had. “Maybe I’ll look around,” he said.
Karen put her head doubtfully to one side. “Promise?” she said.
“Not today,” said Deaken. “I’ve actually got a client today. I’ll start tomorrow.”
Karen stood and swept the crumbs she had created into her napkin and then cleared the rest of the breakfast things from the table. “I’ve been thinking,” she said, from the sink.
“About what?”
“Getting a job.”
She turned as she said it, conscious of the effect it would have. She lifted a rubber-gloved hand against any outburst, washing bubbles dripping onto the floor in front of her. “I’m not trying to start another fight,” she said quickly. “I’m bored with nothing to do. Honestly. And it would help; you’ve got to admit it would help. Financially, I mean.”
“I said I’d look around,” said Deaken tightly. Switzerland was packed with doctors and psychiatrists; maybe it wouldn’t take long. He wouldn’t tell Karen; she had once thought of him as strong and forceful…
“That’s got nothing to do with it,” she said. “Why on earth shouldn’t I work?”
“Because I don’t want a wife of mine having to,” he said, recognizing as he spoke the same pride that kept him from telling her of his fear of a breakdown.
“That’s rubbish!” she said. “I might have to soon.” She dried and creamed the hands of which she was so proud and began shaping her nails with an emery board.
“Wait. Please,” he said.
“What for?”
“Let’s see what I can find.”
“Haven’t we waited long enough?”
She stared up from her manicure and for a moment Deaken thought his wife was going to continue arguing. Instead she made a half shrug with her shoulders and went back to her filing. He got up from the table, took a cloth and began wiping the crockery she had stacked into the draining tray. He was alongside her, but she didn’t look at him.
“Why don’t we meet for lunch?” he said.
“We can’t…” she began and then stopped. “What time are you meeting this client?” she said instead.
“Eleven.”
“What about?”
“I don’t know. I can’t imagine that it’ll go on until lunchtime.” Nothing had lasted that long, from the time he had arrived in Switzerland.
“Why don’t I ring you around twelve thirty, just in case?”
“Fine,” agreed Deaken. They had returned to the elaborate politeness of an hour before.
Because he was meeting a new client, the first for a month, Deaken wore the better of his two suits, the one with least shine at the seat and elbows. He returned to the kitchen from the bedroom for a cloth to give his shoes a final buff. When he straightened, Karen came forward and adjusted the knot of his tie. He reached out for her, feeling the stir of excitement at the touch of her body beneath the thin housecoat.
“Maybe today will be the big one,” she said.
“Thanks,” he said.
“What for?”
“Being kind.”
She stretched up to kiss him. “Twelve thirty,” she said.
“I’ll be waiting.”
Outside the apartment Deaken hesitated, at once aware that it had grown hotter since he had been out for the breakfast bread. He set out towards the water, turning left almost immediately up the rue de Rhone and then right, along a cross-street to take him to the avenue Pictet de Rochemont. It was too expensive an office, even huddled as it was like some afterthought atop the grander suites of bankers and accountants, but Deaken had wanted an impressive address. A mistake, he thought-like so much else. He went in through the main entrance, with its smoked glass and potted plants and uniformed doormen, feeling like an interloper, and took the lift as far as it would go. He emerged on the eighth floor, where the offices were already diminishing in size, and walked up the stairway to the top floor, which had been added at some time like icing to a cake. Here the flooring was linoleum, not marble or cork or tile, and the windows fronting the corridor had the smeared look of glass cleaned once a week by a charwoman with little enthusiasm. Deaken’s office was the fourth along to the right but he stopped at the second because it was the one that Elian Fochet occupied. When he entered she was bent over a newspaper crossword.
“Anything?” he said.
“An offer for an out-of-hours answering service, without which no successful business is supposed to be able to operate, and a handout from American Express on the benefit of taking cards against the firm for employees’ use,” recited the woman. She hesitated and added, “Everyone got the same.”
“Thanks,” said Deaken.
“You’ve an appointment at eleven,” she said. Elian Fochet was mousy-haired, absolutely flat-chested, and wore butterfly spectacles that had gone out of fashion years before. Deaken thought she looked exactly what she was, the shared secretary/receptionist for a group of people hanging on by their fingertips to some pretension of business. He wondered if she was a virgin.
“I know,” he said.
“Do you want me to serve coffee?”
“No, thank you,” said Deaken. Her coffee was appalling.
“It won’t be any trouble.”
“No, really.”
She offered him the circulars but he shook his head. She threw them in the waste basket.
He continued on to his own office, unlocked the door and stood at the entrance. The cheap carpet still looked presentable. So did the couch along one wall and the matching chair in front of the desk. He could have got away with the imitation black leather chair, high-backed and padded-armed, behind it, but the desk was ply and looked it, despite the attempt to disguise it with varnish. The inset, too, was clearly plastic and not leather. Nothing he could do about it now though. From a bottom drawer of the desk Deaken took a duster and wiped the desk top, then the sparsely filled filing cabinet and after that the windowsill. He slanted the Venetian blinds, lessening the light coming into the room, and then looked over his shoulder. Better, he decided. Not much better. He dusted the telephone which rarely rang, returned the cloth to its drawer, and from the one above took out his clean notepad; there were six pencils in a cup to the right, all needle sharp. That’s how he’d occupied the last hour of the previous day.
It was ridiculous to continue like this. He had to do something. And do it soon. The erosion of self-confidence had been insidious. A run of bad trial results-not surprising considering the sort of trials they were-and he had suddenly decided to take a rest. Expand my experience in civil litigation, he’d told everyone. Except that he hadn’t been offered any civil litigation and doubts about his own ability had intensified, until now he wasn’t sure if he could handle a case even if it were offered. Help, he thought, that’s what he needed. Professional medical help. There would be no reason for Karen to know he was having treatment. Easy enough to arrange appointments and sessions during the day.
What about the real cause of the rows and their increasingly strained relationship? He was frightened of parenthood, Deaken admitted to himself. Of seeing Karen balloon into awkward ugliness, nine months of worrying whether the child would be bom properly formed and not with some mental or physical disability. Was he unusual, thinking like that? Unnatural even? He knew Karen was determined to become pregnant; just as he was determined against it. Get the job settled first, he thought. The baby could come later. Richard Deaken, on the run again.
Because of the glass fronting he was aware of the shadowed approach, even before the peremptory knock on the door. Deaken just managed to stand before the man got into the room. He was tall and broad-shouldered, with clipped fair hair and a sun-tanned, open face; the sort of man to play rugby or tennis, Deaken thought.
One look encompassed the room and Deaken knew the shading from the Venetian blinds hadn’t worked. Shit, he thought.
The man offered his hand. “Rupert Underberg,” he said.
The contact was dry, businesslike; for the first time Deaken put the name in possible context. The accent
