Conviction

by Denise Mina

  I put my arm around Fin’s waist and guided him casually away in the opposite direction.

  ‘Excuse me?’ he said indignantly.

  ‘We need to go.’

  He didn’t like being touched or me pushing him so firmly. ‘Get off.’

  ‘Fin, trust me. Move.’

  I was looking for somewhere to hide but we were beyond the shops and bars. I headed for the Hotel Toraque.

  36

  BREATHLESS, I SHOVED FIN through the door into the hotel.

  ‘I saw a man, like the Skibo man. I’m sure–’

  ‘You gave yourself a fright?’

  ‘No, I think he was here looking for us. Down the dock. He was looking for us.’

  ‘Was it the Skibo man?’

  ‘No. Different man. He was looking. He was all wrong.’

  He put his hand on my shoulder and actually patted me. ‘It’s OK. You got a fright. It’s OK.’

  ‘He was looking for someone, really staring.’

  ‘OK. OK.’ He patted me again.

  The lobby was empty. A small log fire crackled in a huge fireplace and a telephone rang somewhere in the distance. Behind the reception desk stood a dapper, grey-suited man with a name badge. It was Hector. He had a dark quiff and an elaborate facial hair arrangement, part neck beard, part moustache, that would be impossible to describe without a drawing. He stood, frozen, his eyes fixed on Fin.

  ‘Find-Lay Cohen,’ he whispered, voice raw with emotion.

  Fin stepped towards the desk. ‘Um, hello?’

  ‘You are Findlay Cohen.’

  ‘Yes. I wonder if you could help my friend and me? It seems we’re slightly hiding from someone.’

  ‘Of course.’ He touched his hand to his grey-suited chest. ‘This would be the honour of my life.’

  He led us into a windowless back office with a small desk and three chairs, then turned and shut the door very carefully behind us. He looked at Fin with an intensity that was disturbing.

  ‘Findlay Cohen…’

  Fin tried to smile.

  ‘Hector,’ I said, ‘we’re being followed by someone. He wants to hurt us. He’s a big man. We’re scared.’

  Hector’s face darkened. ‘You will have nothing to be afraid of here. If anyone comes here to hurt you I will…’ He lifted a letter opener from his desk and demonstrated giving an invisible intruder an upwards stab to the heart.

  We both suddenly noticed that we were in a very small room with a strange man to whom Fin Cohen had come to mean something disproportionately significant. It didn’t feel any safer.

  ‘Well–’ Fin lowered the dagger by the point–‘there won’t be any need for that sort of thing. Kind of you to offer, maybe. Can we call a cab for the airport?’

  Hector realised that he had gone too far, put a hand on his stomach and reined in his emotions. ‘Of course. Of course! Sit down, I will call a taxi. Sit, please.’

  We took the seats across from his desk. Hector picked up the phone and gruffly ordered someone to get a cab and bring it round the back. Then he sat down and gazed at Fin across the desk. ‘Your music…’ he said, ‘has meant a lot to me. At my wedding, my wife… your song “Never Again”.’

  ‘At your wedding?’ Fin squirmed in his chair.

  ‘At our wedding. It was transcendental. It is the honour of my life to meet you. When I heard you were here, in Saint-Martin, I couldn’t believe… I just couldn’t believe that…’

  He made a gesture of his frontal lobe exploding. Fin sensed an opportunity. ‘Hector, you know why we’re in town?’

  Hector nodded. ‘Oui.’

  ‘Violetta stayed here, didn’t she?’

  ‘Oui.’

  ‘Were you working here then?’

  ‘Oui.’

  ‘Did you meet her?’

  ‘Oui.’

  ‘What was she like?’

  ‘Pretty, young, excited to be in the hotel. Very excited by the bathroom and the drawing room, by the soaps and fruit baskets and so on.’

  While Hector was answering questions his eyes were wide and fixed on Fin. It was as if he was trying to fit more Fin into his brain. Fin was so uncomfortable that his face was aquiver. A smile twisted into a frown, morphed into fury as if the unsuccessful smile was convulsing on his lips.

  ‘She had a suite?’

