intruder was in the kitchen. She felt his presence at the foot of the stairs but only spied him when she peered through a crack in the kitchen door, which was half open. She saw a patch of cream jacket, some back, a little shoulder, half an arm, an elbow. She tiptoed inside. He was facing the terrace entrance, his back to her. He was standing, as if expecting her. Perhaps he’d heard the Peugeot park; he couldn’t have seen her approach from the steps, not from any of the kitchen windows, and yet he seemed to know that she most often entered the farmhouse via the terrace.
Stephanie managed to place the cold metal tip of the SIG’s barrel against the nape of his neck before he stirred. When he did, it was nothing more than a gentle flinch. He made no attempt to turn around or to cry out with surprise. That was when she recognized the clipped, snow-white hair.
‘Hello, Miss Schneider.’ And the clipped Scottish accent. ‘Or should I say, Miss Patrick?’
You tell yourself it can’t be true. For once, you’re honest with yourself but your first reaction is denial. It has to be a mistake. Your mistake, somebody else’s, it doesn’t really matter. Any excuse will do when you can’t face the truth about yourself.
Everybody has a talent. This is what the cliché tells us. I think it depends on what you regard as a talent. When the lowest common denominator determines the threshold for that talent, almost anything can count; having a nice smile, being a good liar, not succumbing to obesity. Personally, though, I reject the idea that everybody has a gift. It’s rather like saying ‘art is for the people’. It isn’t. It’s for those who can appreciate it and understand it. It’s elitist. Just like talent.
Most people have no particular ability. Mediocrity is the only quality they have in abundance. I should know. For a long time, I was one of them. But that was before I discovered that there was an alternative me, that there was another world where I could rise above the rest and excel.
It’s one thing to discover you’re exceptional. It’s quite another to recognize that what makes you exceptional is unacceptable. What do you do when you finally see who you really are – what you really are – and it’s everything society rejects? You tell yourself it can’t be true. That’s what you do, that’s the first thing. And maybe it’s what you continue to do. But not me. I’d already lied to myself for long enough. When the moment came, I stopped pretending I was someone else and chose to be the real me instead. I chose to be honest.
Brutally honest.
‘How are you, Stephanie?’
Slowly, he turned round, his face emerging from her memory; ruddy skin stretched tightly across prominent bones, aquamarine eyes, that white hair. He was wearing a cream suit, a dark blue shirt open at the throat, a pair of polished black slip-ons.
‘I heard the rumours, of course. That Petra Reuter was back. Naturally, I didn’t believe them. But when it turned out that there was some substance to them, I assumed that someone had hijacked her identity in order to protect their own identity. Just as you once did.’ He squinted at her, perplexed, offended. ‘It never occurred to me that it might actually be you, the real Petra Reuter.’
Alexander was a man who believed mistakes were made by other people. That was why he was staring at her so intensely. He was looking for an answer.
‘I was sure that once you vanished, I would never hear of you again, let alone see you. But for more than two years, you were Petra. The question is, why?’
Stephanie said nothing.
‘And then you stopped. About eighteen months ago, wasn’t it? No reason, no warning. Again, the question is, why?’
Alexander. A man with no first name. A man she’d spent four years trying to forget.
‘What’s the matter? Cat got your tongue?’ He took a packet of Rothmans out of his jacket pocket. ‘How unlike you.’
Stephanie couldn’t help herself. ‘Fuck off.’
She’d wanted to stay silent. Now, Alexander had his reaction. ‘That’s more like it.’
She jabbed the gun against the bridge of his nose. ‘Get out.’
‘Are you familiar with the phrase “act in haste, repent at leisure”?’
‘Are you familiar with the phrase “I’m going to count to three”?’
He didn’t even blink.
‘You rented this property through the Braun-Stahl agency in Munich. You bought your Peugeot from Yves Monteanu, a dental technician from St Raphael. Did you know that his father was a Romanian dissident? He used to publish an underground pamphlet in Bucharest each month. All through the seventies and into the eighties. A brave but foolish –’
‘One.’
‘No, I don’t suppose you did,’ Alexander concluded. ‘But that would be because you didn’t do as much research as we did. You know what we’re like, though, how thorough we are. For instance, I know that you rarely stray further than Entrecasteaux or Salernes. I know you have a checking account with Crédit Lyonnais that receives fifty thousand francs a month. Which seems a lot, considering the life you’re leading. Each month, it’s from a different source that vanishes as soon as the transaction’s complete. A neat trick – one day, you’ll have to explain it to me. I also know that you’re having a relationship with Laurent Masson, a car mechanic from Marseille. I assume you know that Masson has an ex-wife …’
‘Two.’
‘… but I wonder whether he’s told you about his criminal record.’ Stephanie was betrayed by her expression. ‘I didn’t think so.’ Alexander took his time, making a play out of plucking a cigarette from the packet. He tapped it on the lid. ‘He’s a car thief. Three convictions to his name. Last time out, he got four months inside. That was when his wife decided she’d had enough. She moved out. Took everything with her; furniture, carpets, curtains, the lot. You can imagine his surprise on the day of his release when he got back home. Mind you, it must have made it easier just to walk away … there being nothing to walk away from.’
Stephanie increased the pressure of metal on skin.
Alexander met her stare fully. ‘Three?’
There was a moment where she could have done it. In her mind, there was nothing but static. It was fifty-fifty. She felt that Alexander sensed it too, yet he hadn’t backed down.
She eased the safety on. ‘What are you doing here?’
When she pulled the gun away, it left a pale, circular indentation over the bridge of his nose.
‘I guess Masson thought he’d come to a quiet little town like Salernes – or Entrecasteaux, for that matter – where nobody’d bother him. Where he could start to build a new life for himself. Just like you. Right?’
There was a briefcase on the kitchen table. He opened it and produced an A4-sized manila envelope, which he handed to her.
‘Take a look.’
Inside, there were about twenty photographs, half of them in black-and-white. The first was of a school playground, five girls in uniform, aged seven or eight. They were playing, laughing. From the grain of the print, Stephanie could tell that the photographer had used a zoom lens. For a few moments, the significance of the shot wasn’t apparent. But then she saw.
It was the hair that fooled her. Brown and thick, it was almost waist-length. Four years ago, it had been cropped short. She was tall, too, taller than the girls around her. As a four-year-old, she’d been small for her age. Now, she’d caught up with her school friends and surged ahead. The facial features began to chime; Christopher’s nose, Jane’s eyes.