Extremities

by C A Devine

  ‘Did you fink, I wouldn’t find you?’ I spun around, where had that come from? That voice. I spun left, then right. All the people had hats and sunglasses, their faces covered. ‘Did you fink you wouldn’t pay?’ Where was he? I couldn’t see. Was he really here?

  ‘Hey, New York, you’re falling behind again,’ Max pulled down her bandana again and stretched up doing the same with mine. She dragged me down to her and kissed me. That heat, that exotic spice. She smiled up at me, pushing my bandana back up over my nose, then fitting her own. But the voice still echoed through my mind. She chased off through the crowd again. I followed, shaking off the shiver crawling up my spine. Breathe, Ryan, breathe.

  I lost her again. I turned left then right, someone slapped off my left side. I grabbed them; they pushed me, snapping out a mouthful in Spanish. I lifted my hand in apology, ‘Perdon.’

  I balanced on my toes, swung my head back and forth and caught a glimpse of Max out of the corner of my eye.

  Her hat was off, her bandana pulled down. I shouldered through the crowd towards her. She was talking to someone, a man. More like shouting over the roar of the drums and fireworks. She pushed him. His arm shot out and grabbed her. He had hold of her wrist and was dragging her by the arm. She was yanking her arm away. I pushed through, using my shoulder against the flow. Someone shoved back and shouted at me in Spanish, but I kept pushing. She looked like she was screaming now. I had to reach her. He was dragging her; she was fighting to stay on her feet. She lifted her right leg and kicked him, he let his grasp slip, but another hand came out – a hat, dark glasses, a face covered with a bandana. He grabbed her hair; the other man, her arm. She kicked out at them again. She stumbled. The two had hold of her, but I was getting closer. She was maybe 6 feet away now. I screamed out, ‘Max, Max!’ She kept fighting, struggling, pushing against them. ‘Max!’ She turned and looked straight at me. The crowd surged behind me, letting out a scream, pushing me forward when I needed to go sideward. I turned, looked back and she was gone.

  I drove back against the torrent of people. The thump, thump, thump of the drums pounded with my heart. I stuck my arms in front, pushing people apart. I squeezed back to the point I had seen her last. I spun around; there was no trace of her. She wasn’t there. Think, Ryan, think. Which direction were they dragging her? I stood on my toes, looking left over the crowd. The air was dark with smoke. I could see the entrance to an alley, but not inside. A fanfare rang out, then a huge medley of fireworks exploded behind me, lighting up the sky. And I could see them dragging her towards the end of the alley. The light began to fade. I pushed forward; the crowd pushed back. ‘Porfavor, porfavor,’ I shouted and stuck my arms through again.

  At the entrance to the alley, the crowd cleared. I sprinted in. The light had gone. I kept running as the smoke began to clear. I flew out of the end of the alley, onto a main street. Breaks squealed. I turned. A car was careering straight towards me. I bent my knees, pushed off the balls of my feet. I was in the air. Bang!

  I was flying backwards, and down. Pain blasted through my thigh and shoulder, then my head as it rattled off the ground. Fire burned through me as skin seared from my bare arms and legs.

  The driver jumped from the car. I turned my head both ways, but all I could see was a multitude of shoes. Gunfire rattled in the air; I tried to push to my feet. The driver was next to me blabbering in Spanish, pushing me down. Where was she? Where was Max? ‘Max,’ I roared, ‘Max!’ but I could only hear it in my head.

  People scurried around; car horns beeped, sirens blared. Two police officers appeared, and someone shouted ‘Ambulancia.’ There was so much noise. I had to stand up; I had to find her. I pushed up again. This time a cop laid a hand on my shoulder keeping me down, and crouched beside me. Chatting to me, smiling at me, keeping eye contact with me. I knew the drill. It wasn’t helping.

  ‘I have to find, Max,’ I said, ‘I have to get up, I have to find her.’

