When she gets inside the house she’s enveloped by cool air, and shivers. Toeing off her trainers, she goes straight to the heater and flips the switch on, tries not to think too hard about the gas bill that’s headed her way.
Her place is small, what they call a T1 apartment. A one-bedroom, though the bedroom itself is a pretty decent size and, since she doesn’t get other visitors that often either, the small living room and kitchen work well enough for her. There’s enough space for a newish TV and the shelves in the living room are packed mostly with plants. She put a nail on the wall and hung a wire hanger off it for the ivy to climb and curl all over it. The bottom shelves are packed with old paperbacks that she needs to trade for new reads and her comics are squished in between. She doesn’t have an armchair, just an old terracotta-coloured sofa that she falls asleep on way too much and a chair to one side of the low coffee table.
She stares at the plants as she holds her hands over the heater, waiting for the warmth to start rising in gentle waves and lap at her palms. She can’t bring herself to take her coat off yet.
Isabel thinks about what tomorrow will bring, the way the case is unfolding and what this will mean for Gifted in general. She sighs. They don’t need this on their plate right now. Following the Colombo incident, a wave of discrimination against the Gifted community had swept over Portugal. There had always been an edge of mistrust between regular people and Gifted, but it hadn’t been blatant, and Isabel would go as far as saying that it was mostly fine. But what happened then ripped open a whole new rift, one that had been greatly aided by the PNP and their followers.
But right now Isabel has other, more immediate problems at hand. She needs to call her brother Sebastião back – that’s not so bad. But she needs to call Rita, her sister, back too and she’s not as keen to follow that one up.
She pulls her phone out and scrolls through the missed calls, and remembers she hasn’t given Voronov her contact information. Fuck. She sighs and rubs at her head hard, wanting the headache to disappear. It doesn’t matter that it’s a part of her daily life; she wants a break from the pain.
As much as it annoys her to do it, she’ll have to squeeze in a visit to the clinic tomorrow. She can’t put it off with HR on the Chief’s case and these headaches escalating this way.
Great.
A loud rustling outside her windows draws her attention and she tosses the phone onto the armchair.
The room might be small, but Isabel loves that her living room window overlooks the winding sprawl of the city. Directly in front of it is a thick crop of trees and dry bushes surrounding a disused basketball court. It’s hard to get to. Sometimes teenagers manage to find their way up it to drink a few beers, or smoke weed. She’d kill for some of that right now.
Isabel already knows what she’s going to see as she peers down over her windowsill. A four-legged creature freezes and looks up, eyes reflecting the light from the window. It’s one of the mongrels that wander around in the threadbare woodland. The two of them are always here, even in the unbearable heat of summer. Except this time, as she looks around for the second, she doesn’t see it.
Something twists in her chest and she looks back down at the dog.
It’s not too far down; close enough that someone would only need a good boost up to grab onto the window ledge and haul themselves in. This dog has a permanently floppy ear and a rough circle of black fur around one amber eye. The rest of him is brindle.
‘Where’s your friend, hmm?’ she asks, as the dog continues to look up at her. She can see his ribs. She wonders what happened to the other one and then tells herself not to think about it. No point. ‘Wait here. I’ll bring you something to eat.’
She goes back and digs into her pathetically empty cupboard, drags out a can of sausages and pries it open. When she gets back to the window, the dog is gone. She blocks the sense of helplessness out and tosses the sausages down anyway. He can’t have gone too far. Hopefully, he’ll smell the food and return.
Dialling her brother’s number, Isabel tucks her phone between her shoulder and cheek. She wanders into the kitchen and dares to unzip her coat as she sets a pan filled with water on the stove and starts peeling a lemon, dropping the pieces of its skin into the water.
Sebastião picks up on the third ring. ‘She lives.’
Isabel snorts. ‘Shut up. Don’t you have sermons to go and see to instead of harassing a poor working woman?’
