On the screen is a shot of a tall woman in a scarf entering an eatery.
“The camera keeps information on all the pictures,” she says. “Date and time. So I ask again: who are you?”
“I followed you. It’s true. But for your security. To look after you because clearly you were not looking after yourself.”
“And this Chief Inspector Brower?”
Knox assumed he’d gotten away with that misspeak at the school. Her bringing it up now is a surprise. He’s underestimated her.
“Brower?” He won’t lie to her. Can’t tell the truth.
“He’s your boss, isn’t he? You’re police.”
Knox grins. Wishes he hadn’t. “No.”
“Get out!”
“Listen to me. I was following you. Yes. To protect you. After your meeting, I tailed that woman,” he says, pointing to the laptop, “into a park where she met with a man. As it turned out, a cop.
“Brower’s men caught me spying on their inspector and brought me in,” he continues. “I had to talk my way out. It wasn’t easy.” The truth. “Brower wants the knot shop shut down as much as we do. Brower will work with us. I thought if the head of school called into the police’s main number, we might lose our hold on this, lose control of it. So I recommended Brower.”
“We never had control in the first place.”
“We have this guy who claimed to be Maja’s father. We’re ahead of everyone on this.”
“Not we,” she argues. “I . . . do . . . not . . . trust . . . you.”
“Don’t do this.” Dulwich’s warning echoes in his head. He adds, “Please.”
She answers with hurt eyes. There’s a boat motoring on a nearby canal, a barking dog several blocks away.
“Who is that woman?” he asks.
Her words slur. “I have very good instincts when it comes to people. My work depends on it. I was wrong about you. I know it in here,” she says. “I don’t know who you are, but I know when I’ve been lied to.”
“Who . . . is . . . she?”
“An activist. All right with you? Google her, if you want. Christina Jorgensen. Swedish. Has been fighting child exploitation, worldwide, for nearly a decade. She read my article, okay? If she meets with the police, what do I care? The woman should be sainted!”
He takes this in. Christina Jorgensen could have been watching the market stall where Grace got the tip that led to her assault. Jorgensen followed and saved Grace when the time came.
“We have a phone number for the man claiming to be Maja’s father at the school,” he says. “We—both of us!—have people who can help us with that. This impostor is one of them. Has to be. You understand how close we are? The first twenty-fours hours are critical.”
“You even talk like a cop.”
“I am not a cop.”
“A photographer?”
He answers only with his eyes.
“An agent?” Horrified.
“We can finish this. We can close this.”
“We? I don’t think so. You followed her, didn’t you?”
“Who?”
“Why bother asking? You’ll just lie to me anyway.” She revisits the wine bottle, sloshing more into her empty glass.
“Sonia . . . listen to me—”
“Shut up!” She fumbles with her phone and places it past the laptop face up. She plays a voice mail for him.
It takes Knox a moment to recognize the hysterical voice as that of Maja’s mother. “What have you done? I told you not to follow her. I told you to leave us al—”
“I called back. I recognized the caller ID and I called back.” She absorbs a long draught from the glass. “She never came home. Because . . . you followed her. Who the hell do you think—?”
“No! I did not follow her!”
“Just like you did not follow me?” The image on the laptop glares back at him.
“A friend’s house. School again.”
“No. Yasmina has checked everywhere. Gone. She has no idea where to start looking. She can’t contact the police, and she blames us.”
“We’ll get Maja back. But we have no time for this.” He motions between them. His mind is cluttered with prepared dialogue as he rehearses what comes next. He can drop her into his world but fears the shock would push her even further away. He can abandon her, accepting that he used her as best he could. Rutherford Risk is already running the impostor-father’s phone number. It’s the best lead they’ve had. All things come to a useful conclusion, including the Sonia Pangarkars. He hates that Dulwich could have foreseen this.
“You followed her and don’t have the balls to admit it.”
In a moment of clarity, he sees through the alcohol, through her.
“You blame yourself, not me,” he says.
“To hell with you.”
He can’t quite put his finger on it, but knows he’s scored a hit. “For writing the original story. For getting these girls into all this trouble.”
“You’re an asshole.”
“A photograph?” he says, thinking aloud now. “Captioning a photograph? That would be at the request of your editor.”
“You little shit.”
“You filed the story on Maja.”
Her eyes burn into him.
“You filed, and then Maja went missing.”
“No connection. Coincidence.”
He waits her out, both impatience and intolerance gnawing at him. He enjoys getting drunk as much as the next guy, but has little time for drunks. He’s never claimed to be fair. He eases the glass from her and sets it down.
“I filed the story around four this afternoon. It cannot possibly be the cause.” She sounds resolved to the likelihood she’s the cause of it all.
“You sent in one of my pictures without asking me?” It’s important to remain in character, but he’s losing John Steele to Knox’s temper. How much of this conversation will she even remember?
She seems to have just noticed Knox. “The grandmother. The cigarette by the window.”
“Which one? Which shot?”
“What do you mean, which one?” she asks.
“Are you insane?” It escapes before he can prevent it.
“There’s nothing in that shot to give Maja away. It’s a silhouette.”
“There’s everything to give Maja away,” he counters. “It took three tries to get the f-stop right to account for the depth of field. In the first two shots, the background was in focus—a store sign across the street.”
Her skin tone turns a sickly yellow. He reaches for the trash bin, but it’s too late. She vomits onto the floor. Knocks the laptop and phone into the bedding and slips off the berth, heaving a second time, this time on target.
He catches her as she’s heading for the floor. “You didn’t know.”
“Oh, God . . .”
He moves her out to the head. The proprietor’s in the galley and tries to pretend he doesn’t see them, hasn’t heard them arguing.
Knox helps her out of the stained top. Pulls the bottoms down and places the clothes into the sink as he turns on the water and steps out of the room. The showerhead is in one corner, a drain in the wood floor.
Knox approaches the proprietor and asks for cleaning supplies, and after some discussion accepts the offer for the proprietor’s wife to clean the forward berth. When Sonia comes out wrapped in a towel, Knox directs her into his room. He’s collected her laptop and phone as well as his camera. Hasn’t left anything for his hostess to come across.
A more sober Sonia sits on his berth, barely covered by the small towel. He offers her a T-shirt he’s been sleeping in. She declines.
“She never came home. Can you imagine?” She whispers, but Knox does not like ears so close. He’s already planning to move them again.