Mercy broke down. She hung on to his wrists with both hands, dropped her head and wept.
‘I’m sorry, Charlie. I’m so sorry.’
‘Listen to me.’
‘I should have told you.’
‘Just be quiet and listen to me.’
She looked up; their eyes met. She saw what was in his and it wasn’t anything she’d expected to see. It was joy.
‘The DNA derived from the tissue samples from the body part in Madrid does not match either of ours. The body they have found is not Amy’s.’
It was too big for her to grasp. The emotional volte-face demanded was too extreme. She stared at him, still hanging on to his wrists, as he nodded the new truth into her.
‘Amy is not dead.’
‘But I saw her at Heathrow . . . on CCTV. Her passport . . . ’ ‘You remember what you said right at the beginning, about Amy putting up a smokescreen? The strange feeling we got reading her note that this was her challenging us. “You will never find me.” She fooled us. She knew our emotional involvement would distort our vision. She sent us on a wild goose chase.’
‘But you said that everybody saw her in the hotel in Madrid. You showed them the photo.’
‘They just saw a pretty black face under lots of dark ringlets with blonde highlights. You know what people are like, especially with different ethnic groups. They just see a black face, an Asian face. They don’t see features, eye colour—difference.’
‘I want to believe it, Charlie. I really do. But I just can’t quite bring myself to. I don’t know why. I’m afraid. I’ve put everything in one emotional basket and now I’ve got to take it all out and I can’t do it. Not in one go. The disappointment would be too horrible. It would be tragic if—’
‘The detective on the case called me, said they’d found another body part and it had a distinguishing mark on the left buttock. A tattoo.’
‘Amy hates tattoos,’ said Mercy, hope registering in her voice. ‘She despises them. Karen is always trying to get her to have one done.’
‘When did you last see her left buttock?’
‘I haven’t . . . for years. She locks the bathroom door. You know what she’s like.’
‘Call Karen. They shared a room in Tenerife. She must have seen her bum, for Christ’s sake. They went to the beach.’
Mercy called Karen, asked the ridiculous question, got silence in return.
‘You’re kidding, right, Mrs. Danquah?’
‘No, it’s very important. We need to know.’
‘There’s nothing would make Amy have a tattoo,’ said Karen. ‘She hates them. Hates mine. And doesn’t mind telling me.’
‘But did you see her left buttock?’
‘Left, right, the whole show, Mrs. Danquah. We all went skinny-dipping in the hotel pool. She didn’t have a tattoo, I’m telling you. What’s this all about?’
‘Nothing, Karen. We’re just trying to help with an enquiry from Spain.’
She hung up, didn’t want to get into dead bodies with Karen. She nearly smiled. Boxer grabbed hold of her, hugged her fiercely, buried his face in her neck.
Mercy whispered in his ear, ‘I should have told you.’
‘That you weren’t sure I was her father?’
‘I should have told you.’
‘It doesn’t matter.’
‘I wanted you to be her father.’
‘It doesn’t matter,’ said Boxer. ‘And you know why? Because when I found out that the dead body wasn’t Amy’s, that she hadn’t been murdered, I was so elated. I felt whole again, and I knew that with or without my DNA, she was mine.’
Mercy hugged him to her, wouldn’t let him go. The truth was out. A truth that had been stuck in her like a piece of shrapnel that the body had grown around but with an odd movement could still hurt. Every time she’d seen Charlie and Amy together it skewered her, not just with doubt but with guilt at the omission. She’d done it because she loved him, and yet what a thing to do to the one you loved. It had been one of those four-o’clock-in-the-morning torments for the last seventeen years and now it was gone. And what a way for it to have come out. With so little damage. In fact, the opposite. Joy.
And just as she reached the point where she thought she might allow herself some joy something terrible occurred to her.
‘If that body wasn’t Amy’s . . . ’
‘I’ve got to call Luís in Madrid,’ said Boxer.