  She smiled at me again and said something else I didn’t understand. Then paramedics turned up with the same false smiles. I tried once more to get to my feet. They held me down. They wouldn’t stop chattering. ‘I need to find Max,’ I kept saying it, but they just kept prattling on and on. They lifted me onto a trolley. ‘No,’ I roared, trying to push up. They forced me down. I fought against them, ‘Let me up.’ They strapped me to the trolley. Someone came towards me with a needle, chatting to me in low calming tones. ‘No. No, I have to find her.’ The ambulance, the ER, the calming tones. The voice. ‘Max, I need to find Max, I need to find Max, I need to find Max.’ Did you fink you wouldn’t pay?

  *

  I was aware of silence. I blinked open my eyes onto a white sterile wall. I could feel my blood roaring. Someone sat on a chair watching me. Long dark curls flowed over her shoulders. ‘Max?’

  ‘Mr Ryan, how are you feeling?’ It was a woman’s voice, deep and throaty. But the accent was Spanish.

  ‘Where am I?’

  ‘You are in hospital, Mr Ryan.’

  ‘What happened?’ I tried to blink sleep from my eyes, focus better.

  ‘You were in an accident.’

  Images flashed back through my brain: the chase, the car, the squeal of brakes. ‘Where’s Max? Did you find her?’

  ‘Who?’

  ‘Max. They grabbed her, dragged her away.’ My heart thumped against my ribs.

  ‘Who are they?’ she balanced herself on the edge of the chair.

  ‘I don’t know. I have to talk to the police.’

  ‘I am Deputy Inspector Maria Gonzalez.’ She was beautiful. Smaller than Max with big long loose curls and delicate features propped on a tiny frame. Her age was difficult to make out, thirty maybe or she could have been twenty-five.

  I let out a tight breath, ‘They grabbed her just before the car hit me. I was chasing them.’ I sat up and swung my legs over the side. The white wall spun anti-clockwise, then again and again, faster, faster, faster. I sank back against the pillows.

  ‘Just stay and talk to me for a second, Mr Ryan. What is her name?’

  ‘Max.’

  ‘Max what?’

  I had no idea. ‘Look, I don’t know, we’ve been hanging around together at the marina for the last week.’ How could I have spent so much time with someone and not asked?

  ‘And you don’t know her last name?’

  ‘It never came up,’ I snapped it out. Not a good idea. I sighed, ‘I don’t know much about her, but I know what I saw.’

  ‘And that was?’

  ‘Two men dragging her off down the alley that exited onto the street where I was hit by the car,’ I struggled to keep my voice calm. My heart was beating so fast I thought it might break out of my chest. ‘Something has happened to her,’ my voice cracked. I let out a breath. I needed to calm down, get my breathing under control. They weren’t going to listen to me if I was hysterical. I blew out another breath, ‘I can give you a description. I saw the face of one of the men. I’m just asking you to look into it. Max was staying on a boat in the port. Look, I know what I saw. I’m not some madman. I’m a cop from New York, I’m here on vacation.’

  ‘I know who you are Lieutenant Ryan,’ the tone was full of the all too familiar sympathy.

  ‘I’m just afraid something bad has happened to her,’ I said.

  ‘Where is she from?’ So she had called, talked to someone, checked me out. I felt all hope of help slipping away.

  ‘She’s English.’ Was she? What about the way her accent changed?

  ‘Have you tried to call her phone?’

  ‘I don’t know …’ I even sounded ridiculous to myself.

  ‘How did you meet her?’

  ‘On the beach next to the marina.’

  ‘The nudist beach?’

  I nodded.

  ‘She was on her own and she approached you?’ The tone was patronising now.

  ‘I approached her.’ She raised her eyebrows. ‘At the marina, not the … look I know it sounds weird, but tha
t is the way it happened,’ I said, trying to keep irritation from my voice.

  ‘It’s mainly gay men who frequent the nudist beach and there are some older couples from the sixties naturist movement. Young single women would be very unusual.’

  ‘It’s how it happened.’

  ‘You were in and out of consciousness for eight hours.’

  ‘What does that mean?’

  ‘When did you sustain your injuries, Mr Ryan?’

  ‘Six weeks ago. What does that have to do with anything?’

