‘But Megan—’
‘Trust me, Chris. Please.’
Chris looked about him in frustration. This he did not understand. But Megan was watching him intently. She was serious. And he would do what she wanted.
‘OK,’ he said. ‘But if you get scared, or you want to talk to me, just call me.’
‘I will.’ She kissed him on the cheek. ‘Thank you,’ and she was gone, leaving Chris to make his way back through the dark Cambridge streets to his car, and the drive back to London.
After Chris left, Megan couldn’t sleep. At first, she didn’t even try. She changed into a T-shirt, pushed the sofa against the door, balanced a lamp on the armrest that should fall off if the sofa was disturbed, opened her bedroom window so that she could be heard if she screamed, and climbed into bed.
She was confident that the intruder wouldn’t return, at least that night. All she had to do was repeat that to herself and she wouldn’t be scared.
But, tucked into her little fortress, she wanted to think.
The afternoon with Eric had not gone at all as she had planned. He wasn’t a fat investment banker at all; in fact, the extra ten years had made him if anything better looking. He had been considerate to her, and kind. The memories of what it had been like to be totally, hopelessly in love with him flooded back. She had had boyfriends before at high school and at college, but he was the first man she had really loved. Possibly the only man she had ever really loved. She wondered now whether she had ever stopped loving him.
She had been awful to Chris to send him away like that. But she had to. She couldn’t have slept with him in her current state of confusion. It would have been artificial, dishonest. And the last thing she wanted to do was to tell him the real reason she wanted to be alone that night. Chris had done nothing wrong, and she liked him. Eric was from the past, and she wanted to keep him there.
Didn’t she? Eric had hinted that things weren’t going well with Cassie. Megan was sure that he had married her for the wrong reasons, even if he had done it unconsciously. She was pretty, she was well connected, she probably appeared to be the perfect wife, but she couldn’t have the same bond with Eric that Megan had had. Now, too late, perhaps he realized it.
Megan turned over, huddling under the duvet and blankets. A cold breeze blew in from the open window.
What was she thinking of? Eric was married, for God’s sake! She knew she was an emotional mess, and for understandable reasons: the knife and Lenka. She was seeking stability by trying to re-create a happy period from her past. She was deluding herself.
She needed to talk to someone and she knew whom. Lenka. Lenka would have been able to understand how she was feeling and give her good advice. But Lenka was gone. The misery of that fact swept over Megan.
She opened her eyes. She might have slept, but not for long. She thought she heard a creaking sound from her sitting room. She jumped out of bed and crept to her bedroom door. She looked into the darkened sitting room. Nothing.
She tried to go back to sleep, but she couldn’t. The blurred image of the unknown intruder inches from her face forced her eyes open every time she shut them. Eventually, she gave up and carried her pillow and duvet through to the sitting room. She removed the lamp, and curled up on the sofa. Now that she knew she would be instantly wakened by anyone trying to open the door, she felt safe enough to fall asleep.
3
Ian left the George V as soon as he could pay the bill, and found himself a seedy little café off the Avenue Marceau. He sat by a tiny table next to the window, savouring the combined smell of Gitanes and strong coffee, and tried to think.
He was angry with himself for losing the initiative, and angry with Eric for taking it. Right from the beginning, Eric had been calling the shots.
He remembered that night ten years before, the shock at seeing Alex pitch over the side, the drunken euphoric urge to heroism that had propelled him over the side after Alex, the shock of the cold water and the high waves. Ian wasn’t a bad swimmer, but he could see nothing in the choppy waters apart from the stern of the boat speeding off towards Long Island, and in a moment even that was out of view. He had battled his way through the sea, shouting Alex’s name, but he couldn’t hear anything in response apart from the water boiling around his ears.
Then, after a few minutes of frantic swimming, he caught sight of an arm raised above the waves. He pulled towards it, and intermittently through the rising and falling water, caught sight of two bodies splashing frantically. At first, he thought one was struggling to save the other. Then, as he came closer, he saw a head emerge, and two hands push it firmly down beneath the water. Ian was tired, but he laboured nearer. It seemed to take an age. Then, when he bobbed over the crest of a wave, he could see just one head left above the water. Eric. He shouted his name, Eric turned, and then swam strongly off in the opposite direction.
Ian looked for Alex’s body, but couldn’t find it. Whether it had been submerged or swept out of sight, he didn’t know. But after a couple of minutes, he began to worry about his own situation. He was tired and very cold. Where was that damn boat? He stopped flailing about, and trod water, trying to conserve energy.
His brain was numbed by the cold and the fatigue, and the shock of what he had just seen. What the hell was Eric doing with Alex? It made no sense. He didn’t have the mental energy to make sense of it.
In the rough sea, it was hard work to keep his face safely out of the water. Whenever he lost concentration and a wave broke over him so that he swallowed a lungful of water, it took almost all of his remaining energy to cough it out and stay afloat.
Eventually, he heard the sound of the boat’s engines, and then saw the hull edge towards him through the darkness. Voices he recognized called his name, and arms heaved him out of the water and on to the deck where he lay in a stunned heap.
Eric had whispered in his ear. ‘Don’t say anything. Alex was going to tell them about both of us. I had to do it.’
And Ian hadn’t said anything. He was too tired to think straight then anyway, and so he went along with the cover-up suggested by Eric and Chris. Afterwards, what the hell? Eric seemed in control. If Ian tried to tell the police what he had really seen, he would just get himself into all kinds of trouble. It had nothing to do with him. All he had to do was keep quiet and forget it.
Of course, he couldn’t forget it. Although he was in no way responsible for Alex’s death, he felt guilty. And in a strange way, the guilt strengthened the bond between him and Eric. They both shared a secret. If they both kept quiet, they would be OK. And, in the ten years following Alex’s death, Eric had most definitely done OK.
Ian knew now it had been a dreadful mistake. In retrospect, he realized he had had little to lose compared to Eric. It was Eric who had provided the drugs for Alex and Ian. None of them was more than an occasional weekend user, but in the eyes of Bloomfield Weiss and the police Eric would have been the supplier and Ian and Alex the customers. Eric had somehow got wind of the drugs test at the end of the final examination, and had left early. Ian wasn’t tested, because he was a London-office hire. But Alex had been tested, and caught. He was worried about his job and his mother’s medical bills, and Eric was convinced Alex was going to point the finger at Eric to get himself off. Eric wouldn’t just have lost his job, but he would have done so publicly. If he were to run for political office in the future, any journalist who took the trouble to dig would find that he had been fired from a Wall Street firm for dealing drugs. It was that, Ian was sure, that had prompted Eric to kill.