She decided in the end to delay her decision about Lorena till 1 am that morning and her call to Gordon — her main reason for bar-sitting now, to kill the time — by when, 8 pm in England, Gordon thought he’d be back from seeing Mikaya Ryall in Durham.
Making the call finally at 1.03 am — having put Lorena to bed just after 11.30 pm and ambled along St Catherine until she found a cocktail bar to kill the remaining hour — she spent the first ten minutes with the day’s ups and downs and the final elation of getting an address. She didn’t go into the whole messy drama of her father visiting the orphanage or her phoning her mother — that was going to take another heart to heart, her secret life part-two, when she returned — she just said that one of the nuns had a sudden change of heart about passing on the address. Gordon was full of bonhomie and well wishes for her meeting with the Donatiens the next day, then finally they got to how it went with Mikaya Ryall. No great revelations — except that Gordon was almost sure Mikaya was hiding something.
‘…Something which made her very uncomfortable, very quickly. She practically ran from the cafe halfway through.’
Elena agreed that it was suspicious, but she’d practically reached the end of the rope with sessions. ‘There’s nowhere left for me to go with this, and it’s just not enough for me to be able to hang on to Lorena. I can hardly walk back into Lowndes and say that he’s got to probe deeper because Lorena’s sister too is now having panic attacks at the mention of possible interference from her stepfather.’
‘I know. I know you need something more concrete, and I’m already one step ahead of you.’ Gordon had been uncomfortable after the meeting, so on the way back he’d put through a call to an old contact, an investigator who worked for the banks and insurance companies. ‘I thought — if Ryall can dish the dirt on you, then maybe we should try turning the tables on him. I gave him everything I knew, and told him to dig particularly deep around the time of Mikaya Ryall’s pregnancy.’
‘When’s he coming back to you?’
‘I told him it was urgent, and he’s already been on it half a day. He said he’d try and get back with as much as he can by midday tomorrow.’
5 pm by then in Montreal. Four hours after seeing the Donatiens. But then if they gave her an address and he didn’t live far away — she might well be going on to see him later. Elena liked the idea of reversing the tables on Ryall, giving him a run for his money — but overall she couldn’t help feeling that they were stretching, clutching at straws. On one hand the delay made her nervous, having to keep running the gauntlet with the police; yet on the other she felt relieved at putting off breaking the bad news to Lorena.
‘Okay — let’s wait till then to decide what to do.’ And having said it, she felt as if a weight had been lifted: it was no longer inevitable, a foregone conclusion that Lorena was going back to Ryall. There was still some hope left, however slim.
Or was it mainly for herself that she didn’t want to dwell on the problem? To keep her mind clear for the big day ahead: meeting the Donatiens and then hopefully later her son. Once again pushing Lorena into the background because her own score card was full. 29 years? Her mouth was suddenly dry at the thought. What would she say? How would she even begin to explain? The prospect was far more daunting than perhaps finally having to let down Lorena.
Elena didn’t sleep well that night. She thought she might, given that she’d finally reached the end of her search and was so utterly worn out from the nervous anxiety and lack of sleep of the past days.
But the excitement of the day ahead kept her mind churning as to how she might broach everything and how it might go. Then there was some commotion with sirens not too far away that seemed to go on endlessly: in the end it was over two hours before she finally drifted off.
And suddenly the sirens were coming for her. They were all around and policemen were pounding up the stairs — she couldn’t escape. Then she was outside in chains on the pavement with a crowd of people looking on, pointing. Lorena was also standing there in chains — though it was Ryall holding the other end, not a policeman. He was smiling crookedly at Elena. ‘I’ve got her back now, and she’ll never get free again. Now dance and clap your hands and try and look happy — there’s people looking.’
And she thought: Yes, I should be happy, I’m seeing my son tomorrow. But all she could see was her father as she’d left him by Andreos’s graveside, and everyone else had also turned their backs and left him alone. She rushed over to comfort him, to say sorry for having deserted him for all those years. But as she got closer, it wasn’t Andreos’s name her father was muttering as he looked down at the grave: ‘George… I tried to find you, really I tried.’
And she rushed breathlessly to tell her father that she’d found him, pointing to his figure at the end of the chine. ‘Look, he’s there! There! I found him, I found him!’ Though still he was like the young boy she pictured in the orphanage, not a grown man; and in that moment George turned and she was afraid that he’d move away before her father looked up and saw him. But the chains were still on her legs, and she didn’t seem to be getting any closer to attract her father’s attention… and as George finally turned away, the light too at the end of the chine faded, leaving her in darkness.
The darkness was total, a black shroud. She couldn’t see her father or George any more, could only guide her way by grappling at branches and feeling for trees where she remembered them. Then suddenly there were other footsteps behind her in the pitch darkness, the fall of their breath competing with her own in the new silence, and getting closer, closer… bearing down quickly, their breathing more rapid with each step and so close now she could feel it against the back of her neck, making her shiver… and she wasn’t sure if it was Ryall or the police or…
She woke up, her breathing ragged. She went over to the mini-bar and opened a bottle of mineral water, felt the first few slugs cut through the dryness. Oh Jesus, Jesus, Jesus. She let out a heavy exhalation to ease the tightness in her chest. Hopefully after tomorrow she’d no longer need the sanctuary of the chine to try and bury the ghosts of what she’d done.
The man in the back of Roubilliard’s four-wheeler shrank back a few inches as the heavy, bulldog face suddenly appeared at the front side window, peering in.
‘What do you think?’ Roubilliard half turned round from the front driver’s seat, joining Frank Massenat in his appraisal of the back seat passenger.
Massenat wrinkled his nose questioningly. ‘Take of his glasses?’
Roubilliard’s henchman beside the passenger obliged. The passenger suddenly appeared more anxious than at any time during the fifty-minute wait, his eyes dilating wide and his breathing falling heavy: from what he remembered from his schooldays, this is what usually preceded a fist landing on your nose.
Massenat squinted doubtfully a moment more. ‘Nah, not him. Close, but no cigar.’
‘Sure?’
‘Sure.’ Massenat straightened up and turned away, taking out his mobile.
Roubilliard pulled out a twenty-dollar note and held it in front of the passenger. ‘Some guy who owes our friend money — you could be his twin brother. Now lose yourself and make sure to lose your memory too about all this. Okay?’
The passenger looked between the note and Roubilliard, hardly believing he was being let go, there must be some last minute surprise in store; then with a hasty nod, ‘Okay,’ he took the note and was out of the car, practically breaking into a run as he passed Massenat on his mobile to Roman.
Roman nodded knowingly at the other end. ‘Yeah, thought it was too good to be true. Finding him in less than thirty-six hours — and right on our fucking doorstep in Lavalle. Yeah, yeah. Catch yer later.’