  ‘Oui. The Washington. The very best. She did not belong in the very best suite. She was pretending she did but, clearly, she was a poor person.’

  I smiled at a fellow fraud’s failure and asked, ‘How would you know that?’

  ‘Cheap clothes. Also, she was so happy with the suite. Rich people take it for granted or complain. That suite is magnificent.’

  Fin asked, ‘You sent all her belongings home afterwards?’

  ‘Mais oui. Those tourists were coming in. We don’t want that here. We sent it back.’

  ‘Do you have the address you sent them to?’

  He flipped open his laptop and typed in his password, looking away for a moment. Fin took the opportunity to draw a deep breath. Hector found the file and swung the laptop around so that the screen was facing Fin. I took a picture of the address in Venice.

  The phone on his desk rang three times before he picked it up. ‘Oui.’

  He hung up. He stood up, and with tears in his eyes he said, ‘Findlay Cohen, our meeting is at an end.’

  Fin stepped around the desk and Hector kissed him very formally on both cheeks. Possibly to stop Hector looking at him like that, Fin threw his arms open and hugged him. Hector was so moved that he let out a little cry.

  Finally, he pushed Fin away regretfully and led us out to the backyard through a side door. A taxi was waiting. He leaned in the driver’s window, gave him an order and we got in the back seat.

  The driver greeted us and pulled out. I slunk down, watching over the rim of the window for the ruddy man, expecting him to leap at the car, shoot at the car, stop us somehow. But we made it out of town and hit the wide road that cut across the island to the bridge.

  We were driving out of the town, no one behind us, just casually driving away. Hector helped us, the dress-shop woman helped us and it was all because of the podcast, because Fin was famous and we had an audience. It felt like a fairy tale, where everyone you meet is kindly apart from the bad guys. Not like real life at all. It would be a window of goodwill, we were a novelty, but, just maybe, while people were still interested, we could use the podcast to expose Gretchen Teigler.

  Bristling with hope, I leaned over to Fin and said, ‘I think we should go and face down Gretchen Teigler.’

  ‘Anna, be honest with me: are you on medication?’

  37

  ‘I’M NOT ON MEDICATION.’

  ‘Like, psychotropic medication of some kind?’

  ‘I’m not mental, Fin.’

  ‘I didn’t say you were mental.’

  ‘That was a kind way of saying it but the question is the same.’

  We were driving fast along a wooded road, approaching a small flat town and a sprawling camp site. Trees petered out and the horizon opened up as we approached the road bridge. The land spread its arms to the sea and the bridge to the mainland soared softly up into a blue sky, hung with colourful windsurfer kites.

  Fin looked tired. ‘You can tell me.’

  ‘I saw a man.’

  ‘Sophie/Anna, I really like you, I do, and I know you’re paying for everything, but this is exhausting.’

  ‘What is this about? You think I imagined that man?’

  ‘I’m not saying there wasn’t someone, I just… maybe you overreacted.’

  ‘Fin, why do you think they were taking me away at Skibo? What do you think they wanted?’

  He shrugged. ‘To talk to you?’

  ‘Yes, a man brought a knife to a conversation. You don’t understand: there’s history here. They think I’m going to tell my story about the rape again. It would be so bad for the club, there are billions at stake. Our lives are in danger.’
<
br />   His raised a sceptical eyebrow. ‘My life isn’t in danger.’

  ‘Fin: you ran him over. You witnessed them taking me away at Skibo. You’re a threat now.’

  ‘OK. Thanks.’ He covered his eyes with his hand and kept it there. ‘Fuck, you’re hard to be around.’

  ‘Am I?’

  ‘I mean, obviously something happened at Skibo. Was he arresting you though? I don’t know.’

  ‘With a hunting knife?’

  ‘Well, this man that we are apparently running from, I mean, I didn’t see anything.’

  ‘Oh, well, if you didn’t see anything then it doesn’t exist.’

  ‘There’s no evidence anyone is after us, Anna, a lot has happened to you, I’m not saying it hasn’t, but maybe you’re also just a bit paranoid?’

  I didn’t know what to say to that. I am paranoid but men have tried to kill me and that does tend to make you paranoid.

