Sundance looked at her, her face streaked with tears. ‘I’d recognize her. That’d be enough.’
Vivien was suddenly overwhelmed with tenderness. It was the first time she had seen her niece cry since that terrible business. She didn’t know if the girl ever succumbed to the illusory solace of tears when she was alone. With her aunt and all the other people she came in contact with she was always self-possessed, as if she had built a wall between herself and her own humanity to keep pain out.
All at once she saw the girl Sundance used to be, relived all the wonderful times they had spent together. She leaned forward in her seat and embraced her, trying to wipe out the terrible things both of them needed to forget. Sundance took refuge in that embrace, and they were motionless for a long time, leaving all the space they had inside for that wave of emotion.
Vivien heard her niece’s voice, broken by sobs, coming from somewhere beneath her hair. ‘Oh, Vunny, I’m sorry for what I did. I’m so sorry. It wasn’t me, it wasn’t me, it wasn’t me…’
She kept repeating these words until Vivien hugged her harder and placed a hand on her head. She knew that this was an important moment in their lives and she prayed to whatever being was responsible for human existence to help her find the right words.
‘Shhhhhh. That’s all over now. It’s all over.’
She said that phrase twice, to convince her and to convince herself.
Vivien held her like that until Sundance’s sobs subsided. When they moved apart, Vivien leaned towards the glove compartment, opened it, and took out a box of Kleenex.
She handed it to Sundance. ‘Here. If we carry on like this, this car will soon be an aquarium.’
She said that to lighten the tension and seal this new-found bond between them. Sundance gave a little smile. She took one of the tissues and wiped her eyes.
Vivien did the same.
The girl’s resolute voice surprised her as she wiped her eyes. ‘There was a man.’
Vivien waited. The worst thing to do now would be to express impatience, to insist on the girl coming clean. But Sundance didn’t need any prompting. Now that the wall had come down, it seemed that all the dark things hidden on the other side needed urgently to find daylight.
‘It was someone I met, who gave me things. Someone who organized-’
Her voice cracked. Vivien understood it was still difficult for her to utter certain words and use certain expressions.
‘Do you remember his name?’
‘I don’t know his real name. Everybody called him Ziggy Stardust. I think it was a nickname.’
‘Do you know where he lives? Do you have his telephone number?’
‘No. I only saw him once. And he was always the one who called me.’
Vivien took a deep breath to calm the beating of her heart. She knew what she would have to fight against in the next few days. Her anger and her instincts. The desire to track down that bastard and empty a full round of bullets in his head.
She looked at her niece. For the first time the look she got in return was direct and unclouded. Now she knew she could talk to her in a new way, a way she would understand.
‘There’s something happening in this city. Something very ugly that may cost the lives of many people. That’s why the whole of the New York Police Department is on a state of alert, and that’s why I have to be at the precinct tonight. To try to prevent what just happened from happening again.’
She gave her time to absorb what she had said. And to prepare her for what she was about to say.
‘But I promise you one thing. I won’t rest until I’ve made sure that man won’t do anyone any harm ever again.’
Sundance simply nodded. For the moment, that was all that was needed between them. Vivien started the engine and set off towards Joy, which would be her niece’s home for a little while longer. She was anxious to tell Father McKean about the progress they’d made, but as she joined the traffic, she couldn’t help thinking about the new mission. Whoever this elusive Ziggy Stardust was, his life was about to become a living hell.
CHAPTER 17
Vivien opened the glass-fronted door and walked into the precinct house.
She left outside a bright sunny morning that showed not the slightest inclination to follow her in. This was usually a familiar place to her. A frontier outpost bang in the middle of civilization, which still gave her a sense of home she didn’t find anywhere else.
Today was different. Today there was something abnormal in the air and inside her, a sense of anxiety and electric tension she couldn’t define. She had read somewhere that, in times of peace, the warrior fights himself. She wondered what kind of war she would have to fight in the days to come. And how much space each of them would still have for his or her own inner conflict.
In a precinct house, peace wasn’t a state of waiting. It was a dream.
She waved to the officers on duty behind the desk and went through the door leading to the upper floor. She started climbing the stairs, leaving behind her the roll-call room where, the night before, leaning on the desk, Captain Alan Bellew had updated all the off-duty officers on the situation.
He’d begun, ‘As I guess you’ve all realized by now, this is a really nasty business. It’s now been established that the building on 10th Street was blown up deliberately. The experts have found traces of explosive. The worst you could think of. TNT combined with napalm. That’s one detail the media don’t yet have, though you can bet they soon will. Whoever did this was aiming to cause the maximum damage, combining the incendiary effect of napalm and the explosive power of TNT. The building was mined with surgical precision. How the perpetrators managed to set the charges so carefully without attracting attention is still a mystery. You don’t need me to tell you that everyone’s working on this: FBI, NSA, CIA, you name it. And us, of course.’
Bellew had paused.
‘This morning there was a meeting at the commissioner’s office with the mayor and a couple of bigwigs from Washington. The Defcon level is on maximum readiness. That means all military bases and airfields are on a war footing. I’m telling you this so you can see how seriously everyone’s taking this.’
Vincent Narrow, a tall, well-built detective sitting in the front row, had raised a hand. The captain gestured to him to speak.
‘Has anyone claimed responsibility?’
They were all wondering the same thing. In spite of all the time that had passed, the ghosts of 9/11 were far from being exorcized.
Bellew had shaken his head. ‘Nobody at all. For the moment we don’t know any more about that than the TV channels. Al-Qaeda has put out a communiqué on the Internet disclaiming responsibility. The computer experts are checking if it’s genuine. There’s always a possibility some other group of fanatics is behind this, but these guys are usually very eager to take the credit.’