The Colours of Death

by Patricia Marques

  Voronov had left soon after, to freshen up before heading in.

  Isabel’s grateful for the soothing calm that fills the vet’s. Despite the clinical smell, it still feels like a comforting space, so far removed from a place primarily inhabited by human minds.

  Sebastião is still shaking his head in disbelief. ‘Dogs. Not even one, but two.’

  He’d already been up when she’d called him, too used to rising early even though this was his morning off. He’d met her at her house and driven her over here. Something Isabel had been grateful for, considering the wine from the night before had definitely made a dent in her already barely-there control. She had no faith in her ability to keep anything at bay this morning.

  The bell above the vet’s door jingles as the door opens to admit an elderly man with a cat carrier in one hand and a cane in the other. The young man at reception rushes around the counter with a warm greeting to help him. Apart from them, Isabel and Sebastião are the only ones in the waiting area.

  ‘You look tired,’ Sebastião says.

  Isabel snorts. ‘I feel tired.’

  ‘Is it the investigation?’

  Isabel shrugs. ‘Among other things. But yes, the case.’ She watches the receptionist coo at the cat in the carrier. The old man is chuckling and patting the young man’s shoulder. He follows the receptionist into the back and Isabel and Sebastião are alone in the quiet again.

  Sunlight streams through the shopfront, flooding the pale-green room and making the animal stickers ringing the reception counter gleam. There’s a whole wall filled with shelves of expensive, vet-endorsed food brands, grooming products, health products. Isabel’s going to stop at the pet shop and then at the supermarket instead.

  ‘Is it bad?’

  ‘It’s complicated. And I have the feeling this one’s going to leave a mark, Sebastião. It’s just . . . taken a turn that I don’t like, that’s all.’ She thinks of Bento Soares at the precinct, bursting with grief mingled with rage.

  Sebastião is quiet for a moment. ‘You’re being careful, aren’t you?’

  ‘I am.’

  ‘Dad was careful too.’

  Isabel looks at Sebastião. ‘Yeah.’ She smiles. ‘I’ve been missing him. I mean’ – she shrugs – ‘I always miss him but right now, I’m feeling it more.’ What she wouldn’t give for one of Dad’s hugs right now.

  Sebastião reaches out and pats her hand. Isabel breathes in sharply as she feels the brush of his thoughts. She inhales through her nose and breathes out through her mouth. Focuses on keeping her measly walls up. She needs to work on them. Too used to the S3 doing most of the work for her. She doesn’t have that luxury now.

  The speed with which her Gift had changed – she’s terrified.

  She hasn’t felt like this since the day she’d sat in that chair, in the waiting room with those other kids, waiting for her dad to come out and tell her that her whole life was about to change.

  ‘Have you still not spoken to Rita?’

  ‘No.’ Despite the whole thing, Isabel’s starting to feel guilty about the number of unanswered calls and messages on her phone. Michael’s visit hadn’t made her feel any more like having that conversation, though. ‘Have you?’

  ‘She came around yesterday,’ he sighs, ‘she was down, really upset.’

  It’s hard to resist Rita when she’s like that. It’s like kicking a puppy and it always leaves Isabel feeling like utter shit. Even now, she can feel the pressure building to go and speak to her, to soothe, even though that really isn’t Isabel’s job in this scenario.

  Sebastião squeezes her hand. ‘It’s a situation of her own making, Isa. And she needs to learn that actions have consequences.’

  ‘Mum doesn’t see it that way.’

  ‘Tia Maria has her own issues that I hope she’ll overcome some day. It still confuses me how she can be two so completely different people over something that shouldn’t matter at all. I guess Dad just weathered it all so well that I could never understand why she couldn’t do the same,’ he says.

  Isabel chooses not to think about that even though it never really goes away. ‘She wasn’t always like that,’ she murmurs and it’s easy to pluck from memory her mother’s laughing face, so beautiful in its smile. The way that if they couldn’t sit together on the bus when Isabel was young, she’d always look over at her, checking in. Her mum used to smile so much. ‘But I suppose that’s in the past. I don’t have any expectations any more.’

