Tom Cain - The accident man

She looked at him. "Can you give a damn?"

"About what?"

She said nothing.

"Yes, I give a damn."

All he had to do was lean toward her, break the invisible wall between them. Her pulse rate started to rise. Her breathing deepened. Her back arched fractionally. Her lips relaxed, ready to receive his.

But Carver didn't move.

Alix felt like an idiot. Then her temper flashed. How dare he play games with her? How dare he look at her with those cool, assessing eyes?

"You didn't finish your story," he said.

Alix didn't reply.

"Tell me about Kursk. What was the offer he made you? The one you could not refuse."

"I told you, I have said enough. Now you tell me something."

"What?"

"I don't care. Anything. Just so long as it is true."

Carver looked away. He put a hand up to his face. He leaned back and gazed at the ceiling.

"Fair enough. I'll tell you why I didn't kiss you just now."

Alix was silent, but her eyes narrowed as she looked at him.

"I was scared. I was afraid that if I opened myself up, even that much, I would not stop until I had given myself away, every bit of me. Is that true enough for you?"

"Yes," Alix whispered.

She had been watching Carver's eyes as he spoke. Something in them had changed, as though a curtain had been drawn aside to reveal a distant view of the man he really was. But now she could see him closing up again. When he spoke again, that other man had vanished.

"So… Kursk?"

She wanted to scream at him: Forget Kursk! She longed to get the hidden Samuel Carver back. But she had to find the patience to wait, to let him emerge of his own accord. So she gathered her thoughts and said, "It was very simple. He blackmailed me."

"What do you mean?"

She sighed. "May I smoke?"

She could see him hesitate for an instant. There was a fastidious, disciplined side to Carver. It probably came from his years in the military. All the videos on his shelves were in alphabetical order, all the cooking implements in his kitchen were immaculately arranged. He would not like anyone smoking in his apartment.

As if he knew what Alix was thinking, Carver laughed. "Sure. Go ahead. Then talk."

Alix inhaled deep into her lungs, then let out a long, slow stream of smoke that curled and eddied in the shafts of afternoon light that shone through the apartment's deep-set windows.

"I had been in the KGB for less than two years when the wall came down. Suddenly, all our old allies were rebelling against us, kicking our soldiers out of their countries. It was humiliating. Everything any of us had known was falling apart.

"For a while, we carried on in Moscow as if nothing had happened. In some ways it was easier. More Westerners were coming to the city. They thought that the cold war was over and they had won, so they did not care what girls they screwed, or what they said to us. But then Gorbachev was deposed, Yeltsin took over, and suddenly there was no money to pay anyone. The whole country was run by gangsters. However bad it had been before, now it was one hundred times worse. We had nothing. We had to live somehow."

"You sound like you're expecting me to judge you. I'm in no position to do that."

"Maybe. Anyway, I was lucky. Because I can speak English I got a job at a hotel, the Marriott, working at the reception desk. I found a good man, a doctor. He was not rich or handsome, but he treated me with respect.

"For a long time, I thought I was okay. Then Kursk started coming to the hotel. He had worked with the girls as a 'bodyguard.' That was what they called it. The real reason was to make sure we did not do any business for ourselves, or try to run away with a rich foreign client. Kursk liked to remind me that he knew who I was and what I had done. He could expose me at any time. Everything I had worked for would be ruined. I offered him money to go away, but he turned me down. He was happier teasing me, just keeping me like a fish on the end of a line. I knew that sooner or later he would pull on the hook.

"That's what happened. Kursk came to the hotel on Friday morning. He said he needed a partner on a job. He wanted a woman. People would be distracted by her and pay less attention to him. He told me to leave work, tell my supervisor I was feeling sick. If I came with him, he would pay me ten thousand dollars, U.S. And if I did not…"

"Let me guess. He still had some of your old photographs. You would be caught by your own honey trap."

Alix nodded.

"So what happened to the doctor?"

"He is still there. He wants to marry me."

"What do you want?"

"He will give me a home, maybe a family. I will be a respectable woman."

"But?"

"But I do not love him. I would just be selling myself again."

"Come here," said Carver.

He opened his arms, and Alix nestled against his shoulder. He put his arms around her. She could feel him pressing his nose against her hair, breathing in its scent. Then he leaned back against the arm of the sofa and she went with him, relaxing into his lean, muscular embrace.

It took a couple of minutes for Alix to realize that Carver was asleep. She smiled ruefully. She must be losing her touch if men could take her in their arms without being driven mad with lust. But perhaps it was a greater compliment that a man like Carver would let himself sleep. That was the ultimate vulnerability. She could do anything to him now.

Alix slipped out of Carver's arms and got to her feet. She stroked a lock of hair away from his forehead, then gently kissed his brow, like a mother would a child. She picked up the wine bottle, the ice bucket, and the glasses and carried them to the kitchen.

She walked along the hallway to Carver's bedroom, smiling as she saw the TV on a stand at the end of the bed, exactly as she'd predicted. There was a bedside table with a photograph in a silver frame, showing Carver at the helm of a yacht with a woman hugging him from behind. They were both laughing.

Alix felt a quick, sharp stab of jealousy. Who was this woman making Carver so happy? There was no trace of any feminine presence in the apartment. She wasn't part of his life now. Even so, Alix resented her closeness to Carver and the unforced joy in their laughter.

She told herself she was just being professionally thorough as she looked through Carver's wardrobe, fingering the fabric of his classic English and Italian suits, smiling at his well-worn jeans and baggy sweaters. She thought of his tracksuit. Why was it that the older clothes got, the more men seemed to like them?

On the top shelf of the wardrobe, above the hanging suits and shirts, there were a couple of folded blankets and a rolled-up duvet. Alix had to stretch to reach the duvet. She pulled it down, then carried it through to the living room and draped it over Carver's unconscious body.

But where was she going to sleep? This was a bachelor apartment. There was only one bed. Alexandra Petrova went to sleep in it.

Alone in his office on Sunday night, Pierre Papin pursued the question of Carver, the girl, and the train they had taken out of Paris. A check on the ticket machines at the Gare de Lyon had come up with more than a dozen purchases made during the missing minutes when Carver could have used them. Four of these were for one ticket only. Papin was tempted to dismiss these, but he had to consider the possibility that the Englishman had dropped the girl and continued to a separate destination on his own.

Several of the ticket buyers had used credit cards, none in Carver's name. But that was to be expected. If he had used a card, the name would certainly be that of an alias. So Papin was left with the task of checking twelve separate journeys, involving more than twenty individuals, hoping to track down his two suspects by a process of elimination.