Читать книгу Reluctant Dead - John Moss - Страница 4

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Easter Island Cryptic

To Miranda’s surprise, she was still alive. The city stirred outside her window and she was not a corpse, she had not been molested, she had not been tortured. So far, she had been treated with a kind of deferential civility calculated to invoke terror. The acrid smell of burned synthetic fabric made her nauseous. The smoking man who did the talking frightened her more than the man who was silent, even though his voice was amiable. He had absolute power in a room swarming with ghosts of the disparu, because in the dead hours of early morning he was responsible to no one. He smiled politely as she arranged herself against the headboard, drawing her knees up to her body.

“You are ready now to talk?” he said.

“About what?”

“This is not a social visit, Mrs. Quin. You know why we are here.”

“It’s Ms. Quin.”

“Yes. That is good. You will tell us, please, where is that man?”

His high-pitched voice was smooth and she thought of drowning in oil, suffocating.

“No,” she said. She had no idea who they were talking about, but it seemed a good idea to answer in the negative.

He moved close to the side of the bed. The other man moved close on the other side. She felt squeezed, twisted inside, like meat in a grinder.

“Mr. Harrington D’Arcy. You know Mr. D’Arcy?”

“I’ve never heard of him.” The name sounded vaguely familiar. “Are you with the police? I assume you are armed.”

“It is not necessary, Miss Quin.”

The implication was that the two men could kill her with their bare hands, although his tone was conciliatory. The feeling of drowning in warm oil.

“Strange,” she said. “In Canada, we need warrants.”

“There are police you do not know, Miss Quin, even in your country, they do not need warrants. Public police, you serve the law. Carabinaros, we serve the state. We do as we do.” He paused, savouring the idea, and as he repeated the words they took on an aura of menace she felt to the bone. “We do as we do.”

“Really,” she said. “I have never heard of Harrington D’Arcy.”

The man leaned forward so that the circle of light from her bedside lamp washed over his distorted features, making him look for a moment like he was wearing a death mask. He picked up a book and leaned back into the shadows.

“You are reader of Mr. Thor Heyerdahl, yes?”

She shrugged noncommittally, suddenly realizing they must be after the handsome Englishman, annoyed that it had only now occurred to her.

“This is not your book.”

“Yes,” she said. “No, it was a gift.”

“From Mr. Harrington D’Arcy?”

“From my partner.”

“Sexual?”

“What! No, professional. What business is it of yours?”

He smiled.

“Mr. Harrington D’Arcy gave you this book. On the airplane from Toronto to São Paulo.”

Nothing makes you so vulnerable as knowing you have been watched unobserved.

He reached into a leather satchel the size of a human head. She had not noticed it before, as it was resting on the floor by his feet. She flinched at the macabre possibilities. He withdrew a book and handed it to her. She let it slip through her fingers onto the bed. She half-expected it to leave a bloodstain.

“He left this book behind. It has your name inscribed in it. Open, you will see, it is your name.”

She reached down and tentatively folded back the cover. On the flyleaf were the words “Miranda Quin.” They were written in ballpoint, in an elegant script that was unnervingly familiar.

“Yes,” she said. “That’s my book, and this, the one in your hands, that’s his, the man’s. I didn’t know his name. I’ve never seen him before, I haven’t seen him since the plane from Toronto. I know nothing about him.” She remembered wondering if he was a spy. She almost forgot finding his note, where he virtually declared his covert and endangered status.

The Englishman had asked for help. She was police. These men were menacing and possibly murderous. Miranda stood up, forcing the smoking man to back deeper into the shadows. She decided to take the position that she was no longer afraid. The man turned and flipped on the overhead light, and in the brightly illuminated room, Miranda felt a rising sense of control.

“I do not know the man,” she said. “I have to go to the bathroom.”

“No,” said the man.

“I have to pee.”

“No pissing.”

“That’s easy for you to say,” said Miranda. “There will be pissing, one way or another. You can watch, if you want, but I am now going to pee.”

She moved past him into the bathroom.

“No,” he said. “I do not watch lady piss.”

He reached out and pulled the bathroom door shut as she began to slip the waistband of her slacks down over her hips. She sat down amid shadows cast from the dim light that seeped under the door. The door then opened a crack and a hand reached in, scraped along the wall, and switched on the overhead before rapidly withdrawing. Superstitious, she thought. Afraid I’ll disappear in the dark.