  ‘Liar,’ Sebastião says, voice soft and sad. ‘What about the headaches?’

  Isabel sinks down on the seat, plants her booted feet flat on the floor. ‘The pills aren’t working any more so I’ve stopped taking them. No headaches but . . .’ she chuckles, at a loss, ‘sometimes one problem walks out and another one walks right in.’

  ‘What do you mean? Are you okay? Do you need help?’

  All of her wants to reject it, but the truth is she has no one else who can help her. It rubs her raw on the inside to know she’s going to have to eat her own words.

  ‘I’m going to ask Michael for help.’

  Sebastião seals his lips together, but he doesn’t tell her not to. Like her, he knows her options are limited. Isabel is walking a thin line as it is. It’s either swallow her pride or suffer the consequences.

  ‘I have no choice,’ she says.

  ‘I know.’

  ‘I’m going to ask him to carry out a retesting’ – she keeps her voice down, just in case – ‘a real one. I need to know what I’m dealing with here, Sebastião, or I’m going to lose my mind. I have no idea how to even begin taking this on.’

  ‘You did it before.’

  ‘I had a Guide before. This time I’m on my own.’

  ‘You’re not on your own.’ He bumps his shoulder against hers.

  ‘Yeah. I know.’ Isabel closes her eyes. ‘I know.’

  Sebastião comes back with her and helps her settle the dogs back in before leaving her, with a tight hug and a promise to check in on them for her later.

  She should be rushing out of the house. They still need to figure out how Luisa fits into this whole thing and what role Célia Armindas has in this. Is she the perpetrator or the next victim?

  But Isabel needs this. Just a moment where everything slows down, so she can gather herself. She makes sure to notify the Chief she’s running a little late and takes her time. She gives the dogs a quick scratch behind the ears. She still has to name them.

  Then she heads into the bathroom and takes a long shower so hot that when she finally steps back out, her skin is red. Steam billows out of the bathroom door when she opens it.

  She squeezes at her hair with a towel one-handed and starts on the tea. All the while her phone sits on the counter, unavoidable. Isabel knows she’s going to have to pick it up and make the call.

  She’s already told Sebastião. That was the part she’d been dreading the most.

  No. That’s a lie.

  She doesn’t want to ask for help. Especially not from him. But just like the headaches, the fear has settled in is eating at her. The escalation of her powers is too much. The S3 is now totally ineffective.

  Isabel takes her tea and heads over to the sofa, still drying her hair. She sets the mug down on the floor and picks up the phone, feeling like her jaw has been screwed into place. She unlocks the screen and scrolls through her contacts and her thumb hovers over the name, just the idea of dialling sticking in her throat so badly that it feels as if there’s a chunk of food there obstructing it.

  Isabel takes a deep breath and presses it.

  He picks up on the fourth ring and sounds out of breath. ‘Isabel?’

  ‘Michael,’ she forces the words out, ‘I need to ask for your help.’

  Chapter 52

  Come afternoon, Isabel is outside HS Pharmaceuticals – Gabriel Bernardo’s place of work – having given her name at reception and told them that she’d wait outside.

  She’d stopped by the pr
ecinct to check in before coming here. Voronov hadn’t looked happy at her coming on her own, but Isabel had a feeling this meeting would go better without him here.

  HS Pharmaceuticals is housed in one of those super-modern buildings that are always a shock to the system in a city like Lisbon that is made up of so many old things. The windows have a blue sheen to them, and the building is huge enough that its shadow falls across those on the opposite side of the avenue.

  The road outside splits around an island of gardens in the middle, lined with benches and punctuated by kiosks and huge flower beds. Isabel tucks her sunglasses over her eyes, the crystalline brightness a bit too much for her when her head is so sensitive.

  She takes a seat on one of the benches, setting one paper cup of coffee down next to her, keeping the other in her hand as she draws her coat tighter around herself. The cup warms her palm through her glove. Gloves aren’t usually her thing, not even when it’s freezing, but she’s been taking extra care, making sure there’s something between her skin and others whenever possible.

