'About a year ago. We met at a party – someone was celebrating the publication of a book. We got talking – I thought he was charming -'
'What book?'
'I can't remember.'
She continued her cross-examination and watched Romer's pleasure grow: he was enjoying this, she saw, and his enjoyment began to anger her. This wasn't some pastime, some idle flirtation – her brother was dead and she suspected that Romer knew far more about Kolia's death than he was prepared to admit.
'Why was he at that meeting?' she asked. 'Action Française, for heaven's sake: Kolia wasn't a Fascist.'
'Of course he wasn't.'
'So why was he there?'
'I asked him to go.'
This shocked her. She wondered why Lucas Romer would ask Kolia Delectorski to go to an Action Française meeting, and wondered further why Kolia would agree, but could find no quick or easy answers.
'Why did you ask him to go?' she asked.
'Because he was working for me.'
All day in the office, trying to do her work, Eva thought about Romer and his baffling answers to her questions. He had abruptly ended their conversation after this declaration that Kolia was working for him – leaning forward, his eyes fixed on hers – and which seemed to say: yes, Kolia was working for me, Lucas Romer, and then announced suddenly that he had to go, he had meetings, my goodness, look at the time.
In the metro on her way home after the office had closed, Eva tried to be methodical, tried to put things together, to make the various extraneous pieces of information mesh, somehow, but it wasn't working. Lucas Romer had met Kolia at a party; they had become friends – more than friends, obviously, colleagues of a sort, with Kolia working for Romer in some unnamed capacity… What manner of work took you to a meeting of the Action Française in Nanterre? And at this meeting, as far as the police could determine, Kolia Delectorski had been called out to answer a telephone call. People remembered him leaving in the middle of the main speech, delivered by Charles Maurras, no less, remembered one of the stewards coming down the aisle and passing him a note, remembered the small upheaval of his departure. And then the gap of time of forty-five minutes – the last forty-five minutes of Kolia's life – to which there were no witnesses. People leaving the hall (a large cinema) by the side entrances had found his twisted body in the alleyway running along the cinema's rear, a thickening lacquered pool of blood on the paving stones, a serious wound – several heavy blows – on the back of his head. What happened in the last forty-five minutes of Kolia Delectorski's life? When he was found his wallet was missing, his watch was missing and his hat was missing. But what kind of thief kills a man and then steals his hat?
Eva walked up the rue des Fleurs, thinking about Kolia, wondering what had made him 'work' for a man like Romer and why he had never told her about this so-called job. And who was Romer to offer Kolia, a music teacher, a job that would put his life in danger? A job that had cost him his life? As what and for what, she wanted to know? For his shipping line? His international businesses? She found herself smiling sardonically at the whole absurdity of the idea as she bought her usual two baguettes and tried to ignore Benoit's eager responsive smile to what he took to be her levity. She became solemn, instantly. Benoit – another man who wanted her.
'How are you, Mademoiselle Eva?' Benoit asked, taking her money.
'I'm not so well,' she said. 'My brother's death – you know.'
His face changed, went long in sympathy. 'Terrible, terrible thing,' he said. 'These times we live in.'
At least now he can't ask me out again for a while, Eva thought, as she left and turned into the apartment block's small courtyard, stepping through the small door in the large one and nodding hello to Madame Roisanssac, the concierge. She walked up the two flights of stairs, let herself in, left the bread in the kitchen and moved on through to the salon, thinking: no, I can't stay in again tonight, not with Papa and Irene – I shall go and see a film, the film playing at the Rex: Je Suis Partout - I need to have a change in routine, she thought, some room, some time for myself.
She walked into the salon and Romer rose to his feet with a lazy welcoming smile. Her father stepped in front of him, saying in his bad English, with false disapprobation, 'Eva, really, why are you not telling me you've met Mr Romer?'
'I didn't think it was important,' Eva said, her eyes never leaving Romer's, trying to keep her gaze absolutely neutral, absolutely unperturbed. Romer smiled and smiled – he was very calm – and more smartly dressed, she saw, in a dark blue suit, a white shirt and another of his striped English ties.
Her father was fussing, pulling a chair forward for her, making small talk – 'Mr Romer was knowing Kolia, can you believe it?' – but Eva only heard a stridency of questions and exclamations in her head: How dare you come here! What have you told Papa? What nerve! What did you think I would say? She saw the glasses and the bottle of port on the silver tray, saw the plate of sugared almonds and knew that Romer had engineered this welcome effortlessly, confident of the solace his visit would bring. How long had he been here? she wondered, looking at the level of the port in the bottle. Something about her father's mood suggested more than one glass each.
Her father practically forced her to sit; she declined the glass of port she dearly wanted. She noticed Romer sitting back, discreetly, one leg casually crossed over the other, that small calculating smile on his face. It was the smile, she realised, of a man who was convinced he knew exactly what was going to happen next.
Determined to frustrate him, she stood up. 'I have to go,' she said. 'I'll be late for the film.'
Somehow, Romer was at the door before her, his fingers on her left elbow, restraining.
'Mr Delectorski,' Romer said to her father, 'is there anywhere I can speak privately with Eva?'
They were shown into her father's study – a small bedroom at the end of the corridor – decorated with formal, wooden photographic portraits of Delectorski relatives and containing a desk, a divan and a bookshelf full of his favourite Russian authors: Lermontev, Pushkin, Turgenev, Gogol, Chekhov. The room smelt of cigars and the pomade that her father used for his hair. Moving to the window Eva could see Madame Roisanssac hanging out her family's washing. She felt suddenly very ill at ease: she thought she knew how to deal with Romer but now alone in this room with him – alone in her father's room – everything suddenly had changed.
And, as if he sensed this, Romer changed too: gone was the overweening self-confidence, now replaced by a manner more direct, more fiercely personal. He urged her to sit down and drew a chair for himself from behind the desk, setting it opposite her, as if some form of interrogation was about to begin. He offered her a cigarette from his battered case and she took one before saying, no, thank you, I won't, and handed it back. She watched him refit it in his case, clearly mildly irritated. Eva felt she'd won a tiny, trivial victory – everything counted if that vast easy confidence was to be even momentarily discomfited.
'Kolia was working for me when he was killed,' Romer said.
'You told me.'
'He was killed by Fascists, by Nazis.'
'I thought he was robbed.'
'He was doing…' he paused. 'He was doing dangerous work – and he was discovered. I think he was betrayed.'
Eva wanted to speak but decided to say nothing. Now, in the silence, Romer removed his cigarette case again and went through the rigmarole of putting the cigarette in his mouth, patting his pockets for his lighter, removing the cigarette from his mouth, tapping both ends on the cigarette case, pulling the ashtray on her father's desk towards him, lighting the cigarette and inhaling and exhaling strongly. Eva watched all this, trying to stay completely impassive.
'I work for the British government,' he said. 'You understand what I mean…'