She can practically hear the eye-roll from his side. ‘I’ve been trying to reach you.’
‘I know,’ she says. She finishes with the lemon, tosses the knife in the sink, and sticks the skinned lemon in the fridge, the smell of it clinging to her fingers. ‘We’ve picked up a sticky case.’
‘All right. Well, be careful.’
She sighs. ‘I’m always careful.’
There’s a pause there. ‘Not always.’ Before Isabel can say anything, Sebastião continues, ‘Rita’s been trying to contact you.’
‘I know. I’ve seen her missed calls.’
‘They want us to go to dinner with them. Apparently, they have big news.’
‘You mean they want you to go to dinner. I doubt my mother actually wants me there.’ Isabel’s sister Rita might, Isabel can believe that. Though to be honest, she doubts even that. Her sister is too much under their mother’s thumb to step out of her safety zone and try to maintain a proper relationship with Isabel. It happens sometimes, but Rita’s moments of bravery are few and far between.
Both her mother and sister make more of an effort with Sebastião. Which is funny considering he’s not her mother’s child. But Isabel can forgive that one; Sebastião is easy to adore.
‘I’ll be coming too.’
Isabel leans back against the counter, eyes on the pot as bubbles start to appear at the bottom of the pan. ‘You usually have about as much time for their invitations as I do,’ Isabel says.
‘Rita sounded like she really wanted us to come.’ His sigh is loud and clear through the line. ‘Call her.’
‘Sebastião . . .’
‘Someone has to be the bigger person, Isabel.’
Yeah and it’s always me, she thinks. ‘All right, I’ll call her. And you’re going?’
‘Yes, I’ve already told her I’ll be there.’
Isabel groans. ‘Sebastião.’
‘Isabel.’
‘Do you even know what it’s about?’
‘As clueless as you are.’
‘I hate you sometimes.’
‘Liar.’
Chapter 10
Instead of calling, Isabel texts her sister. Rita messages her back asking her to please come to dinner because she has ‘important news’. Isabel replies, agreeing to go, and doesn’t check her phone again until she’s out of the shower and settling down to a bowl of hot bean soup and buttered toast. She really needs to go and buy some food for the house. She pulls the booted-up laptop onto her lap and types Gil’s name into the search page.
Most links that come up are related to scientific journals and studies and papers. As one of the heads of NTI, he has weighed in on a lot of things related to Gifted history and evolution. There are reams of pages of that, and some YouTube videos of him speaking that Isabel watches a couple of minutes of before clicking back out when it doesn’t turn up anything too important.
Ah. There.
An article on a joint project between NTI and the university, involving Professor Julio Soares. Isabel clicks on it.
It’s about a study to determine whether the ability to reduce or increase a Gifted’s level would be beneficial to the control and mental and emotional well-being of Gifted individuals.
Isabel arches a brow at that and scans the rest of the page.
They’re working with a new trial drug and documenting the results, with the aim of modifying Gifted classifications. According to the article, they think that the difficulties experienced by Gifted individuals are because anything below or above a number five classi
fication creates an imbalance in brain activity, which can lead to mental and emotional complications. They use the components of the S3 pill as their starting point.
S3 – Isabel’s own regular not-so-miracle pill, designed to suppress someone’s Gift.
The idea makes Isabel’s skin crawl. Interesting that not one of the people heading the project is a Gifted individual themselves.
She comes off that page and searches for Gil and events.
She gets a couple of talks and lectures, a science convention that he’d been due to attend as a speaker. There are a few other things, some charities and funding parties. Nothing that brings up where he might’ve been going this morning. Not that Isabel had expected to find that online. They’ll have to check if he has any other computers or laptops he used, speak to his colleagues and to Mrs dos Santos, see if the computer is a company asset. He might have another one that’s personal.
Isabel makes a mental note to check on all of that tomorrow.
