my office.’
Kell found that he was turning Amelia’s words over in his mind. Tread carefully around the Yanks. Tricky out there at the moment.
‘This man. Was he American by any chance?’
Kell was concerned that he was asking too many questions. He was relying on the atmosphere of broad agreement which had grown up between the two of them, a relaxed complicity.
‘I don’t know,’ Marianna replied. ‘I never saw him again.’
‘Was he as handsome as Mr Wallinger?’
Kell put a grin on the question, trawling for a description in a way that he hoped would not raise Marianna’s suspicions.
‘Oh no!’ she said, obliging him. ‘He was younger, but he had a beard, and I don’t like beards. I think the villa was rented by a woman. In fact, I am sure of that, because I spoke with her on the telephone.’
This was the name Kell needed. Find the woman and he could find the man. He was sure of it.
‘I don’t want to get you into trouble,’ he said, suggesting quite the opposite with his eyes.
‘What do you mean?’
‘All I would need is a copy of the rental agreement. If there’s nothing sinister or illegal going on, it would really save me a lot of …’
Marianna did not even bother to hear him out. They were friends now – perhaps more than that. Mr Hardwick had successfully earned her trust. She leaned forward and at last touched the top of his wrist. Kell heard the buzz of a moped as it tore along the port, the crack of seagulls circling above the restaurant.
‘No problem,’ she said. ‘Where are you staying? How would be the best way of sending it? I could fax?’
Three hours later, lying on his bed, almost halfway through My Name Is Red, Kell heard a knock at the door of his hotel room. He opened it to find the same receptionist who had assisted him with the recorded message the previous evening. She was holding up a piece of paper.
‘Fax.’
Kell tipped her five euros and went back into the room. Marianna had sent through the rental agreement, as well as a short handwritten note scribbled at the top of the page: Great to meet you! Hope to see you again! The document was dual-language, so Kell was able to see that the villa in question had been rented, at a cost of €2500, for the seven days prior to the crash. There was no sign of Wallinger’s name on the document, only the signature and date of birth of a woman who had given a Hungarian passport and cell phone number for ID. Seeing her handwriting, Kell felt the mystery of Rachel’s note opening in front of him like a blooming flower. Checking the camera roll on his iPhone, he saw that there was a clear match with the signature on the rental agreement.
He was on the phone to Tamas Metka within minutes.
‘Tom!’ he exclaimed. ‘Tell me. Why am I so popular all of a sudden?’
‘I need a profile on somebody. Hungarian passport holder.’
‘Is he the poet?’
Kell laughed. ‘Not he. She. Our usual arrangement?’
‘Sure. The name?’
‘Sandor,’ Kell replied, reaching for a packet of cigarettes. ‘Cecilia Sandor.’
The force of her grief had astonished Rachel Wallinger. She had spent the greater part of her adult life thinking that her father was a liar, a cheat, a man of no substance, an absence from the heart of his own family. Yet now that he was gone, she missed him as she had never missed anyone or anything before.
How was it possible to grieve for a man who had betrayed her mother, time and again? Why was she suffering for a father who had shown her so little in the way of attention and love? Rachel had not respected Paul Wallinger, she had not even particularly liked him. When asked by friends to describe their relationship, she had always given a version of the same response – ‘He’s a diplomat. We grew up all around the world. I hardly ever saw him.’ Yet the truth was more complex and one she kept to herself. That her father was a spy. That he had used his family as cover for his clandestine activities. That his secret life on behalf of the state had afforded him an opportunity to enjoy a secret life of the heart as well.
At fifteen, while the Wallinger family were living in Egypt, Rachel had come home early from school to find her father kissing another woman in the kitchen of their house in Cairo. She had walked into the garden, looked up at the house, and seen them together. She had recognized the woman as a member of staff from the Embassy. In that moment, her entire understanding of family life had been obliterated. Her father was transformed from a man of strength and dignity, a man she trusted and whom she adored with all her heart, into a stranger who would betray her mother and whose affection for his daughter was apparently meaningless and inchoate.
What had made the discovery even worse was her father’s realization that he had been spotted. The woman had left the house immediately. Paul had then come out into the garden and had tried to convince the teenage Rachel that he had merely been comforting a distraught colleague. Please do not mention this to your mother. You do not know what you have seen. In her state of shock, Rachel had agreed to the cover-up, but her complicity in the lie changed the nature of their relationship for good. She was not rewarded for keeping the secret; in fact, she was punished. Her father became distant. He withdrew his love. It was as though, as the years went by, he perceived Rachel as a threat. There were times when she felt that she was the one who had betrayed him.
What Rachel witnessed that day also affected the way she formed and conducted her own relationships in later life. As she grew older, she became aware of trusting no one; of playing games with prospective lovers; of testing men for evidence of duplicity and cunning. Intensely private and concealed, Rachel was habitually drawn to men whom she could not have or could not control. At the same time, particularly in her early twenties, she was often dismissive of those who showed her genuine kindness and affection.
In the months after the incident in Cairo, Rachel had made it her business to pry into her father’s personal affairs, developing an obsessive fascination with his behaviour. She had cross-checked dates in his diaries; investigated ‘friends’ to whom he had introduced her at seemingly benign family gatherings; eavesdropped on telephone calls whenever she found herself passing her father’s office at home or standing outside her parents’ bedroom.
Then, years later, a reminder of the day that had changed everything.
Only weeks before her father’s death, Rachel had discovered a letter that he had written to yet another mistress. Sent to the family flat in Gloucester Road. Rachel had recognized the stationery, the handwriting, but not the name of the person to whom the letter had been originally addressed in Croatia: Cecilia Sandor. The envelope was marked ‘Address Unknown’ and there was a demand for excess postage. Rachel had intercepted it before her mother had looked through the morning post.
She could still recite parts of the letter from memory:
I cannot stop thinking about you, Cecilia. I want your body, your mouth, the taste of you,