She really did have to pee and it gave her time to think. As she rearranged her clothes, she decided the best strategy was to be volatile. Not grace under pressure, but explosive. She banged her forehead a couple of times with the heels of her hands, re-channelling the adrenaline from roiling to rush, and, swinging open the door, she strode out into the bleak light of the room.

They were gone.

She held her breath, then gasped, shivering, walked over to the window and looked out on the street. A few people were trudging to work; it was too early for traffic. Behind her, the carpet smelled like smouldering brimstone. She turned and surveyed the room. She coughed and it echoed. They had left both copies of the Heyerdahl book discarded on the bed. The note from the Englishman lay open on the bedside table.

Whoever he was, the man who signed himself T.E., was not Harrington D’Arcy. Miranda had seen Harrington D’Arcy once. She had been leaving Alex Rufalo’s place after a staff party. Rufalo’s wife, Caroline, was a high-powered lawyer, a colleague of D’Arcy’s who was dropping her off before the last guests had departed. Curiosity compelled Miranda to peer into the shadows of the limousine when the car door swung open. D’Arcy was sitting back against black leather, washed in the pale light seeping through the tinted glass. Her endangered Englishman with the flashing eyes and irritating self-assurance looked nothing at all like Harrington D’Arcy. She admired his wit and panache for having chosen the name as a nom de guerre. The real D’Arcy was exceptionally wealthy, very influential, but competely unknown beyond a rarified world defined by his own corporate interests.

* * *

In the morning, Morgan went directly to the morgue after a brief stop at The Columbian Connection on the edge of the Annex, a new place that made him think of a Starbucks made over by Tim Hortons, a place of such compromised authenticity he found it unnerving. He doubted he would become a regular patron.

Coffee and bagel in hand, he flagged a taxi. The driver had no idea where the city morgue was located. Morgan was surprised. He did not often take cabs, but he trusted that the cabbies would be familiar with notable locations.

Morgan preferred to walk or take public transit — the subway, never buses. Together, they usually took Miranda’s XK 150, her consolation for a sordid episode in the recent past, something to remind her she was a survivor. She was a better driver; he liked her car, but not driving.

Although it was early, Ellen Ravenscroft was already at work. Morgan apologized for not bringing her a coffee. He offered her part of his unfinished bagel, but she declined. He nodded in the direction of the shrouded cadaver. “What’s the verdict? Was it murder?”

“You tell me, love. Did someone want her dead?”

“Wanting a person dead doesn’t make it murder. Possibly a gruesome coincidence. Of course, there is no such thing as coincidence,” he said, mouthing a cliché he didn’t believe.

They approached the stainless-steel table isolated in a pool of light. Ellen pulled back a plasticized sheet, revealing Maria D’Arcy’s face. It was empty, now, the personality vanished. Death was not unkind, only indifferent.

“You don’t want to see the rest of her, not until I’ve done some tidying up.”

“No,” Morgan agreed, leaning down so close to the dead woman, in another context he might have been her prince, come to kiss her awake.

“What are you looking for, love?”

“Perfume.”

“Very expensive. With all she’s been through, it lingers, doesn’t it?”

“No. That’s the point,” said Morgan. “It doesn’t. Yesterday morning, it was distinct, the smell of sunlight and pebbles. But there’s nothing, now.”

Ellen Ravenscroft leaned over so that their heads almost collided. “You’re right,” said the medical examiner. She stood upright and tilted her head back, with nostrils flared, gazing slowly around the room. “How very strange. There’s still a bit lingering in the air.”

“Did you wash her down?”

“Not the parts you’re sniffing.” The ME pulled the sheet back all the way. Her normally animated features congealed into a mask of stunned disbelief. “Apparently someone has given her a right good clean-up.”

“Is that possible?”

“It’s ridiculous. An embarrassing, offensive, outrageous, ridiculous comical absurdity. Oh God, I’ll have to get to the bottom of this. When I left her last night she was scented with money, the way the good Lord intended. And I was the first in, this morning. The universe is not unfolding as it should, David, no one breaks into a morgue.”

Morgan was aware she had used his first name. The only person to use his first name had been his wife of brief duration — and occasionally Miranda, but only in exceptional circumstances. “Someone apparently did,” he said. “Unlikely as it seems. Security’s light.”

