The Colours of Death

by Patricia Marques

  Rita’s eyes flick up to Isabel’s face, wary.

  ‘I’m not going to lie to you and tell you that what you’ve done is okay. No matter what Mum says.’

  Rita drops her gaze to the table and reaches out to run her thumb along the Tupperware’s seal, rubbing it back and forth. She doesn’t say anything.

  ‘Look,’ Isabel blows out a breath and shrugs, ‘shit happens. I get that sometimes . . . things are messy and that’s just the way it is.’

  Isabel thinks about Michael in her apartment, eyes on her like he might never see her again and the words he’d thought burning into her mind like a brand. But it isn’t her place to say any of that, especially when Isabel still isn’t sure what her own feelings are on the subject.

  ‘You’re marrying him. You love him, right?’

  At that Rita glares at her. ‘I’m not an idiot, Isabel, of course I do.’

  ‘Hey, that’s not what I meant. But I just thought, if you’re going to go out with my ex-boyfriend for a year behind my back, then it should be for something more, something special, I guess. That’s all.’

  Rita’s flinches at the ex-boyfriend label. ‘I didn’t mean for it to happen.’

  ‘I believe you. I don’t think you deliberately set out to fall for Michael. Like I said. Shit happens.’

  Rita sighs. ‘I’m sorry, Isabel.’

  ‘Yeah. Well, it is what it is, right?’ Isabel forces a smile. ‘I think . . . you should do what you want. If you really want to marry him then I wish you all the best. I really do. I hope you make each other happy.’

  Rita opens her mouth, at a loss for words. But then she shuts it again. ‘Will you come to our wedding?’

  Isabel chokes out a laugh in disbelief. ‘Rita. Are you seriously still asking me that?’

  ‘You’re my sister.’

  ‘I know. And I’m sorry but I can’t do that. You have to understand where I’m coming from here.’

  ‘But you’re telling me to be with him!’

  ‘I’m not telling you to do anything. I’m saying you should do what you want. And I’m saying you don’t have to feel any guilt towards me for doing it. But I still won’t be coming to your wedding. And, if I’m honest,’ she leans forward and peers into her sister’s face, ‘I don’t think it’s fair of you to ask that of me. If you think about it, really think about it, you know I’m right.’

  Rita stays silent.

  ‘You’ll have Mum there. Sebastião has already agreed to give you away. It’ll still be a ceremony filled with people who care about you. But this is as much as I can give here. I can’t do more than this. Just. Be happy.’

  Rita turns away and Isabel hears the sniffle she tries to muffle with her hand. She doesn’t turn to look at Isabel as she gets up to go to the boiling water and composes herself. She keeps her back to Isabel as she wipes at her face.

  ‘You still want tea?’ Rita asks. Her voice wobbles but doesn’t break.

  Isabel watches her sister, feeling drained and sad.

  ‘Yeah. I can still have some tea.’

  Chapter 57

  It doesn’t take long for Isabel to decide she’s not going to stay at home doing nothing. She has faith that the Chief will resolve everything. It doesn’t matter who has the audacity to come after the woman, the Chief doesn’t take things lying down and she never lets people meddle with her team.

  As she leaves the building with the two dogs trailing after her, she feels displaced.

  Not in a bad way. It’s a test for herself.

  Nerves beat through her as she prepares. Slowly lowering her walls.

  If there’s ever a time to do it, it’s right now, when the streets aren’t packed with people and just the thought of their every worry and problem finding their way into her head is almost enough to convince her that this is one of the stupidest things she’s ever done.

  Isabel can’t remember the last time she left her house in no hurry and with nothing more demanding to do than this. The dogs trail obediently at her side, which surprises her; she thought they would have been tugging her left, right and centre and she’d been braced for a disaster happening as soon as they stepped outside the gate. Images of them taking off after a cat and her rolling down the steep street might have crossed her mind a time or two.

  Sebastião had laughed at her when she’d told him what she’d named them, apparently shocked by her lack of imagination. She’d named the brindle Tigre and the little white dog Branca. It worked and they didn’t care.

