The Accident Man Read online

  “But anyone could steal them,” she said.

  “Come off it, this is Geneva. We’ve got UN buildings stuffed with bent officials and banks filled with dollars ripped off from Third World aid. No one bothers to steal books. They steal whole countries here.”

  Alix looked at him. “What are you trying to tell me?”

  “Just that there are people cruising around this city with diplomatic plates and fancy suits who make what I do look like charity work. Come on.”

  There was a small café next to the bookstore, with a few plastic tables out on the cobblestoned street and some steps down to a tiny, low-ceilinged room within. Carver walked in.

  Alix followed, then watched as the owner came out from behind the counter and gave Carver a bear hug before launching into a torrent of high-speed French. She couldn’t follow it, but it sounded as though the man called Carver “Pablo.” After a while, he disappeared into the kitchen and reappeared carrying a plastic bag filled with provisions. Carver tried to pay. The man wouldn’t let him.

  The café owner then glanced in Alix’s direction and grinned. He looked her up and down, and said something to Carver with a wink and a nudge in the ribs. She didn’t need to speak French to know what that was about.

  “I’m sorry about Freddy,” said Carver once they’d started walking again. “He gets a bit overexcited in the presence of an attractive woman. If you saw his wife, you’d know why. Anyway, he’s a good bloke.” He held up the bag. “At least we won’t starve.”

  They climbed a flight of stone steps that led into a cobblestoned yard, set against the side of the hill. External staircases and covered passages wound around the buildings that surrounded the yard like the endless stairways of a Maurice Escher drawing. “Well,” said Carver, “Here we are. I’m afraid I’m on the top floor.”

  Alix looked up again, this time with a look of dread. “Do we have to climb all those stairs? Please tell me there’s an elevator inside.”

  “Sorry. The local authorities wouldn’t allow it. Said it would ruin the historic character of this fine four-hundred year-old building. At least it keeps me fit.”

  He grinned and Alix smiled back, enjoying this other, lighter side of Carver’s character.

  She had no idea what to expect when they got inside Carver’s apartment. The killers she’d known in Russia were either total slobs or hygiene freaks. The first group lived in porn-strewn pigsties where the only things that ever got cleaned were the weapons and the only decoration was the inevitable wide-screen TV. The second group were anally retentive and emotionally barren. They lived in sterile environments filled with steel, chrome, leather, and black marble. The only thing the two groups had in common was the widescreen TV.

  There was a third group, of course, the men who gave the killers their orders. They tended to have expensive mistresses and trophy wives. They let the women do the decorating. It kept them occupied during their occasional breaks between shopping expeditions.

  Carver did not live like a Russian. He lived like Alix’s idea of a proper Englishman. The apartment had exposed beams and wooden floors covered in old, faded, slightly worn rugs. There were bookshelves filled with biographies and works of military history alongside paperback thrillers. There were old vinyl records, CDs by the hundred, and rows of videos. The living room had a pair of enormous old armchairs and a huge, battered Chesterfield sofa arranged around an open fireplace. Alix imagined herself here in the winter, curled up on one of those chairs like a cat, basking in the warmth of the fire.

  Carver had disappeared into the kitchen next door. Alix could hear his voice through the wall: “I’m just fixing some coffee. Would you like an espresso? Cappuccino?”

  “You can make that?”

  “Of course. I’m not a total savage. What would you like?”

  “Cappuccino, please. No sugar.”

  There was a painting above the fireplace, a seaside scene, dated 1887 and painted in a bright, not quite impressionist style. A group of friends were standing at the water’s edge. The men had their trousers rolled up; the women were lifting their skirts just enough to be able to dip a toe into the sea.

  “It’s Lulworth Cove,” said Carver, walking back into the living room with two cups of coffee in his hands. “It’s on the Dorset coast, just a few miles west of my old base.”

  “It’s very beautiful.” She smiled. “What was this base?”

  Carver laughed. “I can’t tell you that. You might be a dangerous Russian spy.”

  “Oh no,” said Alexandra Petrova. “I’m not a spy. Not anymore.”

  Carver looked at her pensively. “So, are you going to tell me that story? The long one you were talking about?”

  She sipped her coffee and licked a splash of white foam from her top lip.

  “Okay. But there are things I must do first.”

  “What kind of things?”

  “Well, all I want to do now is wash.”

  “Fair enough. The bathroom’s just down the corridor, on the right. You go and do whatever you’ve got to do. I’ll make us something to eat. And then you can tell me your story.”

  26

  Papin was making slow progress. There weren’t too many photo-composite artists prepared to answer the telephone on the last Sunday morning in August. At last, he tracked someone down, but the picture was not ready until past ten a.m. Then he had to find someone willing to put it on the air.

  On any other day, the threat of an English killer and his sexy blond accomplice would have led the news bulletins and been splashed on the front page. But this was not an ordinary day. The networks in France, like everywhere else in the world, had only one subject under discussion: the death of the princess. And so, ironically, they relegated the man who had killed her to a brief few seconds and a hastily displayed facial composite photo.