  Fin mumbled, ‘How could anyone get there so quickly? Did you think of that? We only tweeted where we were here a few hours ago.’

  ‘It’s not a staff of three, Fin, they have a network of people.’

  ‘A network?’ He looked at me as if I’d just proved his argument.

  ‘Fuck you.’

  We looked at each other. Affection was absent.

  ‘And you know–’ Fin was upset–‘what would this “man” do if he caught us?’

  ‘Kill us.’ I should have padded that out a bit more, it was pretty scary for him to hear that out loud, and I’m not very good at comforting people.

  ‘Look. It’s been fun but maybe we should get away from each other.’

  ‘Yeah, maybe.’ I tried to sound confident but I couldn’t let him wander off, he was clueless and defenceless. ‘Tell you what: we’ll split up. I’ll go and confront Gretchen Teigler, get this sorted once and for all, and I’ll tape it for you.’

  He could see the finale to his podcast. I had him back. ‘Well, maybe I should come with you.’

  ‘No, Fin, I’ll go alone.’

  ‘No, really, I’d like to come with you. Really. Would it mean an end to all of it?’

  I wanted to say yes, it definitely would, but I didn’t want to lie. I felt the first glimmer of hope I’d had in a long time. I started to mumble something about maybe, but it sounded thin. I just sort of trailed off and looked away over the bridge to the sea. As I said, I’m quite bad at comforting people.

  I suddenly wanted to talk to someone as flawed as myself. I took my phone out and called Hamish.

  He picked up and sighed into the receiver. ‘Anna, I’m so sorry. I tried to tell you Estelle was pregnant when we were at the house but you just started screaming and shouting and throwing the suitcase–’

  He was such a coward. I loved him again a little bit.

  ‘Hamish, look, I have to tell you something about Sophie Bukaran and then I’ll leave you alone. You have to move the girls to safety. Men are chasing Fin and me.’

  I could see Fin’s eyebrows rising slowly.

  ‘Men are chasing you?’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘What men?’

  ‘Hit men.’

  Fin’s brows stopped at maximum elevation. He looked out of the window.

  ‘Why? Is it debt? Are you gambling?’

  ‘No, Hamish, it’s a long sad story from before we ever met. There’s a contract out on me and they know I’m with Fin. They can trace Fin to Estelle and Estelle to Porto. If they come to Porto they’ll find the girls. You need to move all of them to somewhere random, somewhere safe.’

  There was a considered silence and he said, ‘Anna, is this some sort of concocted drama to get my attention?’

  It was a low move. A shabby move. I wanted to fume back. We said these things to each other because we were exhausted and ill-suited and disinhibited, I told myself as I looked out of the window and watched the bridge dip, slipping into La Rochelle.

  ‘Hamish, listen to me, OK? I am Sophie Bukaran. Google the pictures and see if I’m lying.’

  38

  SPEEDBOAT TAXIS WERE LINED up at the exit to Venice airport. The drivers directed us to the boat at the front of the queue and we clambered in gracelessly, sitting in the open area at the back. The driver asked us if we wouldn’t rather go inside. I didn’t want to. There was something hearse-like about the little cabin in the middle with net curtains drawn across the windows.

  We showed the driver the address Hector had given us. The driver asked really? There? We assured him that the address was the one we wanted. He gave us a ridiculously high cash-only price and asked if we were still sure? Fin said yes, still sure, but why cash only? Not a tourist area, said the driver. I told him we had cash.

  He shrugged and walked along the running board to the front, started the engine and pulled carefully out, heading towards a great expanse of mud-brown water. Wooden posts breached the surface, marking out the waterway. There was nothing much to see.

  Brown water, rotting warehouses slumped on islands, more brown water, pontoons with large boats undergoing repair, more brown water, another shabby warehouse. It wasn’t quite what I had expected of Venice. I looked at the city map we had picked up in arrivals. We were coming at the city from the wrong angle to see any postcard views, coming in at the back, far away from the Grand Canal and all the sights. The address Violetta’s luggage had been sent to was next to the train station.

  The driver was even more bored by the endless flat water than we were. He sped up on the straight until the boat began to skip the surface and judder clumsily. He slowed down, rebuked by the water.

