‘From what you’ve told me, you accepted
his
word on everything. But did he actually
show
you anything and did she ever, even in her direst moment, even as Lazard beat her in the stables, even as she went over the edge soaked in petrol, did she ever admit anything that would lead you to believe that she was a spy?’

Wilshere was staring at her through the bars of his fingers, a man caged by his own torment.

‘Did he?’

If he did, Wilshere couldn’t think of it, didn’t have to think of it. He knew.

‘You said that it was her fear when you finally questioned her that made you believe in what Lazard had told you, that changed your love to dust. Wouldn’t
you
be scared if your lover suddenly made these accusations, wouldn’t
you
find that the most terrifying experience, that the man you love more than yourself is questioning your trust? It would be like a dagger in my breast,’ she said, ‘it would be like seeing the life flowing out of a mortal wound.’

‘Shut up!’ he said, almost a hiss from behind his hands.

‘
Amor é cego
,’ she whispered. ‘Lazard at least knew that.’

Wilshere didn’t seem to know where to put himself, like a man with barbed wire insides, every inch of life was a writhing torment. He dropped to his knees, crawled to the table as if he was remembering the benefits of prayer from a religion he’d dropped decades before. His face came out from behind his hands. He looked like one of Dante’s heroes.

‘But why?’ he said. ‘Why?’

Anne barely had to think. Her day on the rack after she’d been told of Voss’s womanizing came back to her. The moment that he’d said he’d only been in love once. There was only one answer.

‘Because Lazard was in love with her himself.’

No other words could have had that effect. They were so evidently true that they had a calming influence on
Wilshere. He stood up, dusted his trousers down, drank a finger of scotch and looked at her, looked through her.

‘I don’t have any proof of that, Mr Wilshere,’ she said, feeling stupid using his name formally like that when they’d just been so close, closer even than lovers could ever hope to get. ‘How could I?’

‘Of course not,’ he said. ‘I see that. Nobody could have known that…except me.’

‘Did Judy Laverne say something?’

He smoothed his moustache with thumb and forefinger, madly, obsessively until all amusement from those turned-up points had been ironed out of it. Throughout this exercise he nodded, as if he had a tic in his mind. Then his face relaxed, his head turned away from her and a smile wandered across his lips.

Beecham Lazard walked up the steps on to the terrace. He was carrying a briefcase and a jacket. He was sweating, but the machine-tooled parting was still in place.

‘You look hot, Beecham,’ said Wilshere. ‘I’m afraid we don’t have any ice out here. Can I get you a drink?’

‘You know what I’d really like, Paddy,’ he said, without bothering to correct himself, using the name Wilshere didn’t like. ‘I’d really like a bourbon. But I guess that’s out of the question, so I’ll take a scotch and…be generous, Paddy, we’re celebrating. I got the plans.’

Lazard waved an envelope as Wilshere handed him the drink. They all stood. The men touched glasses, ignored Anne.

‘Let’s go to the study,’ said Wilshere. ‘We’ll finish the business there. You’ll have to come too, my dear. Can’t have you slipping away.’

They carried their glasses up the corridor, filed into the study, Anne in the middle, Lazard prodding her in the back with his finger so that she turned on him.

‘You’re not my problem,’ he said quietly, just between the two of them.

‘Problem?’

‘I was never wild about the idea of using you,’ he said, ‘although…you’re prettier than Voss.’

‘Voss?’

Lazard and Anne sat in chairs in front of the desk. Wilshere leaned against it, stared intently at Lazard, who’d put the briefcase on the floor, settled with his jacket and the envelope across his lap, and was sipping scotch unaware of Wilshere’s attention. A floorboard creaked above their heads without concerning either man.

‘I figured we didn’t need two lines of communication to the boys at Lisbon station,’ Lazard said to Anne. ‘Voss was enough, but Paddy wanted you, didn’t you, Paddy?’

‘Voss is with the Abwehr,’ said Anne.

‘Don’t tell me you didn’t know he was a double?’ said Lazard, laughing. ‘That’s how the limeys operate, isn’t it, Paddy? Nobody knows what anybody else is doing. It makes life easier for people like us.’

‘Why did you need me as well?’ Anne asked Wilshere.

‘Because,’ said Lazard, leaning over the arm of his chair, ‘he was very disappointed by somebody else and he thought the Allies should be made to pay for that.’

‘I was having a very interesting conversation with Anne, here, before you arrived, Beecham.’

‘Oh yeah, what was that about?’ he asked, uninterested.

‘Well, naturally she was concerned about her future so she was doing a lot of thinking and talking in the hope that she would be able to persuade me that it wasn’t going to be necessary for her to be…what’s that word you use again, Beecham? It always escapes me.’

‘Neutralized.’

‘Yes, neutralized. Nobody likes to be neutralized. Made
neutral. Neutered. I suppose all those words come from the same…Latin
ne
…
uter
…not either.’