  It’s stupidly early. Just after seven in the morning and the people awake right now, walking under the pink morning sky, are wrapped up tight and yawning their way through their commute to work. But the kiosks are open and so are the local cafés tucked away from the main streets that will fill with tourists in a couple of hours’ time.

  People’s thoughts as they walk by her manifest in her mind with a crisp clarity that leaves Isabel stunned. The only thing that keeps her moving is the dogs surging forward to sniff the next street corner. Isabel follows them, keeping enough attention on her surroundings that she doesn’t barge into someone, but mostly she just focuses on leaving herself open and listening.

  Maybe it’s because it’s the first few hours of the working day, but people’s minds are mellow; as their words form in her mind, they bring with them colours that reflect their sentiment. Soft yellows as they think about what they have to get done today, or as they remember that they’ve agreed to meet someone after work – that one is tinged with pink towards the end – or as they think about what they’ll have to pick up for dinner on their way home.

  Had she ever noticed that people’s thoughts had colours too? That their voices were dipped in them just like emotions?

  Isabel’s throat tightens and she keeps making her way, letting herself swim in and out of the voices around her, even while the world remains silent to her ears.

  It’s so unobtrusive. The thoughts aren’t forcing their way in; they’re just there, in the space between her and others. She’s not pushing her way into anyone’s mind, doesn’t have to forge any paths. All she’s doing is listening.

  Isabel makes her way to the river, taking the long route through snaking streets and hidden courtyards. Lisbon is a maze of them.

  The river is quiet at this time too. They’d remodelled it a few years back so that there are now wide, yawning steps that span the length of the riverbank all the way to the Terreiro do Paço terminal, where the boats that ferry people across come and go at all hours.

  She grabs a coffee from a nearby café. It’s a small space with just enough room for stock and for someone to move around a few steps. There’s a see-through glass box on the counter displaying a few cakes, but Isabel can smell the sweet scent of roasted chestnuts a little further down the river bank.

  ‘Bom dia,’ she says, ‘small coffee please.’

  Five minutes later Isabel is sitting on one of the higher steps of the river, dog leads and coffee resting next to her and chestnuts on her lap. The dogs are two steps down from her, playing in the water as it laps over the steps, chasing the waves and barking excitedly when a wave comes too close.

  Isabel pats her pockets absently to make sure she has the treats in there. It’s one way to make sure they come back. Dogs that have had to scrounge for scraps for most of their lives will have a hard time running away when there’s an open bag of treats waiting for them right there.

  The river is soothing.

  Her breath billows in the cool air.

  It starts to sink in, then. How much she’s closed herself off from her Gift. She doesn’t even know the extent of what she can do. She has this thing that she’s been born with and she’s spent years suppressing it, scared to let it show because so much of her life depends on it.

  But what had that got her? Years of physical pain. Years of failed relationships with family, friends and lovers. She’s been burying a part of herself, thinking that if she can control it then she won’t end up like other
Gifted. She won’t be taken away somewhere in the middle of the night and never be seen by her family again.

  Tigre runs up to her, setting his wet paws on Isabel’s lap and panting in her face, trying to lick her.

  Isabel laughs and pushes him away. ‘Stop!’ she says. ‘Look what you’re doing.’ Branca chases after her friend and then she has two dogs on her lap. ‘All right, all right. Let’s keep walking.’

  By the time they get home it’s lunchtime. Isabel lets them back in the house and goes to see what she has in the fridge that she can throw together. The dogs sniff around before settling down in their preferred spot, Tigre curling around Branca and licking her a couple of times.

  After making herself a quick something, Isabel sits down and props open her laptop.

  Fuck Bento Soares if he thinks he’s going to be keeping her down at all.

  After two hours of scouring through everything they’ve got, Isabel has the scans of Gil’s diary up on the screen and is flicking through them, looking for anything that could’ve led up to Gil’s visit to the hospital. Why visit someone comatose, repeatedly? He wasn’t a friend, nor was he family. Was the fact that he’d been going up there a significant factor in his murder?

