The Broken Ones
Page 38
“Ethics, I expect.”
Haig shrugged. “He won. I was drunk, and he fought dirty. Dirty little Italian. Just like you.”
Oscar didn’t mind the sound of that. They reached the shade of the rotunda, and Oscar sat stiffly.
“You warned me off Chislehurst,” he said. “You knew something was up.”
“Like I said,” Haig said through smoke, “I didn’t know which side you were on.”
“You knew Moechtar was crooked.”
Haig stared out across the headstones. “Not crooked,” he replied. “Guilty.” He looked at Oscar. His eyes were as bright and hard as ever. “I just didn’t know what of.”
They sat in silence. Oscar watched as the last of the mourners got into their cars. Foley saw Oscar, and took a step toward the rotunda; then he noticed Haig and stopped dead before awkwardly changing direction.
Oscar sighed and signaled for a cigarillo. Haig’s eyes narrowed, then he handed over his silver tin. Oscar took a smoke and waited for Haig to light it.
“You had Jon try to get me out of the picture. Way back when.”
Haig nodded. “I did. You really were pissing me off.” Haig rubbed his chin thoughtfully. “Inexcusable, though, what he did to that boy. Damned unprofessional.”
Jamy sat a few yards away, under a tree, looking down at an ants’ nest or a twig or nothing at all.
Oscar nodded. Through the trees, he could see a little orange backhoe trundling down a path, heading toward Sandro’s grave.
“I could bring that up again,” Oscar suggested. “Implicate you.”
“Ah, yes. You could.” Haig stubbed out his cigarillo on the painted timber and looked at Oscar. “But not a lot of evidence. Besides”—he pushed himself up off the seat and stepped into the brilliant sunlight—“you’re no longer pissing me off. Sorry to hear about the Barelies. When you’re up to it, drop by.”
Oscar watched Haig walk back to his car, unsure what it all meant. He was alive. He was wearing his uniform, and no one had asked him to take it off. It was a strange world.
He looked up at the mackerel clouds skating silently high overhead.
No rain today.
Acknowledgments
I owe great debts of thanks to many people who helped this novel arrive. I’m certain I’ve missed some, and to them I apologize.
As ever, I want to express my gratitude to my tireless and inspiring agent, Selwa Anthony.
My publisher, Vanessa Radnidge, at Hachette Australia, possesses amazing insight and endless patience—her skill, ideas, and deep care for her books and her authors are treasures I value enormously.
Heartfelt thanks go to my editor at Doubleday, Robert Bloom, whose love for good storytelling is infectious, and whose abilities are priceless.
Huge thanks must go to the rest of the Hachette team and Michael Windsor, Joe Gallagher, John Jenkinson, and everyone else at Doubleday for the hard work and great faith they’ve put in this book.
Copy editors Carol Anderson and Claire de Medici helped elevate the text to a new level and made countless wise suggestions.
It’s important to both thank and congratulate Karina Machado, whose brilliant nonfiction book Spirit Sisters opened my mind to what ghosts might be and mean.
I’d like to thank Tania and Nicole Brancato for their invaluable thoughts.
Sharon and Malcolm Hinton deserve special thanks both for checking details against their own experiences and for their precious friendship.
My deepest thanks are for my family, who tolerated my long absences while this book came to be: my divine children, Max and Poppy, and my beautiful wife, Sarah, who makes everything easy—I adore you.
Finally, I’d like to thank you, the reader, for taking the time to pick up this book. I hope you’ve forgiven its flaws (they are all mine!) and enjoyed it.