I found that I was sitting on the ground, and still shaking, and didn’t know where to go.
Closed my eyes, closed my eyes.
Remembered
goddesses of the sun
comedy night in New York City, someone was sat next to me all the way, even though I cannot remember
remember
a man had set fire to a warehouse in Istanbul, and a woman had nearly burnt alive
and now only I remembered
no better than a fantasy, a thing not-shared, an experience made not-real because I
was the only one who knew
Luca Evard, drinking small beer in Brazil
I opened my eyes.
Did he think of me?
He thought of someone whose actions were my own, whose face, when he looked at it, bore my features, who had walked in places where my memories were and performed deeds which had shaped who I was now.
Whether such a one could be characterised as I, myself, I wasn’t sure. But it was something.
It was a start.
I went looking for help.
Chapter 31
From an internet café between the wealthy apartments and growing international hotels of Besiktas, I resurrected an untouched email address and sent a cry of help to someone I couldn’t remember.
Whether Parker would reply, I didn’t know, but I lived in hope.
Chapter 32
I ride the Istanbul metro, picking pockets as I go, and idly, between the faces, I think of Inspector Luca Evard.
Our relationship has not always been professional.
The first time I met him, he arrested me.
The second time, he’d come all the way to São Paulo to consult on my MO. I’d stolen $3.3 million of mixed jewels in an operation that had taken me seven months to plan, twelve minutes to execute. I’d formed relationships (which no one could remember), learned pass-codes, copied keys, corrupted security systems, it was a beautiful job, so sensational that for the first time in my career I kept a few of the lower-valued pieces for myself, simply to remind myself of how good I could be. Silly sentiment; these things are a crutch.
I should have left the country, but the heist was still on local news, and when I phoned Interpol under the guise of a harried policewoman on the case, I was informed that Inspector Evard was on the scene. A CCTV camera had caught the features of a woman who’d been identified in connection with several other cases, and so he’d come to town.
I waited outside police headquarters, a woman in huge sunglasses and a big blue hat, until Luca emerged, and trailed him to the scene of the crime, a meeting with forensics, and finally back to his hotel.
I stood next to him in the lift, and nearly giggled with excitement. I clasped my hands in front of me and wore red and wondered if he’d look my way, but he didn’t, and when he got off at the seventh floor I followed him until he looked back, at which point I pretended to lose my key in my handbag and he walked on.
The next day I put my camera on a ledge by Lago das Garças, set a ten-second timer, scuttled a few feet away from it, posed in what I hoped was a distracted manner with the day’s newspaper, and caught a photo of myself looking, I had to say, really quite mysterious and alluring.
I sent it to the police from a dummy email account with the words, Hey, is this the thief you’re looking for? and managed not to dance when I heard Luca Evard tell the receptionist he’d be extending his stay. That night he ate with his colleagues in a small café round the corner from the station, a bowl of rice, fish and beans, and I trailed him through the city, watching him struggle with the unforgiving traffic, wincing every time a boy on a motorcycle bucked up onto the pavement to dodge the gridlock. He was too neat, too quiet a man to be in a city as loud as São Paulo; he missed Geneva, perhaps.
The next day, while he was out, I stole the cleaning lady’s master key and broke into his bedroom. On the desk was my photo. Pages of notes, records of DNA, fingerprints, snatches of my features, here, in Milan; here, in Vienna; here, in São Paulo, lifted from scenes of crime, and around, scattered thoughts.
Not afraid of being seen?
No team; works alone?
Why does no one remember her face?
He’d written this last in thick black pen, a late-night scrawl, by a beautifully clear picture of my features from Dublin, the day I stole data on 4G phone networking for a client on the darknet. I was smiling at the camera, the name on my badge was Rachel Donovan, and the receptionist had told me about her kids and how she wanted them to live in the countryside, learn all about the real world, as she inputted my data onto the system.
In the bathroom, he’d rolled the toothpaste tube up from the bottom as he squeezed it empty. His aftershave was an old bottle from Germany, €2.50 from the pharmacy. I sniffed it, ran my finger round the edge of the plastic cup with which he rinsed his mouth, lay back on his bed, felt the indentation where his head had rested, traced the lines of disturbance across his sheets, wondered which side of his body he naturally slept on, or whether he tossed and turned the whole night through.
He had two books, perfectly aligned with the right-angle of the table by the bed. The smaller, cover faded, was called The Lemon and the Wave, written by a pair of initials only — R. H. On top of it was a newer, larger book, a macro-economic analysis of capitalism vs. environmentalism. The phone in his room had a number written on it; I copied it and let myself out.
In the afternoon I went shopping.
I bought a crisp new shirt, smart new shoes.
I bought a book on macro-economics and environmental policy.
In the 1950s, society re-geared towards a celebration of consumption. Opportunity awaited all, but how was success to be measured? Not everyone could be a Faraday or an Einstein, a Monroe or a Kennedy — but everyone could own their own television, microwave and dishwasher.
I ate frozen yoghurt from a shop full of beauty queens, felt the blast of air conditioning on the back of my neck.
In the course of the twentieth century opportunities afforded by technological advance redefined societal aspiration. Yet humanity inherently aspires to more. History is full of “celebrities” — those who are celebrated for an act — but in the last century, we celebrated consumption.
I closed the book and counted cars for a while, but the traffic was slow, so I counted bolts in the wheel hubs, and piercings in the ears of the women who walked by me.
What do we celebrate now? Is it nature? Is it simplicity? Even these words have become imbued with a cultural meaning that lends itself to excess.
I wondered where Luca Evard was, and smiled, to know that he was thinking of me.
That evening, at seven p.m. exactly, dressed in white shirt and navy jacket, I knocked on Inspector Luca Evard’s door and said, in English, “Hi, my name’s Bonnie. I’m with the Polícia Civil do Estado de São Paulo, I think you’re expecting me?”
He looked flustered, unshaven, a crinkle in his sweat-stained shirt; in short, a man caught off-guard, who lived his entire life guarded.
“Sorry,” he replied, “I didn’t think…”
“I phoned ahead!” I explained. “Did you get my message?”
“Ah, yes, the message…” He remembers a message on his hotel phone, can’t remember the voice, the words, or me. But a gentleman, always a gentleman is Luca. “Just… let me change my shirt.”
He stood aside to let me in, and I waited, tactfully staring out of the window, while he changed in the bathroom. With the door shut, I kept up a running commentary, lest he forget my presence.