  Isabel is still looking at the scans when her phone starts ringing.

  ‘Hey,’ she says.

  ‘Hi,’ Voronov says. ‘Thought I should check in.’

  ‘Yeah? You realise that you have no obligation to keep me posted while I’m suspended? In fact,’ Isabel leans back in her chair, checking on her two new housemates and finding them snoring on top of one another, ‘I think updating me might get you in trouble.’

  ‘If they find out.’

  ‘Wow, rule-breaker.’ She smirks. ‘Any progress?’

  ‘No. We’ve been keeping tabs on Célia but there’s been no unusual activity around her. The Chief’s been pulled in by the higher-ups wanting to know the status of the case.’

  ‘Soares?’

  ‘Yeah. He’s not letting up.’

  The fact that he’s a bigoted arsehole aside, the man has just lost his son. Isabel isn’t surprised that he’s using every tool at his disposal to see some results.

  ‘I’m looking back through Gil’s diary,’ she admits, ‘trying to see if there’s anything we’ve missed.’ The pointed silence on the other end of the line makes her smirk. ‘What? You thought I was going to sit here and do nothing? Have you got to know me at all during the time you’ve been here?’

  ‘Enough.’

  ‘Yeah, yeah,’ she says, knows her smile is coming through even over the phone.

  ‘Listen, if you’re going to keep working the case,’ he lowers his voice, ‘be careful. The Chief is working on getting you back in, so best thing to do is to stay under the radar.’

  ‘I know. You don’t have to tell me that.’

  He sighs. ‘I’ll call later.’

  ‘Okay. Bye.’

  She puts the phone back down, pushing the conversation to the back of her mind because that’s something to think about later on. Voronov is right. She’s going to have to tread carefully.

  But she’s not letting this go.

  Chapter 58

  Isabel has taken breaks and paced her apartment and sat back down so many times that she’s lost count. In the end she relocates to the sofa.

  At some point her neighbour arrives home and decides that playing music as loud as possible is how she wants to spend the rest of her day. It triggers a small headache but not anything compared to what Isabel is used to dealing with.

  She’s on the verge of getting up to give her eyes a rest for the umpteenth time when she spots something.

  The documents that had been found on Gil, commenting on a study pertaining to trials.

  She’d read through them a couple of times already and, without context, they had seemed irrelevant as she hadn’t known what study Gil had been commenting on.

  But as she’s scrolling down now, she sees it nestled in a bit of text. It says:

  the proposed goal has its origins based on E5 trials.

  Isabel pulls the laptop closer and frowns down at it. She rereads the entire paragraph but E5 isn’t mentioned again. Not in that paragraph and not in the rest of the notes. What’s E5?

  She logs on to the system – risky if someone decides to check that she’s being a good little Inspector and staying away from the case. My case, she thinks, and continues on anyway, going straight for the evidence folder.

  Looking through what had come up on Gil’s laptop, she finds no mentions of E5 anywhere, but she knows she’s seen the term somewhere. She closes the investigation logs and switches over to a search engine instead.

  She gets a bunch of links to mobile phone makes and systems, a city church in England and a university. Apparently, it’s also a postcode. She kisses her teeth and goes back to the search box. She types in ‘E5+Gifted’.

  Some more phone deal links; Gifted care plans; recruitment—

  It comes up as part of a forum discussion. When Isabel clicks on it, it takes her to the thread but tells her, in white letters on a purple background, that she won’t be able to view the thread unless she’s signed in.

  ‘Seriously?’ she mutters. ‘This better not be fucking porn.’

  It takes a few minutes and she has to make them send a confirmation link email to her twice, but eventually she’s in.

  Mostly it’s conspiracy theory bullshit about the government creating drugs to enslave Gifted, or about islands that Gifted are shipped off to never to be heard from again – Isabel thinks that one may have merit – but then E5 is brought up as an example on a thread about the government attempting to weaponise Gifted. Something about it acting as an enhancer that they’d trialled for.

