The French Girl(78)

My eyes fly to his face, which is filled both with shock and excited importance at being the first to deliver news. “Actually, no,” I say thoughtfully, mulling it over as I unbutton my coat. “I can’t. There must be some mistake. What type of fraud?”

“Fiddling his expenses.” He shakes his head, disbelief tracking across his face. “I can’t believe it either.”

“His expenses? Jesus. What could he get out of that? A couple of thousand a year, maybe?” Caro, I think. Caro. Then I check myself: would she really? If it is her, she’s playing a very dangerous game. But if it’s not her, it’s a hell of a coincidence. I consider for a moment approaching . . . who? Gordon? Caro’s father is hardly going to take kindly to the suggestion that he investigate whether his daughter is framing her rival.

“A couple of thousand, absolute max,” Paul is saying. “Not even that, I would think. And he’s in line for a pay rise of a few hundred thousand if he makes partner. Why on earth would he jeopardize that? He’s just not that stupid. But”—he frowns—“if it was a simple mistake surely they would have cleared it up straightaway. This’ll scratch him off the slate. For this year at least.”

One year is all Caro needs. “He’s being stitched up,” I say flatly.

Paul looks at me sharply. “That’s quite a statement.”

I shrug and avoid his eyes by pulling out my chair and switching on my monitor. “I’m just saying it looks that way to me.”

He continues to look at me, something odd in his eyes. “Did you go to the gym or something?” he asks abruptly. “Your hair is wet.”

I put a hand to my head. He’s right. Did I forget to dry it after my shower? My glance at the window reveals bright sunshine outside, so it didn’t rain on me on the way to work. It occurs to me that I can’t actually remember getting to work. “My hair dryer is broken,” I improvise.

“Oh,” he says, but I can feel he’s still watching me.

“What?” I say, looking up from my screen.

“Nothing.” He gives an odd shrug. “It’s just . . . Julie’s a bit worried about you. She said you hadn’t been acting yourself.” He pauses, then his words trip out over themselves. “I just wondered if everything is okay. With the murder investigation, I mean.”

“Oh. Well, that’s all fine. Nothing to worry about. I’m just . . . feeling a bit run-down, is all. I think I’m getting a virus or something.” My words don’t seem to be enough to convince him; something else seems to be required. I try a smile, and it does the trick. He looks relieved.

“Oh. Okay. Well, don’t give it to me; I’ve got a wedding to go to at the weekend.”

His words ring in my head as I pull up the files for my ten o’clock. She said you hadn’t been acting yourself. Acting. Is that all we humans ever really do? Act, and play, and present an approximation of something that becomes ourselves?

I touch my wet hair self-consciously, frowning. If acting is what’s required, it seems that at present I need to pull out a better performance.



* * *



—

Modan again.

I sit in a chair in front of the now-familiar chipped desk and watch him apply his easy, dangerous charm to my lawyer, whilst I grit my teeth semi-consciously. If this was all over, could I come to like this man, this man who wants to be my best friend’s other half? I wonder. I respect him, I admire him even, but perhaps I will never be able to hold a conversation with him without the sense that he’s quietly analyzing, observing, filing information away for a rainy day. Though it’s unlikely to be a big problem for me given that my future social life contains a lifetime of inmates.

I shudder. Even my own black humor is failing to amuse me today.

“Miss Channing?” From the attention both Modan and my lawyer are giving me, it may not be the first time Modan has spoken my name. He’s looking at me quizzically, and I almost think I detect sympathy in his chocolate brown eyes, but I can’t imagine why that should be. How can he do his job if he feels sympathy for those he believes to be guilty? For some reason this puts me in mind of Caro, and my own ambivalence toward her: feeling sorry for her, almost liking her at times, yet so often barely able to stand her . . . I think again of the Russian dolls. “Shall we begin?”

And so we do. Ms. Streeter, wearing a different lipstick in an equally garish color but thankfully much less greasy in application, does some wonderful verbal gymnastics, laying the groundwork; Modan is, I think, genuinely appreciative of her professional skill. At the end of her monologue, one might be forgiven for pushing for instant canonization of one Kate Channing, on account of her selfless and unstinting cooperation. Except that we all know I’m about to sell someone down the river. And then it’s my turn, to do just that.

I know I can’t match Ms. Streeter for linguistic virtuosity, but it turns out I don’t need to. She shepherds me gently in the right direction each time: a sentence pushing me here, a comment tugging me there, the words flowing from her mouth to jostle against me, encircling me as if they alone can keep me safe. Modan, for his part, is unexpectedly kind. I’m completely lost as to the subtext of this meeting. When I baldly declare Caro’s cocaine smuggling, Modan pauses for the merest second, then continues fluently. He doesn’t dispute that Caro put the drugs in my bag; he simply asks about my own cocaine use, as my lawyer warned he would. I say I don’t, repeat that I never have; I tell him he can ask anyone, they will all say the same, and he nods briefly. I don’t know if that means he agrees with me or that he will indeed ask around; perhaps both. He asks about other drug use: I confess the marijuana dabbles, but he’s clearly not the least bit interested in that. Caro’s cocaine habits come under discussion, but I don’t have much to say. I don’t know how much she used back then, and I don’t know how much she uses now, though I rather suspect she does still use from time to time. But I have nothing to base that on, and I tell Modan so. We talk about the others at the farmhouse, whether any of them used drugs—but if they have I’ve never seen or heard of it. Would any of them have shared the cocaine with Caro that night? I think about it. I can’t say for sure, but it seems unlikely to me. Alcohol was the drug of choice for the rest of us. I think of Seb, unable to take his eyes off that slim brown ankle. Not just alcohol. Sex is a drug, too.