‘Are you listening to me?’
‘I’ve got to tell the homicide chief.’
‘Amy found a double. She asked someone to impersonate her. To fool us. And now that girl is dead. Murdered. Cut into pieces because Amy decided she wanted to show her parents how clever she was. She’s got to know how much her little prank has cost. It’s a whole life that’s gone because—’
‘It wasn’t part of the plan,’ said Boxer. ‘She didn’t mean for it to turn out like that. It was just bad luck. That poor girl met the wrong guy at—’
‘You don’t know how it was. You don’t know the circumstances. All you know is that this girl went to the Hotel Moderno. You don’t know Amy’s responsibility. What I know is that if Amy hadn’t wanted to stick one to her parents that girl would still be alive. She’d never have gone to Madrid.’
Boxer got through to Zorrita, gave him the news. There was a long silence.
‘Do you understand me, Luís?’
‘I understand you,’ he said. ‘I just don’t understand how a girl can end up wearing your daughter’s clothes with your daughter’s passport and not be your daughter.’
Boxer did his best to explain, said he’d put it all in an email and the translator could talk him through it. They hung up. He turned to Mercy, saw her anger.
‘Come on, Mercy.’
‘Amy’s little game has cost a girl’s life, made your mother want to kill herself and has caused us so much pain . . . For what?’
‘Amy’s still a kid, which means she’s at her most selfish. The world revolves around her. Only Amy really understand things. She wasn’t thinking about history or consequences. Life’s a game to be played.’
‘One dead girl, an attempted suicide . . . ’
‘Did you tell your family?’
‘No.’
‘No?’
‘Uncle David’s funeral started today. I couldn’t face telling them about Amy when they were about to start mourning somebody else. It would have . . . Just imagine if I had.’
‘Better the way it’s turned out,’ said Boxer.
‘How is Esme?’
‘Functioning but on life support. There’s brain activity, so they’re hopeful.’
‘This case I’m working on,’ said Mercy, gesturing at the house behind her. ‘The boy who’s been kidnapped. A ten-year-old. Looks after his alcoholic mother, doesn’t tell anyone. Hides it because he knows how much it means to her to have him near her. He has to get himself up, make his own breakfast, entertain himself. Probably has to scrape her off the floor, get her into bed, then run off to school. Then come back to that sort of crap every afternoon. All weekend. And Amy thinks she has a hard life. What did Esme call it? A deficit of love. I think that was it.’
‘Steady on, Mercy. You’ve given yourself half a second of joy and you already want to strangle her.’
She cried. She grabbed hold of the lapel of his jacket and wept into his chest. He stroked the back of her head, kissed her close-cropped hair.
‘The main thing is that she’s alive,’ he said, and the word caught in the back of his throat.
After some minutes Mercy pushed herself away, dug out a tissue, wiped her face.
‘Sorry,’ she said, looking at the house. ‘I’d better get back in there. We’re coming up to forty-eight hours with no word from the kidnappers.’
‘We’ve got to find Amy,’
said Boxer, not listening, galvanised now by a new fear: the look he’d seen from the Colombian coming down the length of the baseball bat at him. The intent. He would have a name by now. It would be in the newspapers; some journo would have latched on to an ugly murder like that. And there was the Hotel Moderno—he’d given that to El Osito. If his name wasn’t out there yet, then the hotel would supply it. Too many people knew.
And then there was that order El Osito had roared several times: ‘Don’t shoot!’ He’s mine, leave him for me. And what would be the best way to get to him? He’d work it all out, El Osito, Boxer was sure of that. This was a man who had been brought up on revenge.
The first one had poked him in the chest, the second had put a gun in his mouth, and the third had beaten him up for trying to find a window in the toilet, the fourth had smacked him round the head for catching him cheating at chess. Now Sasha was with a fifth guard.