  Isabel stares at the screen for a moment.

  Something like this would’ve been all over the news. So, either it’s utter bullshit, which is highly likely given everything else that’s on this forum, or the trials didn’t succeed, and it never got rolled out.

  How to—

  She jumps up and runs to her bag, upending it onto her bed and sifting through the contents until she comes up with the card for Dr Nazaré Alves.

  Dr Alves gets up and waves from her seat when she spots Isabel at the door to the bar.

  Isabel takes off her coat, folding it over her arm as she makes her way to the last booth where Dr Alves is tucked into the corner, a bottle of what looks like cider in front of her.

  ‘Hi again,’ Isabel says, ‘thank you for coming today.’

  ‘Not at all. It’s my day off so a drink is nice.’

  ‘Day off?’ Isabel scoots into the booth and when she manages to catch the bartender’s eye, she points to Dr Alves’ drink and holds up a finger, getting a nod in return.

  Dr Alves smiles. ‘You did say it wasn’t about work.’

  ‘I believe what I said was that it’s unofficially about work.’

  Dr Alves laughs. ‘Same thing. So, what is that you need to know so badly that you’re risking getting in trouble by coming to see me?’

  The bartender sets a sweating bottle of cider in front of Isabel. She thanks him before taking a swig. ‘I know what happened with the S3 roll-out,’ she starts and sees Dr Alves wince. ‘What?’

  ‘Nothing. It’s just that was a disaster.’

  ‘Tell me about it. Those were heavily pushed by Monitoring, weren’t they? The study and trials?’

  Dr Alves nods. ‘Yeah. It still is in cases where a Gifted’s powers are difficult to control or spiralling. But usually this is for individuals who are already being monitored.’

  Just hearing that sends a lick of unease down Isabel’s spine. ‘Was there ever an ongoing study or trials into the development of a drug called E5?’

  Dr Alves frowns. ‘E5?’ She takes another drink, leaning forward. ‘Yes. I mean, that was a long time ago and I don’t know much about it, but I think one of the big three pharmaceutical companies was pushing it, trying to get the governm
ent to back it.’

  ‘But they didn’t?’

  ‘No, there were concerns about the implications of the government being involved with that type of trial. I don’t know all that much about it, but they were worried about the nature of it and possible damage.’

  ‘Concerns that it might be a play to weaponise Gifted?’

  Dr Alves inclines her head in assent. ‘Something like that. But I think there were other factors.’

  ‘And E5 was actually an enhancer?’

  ‘Yes. As far as I know that was its purpose. It was like a counterpart to S3. At one point the government was looking at the possibility of funding further research into the differences in stability within Gifted levels. There’s a rising belief that perhaps the middle-level Gifted have stronger mental and emotional stability. S3 and trials for other drugs such as E5 could play into that.’

  Isabel sinks back into her seat. Mulling all of this over.

  ‘Does this affect your investigation?’

  Isabel smiles. ‘Can’t comment at this point. Besides, unofficial, remember?’

  ‘Right.’

  ‘Dr Alves, you said it was one of the big three pushing this. Which ones?’

  ‘Sorry, I meant the big three that deal in medicine specifically aimed at Gifted individuals.’

  ‘Right. And which one of those was trialling E5?’

  ‘HS Pharmaceuticals. They had some big-name buyers that were very invested in the outcome of that trial; I heard it caused them problems after the trials weren’t backed by the government. Had it been a regular pharmaceutical company, I think they would’ve been fine. Private investors would have stepped in. But because medicine surrounding Gifted is such a charged issue, the government was able to put a stop to it. To my knowledge they haven’t attempted anything like it again. Which isn’t to say that other companies won’t. Someone will get to it eventually. It just won’t be in this country any time soon.’

  Isabel tilts her head and thinks it over. ‘This might be pushing it a bit, but you wouldn’t happen to know who was involved in those trials, would you?’