'You wanted to sleep.' They climbed out of the car and walked together around the back of the house and into the kitchen.
Katherine was there, taking warm plates out of the stove.
She looked over her shoulder and smiled at Freeman. 'How was it?'
'Perfect. What's cooking?'
'Beef stew. Is that okay?'
'Sounds great.'
'Stew okay for you, Mersiha?' Katherine asked.
Freeman noticed that Mersiha looked at him before answering, as if acknowledging her earlier promise. 'Lovely. Do you want any help?'
'It's almost ready,' Katherine said, clearly pleased by the offer.
'You could drain the carrots for me.'
Mersiha put a lid on a saucepan of sliced carrots and poured the water off as Freeman laid the table. He winked at his daughter and she winked back.
Later, after Mersiha had gone to her room to get on with some homework, Freeman and Katherine settled down in front of the living-room. Katherine was reading an old copy of Vogue, her mind clearly not on the magazine. She ran her index finger around her tumbler of brandy and Coke. A lit cigarette lay in the ashtray, untouched.
'Penny for them?' Freeman asked.
Katherine's head jerked up. 'What?' she snapped. Then she saw his look of concern and her face softened. 'Sorry, Tony. I was miles away.'
'Anything I can help with?'
She shook her head. 'I was actually thinking about Lennie Nelson, believe it or not. I was wondering what my father would have made of him.'
'He'd probably have given him very short shrift. Your father didn't appreciate outsiders sticking their noses in his business.
I know he thought long and hard before allowing me in.'
'That's true,' she said, smiling at the memory. 'He had you pegged as a fortune hunter, remember?'
Freeman doubted that he'd ever forget. Katherine's father had either scared away or bought off all her previous suitors, and he'd attempted the same with Freeman. He had never told Katherine about the old man's last attempt to drive him away. It had been in the study of the Williamson mansion in Annapolis, a book-lined room with a roaring fire and a Chinese rug on the floor. It seemed to Freeman that he'd spent a long time staring at the blue hand-woven silk rug and its images of dragons and snakes as the old man had outlined his terms: a cheque for fifteen thousand dollars and a one-way ticket back to Scotland, in exchange for agreeing never to see Katherine again. The old man hadn't been quite that direct – there had been a long preamble about the family, their desire to see Katherine married to someone of her own class, someone of her own intellectual standing, someone who could keep her in the lifestyle to which she'd become accustomed – and there was a lot of ego-massaging, about how Freeman was a nice guy, salt of the earth, hard-working and no doubt totally trustworthy, but that really he wasn't right for the only child of one of Maryland's most powerful industrialists. Not to say richest. Freeman could still picture the rug in his mind.
'Still, you won him over, didn't you?' Katherine's words jogged him out of his reverie.
Freeman smiled and nodded. He couldn't remember exactly what he'd said to the old man, not the precise words. He knew that he couldn't show anger, or hatred, that any show of emotion would prove only that Katherine's father was right, that he was unworthy of her hand. He explained that he had been put in an impossible position, that he had no wish to take her away from her family, and that he knew her well enough to understand that it would be an impossible task anyway. Katherine's love for her family, and her father in particular, went far beyond anything she could ever feel for a lover. So if her family rejected him, he had no alternative but to walk away. The old man had smiled and reached for his cheque book, but Freeman had shaken his head. The money wasn't important, he'd said. The money was nothing. Freeman's family owned several farms in the north of Scotland, and while he'd never be as rich as Katherine's father, he'd certainly never be short of money. It was the first and only time he'd spoken about family money with the old man. He had turned on his heels and walked out of the study, sure that it was the last time he'd ever set foot in the mansion. He was wrong.
The following day Katherine phoned, inviting him to dinner.
With her father.
The old man never mentioned the discussion in the study, and Freeman could never work out whether the offer to pay him off had been a genuine one, or if it was just the final test to see whether he really loved Katherine. Whatever, the old man had given his blessing and six months later they'd married.
'Yeah, eventually I did,' he said. 'I doubt if Nelson would have been able to. Your father would have run him out of town.'
'Lynched him, more like,' Katherine said. She was joking, but her father had views that wouldn't have gone down well in present-day politically correct America.
'I think we should give Nelson the benefit of the doubt,'
Freeman said.
'We'll see,' she mused, picking up her tumbler and looking at him over the top. 'Did you speak to Mersiha?'
'About what?'
'Don't give me that wide-eyed innocent look, Freeman. You know what about. Whatever you said, she was as nice as pie tonight.'
'Nah, it's your cooking.'
Katherine sniffed pointedly. 'I hope that's not a crack about my culinary abilities. Wasn't the stew thawed enough?'
'The stew was thawed just fine. My compliments to the chef.'
He ducked as the magazine sailed through the air, missing his head by inches.
'By die way,' Katherine said. 'Did you ever ask her about that cartridge I found?'
Freeman shrugged. 'The opportunity didn't came up,' he said.
'But I had an idea.'
'Uh-oh.' She sipped her drink and waited for him to continue.
'I'd like to take her away for a few days. A sort of vacation.'
'Father-daughter bonding?'
'It went really well today, Kat. She spoke about her brother for the first time. I think she's starting to open up.'
'And you want to go alone? Just the two of you?'
'If that's okay with you. It would just be for a few days. We could all take a vacation together later on in the year if you like, but yeah, I'd like to do this on my own. I really think it'll help.'
'Where would you go?'
Freeman leant forward. 'That's my brainwave,' he said eagerly. 'I'm going to find somewhere like Bosnia. Somewhere that'll remind her of her home. Mountains. Forests. Farmland. If I can get her in that environment, but also an environment where she feels safe, I think it might set her thinking. And talking.'
Katherine frowned. 'I don't know, Tony. It might be a bit much for her.'
'I don't think so. Besides, I'll be careful. I'm not planning to put her through the third degree. I'll take her hiking. Fishing maybe. And we'll talk. If she wants to. Hell, I can't do any worse than Art Brown. His files were devoid of any insight into her psyche. Plenty of observations, but he hasn't a clue as to why she's the way she is. I'm sure I can do better than that.'