  Fog lifted and the horizon split into a jagged line of buildings. We slowed to a gentle putter as we approached and skirted Venice proper. I had expected great palaces of forgotten fortunes rising up out of Canaletto-blue but this looked like a council estate.

  The driver turned into a narrow channel and turned again, the canal narrowing, the buildings around us tall and mean, windows fewer, until we reached a slimy stone staircase leading to a dim walled alley. Neither of us wanted to get out but the taxi driver insisted: this is the address we had given him, just through there.

  We paid and took the greasy steps up, wary of our footing, into a dark passageway that smelled of stale urine and mildew, keeping our eyes on the open courtyard beyond. We came out into a narrow, damp square of high blank walls. Graffiti was scrawled and half washed from the bare bricks. The clouds parted overhead, bathing the first floor above in bright sun, lighting the square, like prison-break floodlights.

  There was only one door in the courtyard. Old, weathered and peeling.

  We walked over to it and knocked, heard a lock buzz and the door gave a loud, shrill creak as it opened. Fin pushed and we stepped inside to find ourselves in a ramshackle living room and a thin fug of cigarette smoke.

  It was very dark. A high window afforded a little light that only served to deepen the shadows elsewhere. It took a moment for our eyes to adjust.

  Damp-blistered walls were painted deep blue. It was sparse. A sagging brown couch was pushed up against the far wall. Two wicker garden chairs sat nearby and a filthy portable electric hob was on a table under the high window. Against the near wall stood a coffee table covered in framed photos. A little girl and a beautiful woman, blonde, slender, pictured at night, in ball gowns, in studios. They didn’t look like family photos. They looked as if they had been cut out of magazines.

  There was only one other door, at the far end of the room, low and sitting open. Inside, I could see the foot of a sheeted bed with a coverless duvet and damp cardboard boxes stacked against the distant wall.

  From the dark of the bedroom came a woman’s hoarse voice uttering a complaint. ‘Fabrice? Non ancora!’

  I called out, ‘Hello?’

  Julia Parker shuffled out of the dark and stood in the doorway. She was fifty but looked ancient. She was the beautiful woman in the framed photos, but wizened now. Her nose had caved in, her skin was loose. She was tall, stick-thi
n, the only meat on her a dowager’s hump. Dressed in a long pink smock over blue tracksuit trousers, garish lime Crocs over pink socks, she looked as if a carer had dressed her up for a joke. She would have drowned in a size 42 dress.

  ‘Chi diavolo sei? Chi vuoi?’ She looked between us, back and forth.

  ‘Julia Parker?’

  ‘Si.’

  ‘Do you speak English?’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘Can we talk to you about Violetta?’

  She tipped her chin and looked down on us. ‘You are fucking Dana tourists?’

  ‘No. Well, kind of. I was a friend of Leon’s.’

  She looked me up and down. ‘From when?’

  ‘About nine years ago. I only heard that he had died a few days ago.’

  ‘Hm. You were his “friend” friend or his friend friend?’ She spoke like a posh Londoner, with just the slightest trace of Italian accent, but her voice was gorgeous. Drawling, gruff and clipped. I could imagine her young and cynical, charmingly melancholy in a way only very beautiful girls can be.

  ‘Literally, just his friend. I didn’t know him for long. I worked at a hotel in Scotland. He was there with a girlfriend and she was a nightmare. He used to come out to meet me near the bins at night to smoke cigarettes and talk. I think he was bored to death.’

  She wasn’t sure of me. ‘What was her name?’

  ‘Lillie Harkän.’

  ‘Ach, Lillie.’ Julia shuffled over to the couch and sat down. ‘Always hated that bitch. So boring.’

  ‘Leon left her there. She was furious. They made me pack her bags and I spat in her Crème de la Mer.’

  Julia laughed at that, hearty and unkind. She mimed rubbing the saliva-spoiled cream on her face and laughed more, started to cough and choke and went very red. Both Fin and I panicked a little and stepped towards her but she coughed her way out of it and waved us away, telling us to sit down, sit down.

  We sat down on the wicker chairs. When she finally caught her breath, she lit a cigarette and smiled at me. ‘What do you want?’