Conviction

by Denise Mina

  I stood up and Fin followed me. I picked up my bag and phone.

  She stood up to meet us. ‘We have an airplane waiting on the landing strip at the Lido. We would like to fly you to Paris to meet with Ms Teigler. She will explain everything.’

  Fin looked at me. He raised an eyebrow. It was a great chance to speak to Gretchen, possibly the only one we would ever get.

  I said, ‘Give me your number and I’ll call you in an hour.’

  She smirked in a way I didn’t like and gave me her card. Dauphine Loire, PA to Ms Gretchen Teigler, email, landline and mobile numbers, and an address in Neuilly-sur-Seine, Paris.

  We walked out of the restaurant and on to the street. I texted the blurry photo I had taken straight to Trina Keany and asked if it was the woman who threatened her. Fin was freaked out, glancing behind us, looking around as if he expected assassins to jump out at any moment.

  ‘Stop it,’ I hissed. ‘She’ll be watching and know she scared us. Get your head up.’

  It is hard to stride confidently in Venice in November. The drizzle makes the cobbles slippery. We tiptoed gingerly in a way that we hoped might convey nonchalance, and followed the pavement over little bridges, heading down to where the canal widened until we came upon an abrupt throng of Chinese tourists gathered around the mouth of St Mark’s Square. It was the worst place in the world for two stringy Westerners to hide. We were both freakishly tall in among them.

  ‘She wasn’t fat,’ said Fin.

  ‘I saw an old photo of her and she was a bit chunky then. Maybe she went on a diet or got lipo or something.’

  We talked and walked, working out a plan of action. My paranoia never came up again. We found ourselves in winding lanes of very expensive clothes shops, just the sort of one-percenter flash that Saint-Martin was avoiding. Strappy sandals for two thousand euros, fur coats for twenty. We slowed down and I wondered aloud what it would be like for Violetta to live here and be poor. The contrasts were so pronounced, between Julia’s damp room and this ostentation. Fin said it would make you avaricious. I thought it would make me angry. Justified anger is powerful. It can prompt people to do terrible things, like spit in someone’s Crème de la Mer because they were rude and you were powerless.

  We walked off the panic and came to the edge of a wide expanse of water, punctuated with barbershop poles and moored gondolas, the gondoliers smoking diffidently in groups on the dockside.

  I looked left to a row of private yachts. They were huge, dwarfing the Dana and the pretty yacht in Saint-Martin.

  The one nearest us had lifeboats hanging from harnesses in openings on the lower decks, a helicopter blade peeking out from the top deck. I took out my phone and found that Adam Ross had answered my message.

  ‘I watched that fucking wreck dive film. You owe me now! There’s a ghost! This is the ripcord from a Zodiac.’

  He had sent a screenshot with a hand-drawn red circle around a white ribbon. It was at the point of the film where the diver had just opened the double doors and was about to enter the Dana’s cabin. A rotting white ribbon was flapping outward.

  I googled ‘zodiac’ + ‘yacht’.

  ‘Fin. Fucking hell, Fin, look. Look at this.’

  Zodiacs come in different sizes, one-man, two-man, all the way up to sixteen. They are self-inflating life rafts that come in a canister, operated with a ripcord which must be attached to the railings of the craft. Pull the cord and the raft inflates and ejects itself into the water, leaving the ripcord behind attached to the handrail.

  Someone had got off the boat once it was at sea. The police had been on the wrong track from the very beginning.

  ‘Who?’

  ‘Creepy drawers back there?’ I suggested. ‘She might have done it to make sure Gretchen Teigler didn’t have to support Leon’s extended family. She didn’t even leave the diamond necklace on board–she either posted it from there or, more likely, brought it back with her. Perhaps Julia was right: Teigler was leaving her fortune to her and marriage to Leon could have changed that. It must have been galling to be cast aside, especially after the things she’s done for her.’

  ‘Look, we have to be very careful,’ said Fin. ‘We can’t imply someone’s guilty if we don’t have evidence.’

  I agreed, there was a lot we still didn’t know, but we were creeping closer to the answer.

  We were looking at the close-up picture of the ripcord when a text came back from Trina Keany:

  ‘That’s her. RUN.’

  40

  I CALLED THE MOBILE number on Dauphine’s card.

  ‘We can be there in an hour, if the invitation still stands?’

