Vivien emerged from the elevator and slowly walked along the corridor.
When she reached the door, she took the keys from her pocket and inserted them in the keyhole. As soon as she had given the lock a first turn, the door opposite opened and Judith appeared. She was holding one of her cats in her arms.
‘Hello there. You finally came back.’
Vivien’s mood at that moment didn’t allow for intruders. ‘Hello, Judith. I’m sorry, I’m in a great hurry.’
‘Don’t you want a coffee?’
‘No. Not now, thanks.’
The old woman looked at her for a moment with a mixture of commiseration and reprimand. ‘What can you expect from someone who thinks only of tips?’
She closed the door in Vivien’s face with a self-satisfied expression. The lock clicked shut, isolating her and her four-legged friends. At any other time, the woman’s eccentricity would have moved and amused Vivien. But right now, she had no room for any feelings that weren’t anger, disappointment and regret. For herself, for Greta, for Sundance. For Father McKean. For all the people that madman had allowed to live before he unleashed another inferno.
After their failure had been confirmed, Bellew had been silent for a long time, afraid even to look at her. They both knew what would happen. By the next day, the whole of the NYPD would know about the fiasco. As the captain had predicted, the commissioner would demand explanations – and maybe resignations.
Vivien was ready to hand over her gun and her shield if she was asked to. She had done the best she could, but it had all gone belly up. It was the fault of chance, but above all it was her fault, her carelessness. She hadn’t remembered to turn on a damned phone in time. The fact that it had happened when her sister had just died was no excuse. She was a police officer and her personal needs and feelings had to take second place in a case like this. She hadn’t been able to do that, and she was ready to take the consequences.
But if other people died, she would have to live with the consequences for ever.
She walked into the apartment of a sick, desperate man who for years had gone by the name of Wendell Johnson. She found the same bare surroundings, the same sense of hopeless solitude. The grey light coming in through the window made everything seem flat, drab, devoid of life and hope.
She wandered through the apartment, waiting for it to speak to her.
She didn’t even know what she was looking for, but she knew there was something unexplored here, like a suggestion whispered in her ear that she hadn’t been able to understand or decipher. She just had to calm down and forget all the rest if she wanted to remember what it was. She moved the one chair from the table into the middle of the kitchen, sat down with her legs apart and her arms resting on the rough fabric of her jeans, and looked around.
The telephone rang in the pocket of her jacket.
Instinctively, she felt like turning it off without even looking to see who the call was from. Then, with a sigh, took the call. She heard Russell’s excited voice.
‘Vivien, at last. It’s Russell. I found him.’
The line was not very good and Vivien couldn’t hear him terribly well. ‘Calm down. Speak slowly. Who did you find?’
Russell started enunciating the words clearly. And at last Vivien understood what he was talking about. ‘The real name of the man who passed himself off as Wendell Johnson all those years was Matt Corey. He was born in Chillicothe, in Ohio. And he had a son. I have his name and his photograph.’
‘Have you gone crazy? How did you manage that?’
‘It’s a long story. Where are you now?’
‘In Wen-’ She broke off. She decided to give Russell the benefit of the doubt, until she had proof of the contrary. ‘In Matt Corey’s apartment, on Broadway, in Williamsburg. And you?’
‘I landed at La Guardia fifteen minutes ago. Right now I’m on the Brooklyn Expressway, travelling south. I’ll be with you in ten minutes.’
‘Okay. Come as fast as you can. I’ll wait here.’
She tried to sit down again, but she had the feeling that her legs would soon start to bump together from sheer nervousness and she wouldn’t be able to sit still.
She stood up and took a few steps around an apartment she knew by heart now. Russell had succeeded where she had failed. She noticed that there was no anger or envy in her. Just relief and admiration for what he had managed to do. She didn’t feel humiliated. And she immediately realized why. It was because he wasn’t just any man, he was Russell. The worm started gnawing at her again, heedless of her impatience. You felt pleasure at someone else’s success only when you loved them. And she realized that she was completely in thrall to that man. She was sure that sooner or later she would get him out of her head, but it would take a lot of time and a lot of effort.
She hoped, with a touch of self-mockery, that looking for a new job would keep her sufficiently busy. She went into the bedroom, switched on the light and for the umpteenth time looked around that apartment.
It hit her at the speed of light, the speed of thought.
No pictures on the walls…
When she had been with Richard, her former boyfriend, she had learned all about artists. He was an architect, but he was also a reasonable painter. The many pictures hanging in their apartment demonstrated that. But what they also demonstrated was the natural narcissism all artists seemed to possess. Often in inverse proportion to their talent. What seemed strange to her was that this man, this Matt Corey, had done all those drawings and over the years had somehow avoided the temptation to put even one of them up on the wall.
Unless…
A couple of steps, and she stood in front of the rack. She took the big grey folder from the lower shelf, opened it, and went quickly through the drawings done on the unusual medium of transparent plastic…
Constellation of Karen, Constellation of Beauty,Constellation of the End …
… until she found the one she was looking for. The bell rang just as she was taking it out of the pile. She placed the drawing on the rough wooden surface and went to open the door, hoping it wasn’t Judith with more complaints. But it was Russell, looking dishevelled, with a couple of days’ growth of beard, his hair unkempt and his clothes crumpled. In his right hand he held an object that looked like a rolled-up poster.
She thought two things simultaneously: that he was very handsome and that she was a fool.
She took him by the arm and pulled him into the apartment before the door opposite could open. ‘Come inside.’
Vivien closed the door again immediately, the noise of the lock covering Russell’s excited voice.