“That’s an explanation, not an excuse.” Ellen Ravenscroft drew in a deep breath and exhaled slowly. “Damn it! Damn it, I was pretty much done with the autopsy part, moving on to analysis. So, God damn it, I don’t think anything’s been compromised except my dignity. And hers, of course.” She took in another deep breath and exhaled with a warming smile, searching for equilibrium in morbid good humour. “Bloody ghouls, if you ask me. Necrophiles. Hapless vampires — the blood’s already been drained. Necromancers, social pariahs, royal creeps. Generally the dead don’t make very good company, you know. Well, they do, sometimes. But they don’t issue invitations.”

“Invited or not, she had visitors. So why is she here?”

“She’s dead. Oh, you mean why is she dead?” Ellen Ravenscroft grimaced. “From causes yet to be determined. I’d say what killed her was generalized hypoxia brought on by acute respiratory distress. She died from asphyxiation. Exactly what caused the asphyxia, I just don’t know.”

“She could have been smothered. I don’t see any strangulation marks.”

“There aren’t any. It might be self-induced hypocapnia.”

“Suicide?”

“Death by hyperventilation, which could be a possible response to the symptoms of hypothermia. A side effect from exposure.”

“In the middle of summer.”

“It’s August, Morgan. The nights are cold.”

“Cool.”

“It doesn’t have to be freezing for hypothermia. And she had a fair bit of alcohol in her system. French champagne, I believe. And not much on in the way of clothes.”

“Can you check out the champagne for me?”

“Yes, of course. And before you say it, I know French champagne is redundant. If it’s real champagne, it’s French, n’est ce pas?”

“Could someone else have done it?”

“Exposed her, yes — misadventure, or at the worst, manslaughter. Asphyxiated her, yes, but damned if I know how. I’ll keep trying. No evidence of a man lurking about down there in the nether region. Maybe a bit of messing about, but gently, perhaps on her own. I’ll let you know. I’d say the bikini top was put on by a man post-mortem — he cupped her breasts in it, before struggling to secure the clasp. Left a few abrasions. A woman would have done it up at her waist, then slid it around.”

“Her husband did it.”

“That’s quite a revelation! He’s confessed, has he?”

“To covering her breasts, not to murder. Bared breasts may be commonplace these days, but not at the RTYC.”

“You think it’s about owning her boobies, Morgan?” She looked down at the body and smiled capriciously. “He doesn’t own them anymore.”

“Yeah, he does. He’ll be along to collect the remains. Don’t let her go?”

“What?”

“Her body, don’t let her go.”

“Of course not. Her remains remain.”

“Good. Now all we have to figure out is why her husband wants a murder investigation, what nefarious crimes is he trying to obscure through misdirection? And what’s with the perfume?”

She looked up at him. “Listen to you,” she said. “Morgan, you need me. Without your partner, you’ve got no one to talk to.”

“I’ll manage.”

“Off you go, then, love. I’ve got work to do.” She did her best in the circumstances to shrug coquettishly, then turned back to peruse the exposed corpse. “I’ll call if the lady reveals anything more.”

Morgan edged back into the shadows that circled the autopsy tables, casting each in a separate cone of light. “Yeah,” he said in a casual voice as he turned and sauntered out the door, irritated that she might be right. About Miranda.

She would be in the air over the Pacific by now, landing about the same time as he reached headquarters if he walked slowly and didn’t stop along the way.

* * *

Hanga Roa, the only community on Rapa Nui, surprised Miranda. She had expected something more exotic. This was a small town not unlike Waldron, the village where she had grown up, an hour west of Toronto on the banks of the Grand River. There were a few streets, mostly unpaved, a few palm trees, a scattering of shops and restaurants nestled casually among stucco and cinderblock houses, an open-walled market and a closed-in market, two scuba-dive shops in the tiny open harbour, and there was one bank. There was an imposing church, fronted by carvings of saints with bird heads. The people seemed to be a mixture of Spanish and Polynesian. Teenage boys rode island horses among occasional taxis and the odd delivery van. Girls wore full skirts or school uniforms. Tourists were few, and stood out as much for their vaguely furtive demeanour as for their wash-and-wear clothes. Dogs and chickens ranged freely along the sidewalks, haphazardly chasing each other.

It’s nothing at all like home, she thought, changing her mind as the taxi pulled up a gentle incline to the Hotel Victoria. While she unpacked in the simple room with white plaster walls and a window opening west toward Tahiti and New Zealand, she wondered where such a notion had come from. Perhaps the island was not lush like the background in a Gauguin painting, nor wondrously strange, despite the giant statues for which it is known throughout the world, but it was definitely alien territory.