‘I don’t know what you’re getting at, Paddy.’

Nor did Anne.

‘We got to talking about somebody else, whom we’d had to neutralize…because she’d proved herself untrustworthy,’ said Wilshere. ‘My disappointment, you call her.’

‘You know, time is not on our side, Paddy.’

‘Anne told me it wasn’t the Americans who arranged for Judy’s visa not to be renewed. It was Mafalda. And you know, come to think of it, she’d be one of the few people with influence who could…yes, family’s very important here, Beecham. Your name gets you a long way, even with people like Captain Lourenço –
especially
with people like Lourenço…’

‘I really have to move now, Paddy.’

‘You’ve got nothing to say to that…Beech?’

‘Look, I just came by to tell you we’re celebrating…’

‘Is that the only reason you came by…Beech?’ asked Wilshere. ‘It’s something I’ve been thinking about. Why does Beecham Lazard have to come and see me tonight, his last night in Portugal? Is it to celebrate and say goodbye? Just that?’

‘Apart from a few little things we gotta tie up, yeah, I think that’s it.’

‘Are you sure it’s not because you had to take one last look at your masterpiece?’

Wilshere was being very strange. Lazard saw it, too.

‘I don’t collect art,’ said Lazard.

‘
I
am your masterpiece,’ said Wilshere, and Anne’s skin came alive – the scalp clung to her head, the hair straining against it.

Lazard’s face went dead, only his eyes darted around the room, from Anne, to Wilshere, to the safe. His waxy cheeks twitched out a laugh.

‘I asked Anne this question,’ said Wilshere “‘What sort of a man would tell another that his lover was seeing other men, then tell him that she was spying on him, and when her visa is not renewed tell him that it was her spymasters pulling her and then not just make him complicit in the murder of his lover but actually get him to light the match, to burn her alive? What sort of a man would do that?
Why
would he do that?” And you know what she said?’

‘Paddy, you just
told
me this girl has been trying to get herself off the hook…’

‘Listen to this line, Beecham, the words…are you ready? She said: “Because he was in love with her himself.” How does that sound to you?’

Wilshere was standing over him now, tall, wild, as if he’d been out riding on a blasted heath all night.

‘Are you OK, Paddy?’

‘No, I’m not,’ he said, dropping his hands on to the arms of the chair, pushing his face up close to Lazard’s. ‘You know what Judy Laverne said to me after the third or fourth time we made love? No, you don’t, because she would never have said it to you, she could never have been that blunt. She said: “Beecham’s got a crush on me…he’s kind of in love with me, but…”’

Wilshere coughed, wretched, gasped. Lazard’s arm had shot out and buried itself in Wilshere’s crotch – in it was the Smith & Wesson revolver. Wilshere staggered back, thumped against the desk, dropped to his knees holding on to himself.

‘Want to be neutered, Paddy?’ said Lazard. ‘“Not either”? Is that what you want?’

Lazard locked the door, put the key in his pocket. Wilshere was doubled up. Lazard kicked him hard in the leg and toppled him over.

‘Get over to that safe, Paddy,’ said Lazard, and kicked him again. ‘Go on, Paddy.’

He laid into him with his feet, both feet, and then he trampled on him, jamming his heels down into the inert body, strutting and jabbing as if he was a ram asserting his mating rights. Anne rushed at Lazard. He grabbed hold of her front – dress, bra and breast – flung her across the room.

He hauled Wilshere across to the safe.

‘Open it, Paddy. Open the safe.’

‘She said…she said…’ Wilshere struggled to get the breath to talk, ‘she said, “I like Beecham, I like him a lot. He’s been very good to me, but physically…” Are you listening to this? “But physically…he disgusts me.” Did you get that, Beecham? “He disgusts me.”’

Lazard raised the revolver.

‘You hit or shoot me and you’ll never get this safe open,’ said Wilshere.

Lazard strode across the room, sheafed Anne’s hair, wrapped it around his fist and dragged her to the safe.

‘Was that what you couldn’t bear, Beech? That there she was with me, a man more than twice her age, and it wasn’t you and it would never be you.’

Lazard tore a bottle of brandy out of the cabinet above the safe and poured it over Anne’s head.

‘Do you want to see this again, Paddy? Do you? Do you want to watch another one of your beauties burn?’

He took a Zippo lighter out of his pocket, flicked it open and swiped it across his leg. The flame came up a lazy yellow.

‘That’s enough, Beecham, I’m opening the safe. Put out the light,’ roared Wilshere. ‘I said, put out the light!’

Lazard waved the flame, the brandy was vaporizing quickly in the heat. Anne was paralysed, the smell strong as ammonia in her nostrils. He clicked the Zippo shut, threw Anne down, across the floor in front of him. Wilshere
pulled himself up to the safe, entered the combination into the dial. Lazard brushed the muzzle of the revolver up and down Anne’s leg, pushing the hem of the dress up further each time.