  ‘Of course. One hour is fine.’ She gave me the plane’s tail number and told me to ask for it at the airport entrance. ‘Do you know where you’re going? It’s the Aeroporto Nicelli on the Lido.’ Her Italian pronunciation was intimidatingly perfect. ‘I’ll see you there.’

  I found myself listening to a dead line.

  Fin and I walked to the Giardini della Biennale Arte, a public park by the waterside, and stumbled on a cafe. We ordered ludicrously overpriced drinks and sat outside.

  Fin took out his phone.

  The first podcast episode was hitting tens of thousands of likes and retweets. The second one had reached a hundred thousand likes. Fin was thrilled. Major newspapers were writing opinion pieces about what we were doing, the ethics of it, mostly denouncing us. The bitchy commentator who ‘said what everyone else is thinking’ had written an op-ed about how she hated me then and stood by that. She blamed me for the other girl’s death. There were profile pieces on Fin and Sophie Bukaran. There were also a lot of side-by-side pictures of Anna-on-the-step and Sophie Bukaran’s missing poster, mark-up arrows and circles around the scar on my face.

  Sophie Bukaran hadn’t been declared dead, she was just listed as missing. Some tweets were from police officers who had worked on the case back then, asking me to get in touch.

  We ordered more drinks and moved outside so that lapping water could be heard in the background. He turned on the recorder and I said hello, I’m Sophie Bukaran. This isn’t part of the podcast but, just for clarity, yes, I am that Sophie Bukaran, the Sophie who was involved in the Soho hotel rape case ten years ago and that’s really all I wanted to say about that. Fin recorded a short episode, detailing our flight and arrival, our meeting with Julia. He cut in a little bit of the recording from her interview. It made us both smile to listen to it because her voice was so rich and deep. ‘So weird,’ said Julia in the clip. ‘All the labels cut out of the clothes and so on. Weird.’

  But he edited it before the next line, when Julia said that she didn’t know if she wanted her interview recorded. He didn’t see a problem with cutting it just before there, he said that was when she withdrew her consent. I said no, I didn’t know, wasn’t she referring to all of it? Wasn’t she retrospectively withdrawing consent to all of it? No, said Fin, it was fine, don’t worry.

  But I did worry. I thought Julia was fabulous and it was disrespectful to use her voice when she might not have wanted us to. It didn’t sit right with me.

  We listened back to the recording and it sounded OK. Just as Fin posted it online his phone rang out. It was his agent calling.

  ‘Blimey! I didn’t know I still had an agent.’ He went away to take the call in private.

  I was alone for the first time since Inverness. Was Dauphine Loire a psychopath? I didn’t really know what one of those was but it was odd, surely, to meet someone you had tried to kill and display no reaction at all. I thought of lovely, warm Julia and missed my girls. I missed them so badly but knew they would be OK as long as Estelle was there. She liked them and they liked her. I hated her right now but I did trust her with the girls. It felt like a big admission. It took the sting away a little.

  As if he had heard my thoughts, my phone rang and it was Hamish. ‘I googled. Oh, Anna. I’m so sorry. I didn’t know. Are you safe?’

  ‘I’m sorry for all the lyi
ng.’

  ‘I keep thinking, if that happened to our girls…’

  It wasn’t sad enough that it had happened to me, apparently. But I was feeling reconciliatory and I said, ‘Yes.’

  ‘You were so young. I’m so sorry.’

  ‘It’s OK. Will you move them?’

  ‘Yes. Someone broke into the house last night. The cops called me. They didn’t take anything. I think they were looking for you.’

  There was a frightened pause between us. ‘Shit, Hamish, I’m so sorry.’ We weren’t often sincere with one another any more. All the trust was gone. It felt a bit uncomfortable. ‘Were you offended that they didn’t steal any of your precious antiquey objets d’art?’

  ‘I was a little bit, yes. They must be modernists.’ Hamish can be disarmingly dry. ‘I’m going to move the girls, as you said, keep them safe until it’s over.’

  ‘Can I talk to them?’

  ‘They’re swimming.’

  We stayed silent on the line for a moment, listening to each other breathe. ‘Keep them safe, Hamish. That’s all that matters.’

  ‘OK,’ he whispered. ‘I just wish this hadn’t happened at the same time. Anna, I’m sorry it’s such a mess.’

  He was feeling guilty, looking for me to make him feel better. I imagine Helen got the same treatment. Like Leon, Hamish was a bit of a lovable shit. Superficial charm, tellers of tales, but selfish to the core. It seems that I had a weakness for such men.