Miranda realized she was standing by the open window, staring into the empty distance, thinking about times lost and about home, feeling lonely.

There was a faint knock on the door.

“Come in,” she said, assuming it was the elderly gentleman who had let her the room.

She turned as the door swung open, but no one was there. Although it was midday, the corridor was dark and cool and she could feel the gentle rush of air. She walked to the doorway. On the floor of the corridor to the side of the door, a man’s body was slumped in deep shadow. A pool of blood, drained of colour in the murky light, spread out from the body on the smooth cement floor.

She knew he was alive from the stillness of the body in its awkward posture, the muscles not yet settled into their final grip on his contorted frame.

It was the Englishman.

She squatted beside him and gently rolled him over. His eyes were open.

“Hang on, there,” she said. “You’re not dead yet.”

She thought she detected the glimmer of a smile. In his eyes. They searched her face.

“How’d you get here?” she said. She did not expect an answer. She had seen enough of violent death to recognize someone at the precarious edge. He tried to focus on her, his eyes widened, he nodded assent, as if claiming he had got there himself, as if he were declaring he was not about to slip over.

“You’ve been shot,” she said.

His eyes closed, then opened again.

“No? You’ve been stabbed. A knife. Let’s see. Under the ribs.” She probed gently beneath his blood-soaked shirt. “Good,” she said. “Only once. It’s not sucking. You’re not spitting blood. It missed your lungs. In broad daylight. Drying blood, you opened the wound getting here. Where from? Not far. Down the hall —”

She slipped away from him and instinctively strode down the hall to an open door, forgetting she was unarmed, and swung into a room, the duplicate of her own except for the unmade bed and congealing blood on the floor.

Satisfied his attacker was gone, she returned to the Englishman. He seemed to have rallied and was trying unsuccessfully to turn onto his side.

“I wasn’t trying to catch him, you know,” she said as she lifted under his shoulders and began to drag him out of the corridor. “I just wanted to know he wasn’t lurking around to attack me, too.”

“So,” he coughed. “Preemptive,” he said. “Bad strategy.”

“Hush,” she said. She forced him to lie back, then hauled him across the floor, and, with great difficulty, onto her bed.

“We’re going to owe the Hotel Victoria for clean sheets,” she said.

“Honeymoon suite,” he murmured.

“What? Oh, quaint,” she said. “God,” she added, “you do attract trouble. But I doubt you’re going to die, not today. Let’s get a doctor in here.”

“No,” he said, and passed out.

* * *

Usually, when Morgan entered the granite edifice that was Police Headquarters, he felt soothed by its vast public spaces that led to a warren of offices, calmed by the pink of the stone and the jet transparency of the glass slabs that mirrored the city. Today he felt stifled and claustrophobic at his desk. After lunch with colleagues in the food court across the street, where he tried to be congenial and failed, he returned to his paperwork, out of sorts.

The telephone rang and he ignored it.

The telephone persisted. He picked up without saying anything.

“Morgan?”

“Yeah, it’s me,” he said.

“It’s Miranda.”

“Sounds like you’re in the next room.” He was suddenly cheerful. “So how’s Easter Island? You found a suitable distraction, yet?”

“Well, I do have a strange man in my bed.”

“Good for you,” he said with what he knew was excessive good cheer.

“And he’s unconscious.”

“Not good.”

“And bleeding.”

“Not good at all.”

“And I think he’s a spy.”

“A spy?”

“Yes.”

“Is he dying?”

“Probably not. I dressed the wound. Morgan, talk to me.”

“Have you called the police?”

“The Chilean police do not inspire confidence. They paid me a visit in Santiago. In the middle of the night, Morgan. I thought they would kill me.”

He was alarmed.

“And they didn’t?”

“Hilarious. It was scary. They were looking for him.”

“Who?”

“This guy in my bed. They say he’s Harrington D’Arcy.”

“Who’s they?”

“The Chilean cops. Carabinaros.”

“Miranda.”

“Yes.”

“He’s not.”

“I didn’t think so.”

“You know who Harrington D’Arcy is, don’t you? His wife has just been murdered — she’s dead and her husband thinks it was murder, or he wants us to think it was murder. He might be the murderer. I think he might want us to think that, too. It’s my case. And you could help. What’s that perfume you used to wear, the expensive one?”