  ‘I am a police officer too. Here is not so different from the United States. I have friends who have been shot,’ she said, her eyes drifting to the scar on my shoulder. I pulled the gown tighter around my neck. ‘I have friends who have gone through what you are going through now. You need time to recover from these things.’

  ‘So I’m imagining it all?’ I snapped. ‘And I’m imagining being in Spain too?’ Was she right? Was I imagining this whole thing? I couldn’t be, it was too real. Max was too real.

  ‘Get some rest, Lieutenant.’

  15

  The Backup

  This wasn’t some lone crazed psycho random abduction – that was the phrase Max had written in her novel. I limped down the dock. The police weren’t going to help. Sure, Deputy Inspector Maria Gonzalez had taken down Max’s description and given me pleasant assurances she’d look into it. But she had called New York. I’d have to find Max myself.

  At the Laila, I threw my bad leg over first. Pain spiked through it as I dragged the other one over. There had to be something here to help me work out what had happened. Do you know how rare two men grabbing a woman at random off the street is? Too rare. There had to be something here to tell me why.

  I opened the cockpit locker and found a screwdriver. I stuck it under the top of the hatch and jimmied the lock. I eased myself down inside. The boat looked the same as it had when we had sailed the Scirocco. I scanned the small saloon. Where to start? Her iPad sat on the chart table. I booted it up.

  It was password-protected and I was no computer whiz. I turned to more old-fashioned means. I searched the place. The lockers in her cabin contained printouts I had read before. I searched the galley and found six wrapped stacks of 1000 euro notes. I moved onto the seats in the main cabin, pulling them up; my body screamed in pain. I moved to the rear cabin, the lockers were empty. I found nothing personal, no passport or other form of identification.

  I lifted the boards, exposing the bilge. I looked around; two bags of bed linen lay inside, nothing else.

  There had to be something, I just hadn’t searched well enough. I shoved the mattress sideways off the bunk and threw the boards down on the floor. I dragged myself headfirst into the storage area, my skinned limbs screaming in agony. I didn’t care. I only cared about finding Max. The light was dim and I used my fingers to feel around the rough interior of the fibreglass hull. Nothing. Was I grasping at straws? Was anything here? I felt up under where the wooden bunk met the wall, dragging my fingers along the join. I hit something in the corner. I reached in and used my thumb and forefinger to draw it out. I held it up to the hatch. A thumbnail flash drive glinted in the light.

  16

  The Informant (The Lie IV)

  The following Thursday I hopped on the same train and stepped off, once again, in Aix-en-Provence. I strolled through the stalls, but this time smelt no wonderful aromas, heard no entertainers, touched no exotic fabrics and when I reached the alley that led down to the pretty café, a shudder ran through me. I lowered myself into the same seat, under the awning, ordered café-au-lait and pulled a copy of today’s Le Monde from my bag. I settled back and flicking through the pages read about the state of the economy, the latest Arab crisis and the president’s new wife. As I sipped the spirited black liquid, I lingered on page five where scribbled in the margin were the words, “He bestowed on me a gift from his travels, all wrapped up in a pretty blue box.” This was it, once I left the drop I was officially an informant. Officially accepting all my father’s charges and betraying Angelo.

  I hesitated only a moment before dropping a few coins on the table and standing up to leave. Just as I cleared the terrace, I bumped into a fifty-year-old man in a dark suit, white shirt and striped tie. ‘Pardón,’ I apologised and walked on without giving him a second glance. He lowered himself into my vacated seat, signalled the waiter and lifted the newspaper.

  For almost three weeks I had found nothing. I searched the villa from top to bottom and realised what I hadn’t in the beginning, the house was rented. There was nothing of Angelo there.

  On four occasions, I dropped a sleeping pill into his wine. Each time I went through whichever car he had left out front, searched his briefcase and downloaded the contents of his Blackberry. Each time I found nothing. The phone contained no contacts, no notes and no dates in the calendar.

  The day before my third excursion to Aix, I was bristling with energy. I crawled length after length in the pool, mulling the situation over in my mind. I was nervous that I could get caught and angry that the whole operation had proved fruitless. The swim didn’t help. I pulled on training shoes and ploughed through field after field of poppy and lavender. There was nothing, not one ounce of evidence to back up Dad’s allegation. Were they wrong about Angelo?

