by Mark Dawson
“I’m Paulo,” he said before wondering whether it was sensible to give her his own name.
Still she didn’t look up. She was tiny and seemingly even smaller now than when she had been in the back of the car. Her long hair fell forward, cascading over her face. Her bare limbs were thin and delicate and, as he looked, he saw a trace of Junior’s blood on the side of her arm.
“I’m not going to hurt you,” he said. “I’m going to look after you.”
He heard the sound of a snuffle, but still she didn’t look up. Paulo’s eye was drawn down, and he saw that the fabric of her jeans was a deeper blue around her crotch. He realised, with a withering blast of shame, that she had wet herself.
“Listen,” he said, pointing into the crawlspace. “You need to wait inside there. I know it’s not nice, but you’ll be safer there than you would be out here. I’m going to get you some new clothes. I have a little girl—just like you. Her clothes will fit. And I’ll get you something more comfortable to sit on. And a blanket.” The words tumbled out helplessly, as if a display of kindness might absolve him from what he had already done. “I’ll get you food and drink, too, and then I’ll be back.”
Finally, she looked up at him. Her eyes welled up and a fat tear rolled down her cheek.
“You need to wait for me inside,” he said, hating himself a little more as he took her by the shoulder and gently moved her toward the door. Unresisting, she shuffled into the crawlspace. “I’ll be back as soon as I can.”
Paulo fought down a bubble of fresh disgust and closed the door. He turned the key in the lock and stood there for a moment, his hand pressed against the knotted whorls of wood. He was sweating. What had he done?
He grabbed the money, turned and hurried up the stairs to the ground floor. He would be quick. He didn’t want to leave her on her own for any longer than he had to.
39
There it was again: a sound.
Milton couldn’t place it. It was muffled, as if he were hearing it from deep underwater. He listened for it and thought that he heard it again. But now he wasn’t so sure; had he heard something? Whatever it was, he tried to ignore it. He was tired, and the darkness was wrapped around him in a warm, comforting embrace. The sound wanted him to wake up, but he didn’t want to. He wanted to go back to sleep.
But there it was again.
This time he thought he felt something, too. He felt as if he was being gently shaken. A hand on his shoulder, perhaps?
“Senhor?”
He rose from the depths of his sleep just a little, enough to become aware of an ache that swept dull waves of pain around his body. He was definitely being shaken; he could feel someone gripping his left shoulder.
“Olá? Senhor?”
He tried to open his eyes. It was an effort—they seemed to be weighted down—but he tried again and was rewarded with stabs of pain from light that banished the last of the darkness. He blinked, trying to clear the gumminess away. He saw dim shapes around him and, above, an artificial light burned through the blur.
He remembered: the crash.
He closed his eyes and concentrated on his body: he felt the ache of pain but couldn’t pinpoint it. He felt numbed, and the pain pulsed with every beat of his heart.
“Senhor?”
He remembered more.
Drake shot and killed in the street.
Berg and Hawkins, likely dead. The four bad guys, all put down.
But the girl… Alícia… taken.
He opened his eyes, blinking into the light. He felt a blast of panic. The fuzz resolved into detail: there was a woman leaning over him, middle-aged, dark-haired and dressed in a white coat. He looked beyond her and saw that he was in a hospital ward. He looked left and right: there were beds packed into a medium-sized room, with barely enough space between them for someone to stand; there was a woman in the bed to Milton’s right, and he would have been able to reach out and touch her shoulder if he chose to.
“Olá?”
Milton looked up at the woman. She was gazing down at him; her face was kindly, and her eyes shone with compassion.
“No Portuguese,” Milton mumbled. His mouth felt as if it had been stuffed full with cotton wool.
“No Portuguese?” she repeated.
“I’m English.”
The woman nodded and smiled. “I speak a little,” she said. Her brow furrowed as she looked for the right words. “How do you feel?”
“Sore,” Milton said.
“You were in a car crash,” the nurse said.
Milton raised his head from the pillow, choking down the urge to vomit, and looked down at his body. His clothes and shoes had been removed, and, instead, he was wearing light blue hospital pyjama bottoms. He was topless, with bloody scratches across his chest and stomach and down both arms.
“I need to leave.”
The woman frowned as she tried to decipher his words. “No,” she said, lighting onto his meaning. She reached down her hand and gently rested her finger on his forehead. “Concussão.”
Milton could translate that easily enough: concussion.
Milton tried to sit; nausea swept over him. The nurse rested her hand on his chest and pushed him gently down again. She shook her head. “You must rest.”
Milton took a breath. “How long have I been here?”
“I am sorry?”
Milton searched for the words and failed. He pointed up at a clock on the wall. It was four. He tried to remember the time when they had been ambushed, but he couldn’t recall it. “When did I come here?”
“Today,” she said. “This afternoon.”
It was too vague to be useful, but Milton couldn’t delay. He needed the nurse to leave. “Thank you,” he said.
“What is your name?”
“Smith,” he replied, so woozy that he almost gave her his real name. “John Smith.”
“And you are… Inglês?”
