Tess Gerritsen - In Their Footsteps

Gerard gripped the steering wheel tightly as they bounced onto a dirt road. “I remember the police coming to see the attic. Asking my father questions. Every day, for a week.”

“What about the woman who rented the attic?” asked Richard. “Her name was Scarlatti. Do you remember her?”

“Yes. She had a man,” said Gerard. “I used to listen to them through the door. Every Wednesday. All the sounds they made!” Gerard shook his head in amusement. “Very exciting for a boy my age.”

“So this Mlle Scarlatti, she used the attic only as a love nest?” asked Beryl.

“She was never there except to make love.”

“What did they look like, these two lovers?”

“The man was tall-that’s all I remember. The woman, she had dark hair. Always wore a scarf and sunglasses. I do not remember her face very well, but I remember she was quite beautiful.”

Like her mother, thought Beryl. Could she be wrong? Had it really been her, meeting her lover in that run-down flat in Pigalle?

She asked softly, “Was the woman English?”

Gerard paused. “She could have been.”

“Meaning you’re not certain.”

“I was young. I thought she was foreign, but I did not know from where. Then, after the murders, I heard she was English.”

“Did you see their bodies?”

Gerard shook his head. “My father, he would not allow it.”

“So your father was the first to see them?” asked Richard.

“No. It was the man.”

Richard glanced at Gerard in surprise. “Which man?”

“Mlle Scarlatti’s lover. We saw him climb the steps to the attic. Then he came running back down, quite frantic. That’s when we knew something was wrong and called the police.”

“What happened to that man?”

“He drove away. I never saw him again. I assumed he was afraid of being accused. And that was why he sent us the money.”

“The payoff,” said Richard. “I guessed as much.”

“For silence?” asked Beryl.

“Or false testimony.” He asked Gerard, “How was the money delivered?”

“A man came with a briefcase only hours after the bodies were found. I’d never seen him before-a short, rather stocky Frenchman. He came to our flat, took my father into a back room. I did not hear what they said. Then the short man left.”

“Your father never spoke to you about it?”

“No. And he told us we were not to speak of it to the police.”

“You’re certain that the briefcase contained money?”

“It must have.”

“How do you know?”

“Because suddenly we had things. New clothes, a television. And then, soon afterward, we came to Greece. And we bought the house. There, you see?” He pointed. In the distance was a sprawling villa with a red-tiled roof. As they drove closer, Beryl saw bougainvillea trailing up the whitewashed walls and spilling over a covered veranda. Just below the house, waves lapped at a lonely beach.

They parked next to a dusty Citroën and climbed out. The wind whistled in from the sea, stinging their faces with sand. There was no other house in sight, only this solitary building, tucked into the crags of a barren hill.

“Papa?” called Gerard, climbing the stone steps. He swung open the wrought-iron gate. “Papa?”

No one answered.

Gerard pushed through the front door and stepped across the threshold, Beryl and Richard right behind him. Their footsteps echoed through silent rooms.

“I called here from the tavern,” said Sofia. “There was no answer.”

“His car is outside,” said Gerard. “He must be here.” He crossed the living room and started toward the dining room. “Papa?” he said, and halted in the doorway. An anguished cry was suddenly wrenched from his throat. He took a step forward and seemed to stumble to his knees. Over his shoulder, Beryl caught a view into the formal dining room beyond.

A wood table stretched the length of the room. At the far end of the table, a gray-haired man had slumped onto his dinner plate, scattering chick-peas and rice across the table’s surface.

Richard pushed past Gerard and went to the fallen man. Gently he grasped the head and lifted the face from its pillow of mashed rice.

In the man’s forehead was punched a single bullet-hole.

Amiel Foch sat at an outdoor café table, sipping espresso and watching the tourists stroll past. Not the usual dentures-and-bifocals crowd, he observed as a shapely redhead wandered by. This must be the week for honeymooners. It was five o’clock, and the last public ferry to Piraeus would be sailing in half an hour. If the Tavistock woman planned to leave the island tonight, she’d have to board that ferry. He’d keep an eye on the gangplank.

He polished off his snack of stuffed grape leaves and started in on dessert, a walnut pastry steeped in syrup. Curious, how the completion of a job always left him ravenous. For other men, the spilling of blood resulted in a surge of libido, a sudden craving for hot, fast sex. Amiel Foch craved food instead; no wonder his weight was such a problem.

Dispatching the old Frenchman Rideau had been easy; killing Wolf and the woman would not be so simple. Earlier today he had considered an ambush, but Rideau’s house stood on an empty stretch of shoreline, the only access a five-mile-long dirt road, and there was nowhere to conceal his car. Nowhere to lie in wait without being detected. Foch had a rule he never broke: always leave an escape route. The Rideau house, set in the midst of barren scrub, was too exposed for any such retreat. Richard Wolf was armed and would be watching for danger signs.

Amiel Foch was not a coward. But he was not a fool, either.

Far wiser to wait for another opportunity-perhaps in Piraeus, with its crowded streets and chaotic traffic. Pedestrians were killed all the time. An accident, two dead tourists-it would raise hardly a stir of interest.

Foch’s gaze sharpened as the afternoon ferry pulled into port. There was only a brief unloading of passengers; the island of Paros was not, after all, on the usual Mykonos-Rhodes-Crete circuit made by tourists. At the bottom of the gangplank, a few dozen people had already gathered to board. Quickly Foch surveyed the crowd. To his consternation, he saw neither the woman nor Wolf. He knew they’d been on the island today; his contact had spotted the pair in a tavern this morning. Had they slipped away by some other route?

Then he noticed the man in the tattered windbreaker and black fisherman’s cap. Though his shoulders were hunched, there was no disguising the man’s height-six feet tall, at least, with a tautly athletic build. The man turned sideways, and Foch caught a glimpse of his face, partly obscured by a few days’ worth of stubble. It was, indeed, Richard Wolf. But he appeared to be traveling alone. Where was the woman?

Foch paid his café bill and wandered over to the landing. He mingled with the waiting passengers and studied their faces. There were a number of women, tanned tourists, Greek housewives clad modestly in black, a few hippies in blue jeans. Beryl Tavistock was not among them.

He felt a brief spurt of panic. Had the woman and Wolf separated? If so, he might never find her. He was tempted to stay on the island, to search her out…

The passengers were moving up the gangplank.

He weighed his choices and decided to follow Wolf. Better to stick with a flesh-and-blood quarry. Sooner or later, Wolf would reunite with the woman. Until then, Foch would have to bide his time, make no moves.

The man in the fisherman’s cap walked up the gangplank and into the cabin. After a moment, Foch followed him inside and took a seat two rows behind him, next to an old man with a box of salted fish. It wasn’t long before the engines growled to life and the ferry slid away from the dock.