  A grey Aston Martin DBS Volante sat outside the front door – it had looked burgundy in the stables – a jaunt in that would certainly help work out my kinks. I sank into the luxury and screeched out through the electric gates. The engine roared as I opened it up.

  I wove in and around country lanes, testing it out, putting the twelve valves through their paces. It was an exquisite machine. I spun around a hairpin bend, straddling the white line, right into the path of a speeding Citroën 2CV. The elderly driver stared at me for an endless second before I twirled to the right, then to the left. I hit the stony verge and the smell of burning rubber permeated the air. I turned back up onto the road unharmed and blew out a breath. I looked back in time to see the little Citroën speed around the next bend. I continued somewhat slower around my next turn. I straightened the wheel and felt a bump, then another and another. I pulled up at the side of the road and jumped out to take a look. There was a gaping gash in the back right tyre. ‘Shit,’ I cursed and kicked the wheel.

  *

  Angelo was already home when I walked in. ‘A flat? What do you mean, you got a flat?’

  ‘I hit a pothole,’ it was only a white lie. ‘You know the state of the roads around here.’

  ‘You’re fucking joking?’

  Should I say yes? The nervous energy sparked up a notch. ‘No.’

  ‘You stupid cow, I need that car. Tonight.’

  ‘I’m sorry. I didn’t do it on purpose. I’ll get it sorted tomorrow.’

  ‘What bit of tonight don’t you understand?’ he lunged for me. The key fell from my hand and spun across the floor. I turned and ran, but he was right behind me. I reached the front door; he sprang, grabbing me by the hair. He slapped me with the heel of his hand on the left side of my face. Pain exploded up through my jaw.

  ‘Get off me, you psycho!’ I brought my right arm up into his ribs, clawing at the skin. I followed up with my left, punching him on the side of the head. The impact shuddered through me. But it stunned him and I wriggled from his grasp. ‘Get the fuck off me,’ I said, backing away from him, aiming for the door once more.

  He dived for me, landing a blow to my kidneys. I went down. A second wave of pain seared through me, but adrenalin was taking over and I was bringing my knee up to his crotch, fast. ‘You’re no better than the fucking morons that can’t tell the difference between Tuesday and Wednesday.’

  I froze.

  ‘When I say Wednesday, I mean Wednesday.’

  I covered my head and curled into a ball.

  ‘Don’t they realise how dangerous it is to fuck with the schedule? And now this, screwing the whole thing up so we won’t be ready to go,’ he continued to r
ant, but backed away from me. ‘Keep your hands off my cars,’ he stormed out, snatching the key up off the floor as he went.

  I pushed to my feet, fighting nausea. Tonight? What did he need it for tonight? I walked out onto the terrace, tasting blood, and watched as he drove the Aston Martin down the dirt road to the stables and a few minutes later walk back up.

  I was staring at the television when he shuffled back in.

  ‘I’m so sorry, can you forgive me?’ He slid to his knees in front of me, ‘It won’t happen again. I promise. Let’s forget it. Please.’ I said nothing. The pain in my jaw wasn’t about to let me forget anything soon.

  He made dinner and lavished me with attention. He couldn’t do enough for me. He didn’t head out again, so I opened a second bottle of Pétrus and dropped a pill in his glass.

  I snuggled into him as I waited, examining his chest. The angry black bruise, indented with nail marks, gave me a sliver of satisfaction. When I was sure he was out of it, I slid out of bed, tiptoed down the stairs and out of the terrace doors.

  I wandered the half mile down to the stable. The Mistral was blowing, breathing a welcome chill on my sore face. The doors were chained and fastened with the same double fingerprint recognition padlocks. I wandered around the long building. Bars covered all the windows on the ground floor, but upstairs they were unobstructed. I shouldered the small door, it didn’t budge. I walked all the way back around to the main doors, but there was no way in. There was only one thing for it. I stepped over to the drainpipe, wrapped my arms around it and drew up my knees just as an owl hooted and rushed from the trees.