He’d noticed that they didn’t always come and sit with him in the room. Sometimes the new guard would come in, there’d be an exchange in Russian, some of which he understood, then they’d handcuff him to the slatted bench and both go out. That was worst because it would mean hours on his own, lying down, getting uncomfortable and bored.
This time there’d been the usual handover but the guard had stayed in the room and said hello. None of them said hello. He’d uncuffed him even though it wasn’t eating time. Sasha could tell from the atmospheric pressure in the confined space of the room that this guard was more friendly. He thought maybe he had a son like him.
‘I’m very worried about my mother,’ said Sasha, head down, palms on his knees, legs dangling off the bench, feet not reaching the floor.
‘I can understand that,’ said the man. ‘She’s not well.’
‘She drinks,’ said Sasha.
‘I know,’ said the man.
‘It’s not really her fault.’
‘It never is.’
‘She’s unhappy.’
‘A lot of people are,’ said the man. ‘It’s called life. You don’t understand it yet.’
‘How do you know?’
‘You’re a kid. Life is simple when you’re a kid.’
‘Is it?’
No answer.
‘She’ll be really, really worried by now,’ said Sasha.
‘She’s being looked after.’
The emotion welled up and, although Sasha didn’t want to, he couldn’t help himself. He sobbed, felt the tears wetting the material of his mask. The guard sat next to him, put an arm around his shoulders, hugged him into his chest. Sasha got himself under control.
‘Nobody talks to me,’ said Sasha. ‘You’re the first one. Why doesn’t anybody talk to me?’
No answer. The man knew perfectly well why nobody talked to the boy. They knew to keep their distance from someone they would have to . . . deal with. But he was different. He cared.
He rested a hand on the Sasha’s thigh, squeezed it reassuringly and his little finger tickled the boy’s groin.
Sasha’s spine turned to ice.
Jesús and Jaime were sitting in a bar drinking beer with a copy of El Mundo open between them. There was a small article on page 6 about an unnamed girl who had been murdered and a part of her body recovered from a bag found under a motorway bridge near Perales del Rio. All their contacts in the Madrid police force were in the drug squad and had no information about homicide cases unrelated to drug dealing or trafficking. El Osito had told them to drop the police, stick to the journalist, which was why they were waiting for Raul Brito from the weekly Interviú to turn up. The only break they’d had was at the Hotel Moderno, where they’d found some leaflets on reception with a photo of the girl as they’d seen her on Saturday night and beneath, in Spanish, ‘Have you seen this girl? Her name is Amy.’ This was followed by a Spanish mobile number, which they’d already tried and found to be dead.
‘What do you think about all this?’ asked Jesús, broaching the subject he really wanted to talk about but until now hadn’t quite dared.
‘El Osito did it,’ said Jaime. ‘No question about it. We’re not running around like this for fun.’
‘And the English guy?’
‘I don’t know. If El Osito knows he’s not telling us.’
‘So we got to be careful. Don’t want to end up—’
‘Look, before El Osito came out here Vicente told me everything I needed to know. Warned me. This has been coming for a long time. We’re lucky we haven’t been clearing up a mess like this every week.’
‘Why didn’t you tell me?’
‘I did. I just didn’t give you any details because I know you can’t keep your mouth shut. The one thing Vicente warned me about was not to cross El Osito. You give him the wrong look and he’ll blind you, you tread on his toe and he’ll take your leg off.’
‘I remember that bit.’
‘I’m glad it stuck. I can see you shitting in your pants every time he talks to you.’
‘This thing he’s got about black girls . . . ’
‘It’s a bad thing. That’s all you need to know.’
‘Did Vicente tell you why?’
‘There doesn’t have to be a why. The wiring’s all fucked up in his head. That’s the why. Too much snow. That’s the why. He’s a nut job.’
‘But did he tell you?’
‘He told me that El Osito’s father was shot dead in a hotel in Cartagena de las Indias. It was a gang war thing. They used a black girl to get him into the hotel. Shot her too. He was fucking her at the time.’
