Sophie knew he was telling the truth; her mother had told her he had kept his side of the bargain, for the next few years had sent money which made it possible for them to live comfortably until she married Franz.
‘Maybe that’s true, but the price was too high. You could at least have let my mother know how Anya was! All these years, she was dying to know what she looked like, how she was doing at school, if you had only sent a photo once in a while. But total silence was cruel.’
‘It was part of the bargain. Her child was dead, as far as everyone was concerned, and she had to keep up that pretence, had to believe it herself. I didn’t want her to think about Cathy.’ He stared insistently at Sophie. ‘And you have to stop thinking about her, too! For her sake, as well as your own and your mother’s.’
‘Don’t threaten me!’
‘I’m just warning you . . .’
‘Do you think I don’t know why someone tried to push me under a train!’
He went very pale, his eyes alarmed. ‘I swear on my word of honour I had nothing to do with whatever happened to you in the subway. I only heard about it afterwards.’
She had no doubt he was a liar, but if this was acting it was good. The best. Sophie looked at him uncertainly, wondering how she could believe him, yet half-convinced.
‘But there are people who are not too happy about your interference, at this precise moment,’ he said very quietly. ‘There’s a lot of money riding on me, you know. I have powerful friends, wealthy friends, who are prepared to back my bid for the presidency – and they are not men who have many scruples about ways and means.’
She shivered. ‘You are threatening me.’
‘A warning isn’t a threat. And anyway, if you care at all about Cathy you’ll leave her alone!’
‘I care about my mother more than anything else. My mother needs to see her – to know that she is OK, that she’s happy.’
‘Of course she’s happy, she’s married, she loves her husband, of course she’s happy! You don’t know what you’re doing. Go back to the Czech Republic and forget about the past. You have a life of your own to live. You’re a clever girl – why not start your own business back home? I’d be happy to help you. How much would you need?’
‘I don’t want your money! You can’t buy me!’ Sophie had come here to America on a quest and she wasn’t yet ready to give up that quest. It wasn’t simply that she had to fulfil the promise she had made to her dying mother. The truth had changed the way she saw her life. She was in search of something indefinable; in search of that first happiness, the family she had lost all those years ago, her mother, most of all, until she had remarried and built herself a new family, and the dead father and dead sister whom death had made unchanging, who had never deserted her the way her mother had. Finding out that Anya was alive somewhere had shaken the kaleidoscope of time, whirled the coloured fragments of her life into a new pattern, strange, bewildering, making her see herself and the past in an entirely new light.
‘Is there a man in your life back home? If you were thin
king of getting married, you would need somewhere to live, wouldn’t you? I could do a lot for you, Sophie.’
‘I just want you to help me meet my sister,’ she stubbornly repeated. ‘I promise I won’t tell her anything, not without telling you first, but I must meet her, talk to her. You owe me that.’
He lost his temper then, snarling at her. ‘I don’t owe you anything! Stay away from me and my family or you’ll regret it!’
‘You don’t frighten me. I’m going to see Anya whatever you say or do – nobody is going to stop me.’
He stared at her, his face clenched in rage, then walked out, slamming the door after him.
Steve walked out of the hotel lift. Under his arm he held the big buff envelope containing the enlarged photographs of Sophie’s family. He had called in on Lilli half an hour ago, given her back the big black wheel, shown her the photographs – but they had meant no more to her than the originals. He could tell from her wry expression that she thought he was barking up the wrong tree, and maybe he was. But he had this strong sense that the photos meant something – or why would the men who ransacked Sophie’s room have taken them? Steve always played his hunches. In his business, instincts could mean the difference between getting a story and missing it.
On his way to his room he heard the click of a door opening. A door across the corridor from his own. His whole body jerked in alarm as Don Gowrie came out from the room, glanced quickly, almost furtively, both ways. What the hell had he been doing in Sophie’s room?
At that instant a door on Steve’s right opened and a blonde swayed there, giving him the impression she was holding on to the door to stop herself falling down. A transparent black nylon négligé clung to her like a second skin, showing the whole of her full-breasted, long-legged showgirl body as if it was naked.
‘Hey, bud, got a lemon?’ she throatily murmured, and Steve blinked.
‘Sorry? What did you say?’
The blonde gave him what was obviously meant to be a seductive smile. ‘I was just going to have another gin, but I’m plumb out of lemons.’ She looked him up and down through half-closed eyes with improbably long lashes. ‘Hey, you’re cute – come on in and have a drink with me.’
‘Sorry, I’m busy just now – ring Room Service.’
‘Well, fuck you,’ she said, but Steve was already loping away towards Sophie’s room, his heart thudding with anxiety.
There was now no sign of Gowrie. Steve banged on her door with a clenched fist and kept on banging until the door was yanked open and he almost banged on her nose.
Relief made him feel sick; his head had been full of images that terrified him, seeing her alive made him suddenly angry.