The Sudden Appearance of Hope

by Claire North

  I was twenty-four years old, and had come to Milan for the food and the fashion. First impressions – my life is about making a good first impression. When one attempt fails, I will go away, and reinvent myself, and return to try again. Though first impressions may be the only thing I have, at least I get to practise until they’re right.

  Milan during fashion week is full of strange crowds at unlikely venues. Turn a corner and there they are, the young and old, dressed in incredible shoes and ridiculous hats, waiting to see someone-who-knows-someone-who-is-someone’s-friend walk up the red carpet. Models abound, but are surprisingly hard to spot in the streets without their make-up and pout, the glamour gone, walking with legs, not hips. It is an exercise in transformation, one I was determined to study.

  Getting into the Dolce & Gabbana after-party was easy. You walk in as a waitress, and once inside you change into a gown. That year, collars were high, skirts were short, and the look was paisley meets Star Trek. I noted every woman of power, every model climbing that greasy pole, and copied their smiles and walks, one foot in front of the other, a perfect straight line, toe to heel.

  It was a spiteful whim that led me to rob Salvatore Rizzo, sixty-nine years old and the king of beauty.

  “A shame, a shame,” he said, looking at me. “You could be someone, but you’re not someone, you don’t have the face, the eyes, the lips; and if you were going to be someone, you’d be someone by now.”

  I thought about speaking my mind, and didn’t. I was twenty-four years old, and I was learning professionalism.

  “These,” he said, running his fingers down first the gold-and-sapphire choker around a model’s throat, then the line of her collarbone, then the slope of her arm, “are the Tsarina’s Tears. They were worn by Alexandra of Russia the day the Winter Palace fell. Do you know what they’re worth?”

  Approximately six million dollars, I thought. “Oh no,” I replied. “How much?”

  “To ordinary people – money. To me – the human soul. The girl who wears this isn’t just beautiful, she is extraordinary, she is an icon, an icon of what women should be. Women should be beautiful, they should be diamonds, we should worship them, we should want them, we should need to be wanted by them, we should keep them safe and polished and perfect, that is what I believe in, that is what I fight for, I am a feminist you see, it is the only thing that is important in life. Women. And beauty. And the soul.”

  I smiled and wondered if any of the on-site security personnel carried guns.

  At the bar, a model from Riga, seventeen years old, whispered, “They told me I should sleep with him, but my friend let him do things to her last month and then got sent home without her pay, so I’m just going to keep working, stay in control, get to the top the hard way.”

  “Why do you do what you do?” I asked.

  “Cash,” she answered. “If I can keep this up, I can pay for university, but it’s hard – it’s a hard life, you have to change everything you do, how you eat, how you speak, how you exercise, how you sleep, how you walk; everything. But sometimes, when I walk down the catwalk, and everyone stares at me, I feel it.”

  “Feel what?”

  “I feel like… yeah. Fuck you. I am fucking amazing. I am fucking strong. That’s what the clothes mean, you see. When they’re good, I feel more like me, and I’m unbeatable.”

  That’s what the smile means too, I thought, lips locked in place. I smile, and I do not speak my mind, because when I am restrained in my actions, I am more than myself: I am unstoppable.

  “What do you want to study?” I asked.

  “Urban redevelopment.”

  “Not fashion?”

  She shrugged. “I know about fashion already. But I don’t know enough about mass transit links.”

  For a moment, the smile becomes genuine. “You should study,” I said. “I think it sounds like an excellent idea.”

  Three hours later, I found her passed out behind the bar. Someone had slipped something into her drink, and her pants were torn. The hospital said there was no sign of penetration, but the management let her go, just in case. Two hours later, the Tsarina’s Tears vanished from Salvatore Rizzo’s room, taken by a woman whose face no one could remember.

  Usual pattern of behaviour.

  I offered the stolen jewels for sale, agreed an exchange in a café in Vienna, arrived, ordered sachertorte, and within five minutes was staring at an arrest warrant and a small man with the beginning of a premature bald spot who said, “Did you have a coat?”

  So stunned was I by the situation, by the policemen swarming around me and the small crowd of tourists staring at me through the café window as the handcuffs were clamped on, that I didn’t register the question at first.

  “What?”

  “A coat,” he repeated patiently. “It’s very cold outside.”

  “By the door; the blue one.”

  “This coat?”

  “Yes.”

  He patted it down quickly, found nothing of interest, draped it over my shoulders. “All right then.”

  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 spinnin
g 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.

  I felt no need to pray, and wondered if any goddess of the sun would watch out for me regardless.