“Rare, not so expensive. It was Fleurs de Rocaille. Morgan, what on earth are you talking about?”

“Fleurs de Rocaille, yeah. Someone broke into the morgue and washed it off her body.”

“Whose body? Broke into the morgue? To steal her perfume? Morgan, you are making no sense.”

“You’ve got a guy on the verge of expiring in your bed and the only thing you know for certain is that he is not Harrington D’Arcy.”

“Yeah.”

“And you’re making sense but I’m not? Sorry I can’t help, I don’t know who he is, either. Otherwise, how’s it going down there?”

“It was good talking to you, Morgan.”

“You, too.”

“Bye.”

“You’re alright?”

“Yeah, it’s a good place to be.”

“That’s it, then?”

“Take care, Morgan.”

“Bye.”

Morgan’s ebullient mood wavered on the brink of collapse. Miranda in his life made him feel good. He had never felt as close to anyone else, not even his former wife. Especially not her. Perhaps to a girlfriend, the year he lived in England half a lifetime ago, Susan with the copper-red hair. He was fine now. Miranda was still in the world. People got on planes, went away, and you didn’t know if they were real anymore. But hearing her voice, she was still real.

But what the hell had they been talking about? It was like they had caught brief glimpses of each other across an abyss between parallel worlds. He felt himself slipping into a funk. He envied her having an adventure. A fake Harrington D’Arcy bleeding in your bed at the Hotel Victoria. She had slipped into a story by Somerset Maugham. A spy? Not likely, if he was using the name of an establishment lawyer. He was attractive, though. He could tell by her voice. And dangerous.

* * *

Miranda sat on the only chair in the room, gazing at her unconscious companion with something approaching affection. He had roused while she was talking to Morgan, then slipped off into a deep sleep, which projected, as it does among even the most dangerous, an innocent vulnerability that she found disconcerting. They had been through a lot together. So it seemed. Really, he had been through a lot, and so had she, but separately. She would let him sleep and heal. Then she would try to sort things out. It was good talking to Morgan. She had not crossed over into another dimension after all.

She had gone out and gotten medical supplies from a pharmaceutical and curio shop on the main street and picked up a few ready-to-eat groceries from a small grocery and curio store next to it. She had noticed very few tourists in Hanga Roa, but every retail outlet in town seemed to have rows of table-top moai replicas, gaping maki-maki ashtrays fashioned after an open-mouthed god of the island, and a stack of T-shirts emblazoned with moai or birdmen or heroic images of Hoto Matua, the island’s first leader when the people of Rapa Nui arrived from the sea, about the time ancient Rome fell to the invading Vandals.

Cruise ships, she reasoned. At random intervals, a sudden influx of exotic visitors would no doubt arrive, take photographs of themselves standing in front of a scowling moai to prove they had been there, pick up a few souvenirs on the run, and sail away. There can’t be too many, she thought. The nearest port for their next stop would be more than two thousand kilometres away. Curiously, she did not feel isolated, or that the rest of the world was remote. She knew her loneliness was something carried within, not imposed from outside. This would be a good place to write mysteries, if she could just step away from the one she was in.

When she returned to her room, she dressed the man’s wound. He shuddered from pain, without fully awakening, and when she was finished he mumbled something and fell back into sleep. After the interlude with Morgan on the phone, she squirmed down in the room’s only chair and watched as the hours went by, until the room grew suddenly dark when the subtropical sun plunged into the western ocean. She got up and went to the bathroom, leaving the door open in case the Englishman stirred. When she came back, he was awake. He had turned on the bedside light. Even in pain, he was insufferably handsome.

“Hey, how are you doing?” she said.

“Good, a lot better.”

“You just lie easy.”

He boosted himself up against the headboard.

“I’m all right,” he said. “I’m a fast healer.

“You lost blood.”

“I’ve got a lot. Was it blue?”

“Was it, oh yes, very blue. Sloane Square and Oxford, right? And before that, Eton or Harrow, no doubt.”

“Eton.”

“And what name are you going by today?”

“Tonight? Shaw, Thomas Edward Shaw.”

“You’re lying.”

“Am I? Yes, I suppose I am.” He hunched a bit to the side, to relieve pressure on his wound. “What about Ross,” he said, “could my name be Ross?”

