“Yes. I was. We met at the hospital.”
“Did we? I don’t — But of course I don’t. Silly me.”
A tiny push of his bottom lip, a kind of facial shrug, his hands welded to his cup of tea, which he did not drink.
At last I asked, “Will the company support her?”
“Probably not. The revelation that Perfection may have led to the massacre in Venice sent shares tumbling. The directors of several holdings moved to separate themselves from what they see as a sinking ship. Mergers are taking place. Takeovers, in others. The business will still stand, in some other form, owned by some other people. Bankers, no doubt. Faceless wealthy men from… somewhere.”
“You’re still here,” I pointed out.
“I failed her and her family,” he murmured. “I owe… penance.”
Penance: a punishment undergone to redeem a sin. A feeling of regret for one’s wrongdoings. A punishment or discipline imposed for crimes committed. Self-mortification as a token of repentance.
Silence a while, as the omelette set in the oven.
He said, “Why are you here?” and didn’t meet my eye.
“To see Filipa.”
“Why?”
“She… would you understand what I mean if I told you that she is my friend?”
“I don’t know. I can’t imagine your world. Your life.”
“I can help find Byron.”
“She’s gone; she’s done what she wanted to.”
“She came to see me in the hospital, in Mestre.”
“What were you…?” he began, then stopped. “You were in the hotel? You were hurt?”
“Byron stabbed me. She knew I’d come, and she… She won’t kill me, I think. I can help you find her. I tried before, but didn’t have your resources, and you didn’t have my information. Now we have both.”
Again, silence. Again, the passing of time. Tea cooled, shadows turned, mountains rose, mountains fell, and time passed.
“I find you strangely convincing, now I see you face to face, Why. Did I find you convincing before?”
“No.”
“It’s a peculiar thing, but I find emotion, when it comes to you, rather hard to engage with, since, not remembering who you are, I have little attachment to the matter. Instead of feelings, I find with you there are only facts. I don’t think I can find Byron. Do you understand? I wanted to, for so many years, when she killed Matheus — we were together at the time, I thought I should have seen it coming, there should have been… but I didn’t.” A chuckle, a single shake of his shoulders, laughing off an idea that isn’t funny. “Penance,” he declared. “I should have stopped her, and I didn’t, and she fled, and I spent years hunting her, years of my life to do… something. Something right, perhaps. I don’t really know any more. And here we are.”
I half closed my eyes, smelt expensive tea leaves and gently burning egg. Thought about Filipa Pereyra-Conroy, about the geometry of the Möbius strip, an expression of non-Euclidian… of Euclidian…
knowledge, there, but no use.
Not for this.
I opened my eyes, said, “Where is Filipa?”
Filipa sleeping on a bed.
She wears pale green pyjamas, silk, no pattern or obvious seams.
Lies on her side, her hair around her head, the blankets pulled up high.
I ask: did she leave anything, a note, a message, anything at all, before she took Perfection?
No, he replied. Nothing.
I ask: does she have her mother’s bracelet? Silver, plain — a Möbius strip?
No, she hasn’t got it here.
Do you know where it is?
No. When she… after the treatments, she didn’t seem interested in it any more.
Filipa sleeping.
I think about waking her.
What will she say?
Nothing, I think, which matters any more.
Help me, I said.
I can’t…
Help me.
I won’t…
Help me. Goddamn you, you stupid fucking man, you waste of space, where’s the guy who tracked a thief across the Middle East, where’s mugurski71, where’s Gauguin, where’s the spy, the security man, the manipulator, the killer instinct, where’s your hunger for revenge?
Byron beat me, he said. Byron won.
She stabbed me and left me bleeding on a Venetian floor, I replied. She stuck electrodes in my brain and tried to make me her machine. She used me and made me her doll but she did not fucking beat me, now pull yourself fucking together!
He stared at me through the laced fingers of his hand, and said, How many times have we had this conversation?
A hundred fucking times, I snapped, and you forgot them all, but every time I was right, and every time you joined me in the end. So before Prometheus is torn apart, before Filipa goes to jail, before the last cent and the last contact you have vanishes for ever, help me.
And I was shouting, but not at him.
And he said: what do you need?
Chapter 99
Gauguin has many shiny tools at his command.
A CCTV expert caught a glimpse of Byron as she boarded a train at St Lucia, three hours after the Hotel Madellena, then lost her somewhere in northern Italy, after she failed to disembark at any of the regular stops.
We think she jumped while the train was stalled at a red light, he explained. Gauguin mustered his troops, expanded the search: transport hubs, airports, railway stations, ferry ports. A woman thought she caught a glimpse of Byron passing through Lugano, but it was the back of her head, seen from a steep angle, and who could say, really, in the grand scheme of things? Who could say?
“Probably is her,” mused Gauguin. “If only because we never see her again.”
I stayed next to Gauguin, and he kept the recording running, swapping out mobile phones for USB recorders whenever batteries died, watching me, always watching, from the corner of his eye.
I said, “It’s okay. Byron got paranoid after a while too.”
“I’m not—” he began, then stopped.
“You fear who I am, when you forget me. You fear that I may say something, do something, and walk away, and when I come back, you won’t remember. The recorders are your weapon, but what if they stop? What if they stop and I rob you blind, and you never know. I’d be afraid. That’s okay.”
He turned away, half closing his eyes, and said not a word.
A time must come when Gauguin forgets.
I stand over him while he writes in a large, capitalised hand, all his impressions of me. He uses a heavy silver fountain pen, black ink. It reminds me of something — the pen that Byron used to write with, recording her notes in America. Not merely an association — he is using its twin. I think about asking, then let it go.
He takes a photo of the two of us, standing together in the kitchen, the clock behind and no smiles on our faces. I resist the urge to stick two thumbs up for the camera, or do bunny ears behind his head, and as stars turn and the moon sets I return to my hotel in the town, two big boxes of paper slung one under either arm.
I do not sleep.
The life and times of Byron on the floor.
Everything Gauguin had, starting with a name.
Siobhan Maddox. How strange to think of her as something human. Siobhan Maddox, born in Edinburgh to a primary school teacher and an installer of window frames. Studied French and Russian at UCL, lived in Germany for three years, working by day as a nanny for the British Embassy, and by night raising both her German and Russian to native-level fluency. Had a brief and entirely amicable affair with an attaché, found a certain curiosity about the world of diplomacy, applied for SIS.
Said the recruiting officer, in the faded notes of her faded file: on paper there is no reason to accept this candidate. It is in person where you realise that she would be invaluable.