Perhaps, if this was wrapped up by the morning, he’d amble down Fifth Avenue and visit one of those terrifying shops that made him, a scion of the nation’s intelligence establishment, feel like a straw-chewing rube with cow flop on his heels. He’d turn his mind away from the figure on the price tag and get Adrienne something nice. Something that showed he did think of her, did find time for her alongside his work. Though an expensive present might make it seem like he was trying too hard. Giordano had no feel for the intricacies of gift-giving and social rituals in general, and he was the first to admit it.
He got a bottle of mineral water from the minibar in the back of the Pontiac and opened his briefcase. From it he pulled a sheaf of printed papers. He wasn’t a complete Luddite like any others of his generation, but he was old enough to experience discomfort from reading words on a screen for too long, and far preferred the printed word. Giordano had done the printouts himself, on his own printer, once he’d received the email. He’d got it not from Naomi but from another source.
John Purkiss. Everything the Company had on him, gleaned from contacts they had inside the British Secret Service. One of the many interesting things about Purkiss was his odd status with SIS. It wasn’t clear from the information on the printouts if Purkiss was still an employee of the organisation or not. What was clear was that his role was an unusual, perhaps unique, one. He was in effect SIS’s Internal Affairs, a one-man department tasked with cleaning the organisation’s stables. His existence was suspected by many but apparently known of by relatively few; and in the legend that had grown up he was known as the Ratcatcher.
Which meant he wasn’t in the US to kill Company men, and had probably had no hand in the Amsterdam killings either. He was here to find the perpetrator. And that meant the killer was British Intelligence.
Which threw up a whole assortment of new questions.
Like most veteran spooks, Giordano appreciated the profound value of proxies. Proxies to fight your wars, to buffer your losses. He’d cut his teeth as a young operative in the end game of the Cold War back in the late seventies and early eighties, when the Company and the Soviets had slugged it out in Angola and then Nicaragua at one remove. Spying had always used middle men, down to the simplest cut-out in the transmission of a coded message. But proxies could be used in other ways, too.
Purkiss looked like a professional. In which case, Giordano intended to make use of his skills. Let the Brit do the legwork and lead him to the perpetrator.
Twenty-Six
Interstate 95
Tuesday 21 May, 12.40 am
The display on the dashboard said it was nearly a quarter to one. Nina didn’t know where they were, paid no attention to the signs that flashed by, the landscape beyond the road. They’d bypassed Washington, that she was sure of.
Beside her Pope hadn’t spoken for a full ten minutes. The silence had gone beyond uncomfortable and felt now like a canvas shroud.
Nina needed the bathroom, but wasn’t going to break the silence with a banality like that. She clasped the violin closer.
As if reading her mind — again — Pope said, ‘We need to stop for petrol.’
Even though he was English, the word sounded jarring to her ear.
After about a mile the red lighting of a Texaco forecourt grew through the rain. He turned off the road and pulled up beside a pump. Switched off the engine.
His face was turned to her. ‘You can go inside, to use the ladies’ room. If you need to.’
Nina suddenly wished she’d glanced at the fuel gauge while the engine was turned on. Had he really needed to stop, or was he testing her, to see if she’d run away or tell the attendant she’d been kidnapped or something? But she hadn’t been kidnapped, and there was no reason to think she had. She’d been rescued, after all.
‘Sure,’ she said quietly, and snapped the seatbelt free. After a moment’s hesitation she left the violin in the footwell.
There was no pump attendant at this hour. Inside the shop she watched Pope through the window, working the pump. The bored-looking college boy behind the counter gave her a quick once over, then nodded at the restroom doors.
Afterwards she lingered in the shop, staring out at Pope. Thinking about what he’d said, and what she’d have to confront.
Her father hadn’t killed her mother. It was beyond the ability of her mind to consider. They’d fought, she remembered, especially after coming to the island. There’d been times, she recalled now, that her mother had pushed Nina behind her, said things to her father like this is no life for her, she needs to be with other kids her age; but she was certain her mother had never been hit. As an older child of ten or eleven, when adults’ lies were easier to detect than ever, Nina had never listened to awkward excuses for black eyes or bruises, because there had been none.
And yet… what did she really know about her mother’s death? Her father had told Nina she’d died in the storm, in what she later came to learn was Hurricane Mitch. Her grandmother had confirmed this on the few occasions she’d alluded to it. Nina had never thought to question the story, never considered there might be any reason to investigate the circumstances of her mother’s disappearance herself. Had her grandmother been involved too in a cover up? Or had the old woman herself been lied to?
Pope went up to the window to pay rather than coming into the shop, almost as if he respected Nina’s right to be alone with her thoughts. She walked back outside, feeling the midnight chill bite her. Back in the car she waited.
He started the engine, sat for a moment without pulling away.
‘Do you trust me?’ he said.
Because you’ve just demonstrated that you trust me, Nina thought. She said, ‘Yes.’
‘Then I’ll explain.’
*
Afterwards she sat pressed back as though melded to her seat, feeling as though she never wanted to move again.
Pope’s sentences had been like a collection of tiny numbing needles, each one insinuating itself into her and becoming part of her, never to be separated. The emotions began to blur until they were indistinguishable, a warm fug like the layers of anaesthetic she remembered disappearing under when she’d had a wisdom tooth extracted at seventeen.
Through it all, she was aware of a notion — not a feeling, but an abstract concept, sharp as ice in its clarity — that she had difficulty putting a name to at first. It came to her in the silence after Pope had finished.
Vindication.
The Watchers had been there. Perhaps not literally all the time, but often enough that her natural fearfulness had supplied them when they were absent. The voices, she accepted, were pathological. A product of misfiring neurones or faulty levels of neurotransmitters or something. But again, the voices tended to appear when her levels of stress were exceptionally high, and wasn’t that usually when she felt most watched?
For years, as far back as she could remember, Nina had worn guilt like a straitjacket, and she hadn’t understood why. Perhaps part of it was an irrational, child-like guilt at having failed to keep her mother alive, against the power of the storm. But for the first time now she recognised that most it was guilt about being alone; about keeping people at a distance, even those who were trying to help and understand her. And about resisting the impulse, sometimes almost overwhelming, to reach out to her father, to penetrate the incomprehensible wall he’d built between himself and the child he’d left behind.
The guilt loosened itself palpably, and it was as though her very chest was expanding, drawing in air hungrily as if it had been starved. From having been fused to her seta, she now felt as though she was about to float outwards, filling the confines of the car and spilling beyond.