The English Girl: A Novel

footfalls of the captors as they withdrew, trying to determine their number. Then a heavy door slammed shut with the finality of a coffin lid. After that, there was no sound at all. Only the smell. Heavy and nauseatingly sweet. The smell of a human being in captivity.
    Gabriel sat motionless and silent, convinced he had been left in the room alone. But after a few seconds, a hand removed the hood from his head. It belonged to a young woman, gaunt, pale as porcelain, yet still exquisitely beautiful.
    “I’m Madeline Hart,” she said. “Who are you?”

26
    NORTHERN FRANCE
    F or nine days Gabriel had struggled to paint her face clearly in his mind. She was a charcoal sketch, a name in an impressive file, a favor for an old friend. And now at long last she sat before him, the captive for whom he had tortured and killed, posed as if for her own portrait. She wore a dark blue tracksuit and canvas shoes with no laces. She was thinner than she had been in the videotape—thinner even than in the last proof-of-life photo—and her hair had grown at least an inch in length since her disappearance. It was combed straight back from her forehead and hung limply down the center of her back. There was a hard edge to her cheekbones and dark patches like bruises beneath her blue-gray eyes. Her hands were folded neatly in her lap. Her wrists were all bone and sinew; her nails were gnawed to the quick. Even so, she managed to convey a sense of dignity and command. It was clear why Jeremy Fallon had declared her destined for a seat in Parliament—and why Jonathan Lancaster had risked everything for her. Gabriel realized suddenly that he had, too.
    “I’m here to bring you out, Madeline,” he said, responding finally to her original question. “This is part of the endgame.”
    “You wanted to see whether I was still alive?”
    He hesitated for a moment and then nodded.
    “Well, I am alive,” she said. “At least, I think I am. Sometimes I’m not so certain. I don’t know the time, the day of the week, or the month. I don’t even know where I am.”
    “I think you’re in France,” said Gabriel. “Somewhere in the north.”
    “You think?”
    “I was brought here in the trunk of a car.”
    “I’ve spent a great deal of time in the trunk of a car,” she said sympathetically. “And I think I remember a boat ride a few hours after they kidnapped me, but I can’t be sure. They gave me a shot of something. After that, it was all a blur.”
    Gabriel assumed that their conversation was being monitored. Therefore, he did not tell Madeline that she had been brought from Corsica to the mainland aboard a thirty-six-foot motor yacht called Moondance , piloted by a smuggler named Marcel Lacroix, and accompanied by the man with whom she had lunched earlier that afternoon at Les Palmiers. Gabriel had many questions he wanted to ask her about the man he knew only as Paul. When did she meet him? What was the nature of their relationship? Instead, he asked if she could recall the circumstances of her kidnapping.
    “It happened on the road between Piana and Calvi.” She stopped herself. “Have you ever been?”
    “To Corsica?”
    “Yes.”
    “I’ve never set foot there.”
    “It’s quite lovely, really,” she said, sounding very English. “In any case, I was riding a little faster than I should have been, the way I always ride. A car pulled in front of me after a blind turn. I managed to squeeze the brakes, but I still hit the side of the car quite hard. It took an eternity for all the scrapes and bruises to heal.” She rubbed the back of her hand. “How long has it been?” she asked. “How long have they been holding me?”
    “Five weeks.”
    “Is that all? It seems longer.”
    “Have they treated you well?”
    “Do I look as though I’ve been treated well?”
    He didn’t answer her.
    “I’ve eaten nothing but bread and cheese and canned vegetables. Once they gave me a few scraps of chicken,” she added, “but it made me sick, so they never gave it to me again. I asked for a radio but they refused. I asked for books to read or a newspaper so I could keep up with what’s going on in the world, but they refused that, too.”
    “They didn’t want you reading about yourself.”
    “What does the world know about me?”
    “You’re missing—that’s all.”
    “And what about that dreadful video they forced me to make?”
    “No one’s seen it,” he said. “No one but the prime minister and his closest