“Can I just pay now?”
I am bureaucracy on the move, serving the good people of Paris.
“No! And you have to move!”
“But you’ve already given me the ticket.”
“Move!” I nearly shrieked the word. “Or I’ll call the police!”
I am traffic warden. Fear my wrath.
He moved.
As the van pulled away from the kerb I walked away at a stately leg-swinging swagger.
Around the corner I darted into the nearest open shop, caught the arm of the first person I passed,
was irritated to discover that I had acne, a particularly hot spot burning above my left eyebrow, but so be it, no time to fuss,
and headed back the way I’d come.
I walked straight into the restaurant where a few minutes ago a dignified lady with a penchant for diamonds had eaten mussels in cream, up to the table where Janus sat and exclaimed, “Monsieur Petrain! Morgan is dead!”
Janus, a woman’s thigh pressed to his own, looked up, confusion battling with irritation, before the professionalism of a ghost kicked in. “Morgan? How terrible!”
Ghosts lie. It’s how we keep our friends.
“They sent me to find you at once!”
“Well yes,” he murmured, thumb flicking against the edge of a fifty-euro bill. “I can see that they would.”
“Morgan?” asked the woman draped across his left leg. “Who is Morgan?”
“My good friend Morgan,” he replied quickly, easily. “How did it happen?” he added, eyes flicking to me as his thumb snapped back and forth against the note.
“His lungs,” I replied. “The doctors always said that Michael Morgan would never live past fifty. Can you come?”
And finally, in not his finest hour of deductive reasoning, Janus understood.
“Of course,” he said. “Of course. Let me settle up and I’ll be right with you.”
Three minutes later we walked beneath the red awnings and flaking shutters of the tight Paris streets and Janus said, “Who are you?”
“How many ghosts did you introduce to Morgan?”
“What are you doing here?” he hissed.
“We need to get somewhere crowded. Need to jump away.”
“Why? I’ve only just moved to—”
“You’re being followed. An organisation called Aquarius is right behind you. They tracked you from Madame Osako through the cleaner to Petrain, and so did I. I bought us a few minutes, that’s all.”
A curl at the corner of his mouth. “Why would you do this?”
“They killed Hecuba, Kuanyin, others. They call me Kepler. Their file on you is thick; their file on me is a lie, and their file on Galileo is a fake.”
“Who’s Galileo?”
“Miami. Galileo killed us. Come on, we need a crowd.”
Chapter 63
Remember Miami.
November 2001.
At this time the Galileo file had her down as a beautiful woman with auburn hair who didn’t need to wear heels to strut, lipstick to pout. Who she was, where she was, I do not know, but she was entirely herself, some other where.
It was unseasonably cold for the time of year. I had gone so far as to start carrying a light linen jacket to wear outside, and on the beach the sunbathers were almost cool enough to talk to each other, instead of the usual silent all-consuming sweat that defined the Florida sands.
I was Carla Hermandez, district attorney, and I had become myself for the sake of my flat. On the fourteenth floor of a Miami tower block, I had panoramic views of the entire city, the green explosion of Oleta to my right, the beach not fifteen minutes’ walk away, and in my black marble bathroom a jacuzzi. All paid for by the criminal cartels I was meant to prosecute.
My sudden donation of a large percentage of my life savings to victim-support charities had therefore earned me the incredulity of my (dubious and sacked) accountant, and simultaneously a range of dinner invitations from people hoping to profit by my newfound philanthropy. Money buys friendship in even the most well-intentioned circles.
I eased into my body and lifestyle a little piece at a time: a friend dropped here, a phone disconnected there, a drink with a stranger in a bar, a jog along the beach, a gift to the concierge downstairs.
I was beginning to settle in when a voice said:
“I just love who you’re wearing.”
It was a fund-raiser for an anti-corruption charity. I had attended for the nibbles, the jazz and the irony. But there, resplendent in a blue taffeta dress, was Janus.
She had to be Janus.
No one else would have polished their teeth to such whiteness.
No one else would dare wear such long lacquered nails, such a low-cut dress, such high heels for such dainty legs.
No one else could have recognised that I, Carla Hermandez, was not myself.
“Darling,” she exclaimed, looping one arm through mine, “I’ve been in Miami for nine months, and Carla Hermandez is a double-crossing bitch. A queen among bitches, a bitch that laughs the laugh and barks the bark, but still a bitch. And you–” she tapped my shoulder with her glass “–are clearly not Carla Hermandez. How are you, darling? How are you keeping?”
“Well,” I replied, “Miss…?”
“I am Ambrosia Jane. And if I ever meet them, I shall chide my parents for the name.”
“What happened to Michael? Michael Morgan?”
A flicker passed across Janus’ face, and softer than I’d ever heard her speak before she murmured, “Time to move on.” Then her face flashed a smile again, too bright to be real. “I hear you’ve quit the business?”
“You mean district attorney?”
“I mean estate agenting. Such a shame; you were so good at it.”
“Time to move on.”
She laughed, brittle and false as cut glass. “I hope you’re keeping busy in your retirement.”
“I’m… Yes. Keeping busy. Trying a few different things.”
A flicker of concern across her high plucked brow. “Are you all right, sweet thing?” she murmured. “Have you… had a bad experience?”
“I’m fine. You?”
“I’m fine too.”
“Well then. There you are.”
Silence, her eyes fixed on mine. I looked away. Her arm tightened against the crook of my elbow. Two women pressed together in a room of strangers, and stranger than could be known. “You know,” she murmured, “for the last thirty years I’ve been looking after my body. I exercised, ate carefully, played golf–golf of all things. Walking away from all that work I put in was… frustrating. But at least now I don’t have to care about my figure. More champagne?”
“Thank you.”
“Don’t go anywhere,” she said.
Stand on a balcony overlooking Miami.
Cars back to back, pairs of white lights in one direction, red in the other, glowing like angry ants stuck in a queue to the nest.
Look down.
Pick a body.
Any body.
As an estate agent, I picked my bodies carefully. The beautiful, the wealthy, the popular, the beloved. I picked apart their lives and made their lives my own.
More care, less artifice.
Look through the walls, and I can see seven million lives acted out as though their stories, their memories, were the defining point of the universe.
Which, in a way, they are.
I stand on a terrace fifteen floors up, at a party hosted by a charity whose name I can’t remember but which is terribly, terribly grateful to me for turning over most of my savings to its account, and Miami isn’t cold, not even in November; the most chilly Miami gets is when you step inside the foyers of arctic air conditioning,
but I shiver.
Then Janus is by my side. She is very beautiful, and she is young, and ancient, and careless, and free.
“More champagne?” she says.
I do not say no.