  I thought about Byron14, and mugurski71.

  I thought about the Chrysalis diamonds, hidden back in my hotel room. Why had I stolen them? At first it had been part of a plan, a challenge, a thing to do. But Reina had died and I had been prepared to walk away until someone had said…

  Perfection.

  And Princess Shamma bint Bandar had been perfect, and so had Leena, and Reina had not been and she had died and perhaps…

  … with the wisdom of hindsight…

  … I had let a little bit of spite infect my professionalism.

  Spite: malicious ill will. The urge to hurt or humiliate.

  Byron14 had an agenda. That didn’t necessarily make Byron14 wrong.

  I sat in thought for an hour and a half, until the motion of the sun pushed the shade away from my face and my skin began to burn. Then I went into a hall of white stone and crystal chandeliers, and wondered if this simple opulence, this elegant extravagance was what the Prophet had really had in mind when he preached, and listened to a lecture in English on the interpretation of the Hadith, and closed my eyes as the mullah talked, and thought some more.

  Chapter 18

  There’s a lot of crap talked about the darknet.

  Encrypted data, hard (but not, please note, not impossible) to trace. It lurks beneath the internet, that public stewing ground of tracked data and tweets, like the submarine beneath the cruise ship. There, political dissidents post videos of their kin being slaughtered by the powers that be; here, the factory workers in Yunan driven to despair, their final moments shown as they throw themselves from the highest windows. Their deaths are filmed on a smartphone and smuggled through the Great Firewall of China; the man who died that day made your computer, and it was cheap – will you, knowing his suffering, buy elsewhere? (But it was cheap! So wonderfully cheap!) Governments use the darknet to negotiate and communicate away from prying eyes. The US Navy invented it, and through it treaties are salvaged, truths revealed.

  Anonymous don their Guy Fawkes mask and take down government servers and giant corporations, fight for petty feuds and noble causes. Today a DDOS attack against the Russian government in retaliation for the death of a journalist who spoke out over Ukraine. Tomorrow a police server is wiped in Scotland Yard, erasing records of one of their kind and, incidentally, securing the freedom of two aggravated assaulters, three burglars and a rapist.

  Causes are sometimes blind, they say. Sometimes people are hurt in the fight for freedom.

  Free to look at child pornography.

  **My website has over 40,000 positive reviews and over 3,000 images!!**

  Or perhaps:

  Heroin, uncut, 2kg slab direct from Afghanistan. This is the highest quality, carefully packaged and delivered. Please place your offers with the subject line, “Auction bid”.

  There is no act too degrading, no violence which cannot be indulged on the darknet. Pay in USD, euros, bitcoins or yen, someone, some
where, will make your dreams come true.

  On the day I was to exchange $2.2 million worth of diamonds with an anonymous user by the name of mugurski71 in a café in Oman, I took a gamble on Byron14, and sent a decoy in my place.

  Her name was Tola, and she had been trafficked from Thailand four years ago into domestic service. Her passport was taken by the agency who’d arranged her transit, her salary was held back for “security requirements” and after three weeks in the house where she was labouring, the fifty-four-year-old father-of-nine attempted to rape her. She bit his ear hard enough for him to need stitches, and she was arrested. Once he was out of hospital, the man didn’t press charges, but the agency which had trafficked Tola gave him compensation for his trouble and had Tola in a brothel in the desert before the cheque had cleared.

  “I’m nice,” she said, when I phoned. “I have good French.”

  I told her to meet me in the souk, and left a mobile phone on the table in the café where the transfer was to take place.

  Through the mobile phone’s camera, I watched her face bob in and out of focus. She didn’t pick up the phone, didn’t examine it, expressed no curiosity about anything. Just sat and waited, her features stuck in tiny motion, like a piece of degraded film on a loop.

  From my phone a few shops away, I sent her location to mugurski71 and waited.

  They arrived in seventeen minutes, and the moment they did it was obviously a trap. The man who went into the café was respectable enough: a cream linen suit, sunglasses, hair receding from his high forehead and a silk handkerchief folded in his jacket pocket. The seven armed men who positioned themselves around the little shop and nearby pathways didn’t even bother to hide their weapons; one, an idiot who deserved to lose both his testicles in the inevitable slipped-trigger, had a gun lodged in his trouser belt.

  All this I saw as I walked between them, examining the sights of the market like a good tourist. In my ear I could hear a conversation unfolding in the café that I was happy not to be a part of.

  Where are the goods?

  Good. Good good.

  Where are they?