She watches a bit more of another video of Gil talking. He hadn’t been the best speaker but clearly knew his stuff. She’d heard him on the news a couple of times and it had always left her cold listening to him talking about Gifted as subjects rather than people. Although Gil dos Santos claimed to have their best interests at heart, he had treated Gifted more as a problem that needed to be fixed.
Isabel finishes her soup and toast, sets it aside and sits for a while before going at the search again.
Aleksandr Voronov.
She stares at the headlines that fill the screen. They’re all from three years ago.
Ah. So, that’s where she’d recognised it from.
Aleksandr Voronov testifies against Gifted partner!
Criminals infiltrate the PJ: Gifted Police Officer turns back on PJ as his role in organised crime ring is exposed by partner.
In one article, there’s a picture of the courthouse, crowded with journalists and police officers trying to hold them off. That might be the back of Voronov’s head going into the courthouse. She can’t tell for sure. Too many other people in the photo.
Aleksandr Voronov had been a celebrated name by the Regulars in society when the news had broken. A Gifted officer, Mario Seles, had been turned in and, after an investigation by the Internal Investigations Unit, was found guilty. All the evidence had been provided by Voronov.
It had been big news at the time. Isabel had been in her first year as Inspector. She remembers she’d felt grateful for having already passed her exam. The board of examiners have since used Seles’ case as a point of reference for all Gifted.
There’s a picture of Voronov coming out of the courthouse on the day he’d been in to give evidence.
What isn’t mentioned is the rumour that had spread like wildfire through all the Lisbon departments, a rumour that the evidence had been bullshit and Voronov had turned on Seles for being Gifted, that it had all been yet another thing done to discredit the Gifted community.
Isabel sits back and stares at the article until it blurs.
What she knows for certain is that the Chief isn’t a bigot and fights tooth and nail for the people who work under her, no matter who or what they are. But no one is right all the time. And now Isabel’s going to be stuck with a partner she can’t trust.
It’d be easy for Isabel to get her back up and put Voronov in his place. But fair is fair, and since there’s a chance that Voronov isn’t a rat, then Isabel is going to do her best to make sure they work well together. She’s going to have to be smart about it and watch her own back until she knows one way or the other.
She glances back at the screen. There are no mentions of him in anything else. Not for the past three years, nothing after the case that ended with his partner being put away.
Isabel closes her eyes and lets her head fall back. It feels like the blood is pumping through her head in time with the headache, throbbing badly at her temples. It hasn’t improved. She hasn’t even had the smallest reprieve. Normally it abates by the time the pill’s effects begin to run out but this time it remains, steady and rhythmic, until Isabel feels like hitting her head against a wall a couple of times might be a great alternative.
She kneads at her right temple, where the worst of the pain is collecting, and forces herself to open her reports folder. She still needs to finish off the report for the case she was working on before Gil dos Santos died and set in motion a series of events that Isabel isn’t feeling particularly eager about seeing through.
Nothing good can come of a case where the son of a right-wing politician who has made his contempt for Gifted well known gets thrown into the ring of the investigation.
Chapter 11
THEN
Isabel watches the other children waiting just like her.
The sterile smell of the reception area isn’t nice; it makes her stomach swoop down and she has to swallow over and over as her mouth fills up with saliva. She feels like she’s going to be sick. But she doesn’t want to do that. Her dad is still inside the room with the doctor lady who had taken Isabel through her tests and Isabel doesn’t want to make a mess.
The others are sitting with their parents and waiting to be called in by one of the doctors. They are all here for the test results.
Her mum hadn’t been able to come because Rita’s sick, and Sebastião, their brother, had exams this week, so Tia Simone hadn’t let him come either. But that’s okay; Isabel told him it was fine because she’s strong. And she is. That’s what Dad always tells her.
Isabel looks at the table in the middle of the room. It’s covered with kids’ books and magazines and, on one side of it, colouring-in pencils with broken leads and felt tips with missing lids. There are a lot of yellow pencils and some of the markers have had their tips squashed. Isabel hates it when that happens. It’s why she doesn’t like Rita playing with her pens at home; she always presses too hard and breaks everything.