  Marceline Ducroix, who had served Carver his pastries and coffee in the twenty-four-hour joint in Châtelet-les-Halles, saw the picture on the TV in the back office, where her father and uncle were sitting watching the news. The two men were engaged in a loud argument over whether the car crash was an accident or the result of a typically evil Anglo-Saxon plot. Their conversation distracted her.

  The English killer wanted by the authorities sounded like the polite, well-dressed man who had spoken perfect French to her that morning. Even so, she wasn’t sure it was him. “Then don’t go to the cops,” said her father, when Marceline asked his advice. “They are all sons of whores. The less you have to do with them, the better.”

  Jerome Domenici got home at eight thirty after his night shift at the pharmacy. By then he had already heard about the tragedy in the Alma Tunnel. Everyone who had come into the shop had been talking about it. He caught about ten minutes of the TV news before he fell asleep on his couch.

  It was lunchtime when Jerome woke up again. He was fixing himself some bread and cheese, with one eye on his plate and the other on the TV, when he saw the composite photo. The man looked familiar. He called the number on the TV screen.

  Papin was already at the Gare de Lyon when he heard that a man in a gray jacket, fitting Carver’s description, had been spotted in a pharmacy on the Boulevard de Sebastopol, buying hair color and scissors. But he’d been alone. And he’d bought three colors: brunette, red, and black. Papin was fairly certain that the woman had used the dye, but which color?

  Meanwhile, there had been multiple sightings of an Englishman answering Carver’s description at the Gare de Lyon. Papin had established that the man had bought two tickets to Milan, shortly after seven a.m. That meant he must have caught the seven fifteen, but it had already arrived in Milan, the ticket collector had been interviewed by local police and did not recall seeing anyone resembling either composite photo. On a journey between France and Italy there was no passport control, so there were no border records. There was no way of telling whether Carver had ever got on the train, or with whom. And if he had got on, there was no way of establishing where he’d got on withou
t canvassing every single station along the route.

  Before he did that, Papin decided to check the CCTV footage from the cameras dotted around the station. The coverage was patchy, but Papin did spot a bespectacled man in a gray jacket leaving the ticket office at 7:05. He was carrying a black bag over one shoulder: the computer.

  “Is that him?” Papin had asked the operations director.

  “It could be. Without the glasses that could easily be Carver.”

  “Okay. But now look. We have him here at 7:05. The next time we find him he is approaching the gate for the Milan train at 7:09.”

  “Yes. . . . He bought a ticket, he got on the train. So?”

  “So, where has he been? It only takes a few seconds to walk across the concourse. He did something in the meantime. What?”

  “I don’t know. Maybe he went to the bathroom. Maybe he bought a newspaper.”

  “Or maybe he bought another ticket, to a different destination. Carver is good. He must have known he would be spotted at the ticket office, so he used that to create a diversion. Then he got the other tickets at the automatic machines. Merde! There is no video footage covering them. Someone will have to check the machines for all the purchases made between 7:05 and 7:09. And meanwhile, I will do something else.”

  “What’s that?”

  “Find the girl.”

  27

  Freshly showered, Alix came into the kitchen, where Carver was fixing them both some food. She had one towel wrapped around her body, another around her hair.

  “Do you have an old shirt or something I can wear?” she said, with a self-conscious smile. “None of my . . .”

  “Shhh.” Carver held up a hand.

  Alix was about to argue. Then she saw that there was a small television on a bracket on the kitchen wall. Carver was watching a satellite news program.

  “It’s unbelievable,” he said. “There are thousands of people outside the gates of Buckingham Palace. There are more of them laying wreaths outside Kensington Palace, where she lived. There’s a book of condolence and people are queuing for, I don’t know, hundreds of yards to sign it. The prime minister’s calling her the People’s Princess. They’ve had politicians giving messages from all over the world. There are experts talking about everything from whether paparazzi photographers should be allowed to chase people on powerful motorcycles, to how the royal princes are going to cope with bereavement. . . . The actual time of death was four a.m., by the way. Like that makes any difference.”

  “We didn’t know what we were doing.”

  “Like that really makes any difference either. Look, do you want some cheese omelette? It’s pretty good. This is the place for Swiss cheese, after all. It’s just that I’ve rather lost my appetite.”

  “Sure, thanks,” Alix said. “But I think I should be wearing some clothes when I eat.”

  “Of course. Stay right there.”

  He was back a few seconds later, holding a gray T-shirt. It said “Sandhurst Special Forces Challenge 1987” across the front. “Is that okay? Afraid I’ve not done much laundry lately, I’ve been away. It’s crazy. . . . I was in New Zealand when they contacted me. On my bloody holiday.”

  She touched his arm gently, sensing the barely suppressed tension in his voice. “It’s okay. This shirt will do fine.”

  “Good. On second thought, maybe I will have some of that omelette after all.”

  They sat eating and watching the TV for a while. There were cameras at RAF Northolt air base, west of London. The princess’s body was expected at any moment. Finally, Carver got up from the table and switched the TV off.

  “You know what? I think I’ve seen enough of that. They’re not going to tell me anything I don’t already know. And there’s not been anything about our part in it all. Nothing about explosions or gunfights in Paris. Either they don’t know, or someone is going to great lengths to cover it all up.”