  She watches people going about their daily lives with a degree of trepidation, just waiting for their thoughts and emotions to touch her.

  Isabel has had to return to the basics of when she’d first learned to control her powers. Half an hour to meditate, another half an hour to build her walls. She’s been keeping as much distance as possible between herself and other people. It’s not much of a barrier but it helps her feel better, helps her compose herself whenever it’s not enough and she slips up and lets the thoughts flood in.

  Would’ve been nice if this wasn’t happening in the middle of a murder investigation.

  She plucks the lid off her coffee and blows on it lightly.

  Gabriel comes out through the rotating doors, tugging a jacket on. He has his hair up like before but this time he is wearing prescription glasses, which surprises her. He hasn’t worn them in their previous meetings.

  There’s a hitch in his step when he spots her.

  Isabel smiles, holding up the second coffee cup and waiting for him to cross the street.

  He stops in front of her, sliding his hands into his pockets, still looking unsure.

  ‘Inspector,’ he says.

  ‘Isabel,’ she corrects, and holds the coffee out to him. ‘Sorry, it’s just plain black. Not sure what you take extra. I have some sugar in my pocket if you like?’

  Gabriel looks at it like he’s never seen coffee before. Then his eyes flick back to her face, apprehensive.

  Isabel’s smile turns wry. ‘You don’t drink coffee?’

  Gabriel takes the cup. ‘Thank you,’ and then he takes a seat next to her.

  ‘Sorry to come to your work like this.’

  Steam peels into the air as he lifts the lid to take a sip. ‘I can’t stay out here long.’ He won’t meet her eyes.

  ‘Gabriel,’ she says, kindly, ‘what were you doing outside my house?’

  Gabriel stares down into his drink, a muscle working at his jaw. The dark circles under his eyes have got worse.

  Isabel looks around them. ‘There’s no one here except for you and me. I haven’t reported it. I haven’t done anything like that.’ She twists in the seat, bringing a leg up onto it. ‘I want you to talk to me.’

  Gabriel says nothing, keeps his gaze locked on the cup of coffee.

  ‘Gabriel.’ She waits until he lifts his head and meets her gaze. ‘Talk to me.’

  ‘I’m sorry.’

  ‘You don’t have to be. Just be honest. Why were you there? Why did you run?’

  ‘You need to be careful,’ he says, voice low and soft, as if he is scared to speak the words into existence.

  Isabel draws back, surprised. ‘What?’

  ‘I wanted to speak to you but then I panicked. I didn’t want to be seen.’ Gabriel turns to look at her. Despite the brightness of the day, his skin looks sallow, drained. ‘What’s it like?’

  ‘What?’

  ‘I’ve worked on the development of a lot of Gifted-level medicine. I know someone on suppressors when I see it.’

  Isabel freezes.

  ‘Debilitating headaches are part of it, you know. They can get so bad that people can’t function. The higher the level the worse they are. Both times we met you kept wincing, when you thought someone wouldn’t notice, and you always keep your distance, even from your partner, even at the function where it was packed with people. Like you were trying to erect a physical barrier. We saw it all through the trials. But suppressors have been discontinued.’

  Isabel doesn’t know how to react, shocked that this has come out of nowhere and after a handful of previous encounters.

  ‘Luisa says you asked to look into her mind.’ He glances down at her gloved hands. ‘Do you do it through touch? Your level must be so high. Do you understand when someone’s level is high, the danger they could be in? You know about that, right?’

  Isabel recovers herself enough to reply. ‘Not from personal experience, as you seem to think,’ she says.

  ‘It’s why higher-level Gifted require monitoring. It starts to corrode parts of the brain, impacts the amygdala. Empathy and memory become affected. It can lead to a lack of emotion, which could be dangerous – less willingness to control oneself. It’s why S3 was created to begin with, to keep things from reaching that stage.’ Gabriel stops and drinks.