The door opens and Isabel looks up.
Her dad shakes hands with the doctor lady. Dr Carvalho, she’d told Isabel her name was. She looks over at Isabel, giving her a gentle smile and a wave.
Isabel doesn’t smile but she waves back. She hopes they can go home now. The tests had been long and scary. And she’s hungry. It’s been so long since they were last given a snack. She hadn’t been allowed anything else because they said it could ruin the tests.
Something odd happens to her dad’s face when he turns to look at Isabel. It’s like his face breaks for a second, and Isabel stands, hands fisting at her sides, because it looks like Dad is going to cry.
Isabel swallows again and rubs her hands over her jeans. Her mum had said she was allowed to wear her favourite clothes for this, so the jeans she’s wearing are her best ones. They have flowers on the pockets and her top has a picture of her favourite sailor moon.
But then Dad smiles and walks over to her. Dr Carvalho calls out the next patient’s name.
‘You okay? We didn’t take too long did we?’ Dad asks, patting her head and picking up her bag. They’d asked them to bring comfortable clothes for the test and Mum had packed up Isabel’s favourites for that too. Her dad takes her hand.
Isabel shakes her head. ‘Did she say something bad?’ she asks. She holds Dad’s hand tighter. Her heart is beating so fast and it scares her.
Dad kneels in front of her, smiling and shaking his head. Isabel loves it when her dad smiles like that.
He brushes her curls away from her face.
‘You did fine. The doctor was just explaining to me what the results mean.’
‘Is it bad?’
‘No,’ he says, ‘but remember what we talked about?’
Isabel nods. ‘Yes. You said we needed to know where the voices were coming from. If I was special.’
He nods. Dad has dimples. Sebastião and Rita have them too. Isabel doesn’t, but she doesn’t mind. Mum says Isabel has Dad’s eyes. Isabel thinks she’s right. When Isabel looks in the mirror they’re big and soft brown just like
his.
‘Okay.’ He takes out a paper from his pocket and unfolds it. It’s pale green and when he opens it up Isabel sees the same symbol on the top of the page that she’d seen on top of the building when they’d walked in yesterday morning. ‘This says that you’re Gifted.’
Isabel feels her whole body flush cold and then hot. She stares hard at her dad, can’t even open her mouth. She squeezes his hand tight.
Because she hadn’t wanted that. She hadn’t wanted that. No one wanted to be Gifted. She doesn’t want to think about what her friends will say.
‘Dad,’ she says and her voice is weird. Her throat hurts. It feels too tight.
Dad takes her other hand and rises so that he can take the seat next to hers.
‘Então, Isa,’ he says, voice gentle, ‘you don’t have to be scared. Okay?’
She can’t look at her dad then, she’s so scared. She’s so scared and her heart won’t stop beating so hard.
‘People don’t like Gifted,’ she says. ‘They don’t like them.’
Her dad ducks his head a little to look at her. ‘Do you not like people who have different Gifts?’
‘Everyone at school said it. And Mãe sometimes . . . when they talk about it on TV.’ Isabel’s mouth feels so dry and her chest hurts. ‘Mãe – is Mãe going to be upset?’
Her dad sighs and then hugs her. He’s warm and smells nice. Sebastião had taken Isabel with him on Father’s Day and they’d picked a cologne for their dad together. Dad wears it all the time.
‘It’ll be okay. You’ve just been given a gift, that’s all,’ her dad says, ‘it’s going to be fine. We’re going to learn more about it together, okay? I bet you’re going to think it’s really cool once you know how to use it properly. I promise I’ll help, okay?’
She nods against his shoulder, doesn’t want to look up yet.
‘You’re a gift to me Isabel, understand? You’re a wonderful gift to me.’
The Colours of Death Page 6