“I suspect your name is Lawrence — T.E. Lawrence of Arabia, he used both Ross and Shaw as pseudonyms.”

“Quite so. You must be very good at crossword puzzles.”

“Yes I am.”

“Did you read his very pretentious book, Seven Pillars of Wisdom? Are you a Middle-Eastern history buff? Or was it the film with Peter O’Toole? An excellent film.”

“Where on earth did you get the energy? You were dying a few hours ago. I read the abridged version; Revolt in the Desert. Didn’t finish it. And what’s your connection with Harrington D’Arcy?”

“I am of stern stuff, my mother habitually proclaimed. Heal or die, my father would say. I had a Victorian childhood, generations too late. My parents were really quite evil, in their own charming way. I have never met Harrington D’Arcy. It’s just a name with a history, powerful, but obscure. Makes it easier to take on another identity if there’s an identity to take on, so to speak. For now, I need to be Ross. I believe I am carrying papers that will establish I am Thomas Edward Ross.”

“And are you?”

“Yes, certainly. Did you know when Lawrence was Ross he was John Hume Ross. He was only T.E. as himself and as Shaw. If there was an himself. I prefer my own version. Do you know Mr. D’Arcy?”

“Intimately. From a distance. His wife was just murdered — died.”

“Which is it, Miss Quin?” He was trying for a quip, but he seemed, for a moment, confused. “How could you know that?” he said. He glanced around, then looked at the telephone.

“And how would you know she was not?” said Miranda.

The Englishman who had decided to call himself Ross shifted his weight against the headboard.

“I think perhaps we should clean up the blood,” he said.

“I’ll do it later. I bought cleanser and some wiper-uppers.”

“Were you out?”

“I don’t carry dressings for a knife wound when I travel,” she said, gesturing toward his bandaged abdomen.

“Yes, of course. Thank you. Why are you being so helpful? Thank you for not calling the police.”

“I reserve the option. At this point, though, I’d rather keep the so-called authorities as far away as possible. I had some midnight callers in Santiago. They claimed to be police. Carabineros. They were looking for you. They did not inspire confidence.”

“And do I?”

“Inspire confidence? Anything but. You seem like a dangerous man to know.” She paused, then smiled. “I doubt you’re a cop, but I do think you’re one of the good guys. That could just be part of your disguise, of course.”

“Disguise?”

Come on, Thomas Edward Ross, she thought. No one wears good looks so casually without something to hide.

“Yeah,” she said.

He smiled with roguish insouciance. “I have no idea what you are talking about, Miss Quin. I will confess, I am not actually a member of the constabulary, although I might have been, had life gone in a somewhat different direction. I am a wounded man and vulnerable. Have we anything to eat?”

“And I might have been Pope,” she said. “We eat after you fill me in the mysteries of life, Mr. Ross. You disappeared on the plane to São Paulo. Then what? Begin there. Conclude with what you know about the death of Mrs. D’Arcy.”

“Nothing, I know absolutely nothing about her death.”

“The plane, you disappeared. You left me a note.”

“Right. Well, I did, yes. It didn’t do me much good.”

“Nor much harm, apparently. You’re here.”

“Somewhat harmed.”

“Yes, well…. Let’s start with, who do you work for?”

“Myself, mostly. In the end, we all do.”

“Oh really?”

“The age of spies and spying isn’t what it used to be.”

“If it ever was.”

“Point taken, Miss Quin.”

“Would you stop calling me that.”

“Certainly. Calling you what?”

“Miss — Miranda Quin, yes. Detective Quin, or Ms. Quin, if you feel compelled to give me a title. Not Miss Quin. My great-aunt Maude was Miss Quin.”

“Indeed, Ms. Quin. Or might I presume and call you Miranda? Detective, next question?”

“Your employer?”

“Would it be enough to say I am associated with a certain large entity that does not wish to be compromised by being associated with me?”

“That’s a start, if it’s the truth — which I doubt.”

“Quite wisely. But it’s something like that. I’m more of an agent than a spy. You really do not need to know more. You are alive because you know so little.”

“You think my visitors in Santiago might have killed me?”

“Of course. They are professionals. And skilled enough to know you could lead them to me — which you have.”

“Hardly. You got here first.”

“Yes, I came in on an American freight plane yesterday afternoon.”

“And coincidentally ended up in a room down the hall.”

“Hanga Roa is small. You are travelling under your own name. It was easy to find you, even before you arrived.”

