William Boyd - Restless

I was home in Oxford by nine o'clock and picked up Jochen from Veronica's.

'Why did you go to London?' he said, as we climbed the back stairs towards the kitchen door.

'I went to see an old friend of Granny's.'

'Granny says she hasn't got any friends.'

'This is someone she knew a long time ago,' I said, moving to the phone in the hall. 'Go and put your pyjamas on.' I dialled my mother's number. There was no reply so I hung up and dialled again, using her stupid code and she still didn't pick up. I put the phone down.

'Shall we go on a little adventure?' I said, trying to keep my voice light-hearted. 'Let's drive out to Granny's and give her a surprise.'

'She won't be pleased,' Jochen said. 'She hates surprises.'

When we reached Middle Ashton I saw at once that the cottage was dark and there was no sign of her car. I went to the third flower pot on the left of the front door, suddenly very worried for some reason, found the key and let myself in.

'What's happening, Mummy?' Jochen said. 'Is this some kind of a game?'

'Sort of

Everything in the cottage seemed in order: the kitchen was tidy, the dishes were washed, clothes hung drying on the clothes-horse in the boiler room. I climbed the stairs to her bedroom, Jochen following, and looked around. The bed was made and on her desk was a brown envelope with 'Ruth' written on it. I was about to pick it up when Jochen said, 'Look, there's a car coming.'

It was my mother in her old white Allegro. I felt both stupid and relieved. I ran downstairs, opened the front door and called to her as she stepped out of the car.

'Sal! It's us. We came out to see you.'

'What a lovely surprise,' she said, her voice heavy with irony, bending down to kiss Jochen. 'I didn't remember leaving the lights on. Somebody's up very late.'

'You told me to call you the minute, the second, I got back,' I said, more accusingly and more annoyed than I intended. 'When you didn't reply what was I meant to think?'

'I must have forgotten I'd asked you,' she said, breezily, moving past me into the house. 'Anyone like a cup of tea?'

'I saw Romer,' I said, following her. 'I spoke to him. I thought you'd be interested. But it didn't go well. In fact, I would say he was thoroughly unpleasant.'

'I'm sure you were more than a match for him,' she said. 'I thought you both looked a bit frosty when you said goodbye.'

I stopped. 'What do you mean?' I said.

'I was outside: I saw you both leave the club,' she said, her face utterly open, guileless, as if this were the most natural thing in the world. 'Then I followed him home and now I know where he lives: 29 Walton Crescent, Knightsbridge. Great big white stucco place. It'll be much easier getting to him the next time.'

New York, 1941

EVA CALLED TRANSOCEANIC FROM a pay phone on the street outside her safe house in Brooklyn. Five days had gone by since the events in Las Cruces, during which she had made her way slowly back to New York, taking advantage of all the means of transport available – plane, train, bus and automobile. The first day in New York she had staked out her own safe house. When she was sure no one was watching she moved in and laid low. Finally, when she assumed they'd be growing increasingly worried by her silence, she telephoned.

'Eve!' Morris Devereux almost shouted, forgetting procedure. 'Thank God. Where are you?'

'Somewhere on the eastern seaboard,' she said. 'Morris: I'm not coming in.'

'You have to come in,' he said. 'We have to see you. Circumstances have changed.'

'You don't know what happened down there,' she said with some venom. 'I'm lucky to be alive. I want to speak to Romer. Is he back?'

'Yes.'

'Tell him I'll call on Sylvia's number at BSC. Tomorrow afternoon at four.'

She hung up.

She went down the street to a grocery store and bought some tinned soup, a loaf of bread, three apples and two packs of Lucky Strike before going back to her room on the third floor of the brownstone building on Pineapple Street. Nobody bothered her, none of her anonymous neighbours seemed to register that Miss Margery Allerdice was in residence. If she opened the bathroom window, and leant out as far as she could, the top of one of the towers of Brooklyn Bridge was just visible – on a clear day. She had a pull-down bed, two armchairs, a radio, a galley kitchen with two electric rings, a soapstone sink with one cold tap and a lavatory screened by a plastic curtain with tropical fish all swimming in the same direction. When she arrived back she made some soup – mushroom – ate it with some bread and butter and then smoked three cigarettes while wondering what to do. Perhaps, she thought, the best thing would be to fly now… She had her identification, she could be Margery Allerdice and be gone before anyone really noticed. But where to? Mexico? From there she could catch a ship to Spain or Portugal. Or Canada, perhaps? Or was Canada too close? And BSC had a substantial organisation there also. She ran through the pros and cons, thinking she could manage better in Canada, that it would be easier to be inconspicuous; in Mexico she'd stand out – a young English woman – though from there she could go to Brazil, or even better, Argentina. There was a sizeable English community in Argentina; she could find a job, translating, invent a past for herself, become invisible, bury herself underground. That was what she wanted to do – to disappear. But as she thought on she realised that all this planning and speculation, however worth while, wasn't going to be put into effect until she'd seen and spoken to Romer: she had to tell him what happened – perhaps he could sort out and solve the crowding mysteries. After that she could make up her mind, but not before.

As the evening drew in she listened to some music on the radio and in her mind went back over the events in Las Cruces. 'The Events in Las Cruces' – the euphemism was rather comforting: as if her hotel room had been double-booked or her car had broken down on Highway 80. She felt no guilt, no compunction about what she had done to de Baca. If she hadn't killed him she knew he would have killed her in the next minute or two. Her plan had been only to stab him in the eye and run. She only had a sharpened pencil, after all – one of his eyes was the only possible target if he was to be immobilised. But thinking back over those few seconds in the car, remembering de Baca's reactions, his total, shocking incapacity followed by his immediate death, she realised that the force of her blow must have driven the pencil point through the eyeball and the eye-hole in his skull, deep into his brain puncturing, in the process, the carotid artery – or perhaps hit the brain-stem, causing instant cardiac arrest. There could be no other explanation for his almost instant death. Even if she had missed the artery and the pencil had penetrated his brain de Baca might not have died. But she would have been able to make her escape, though. However, her luck – her luck – her aim and the sharpness of the pencil point had killed him as swiftly and as surely as if he had taken prussic acid or had been strapped to an electric chair. She went to bed early and dreamt that Raul was trying to sell her a small speedy red coupe.

She called Sylvia's number at BSC exactly at 4.01 p.m. She was standing at a pay phone outside the entrance of the Rockefeller Center on Fifth Avenue with a good view of the main doors. Sylvia's phone rang three times and then was picked up.

'Hello, Eva,' Romer said, his voice level, unsurprised. 'We want you to come in.'

'Listen carefully,' she said. 'Leave the building now and walk south down Fifth. I'll give you two minutes, otherwise there won't be any meeting.'

She hung up and waited. After about three and a half minutes, Romer emerged – fast enough, she thought: he would have had no time to set up any team. He turned right down Fifth Avenue. She shadowed him from across the street and behind, watching his back, watching his manner, letting him walk some six blocks before she was sure there was no one on his tail. She was wearing a headscarf and spectacles, flat shoes and a camel coat she'd bought in a thrift shop that morning. She crossed the street at an intersection and began to follow him closely herself for another block or two. He was wearing a trench coat, an old one with a few repaired tears, and a navy-blue scarf. He was bareheaded. He seemed very at ease, strolling southwards, not looking around, waiting for contact to be made. They had reached 39th Street before she walked up beside him and said, 'Follow me.'