“That’s right.”
“We look after you. You must wait here. Okay?”
“Yes,” Milton said, smiling again. “Of course.”
The nurse turned and walked away from the bed. Milton watched until she had turned the corner and was out of sight, and then slowly raised himself to a sitting position. The nausea came again, but he swallowed it down. He felt numbed, and he could taste something metallic in his mouth; he shuddered again at thought of the drugs they must have given him for the pain. He felt weak and vulnerable. He knew that the voice in his head—the voice that told him he was worthless and always would be, that he owed so much to so many, that he would never be able to make amends—he knew that the voice would start to drip its poison again, telling him that it didn’t matter anymore, that he wasn’t sober, that his long run of sober days was over, that he had been pumped full of drugs so what did it matter if he found a cheap bar and drank until he was out of his mind.
He clenched his right hand into a fist and cracked his knuckles against his forehead. He didn’t have the luxury of self-pity.
Self-pity would kill him, in more ways than one.
He had to leave. Now.
He had been out for two hours. The men who had ambushed them were professionals. They wouldn’t be in the business of leaving witnesses behind, especially those who had seen their faces. If Milton had been in their shoes, he would have checked to see if the driver of the car that had given chase had survived the crash. If he was still alive, Milton would have taken steps to ensure that he wasn’t for much longer.
They would come for him. He was in danger.
And the police would have found the AR-15 and the Glock from the car. They would know that he was involved in the shoot-out. At least six people were dead; the nurse had probably gone to tell them that he had come around.
He had to leave
Right now.
40
Milton swung his legs out of bed and lowered his feet to the cool tile floor. He felt weaker than he expected; they must have given him something to ease hi
s pain. He shuffled forward and, using his arm to brace himself, pushed himself to a standing position. A bout of dizziness forced him to put his arm down again in order to hold himself upright. The moment passed and, gritting his teeth in frustration at his debilitation, he took a step away from the bed.
The ward was busy. He scoped it out quickly, counted ten occupied beds, some of them with friends and relatives gathered anxiously around them, and a handful of nurses who were too busy to notice that he was on his feet. The ward was accessed by an open corridor to his right, where the nurses had a station. Milton could see the nurse who had come to wake him up; she was talking to a man in a police uniform. Both had their backs to him and hadn’t noticed that he was up.
There was a paper sack on the chair next to the bed. Milton opened it and took out his clothes; they were stained with blood from his scrapes and scratches, the smudges still tacky in the humidity of the ward. He dressed and walked slowly toward the corridor. He felt awful, constantly on the verge of being sick, and was sweating by the time he reached the intersection with the corridor. There were windows on one side of the corridor and, as he glanced out, he saw that he was several storeys above the ground. He kept walking until he reached a vestibule, where there were doors for two elevators and a plain door that was marked as an emergency exit. He pressed the button for the lift and, to his relief, the door opened at once. He stepped into the elevator, pressed the button for the ground floor, and braced himself against the wall as the doors slid shut and the car descended.
The elevator arrived at the ground floor and the doors opened. Milton got out, stepped around a porter with a patient in a wheelchair, and walked through the lobby area to the exit. A sign on the wall of the building announced the Miguel Couto Municipal Hospital. There were three ambulances waiting to discharge their occupants and a police car behind them. Beyond that was a collection of taxis waiting to pick up passengers. Milton signalled to the driver at the front and waited for him to bring his car alongside.
Milton tried to remember the address that he needed. “Rua General…” He couldn’t remember the rest.
“Rua General Glicério?” the driver offered. “Urquiza?”
“No,” Milton said. He remembered the district. “It’s… in… Laranjeiras.”
“Rua General Mariante,” the man suggested.
The address chimed with his recollection. “Yes.”
The man grunted and indicated that Milton should get into the car.
“Inglês?”
“Yes,” Milton replied. “No Portuguese.”
Milton knew that making it plain that he didn’t speak the language was the best way to shut down a conversation that he did not want to have. He felt dreadful: he was as weak as a baby and, even though the car was air-conditioned, he was still sweating profusely.
He looked up and saw that the driver was watching him with a worried expression. “You okay, senhor?”
Milton gave a feeble nod. “How long to Laranjeiras?”
The man held up three fingers. “Leblon to Laranjeiras—trinta.”
Thirty minutes. Milton concentrated on trying to find a point of balance amid the buffeting dizziness that roiled around his head. He had to hold it together until he reached his destination. He tried to remember the house, but he had been drinking back then and all he got were vague fragments: the fragrance of a jasmine bush, a pretty walled garden, thin drapes that covered the windows. Milton didn’t even know if the resident agent was still in Rio. The quartermaster had been old when Milton had last availed himself of his services, and that had been years ago. He might have been reassigned since then. He might have retired. He might have died.
But Milton had no choice.
Harry Marks was the only person in Rio to whom he could turn to for help.
41
Paulo climbed the stairs to the apartment. The rooms beyond were normally a riot of noise, but now they were quiet.
“Hello?”
There was no reply.