‘Long hair? Ringlets?’
‘You want her shoe size as well?’
‘O.K., here comes Brito.’
The journalist took a seat, pulling the chair up to the table using a hand between his legs. He had soft brown eyes in a shrewd, pouchy face and hair whose shape, colour and thickness could survive doomsday. He looked from Jaime to Jesús and down at the newspaper.
‘El Mundo?’ he said, as if he’d caught them reading Descartes.
‘Beer?’ asked Jaime, which seemed to be the only possible retort.
Brito nodded. They called the waiter, ordered three beers.
‘What’s going on?’ asked Brito. ‘This about the Russians?’ Jaime turned the newspaper round for him, pointed at the article. Brito read it, nodding.
‘We’ve been talking about that in the office today,’ he said. ‘One of the young guys wanted to run with it, but we had no photo.’
‘Why don’t they give her name?’
‘They only found a body part and a passport so there’s been no formal identification,’ said Brito. ‘They’re running some DNA tests, but the backlog with the cuts . . . ’
‘DNA tests?’
‘You know, Jaime, they extract DNA from a tissue sample—’
‘Don’t fuck with me, Raul,’ said Jaime, setting the tone. ‘What are they comparing the sample to? You have to have verified DNA from a victim or her parents to confirm ID.’
‘She was a runaway. The father came looking for her. So I imagine they’re comparing her DNA with a cheek swab from him.’
‘So you’ve done some work on this?’
‘Not me. It was talked about in an editorial meeting last night. It was put on the “possible” list if the journalist can find a photo and an angle.’
‘Have you got a name?’
‘Not yet, and we’ve only got about a quarter of the story,’ said Brito, tapping the newspaper, ‘which is why this article is only five centimetres long and on page 6. An ugly crime, but not quite interesting enough . . . yet.’
‘You remember that information we gave you about the Russians on the Costa del Sol. You ran that piece about local government corruption, the girl trafficking . . . ’
‘I remember,’ said Brito. ‘I also remember it solved some of your pro
blems when the police launched Operation Scorpion and there was quite a bit of, what shall we call it, ethnic cleansing? A scouring of the Slavs.’
Jaime looked at him steadily, letting him know that he’d just overstepped the mark: turning what should be his gratitude into doing them a favour was not how it was supposed to work.
‘What’s your interest in this case?’ asked Brito, leaning forward. ‘Did one of your boys get a bit out of control?’
‘Not one of our boys,’ said Jaime, touching himself on the chest.
‘Is this the Russians again? Is this a girl-trafficking thing?’
‘We don’t know. We just don’t like this kind of thing happening without us knowing about it. So we want you to get us all the information you can. All the names. But you don’t run with any story. That could be dangerous for you. We don’t know who you’re dealing with. You print something, they might come after you.’
‘This is beginning to sound very interesting,’ said Brito.
‘Here’s a start,’ said Jaime, pulling out the leaflet. ‘The girl was staying at the Hotel Moderno. Her father put out this photo of her. The mobile number is dead. We want full names and anything you can find out behind the names. You do that, we’ll be very happy and we’ll show our gratitude.’
Brito folded the leaflet into his pocket, made some notes, finished his beer and left.
‘I don’t know what’s harder,’ said Jaime, wiping his hand down his face: ‘dealing with journalists or the police.’
Sasha shrugged himself out from under the man’s arm. The man grabbed at him, got him by the collar of his shirt, hauled him back. Sasha didn’t even have time to try to rip his mask off; he just lashed out, kicking, punching and screaming. The man took the blows, silent with the effort and concentration on what he wanted. He grabbed Sasha’s arms, pinned them to the sides of his body and tucked him under his arms, holding him firmly around the waist. The man rolled and slammed him face down on the slatted bench, tore at the waistband of the boy’s trousers. Sasha was momentarily stunned and winded from the impact with the bench. He went limp, blinked behind his mask.
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