  He walked through to the living room. “I thought you were going to tell me your life story.” He threw himself down on the sofa and waved at the two armchairs. “Grab a seat. I’m all ears.”

  Alix walked into the room. She settled into one of the chairs, pulled her knees up to her chin, then wrapped her arms around her shins in a self-protective embrace. Carver watched her, taking in every detail. He looked at the way the sunlight caught the soft down on her long brown thighs. He looked at the way she ran her hands through her short, damp hair. He was wondering if she would betray him. He thought it might be worth it, just for the chance to have this girl in his apartment, even for a single day. As long as she was there, he could forget about death. Then Alix began to talk.

  “Imagine a world without color. The sky is gray. The buildings are gray, and the people too. The grass is gray. In winter even the snow is dirty gray. No one has any money, and capitalism is the enemy, so there is nothing in the shops, no displays in the shop windows. There are no advertisements in the streets, no bright lights. You queue for bread with your mother and wonder how drunk your father is going to be later, and which of you he is going to hit, if the vodka does not make him unconscious first. That is how I grew up.

  “We lived in a city called Perm, maybe twelve hundred kilometers from Moscow. I was a good student. I had lots of time for studying because no boys were interested in me.”

  “Oh, come on,” Carver interrupted. “I don’t believe that.”

  “No, really. I was not a pretty girl, and my eyes they . . . how do you say it when eyes point in the wrong direction?”

  “Cross-eyed?”

  “Yes, I was cross-eyed.”

  “Oh, that explains it.”

  “Explains what?”

  “Your eyes. There’s something just a tiny bit uneven about them.”

  Alix started as if someone had slapped her. Carver cursed himself.

  “I’m sorry, that was incredibly stupid of me. What I meant was, I think you have amazing eyes. They’re beautiful. And they’re kind of hypnotic. I can’t stop looking at them and, er, now I know why.”

  Carver waited to see whether he would be forgiven.

  “You were saying . . .”

  “I was saying that my squint was not so—what did you say?—hypnotic when I was a lonely little girl. I had to wear spectacles with really ugly, thick frames. So the other children made fun of me, the boys, and the girls also. Later, I grew up. My body was good, I knew that, but my face, forget it.”

  “So how did the ugly duckling turn into a beautiful swan?”

  She gave a quick nod of the head that simultaneously acknowledged and dismissed his compliment.

  “I belonged to Komsomol, the Young Communists League. I did not love the Party. I did not care about politics. But you had to join, and there were benefits: summer camps, places at better colleges. You know. So, anyway, they had a literary competition. Even under the Communists it was important to be kulturny. . . .”

  “Cultured?”

  “Yes, like playing a musical instrument really well, or dancing ballet or, for me, being able to write a long essay on Chekhov. I said he exposed the decadence and emptiness of the bourgeoisie in Imperialist Russia, proving the need for the revolution. Total bullshit! But it won a trip for me to a big Komsomol convention in Moscow. There were young athletes, scientists, artists, and academics. We did not know it, but the state used these conventions to select the best young people to be trained for all the different agencies.”

  “Aha!” Carver raised a finger in the air, like some corny old TV detective solving a mystery. “So this was where they selected you to be a dangerous Soviet spy!” His voice turned more serious: “What were you, an analyst? Or did you do fieldwork?”

  “You could call it that. A woman came up to me at the convention. She said, ‘Do you mind?’ She took off my glasses and looked at me, saying nothing, like someone at a museum who is looking at a painting, trying to decide if she likes it. I did not know what to do. My face went red.

  “We went to a small side room.
There were two men sitting behind a desk. I had just been reading my essay to the judges of the literary competition. These men looked exactly the same, like they were going to judge me. The woman said, ‘Take off your clothes, my dear.’ I was very shy. I had never shown my body to any man. But I also knew I had to obey orders.

  “The woman told me not to worry, this was no different than seeing a doctor. I stripped to my underwear and then the three of them started talking about me. It was terrible, so humiliating, like I was a farm animal at market. They were talking about my legs, my breasts, my ass, my mouth, my hair, everything. Then one of the men said, ‘We will have to do something about the eyes, of course.’ And the other said, ‘That is no problem, a simple procedure.’

  “I could not believe it. All my life, the doctors in Perm had said they could do nothing for me. They said my problem was not serious enough to justify the cost of an operation. Anyway, the woman told me to get dressed again. The men talked quietly for a moment. Then one of them told me I had been selected for a great honor. That September, I would return to Moscow to receive special training at an elite academy. I would learn to undertake duties that would be of great service to the motherland. If I completed the training satisfactorily, I would be given the finest clothes and my own Moscow apartment. My parents too would be granted improved accommodation.

  “It was incredible, like a fairy tale, like becoming a movie star. When I told my mother, she burst into tears. She was so proud. Even my father cried for joy. That summer, I had my operation at last, carried out by the same doctor who had told me it would be impossible. I threw away my glasses. When I got on the train for Moscow, I was sad to be leaving home. But I was so excited also. I could not believe that fate had chosen me for such great fortune.”

  Carver shifted position on the sofa, cleared his throat. “What happened when you got to Moscow?”