He went through into their room and saw that it was empty. A piece of paper had been left on the bed. He picked it up, unfolded it, and read the note.
He banged his palm against his forehead.
Oh shit.
He remembered: Eloá had an appointment at the hospital. He had attended every one so far, no matter how trivial, and now he had missed this one. He read through the note again. Rafaela didn’t sound angry, just disappointed. That made him feel even worse.
He had lost his grip on his life in the space of half a day. Things were completely out of control. He tried to think of a way to fix it, but he could not. He was up to his neck in it now, and it was all his fault.
He looked down at the bag of money in his hand and tried to think of a safe place to keep it. He didn’t have a bank account and, even if he did, he wouldn’t have wanted the inevitable attention that a cash deposit of thirty thousand would have attracted. He glanced around the room, remembered that the floorboard that he stood on when he got out of bed every morning was loose, and went over to it. He knelt down and used a pen to help pry it up. There was a small void beneath it, more than enough space for him to hide the bag. He took out two twenties, zipped the bag back up, and dropped it into the space. He pushed the bag down and replaced the floorboard. It wasn’t perfect, but it would have to do.
He went over to the basket where they kept Eloá’s clothes and picked out a T-shirt and a pair of jeans that he thought would fit the girl. He found a pair of fresh underwear and some socks and put them into a plastic bag. He stood and, about to turn for the door, his eye was caught by the shelf that held his daughter’s toys. Money had always been tight for them, even before her diagnosis, and there was little spare to buy her things beyond the essentials. His mother had found some extra cash after their world had been brought crashing down with the discovery of Eloá’s cancer, and she had bought three cuddly bears: one red, one green and the other blue. Paulo felt terrible at what he was considering, yet he knew he would feel worse if he left the little girl alone without anything to comfort her, so he grabbed the paw of the nearest bear, the red one, and put it, too, into the bag.
He wanted to stop, to put everything back as it was, and forget what he had done, but he could not. Things couldn’t be changed now: the girl would still be locked in that room, and Garanhão would still expect Paulo to watch her, and he couldn’t allow himself the indulgence of self-pity. He didn’t deserve it.
He was to blame.
He stuffed the bag under his jacket, left the apartment, and hurried back up the Hill.
42
Paulo reached the confluence where the two main roads met. There were fast-food stalls set up around the perimeter of the square, and, after trying to guess what the girl would be most likely to enjoy, he walked over to one of the vendors and ordered chicken coxinhas. The young man who ran the stall scooped up half a dozen croquettes, bagged them up, and handed them to Paulo. He wondered whether the girl might be vegetarian and, in case she was, he ordered empanadas. The man bagged those up, too, and handed them over. Paulo gave him one of the twenties and took seventeen in change.
He reached the top of the Hill and walked to the warehouse. He made his way inside and went through into the office. There were two men he didn’t recognise sitting at a plastic table with a bag of weed set out before them; one of the men was rolling a joint, putting it to his mouth and licking the paper to seal it. He handed the spliff to the other man and started to roll a second; the other man put the cigarette to his lips and lit it, staring balefully at Paulo through the blue-tinged smoke. Paulo turned his eyes away from him, passed through the room, and then climbed down the stairs to the basement.
He was worried that the light might have been switched off, but he could see the yellow glow beneath the bottom edge of the door. He turned the key and opened the door. The girl was sitting with her back to the wall, her legs drawn up to her chest as if she was trying to make herself as small as possible. She turned
to look at him.
“Hello again,” Paulo said.
She didn’t speak; instead, she bit down on her bottom lip.
“I’ve got you some clothes,” he said. He put the bag down on the floor and took out the jeans and the underwear. “Here,” he said. “You’ll feel much more comfortable.” She didn’t respond, so Paulo pushed the clothes inside the door and then stepped back. “I’ll let you get changed.”
He started to close the door. “No,” she said, almost too quiet to hear. “Leave it open.”
“I’ll leave it like this. Tell me when you’re ready.”
He went to stand behind the door. He wondered whether she would ignore him again, but, as he waited there, he heard the sound of scrabbling movement and then a zip being worked down.
“My name is Paulo,” he told her again as the sound of movement continued. “What’s yours?”
The girl didn’t answer.
“I know you’re frightened. I understand that—I’d be frightened, too. But you’re not on your own. I’d like to be your friend if I could. I have a little girl, too. Her name is Eloá Vitória. She’s six—are you the same age as her?”
Still the girl did not reply.
“You don’t have to say anything,” he said. “You can be quiet if you want to—it’s fine. But I bet you’re hungry.” He reached into the bag and took out the coxinhas and empanadas. The smell was pungent and quickly filled the room. “I’ve got you some food. Have you finished changing?”
She didn’t speak, so he stepped around the half-open door and stooped down so that he could shuffle inside. She had changed into the new jeans, and, from the pile of clothes at her feet, he could see that she had taken the fresh underpants as well. She had not changed her top. Paulo collected the dirty clothes.
“I’m going to get these washed,” he said. “I’ll bring them back tomorrow, but you’re welcome to have those ones. Is the food okay?”