“And they knew you’d find me?”

“Apparently.”

“Why?”

“Why what?”

“Why find me?”

“Because you are a very attractive woman.”

“Thank you.”

“And to check out the status of my book.”

“You’re kidding. They had them, you know. In Santiago. Both copies,”

“That is a shame. It belonged to Maria D’Arcy.”

Miranda sat upright. Until now, she had felt surrounded by terrors so absurd they were laughable, because sooner or later she knew she’d wake up. Suddenly, she was awake.

“I have it, again,” she said. “Your copy and mine. They apparently don’t like Heyerdahl. I thought you didn’t know D’Arcy.”

“I don’t. I know his wife — I knew her.”

“And you just picked her husband’s name at random. Now that is quite a coincidence.”

“I’ve lost a lot of blood, Ms. Quin, is that better? Do be kind. I have been quite careless — ”

“With your lies.”

“With the truth.”

“Same thing.”

“Yes, I suppose it is,” he said.

The connection between them was the death of Mrs. D’Arcy. Miranda felt like she had plunged into a Hitchcock film, the victim of forces beyond her control.

“I assure you,” said Ross, as if despite the revelation nothing had changed, “I did not know that Maria D’Arcy was dead. I had a private dinner with her near the airport, only hours before I met you. She was very much alive.”

“What is a private dinner, may I ask?”

“Private.”

“Gotcha. Word had it she was adventurous.”

He smiled ambiguously.

“In my business, you do what you do.”

She had heard that expression before. We do as we do, said the smoking man in Santiago. She realized she should be afraid of the handsome Englishman. He was in the same business as her midnight callers, but with polished manners. That made him more difficult to read, and perhaps even more treacherous.

* * *

The afternoon dwindled into ennui and Morgan went home early. Maria D’Arcy’s death puzzled him, but he was distracted by the feeling that it was incidental to something bigger — as to what that was, he had no idea. He nuked a frozen dinner and opened a bottle of Ontario merlot.

Alex Rufalo had called him in after lunch for a progress report.

“The medical examiner thinks probably misadventure,” Morgan had explained. “That means a coroner’s inquest.”

“I know what it means, Detective Sergeant. But until we get a definitive report, it’s an open case, so keep at it.”

“Yeah, sure,” Morgan had said, wandering back to his desk. He spent the rest of the afternoon on the computer, trying to find a connection between his boss and Harrington D’Arcy.

Before going home, he had made an appointment to see D’Arcy in the morning. You don’t make appointments with suspects, he thought. Only with witnesses. He realized D’Arcy had somehow positioned himself as an innocent by insisting on murder. He also realized sticking to protocol was his response not to the crime, but to his feelings of being played when he didn’t know the the game, let alone the rules.

For the most part, Morgan was a procedural maverick. He and Miranda were very good at their jobs, bent rules, or overlooked them, and got things done. Nothing illegal — they were both so straight their shadows wouldn’t bend on a bicycle — but sometimes they cut corners, ignored protocol, overrode bureaucratic niceties. And because they were good, they got away with it.

He did not always get along with senior administration, but he assumed they were on the same side. Right now, he wasn’t so sure.

He forgot about his dinner in the microwave and the open bottle of wine. With CNN on in the background, he slouched on the sofa, and distractedly sorted through a stack of books on Easter Island, not looking for anything in particular. He picked up a hackneyed guide to the island featuring the inevitable moai on the cover and thumbed through its pages. The book was overflowing with unfiltered ephemera; it was trite, amateur, and soulless. He tossed in on the floor.

The telephone rang. It was Ellen Ravenscroft.

“Sorry to bother you so late,” she said, “but I thought you’d want to know.”

“Yeah, sure. What?”

“Maria D’Arcy —”

“Murdered.”

“Yes, Morgan. You never doubted it?”

“It was your voice, and the hour. You’ve been working late.”

“No, love, I’m at home, with the heat turned up and nothing on but the radio. Yes, I’m at work. I’m standing in front of the lady’s naked cadaver as we speak.”

“Murdered.”

“Unequivocally.”

“How?”

“I thought you’d never ask. It’s the perfume, Morgan — why would anyone risk being caught breaking into a morgue? There had to be something in the perfume. And if the perfume was gone, there had to be traces of whatever it was masking — or, was the perfume a delivery system? Either way, it got me to thinking.”

“That’s always good. Do you want to finish this conversation over dinner?”

