He sat next to me on the drive to the police station, and was applauded by the Viennese officers as he led me inside. They took my fingerprints — a problem. Computers remembered me. I’d have to be more careful after this.
In the interview room I asked, “Why did they clap when you came in?”
His German was laced with an accent I couldn’t place; neither the precise snap of Berlin nor the low scuffle of Vienna. “I’ve been looking for a jewel thief for three years,” he replied. “Catching you is a big break. Would you like tea, coffee?”
“You’re not with the local police?”
“Interpol.”
“I thought Interpol was just something people talked about in movies.”
“In movies, there’s less paperwork,” he replied with a sigh. “Writing emails and sorting spreadsheets doesn’t sell cinema tickets, though I have some very exciting databases.”
To my surprise, I smiled, examining this policeman anew. He was an inch shorter than me, long-armed and squat-necked, with a tight constellation of three small, flat moles by his left ear. His fingernails were trimmed painfully short; had he chewed them as a child?
Onychophagia: an oral compulsive habit, nail biting. Apply a chemical lacquer to the nails to prevent chewing. Denatonium benzoate: the most bitter taste known to man.
“What’s your name?” I asked, surprised to hear myself speak.
“I am Inspector Evard.”
“Interpol has inspectors?”
“We are policemen as well as pen-pushers.”
He spoke gently, shoulders curved, hook-nosed and narrow-eyed, intent through his aura of polite absent-mindedness. My fear at being arrested was beginning to diminish in the face of more rational thought. The odds of escape seemed high. This was only a slight setback, surely? Then again, he had my fingerprints, and now a photograph too.
He watched me, watching him, and said at last, “Your German has an accent.”
“So does yours.”
“We can speak in another language?”
“I prefer Spanish.”
“My Spanish isn’t very good.”
“Then German’s okay.”
“Did you want a drink?”
“Coffee, please.”
He uncuffed me, and left the room. I was alone.
The walls were beige. There was no two-way mirror, but a CCTV camera watched my table. The door was heavy blue metal, locked. I stood up, walked until I was standing directly beneath the CCTV camera, and began to count.
Sixty seconds: my face would begin to fade.
One hundred seconds: Inspector Evard would begin to wonder why he was holding two coffees.
Two hundred seconds, and the cops who applauded Inspector Evard on making his arrest would already have forgotten why they clapped. Perhaps they applauded him for recovering the Tsarina’s Tears, waiting to be returned to their unrighteous owner. Perhaps already their minds were spinning a story, the diamonds recovered but the courier fled, a half victory for now.
I waited, back pressed against the wall, CCTV camera above my head.
I waited an hour, then two, then four, not moving, not making a sound, out of the line of sight of the camera.
I waited until eleven p.m., when at last I hammered on the cell door and barked in my best German, “Let me out of here! Idiots, where is my client?”
After a few minutes of banging, someone came running, and the interview room door was unlocked. An astonished officer stared at me, and before he could speak I exclaimed, “Where is my client? I have been waiting here for an hour!”
Confusion, doubt: what was this woman, dressed in smart clothes, doing locked in an interview room? “Where is your senior officer?” I added, pushing past towards the reception desk. “Tell him I wish to lodge a complaint — oh, the bathroom!”
I lunged for the toilet door before the copper could say anything, and he, foolish he, did not follow. Inside the bathroom I waited another five minutes, then washed my face, straightened my shirt, pushed my hair back and marched out of the police station, past the receiving desk, back straight, head held high.
No one followed.
The next day, newspaper headlines reported the recovery of the Tsarina’s Tears, but that, regrettably, the thief had evaded capture. Two days later, I followed Inspector Evard from the station to the hotel where he was staying, a square, grey thing in Donaustadt, and when he went out to find supper, I pulled on my coat and my winter boots, and followed him through the night.
Snow fell, four inches on the ground, a boot-clinging crispness that soaked up trousers and turned your knees blue. It hushed the trams, emptied the pavements, made the yellow lights behind every window seem hot, far away. I shoved my gloved hands under my armpits and followed, and sometimes Evard saw me, and sometimes he turned away, only to see me again for the very first time.
Now.
And now.
But never again.
He walked to a Gasthaus of minimal merit, a low-ceilinged room slotted beneath a concrete apartment, where they served Czech spirits that smelt of aniseed and tasted like cough mixture, and German beers each in their own special glass, and boiled sausage and boiled vegetables and breaded chicken and various flavours on a theme of cabbage. He settled into a corner and to the waiter’s disgust ordered only a half-pint of unremarkable beer, and schnitzel with chips. When he had finished his beer, I sat down opposite him and said, “Excuse me, are you Inspector Evard?”
“Yes, but I…”
“I’m Joy,” I said, hand out in greeting. A hand which is offered, most people will instinctively take; rejection requires conscious decision-making. “We met in Milan, do you remember? I’m a freelance press photographer, I saw you and thought…?”
He didn’t remember, but the mind will fill in gaps. He had been in Milan, certainly, tracking the thief behind the Tsarina’s Tears. Sometimes he met journalists. His eyebrows creased, how had he forgotten me? Well — who remembers the photographer?
I let the thoughts play out behind his eyes then said, “Congratulations on recovering the Tsarina’s Tears, I read about it in the papers.”
“Thank you. It would have been better if we’d arrested her, but… thank you.”
“Her? The thief’s a woman?”
“We have her face on CCTV from a dozen different robberies. She’s been lazy — fingerprints, DNA.”
“May I buy you a drink?”
“I was going back to the hotel, an early flight…”
“Of course; not to worry.”
“Miss… Joy, did you say?”
“Joy, yes.”
“I’m surprised I don’t remember you.”
“We only met briefly, in Milan, and there were a lot of people that day.”
“Well,” he murmured, “well. I hope I see you again soon.”
So saying, he rose, and I followed him at twenty yards distance back through the night and the falling snow, and stood outside his hotel until I saw the light go out in his room, and I was happy, giddy even, like the new girl at school who has finally made a friend.
Chapter 17
Some few years later, I sat by a pool of shallow running water in the shade of the Sultan Qaboos Grand Mosque, my head covered, my feet bare, and thought of nothing much, and everything in particular. Even in the shade, the stones were still hot from the midday sun, but the burning was good against my skin.
Sun goddesses:
• Amaterasu, who split from her moon-god brother, Tsukuyomi, after he slaughtered Uke Mochi.
• Bast, lion goddess of the sunset.
• Shapash, judge of the gods who refused to shine until Baal was resurrected again.
• Bridgit, Celtic goddess of the heart who, when her child died, wept and sang all at once and was later acquired by the Catholic Church as a saint whose powers lay in burning hearths and holy wells.