  ‘Why are you telling me this?’ She reaches for him but then realises what she’s doing and stops herself. ‘Do you know about what they were working on? Is that what this is about? We have two people who have had their lives taken. If you know something, you need to tell me.’

  ‘The people you’re looking into are very smart, Isabel. They know a lot about these things. You need to make sure you’re watching your back because they have a lot of power.’

  He gets up and walks to a nearby bin and throws the cup in there, still almost full. Stuffing his hands back in his pockets, he walks back over and stops in front of her.

  ‘I really am sorry about yesterday. Please take care of yourself. I have to go back now.’

  Isabel watches him cross the road and follow the slow spin of the revolving door back inside the building.

  She can feel the frantic pulse of her heart at her throat. Her throat feels dry and there’s a detached feeling of panic trying to claw its way through her chest, but she can’t quite connect to it, as if she’s not sure that she just sat through that conversation.

  She stays on the bench, the cool sunlight on her face and the susurrus of the city in her ears, until her coffee is finished.

  Chapter 53

  ‘You called for me?’ Isabel asks, coming into the Chief’s office.

  The Chief looks up from the documents she has in hand. She doesn’t have to say anything. Because the look on her face says it all.

  ‘What’s happened?’

  The Chief pushes back from her desk and stands up, her movements stiff and aggressive, underlining the stamp of anger in her expression. Her hands are clasped behind her back as if she’s keeping herself from doing some serious damage.

  ‘Isabel, take a seat.’

  Isabel blinks at her. She’d expected the Chief to throw a serious roadblock at her about the case, some kind of mistake or another piece of intel that has somehow slipped through the cracks.

  ‘Just – for once in your life shut your mouth and take a seat. Voronov is on his way over, too. This concerns you both.’

  At that, Isabel is thrown back into that moment, that one moment as a child when her life changed and she wasn’t able to do a thing about it. Her body goes cold instantly and then flashes hot. She has to breathe in deeply through her nose to keep herself calm.

  Chief knows. She knows about the pills.

  Voronov.

  ‘All right,’ Isabel manages to force past clenched teeth. When she takes a seat, it’s like all her bones hurt and she can’t bend her joints. Neither of them say anything else.

  Voronov’s knock sounds in th
e room – yeah, she recognises his fucking knocks now, but even if she hadn’t, his signature bleeds through the door. It’s not just him. She’s been slowly adjusting to the way things just come to her without her having to pull them to her.

  ‘Get in here, Voronov.’

  The door opens and closes. Isabel can’t bring herself to look at him. She doesn’t know what she’ll do if she does.

  ‘What’s going on Chief?’

  ‘Sit.’

  Isabel hears the groan of the chair as he sits.

  The Chief can’t seem to shake the unwanted energy clinging to her because she doesn’t sit herself; instead she starts pacing back and forth behind her desk.

  ‘We’ve had a complaint made.’

  Isabel looks up, unprepared for this.

  Complaint. Not an allegation.

  Isabel looks at Voronov and finds his eyes on her face. All of a sudden she feels guilty. His eyes narrow on her and she feels like he’s seeing right through her. Isabel wonders if this is how people feel when she looks at them, this sensation of knowing that someone can read everything going on in your head.

  ‘Irina dos Santos.’

  Both Voronov and Isabel speak at the same time. ‘What?’

  Isabel scoots forward on her chair.

  ‘Wait, wait, Irina dos Santos made a complaint? Against who?’ Isabel asks.

  The Chief finally sits down and when she looks at Isabel, Isabel feels her stomach drop.

  ‘She’s filed an official complaint against Inspector Isabel Reis.’

  Isabel sits back in her chair and looks away, too angry to speak. Because if she’s been called into the Chief’s office for this then it means whatever dos Santos’ wife complained about has stuck and Isabel is about to hear something from the Chief that she really, really isn’t going to like.

  ‘What could she have to complain about?’ Voronov asks. ‘I was with Isabel the whole time. She hasn’t broken any protocol or done anything that can even—’