“You haven’t eaten yet? It’s nearly midnight.”

“I forgot.”

“You forgot to eat. I never thought I’d be saying this, but no.”

“Okay.”

“No, really, it’s a lovely idea, but I’m still at the ‘office,’ and tomorrow’s a heavy day. They’ve been bringing in the dead all evening, accidents and executions. Toronto’s getting to be a lethal place. I’m going to sleep here.”

“Okay.”

“Okay, so there were minute traces of poison absorbed through the skin on her neck. The details will be on your desk in the morning.”

Morgan went to bed on an empty stomach and lay awake for a long time. He listened to the darkness, excited, then calm, until a rush filled his mind and he drifted to sleep.

* * *

Miranda and her companion talked deep into the night, huddled over a light supper of sliced Spam with crackers, cheese, green grapes, and a Chilean cabernet to wash it all down. At ease with each other and yet wary in the ambient gloom of the bedside lamp, they might have been lovers in a dangerous time.

She changed the dressing on his wound, sluicing the ragged flesh with alcohol until he proclaimed he’d rather die from blood poisoning than painful benevolence. There was an urgency to their playfulness that heightened the intensity of being together. But even had the Englishman been up to it, Miranda thought herself unlikely to have sex with such a man. There were too many unknowns, too many evasions. Being in the midst of a conspiracy, when she was not even sure who the players were, was not supposed to be erotic.

But of course it was. It crossed her mind that intrigue was an aphrodisiac, better than oils and roses. It was infuriating because he looked so astonishingly handsome, his body taut and hard, suppressing pain like a great muscle ready to spring, the strain enhancing his face by making each feature more sculptural. His dishevelled hair and stubbled beard, the bared chest and bloodied bandage, the quiet but resonant voice and elusive accent, made him almost irresistible.

Bad news, naturally. She gazed at him and realized that the danger and confusion surrounding him were a natural state of affairs. The rational side of her mind found this intolerable, while, strangely, a small part of her wanted no resolution, but for things to go on as they were, one mystery rolling into another, each adding layers of complexity, like a snowball caught in an avalanche.

Looking at herself in the mirror, Miranda had never been so aware of herself as a woman. She decided to turn this to her advantage. She suspected Thomas Edward Ross could out-manoeuvre her in the manipulation of truths, but in the oppressive intimacy of their situation, perhaps she had the upper hand.

She led him on, playing on his urge to define himself. He talked. He had abandoned her book on the plane to São Paulo, he told her. That’s where the smoking man must have found it. Ross had spotted the Chilean travelling in the tourist section, that’s when he exchanged books and asked for Miranda’s help. But when he realized his pursuer knew he had been seen, he changed plans. Instead of leaving with Miranda, he slipped out through the baggage hold, leaving a few dollars in his wake.

What is odd, she thought, is that this seems improbable, but not impossible. She asked questions.

Why were they after him, whoever they were?

Why was he concerned about the Heyerdahl book?

How did she fit in?

Had she been part of his plans from the beginning?

What was special about Maria D’Arcy’s copy of the book?

Did it have something to do with the handwritten notations?

Was there a connection between the book and Maria D’Arcy’s death?

Who attacked him here in the Hotel Victoria? Was it the smoking man?

Why did they follow him to Easter Island?

Or did they follow her?

He repeatedly responded without answering, leaving her enthralled by his artful evasions when she should have been infuriated or frightened.

They both flinched at the sound of a gentle knock on the door. She recognized the voice of the concierge — perhaps he was also the owner — but could not make out his words.

She looked to Ross, and he shrugged, indicating that the inevitable could not be avoided. She slipped the lock on the door and opened it a crack.

The door slapped against her, pushing her backward into the room. A man came in, and the concierge stood behind him. The man walked directly to Ross and wrenched him to his feet. Another man entered the room. He imposed himself between Miranda and the door. When she moved, he slapped her hard and she fell to the floor. The first man hauled Ross out of the room. The second man snapped off the bedside lamp, then followed, drawing the door closed sharply behind him. Both men had worn kerchiefs pulled up over their faces; only the concierge was recognizable.

No words had been spoken. Miranda’s head throbbed. The scene had played out like a black-and-white movie, with the sound muted. Film noir, she thought, aware she was lying alone in the dark, with the taste of blood in her mouth. She had slipped into a screenplay written by Dashiell Hammett in league with John le Carré.

* * *