The Geneva Trap

Chapter 21

Liz dropped her bag on the floor, closed the door and leaned back against it. Home, she thought. Through the open door of the sitting room she could see the sun shining in through the sash windows on to the carpet. She’d bought this place a couple of years ago with the proceeds of the sale of her basement flat in the same large Victorian house and a mortgage she could only just afford. She’d loved the basement flat too when she’d bought it – the first property she had ever owned – though it was rather shabby and dark, and for several years she’d had neither the time nor the money to improve it. But when she’d returned from a posting to Northern Ireland, this ground-floor flat had been on the market. She’d viewed it first out of curiosity, with no idea that she might be able to afford it, but the estate agent had surprised her with his estimate of what she might get for the basement, and her mother, who had never liked the basement flat, had encouraged her to go for it, and suddenly to her great surprise she had found herself the owner.

She still had too little time to look after the flat properly, and she hadn’t yet got round to employing a cleaner to replace her old one, who had retired to the South Coast; after several days away the dust lay in a thin layer on the surfaces and last weekend’s newspapers were still in the heap on the floor where she’d left them. But it was Saturday and she’d soon have the place tidied up.

As she dusted and vacuumed, she smiled at the contrast between her humdrum cleaning and what she’d been doing twenty-four hours earlier. After waiting fruitlessly for an hour in the little café in the Place du Bourg-de-Four, she had spent the afternoon at the Embassy with Russell White. As soon as he’d learned that Sorsky hadn’t shown up, he’d put a surveillance team on to the Russian Trade Offices and another man at the Russian Embassy to try and get a sighting of Sorsky. Each hour they phoned in to report; each hour they repeated that there was no sign of the man. Then White got one of his colleagues, who had grown up in Normandy and spoke French with a regional accent, to ring the Russian Trade Delegation and ask for Sorsky. The receptionist had said that he wasn’t in the office, and no, she didn’t know when he would next be there.

Liz had cancelled her flight reservation and rung her mother to explain she wouldn’t be home in time for lunch the next day. She’d spent a sleepless night in the hotel, kept awake by the uncertainty of the situation. Could Sorsky have had a change of heart? It was always a possibility, especially if he had found out nothing further and felt that he’d already done all he could to alert the West to the threat to Clarity.

Then again – and this was what really worried Liz – he might have been caught going through his colleague’s files. But caught by whom? After all, he’d said the man was away from Geneva. Perhaps the secretary had found him rifling the filing cabinets, but would she really have turned her former lover in – since it was she who had alerted him in the first place to his colleague’s odd behaviour?

It was a mystery, and no clearer to Liz when the morning came. Russell White had arranged at short notice to play tennis with a friend (Terry Castle, his usual partner was on holiday), but when he rang Liz at 10.30 it was only to say there was no sign of Sorsky at the club. ‘I’ll go again tomorrow, just in case,’ he’d said. ‘Though it’s always been a weekday when we’ve met before. Did you want to stay and wait for that?’

Liz decided. ‘No. It doesn’t sound likely that he’ll show up on a Sunday. I think the best thing is for me to return to London. I’ll come back right away if you hear from him.’

Now, the cleaning finished to her satisfaction, Liz took a leisurely hot bath while Mozart played on Radio 3 in the sitting room. After she’d dressed she took an inventory of the refrigerator: one-week-old carton of milk, two eggs past their best-before date, a half-full bottle of Australian Chardonnay that she knew had been opened ten days ago, and a head of Iceberg lettuce, brown and wilted. Even by her standards this was grim, so she went to the corner shop on Highgate Road to stock up, and when she got back the message light on the phone was blinking. It was her mother, still up in town. Liz rang back straight away.

‘Hello, dear,’ said Susan. ‘So you got home at last.’

‘I’m so sorry about lunch, Mum. I thought you’d have gone back to Bowerbridge by now.’

‘Actually, I’m just about to leave. Edward’s staying up – he’s arranged to see Cathy and Teddy tomorrow in Brighton. I can’t say he’s looking forward to it – she was perfectly awful to him on the phone when he suggested it. But he’s worried about these French friends of hers. When Edward talked to little Teddy, he said one of them – he called him René – wasn’t very nice.’

‘To Teddy?’

‘No, to Cathy. Teddy said they were arguing.’

‘Oh, dear. Is Edward there now? Let me have a word with him.’

While her mother went to get Edward, Liz thought about this French visitor. Could they really be threatening Cathy, or had Teddy just imagined things?

‘Hello, Liz. Glad you’re back. Everything all right?’

‘Everything’s fine with me. But I gather it’s not so fine with Cathy.’

‘No. I’m going down to see her tomorrow. I’m rather dreading it, to tell you the truth.’

‘Would you like some company?’

‘Do you mean you’d like to come? You must have better things to do on a Sunday, especially when you’ve been away.’ But his voice had lifted.

‘I don’t actually. I’d love to come, if you’d like me to?’

‘Well, if you’re absolutely sure, I certainly won’t say no.’

‘I’m absolutely sure,’ said Liz, hearing the relief in Edward’s voice.

She rang Martin next. There was no answer, so she left a brief message on his answering machine, letting him know she was back, then made herself a supper of pasta sprinkled with Parmesan, and went to bed. As she snuggled down in her large comfortable bed, she felt she could sleep for ever. She was halfway there when the phone rang on the bedside table.

‘Please say I didn’t wake you up.’ It was Martin.

She said, ‘Even if you had it’s nice to hear your voice. What have you been up to?’

‘I took Danielle to dinner. You know students; they seem to live on dry crusts and a lettuce leaf. So I took her to La Rouge Chemise.’

‘Oh, no,’ said Liz, with a groan. Martin had taken Liz there on her birthday – it had been a grande bouffe with six courses, none of them small.

‘Danielle says she won’t have to eat again for a week. But how did your trip go?’

‘It had some interesting developments,’ she said.

‘Well, you’d better come over and tell me about them.’

‘I will.’

‘You sound tired, Liz. I hope you’re going to take it easy tomorrow.’

‘Actually, I’m going with Edward to see his daughter in Brighton.’

‘Okay. I haven’t forgotten about that, by the way. I’ve put a call in and am waiting to hear.’

‘Thank you,’ said Liz, realising this meant he had rung Isobel Florian, his counterpart in the DCRI. She tried but failed to suppress a yawn.

‘I heard that,’ said Martin.

‘Sorry.’

He laughed gently. ‘You can’t fool me. Even if I’m not there to see if you can keep your eyes open. Those beautiful big eyes.’

‘Flatterer.’

‘I’m French, so what do you expect? But now it’s time you closed them.’