  ‘Anna? I’m sorry?’

  He was prodding me for reassurance. I didn’t owe it to him, I wasn’t his partner any more, but I did because I liked him and thought I probably always would. ‘This could have happened at any time, Hamish. It’s not because you left, it’s because Fin is famous. I’m glad it happened when the girls were away from the house. And with you, even with Estelle, I’m just glad they’re safe.’

  ‘I know. Anna…?’ His voice was thin, petering out, his breathing ragged. He wasn’t good with big emotions.

  ‘Hamish, if something… if we don’t get to speak again. I loved you very deeply.’

  ‘Anna? I have… love.’ His voice rose to a high C. He was crying too much to say anything but it was OK. I didn’t need to hear it back.

  ‘Goodbye, Hamish.’ I hung up and sipped my coffee and remembered drinking coffee in the early mornings in the house, when everyone was asleep and I could read, my favourite memory. I remembered it until Fin came back.

  He was smiling, eyes alight, and dropped into the seat.

  ‘What’s the agent saying?’

  ‘She still is my agent and she is creaming herself. She’s got all sorts lined up for us when we get back. We’re being featured in newspapers and magazines, on talk shows and radio shows, our podcast is right up there. And the #MeToo angle is a whole other aspect of it.’

  He went on and on, details about the things and lots of money and so on. He was excited about the future, was making plans. I wasn’t really thinking about that. I just agreed to everything.

  ‘We’ve had a big money offer for an advance on a book. I couldn’t write a book. How about you do that?’

  I said, yeah, sure, why not, I’ll write a book.

  That is this book, incidentally. What was I thinking? I didn’t consider the process of writing a book, the six months of self-doubt, the wrongness of all words, paragraphs strangling each other, civil war on the page, the sheer boredom of writing about myself. I just glibly said, yeah, sure, why not, I’ll write a book. I agreed as if I was asked to taste a new flavour of crisp for the first time. Go on then. I’ll try it right now if you like, while we’re waiting for a bus.

  ‘Anyway,’ I said. ‘Someone broke into our house in Glasgow last night.’

  ‘Oh my God.’

  ‘I know.’

  ‘Fuck!’

  ‘Yeah. They didn’t take anything. Hamish thinks they were looking for me. We should go and see what Loire’s planning.’

  We found a taxi to take us to the dock for the Lido airport and we sat inside, buttoning up our coats like natives. Soon we were in broad open waters and the temperature plunged. The waters were wide and cold.

  We arrived at the Lido and moored at the dock for the airport. We gave the driver a hundred euros to turn the engine off and come inside the cabin with us. We waited, net curtains drawn, watching. Within minutes we saw a boat approaching from the city. Then we saw them getting out. Dauphine Loire followed by a red-faced man in the battered leather jacket.

  ‘He’s a heavy,’ whispered Fin.

  ‘D’you think?’

  ‘He doesn’t belong with her. Look at his big hands.’

  The man reached up to grab the railing and we saw a knife sheath inside his jacket. He got into the front of a waiting car, Dauphine got in the back and they drove away in the direction of the airport. Then I told Fin:

  ‘That’s the man I made you run from in Saint-Martin.’

  41

  IN A BRITTLE, FRIGHTENED silence we took the taxi back to the city and got dropped at the train station. We knew Loire would have a plan, that she might have people with her, we knew we weren’t getting on the plane, but the sight of the knife in the man’s jacket made us both want to run away immediately and completely. We were very scared. I wanted to talk to Gretchen Teigler but it wasn’t safe to go through Loire.

  In the station I bought two first-class tickets for the next train to Lyon, leaving from Santa Lucia Station in just under an hour, changing at Milan. I didn’t think we should wait around at the station. It was small and there was nowhere to hide. We were just five minutes’ walk from Julia’s address.

  It was my idea to go back and see her again. I needed to ask her permission to use the recording of her voice. It was pointless, the episode was already posted, but I felt queasy about it and wanted to ask her formally, as a token of respect. Fin thought I was being stupid but I needed her to know that I cared enough to ask. Beautiful women like Julia have a hard hand to play, so much is projected on to them, they get bulldozed all the time. I think I wanted to say that I cared what she thought and maybe have her admire my trousers again. I think I had a little crush on her.

  So we went back.

  We found our way through the narrow lanes and warehouses to Malik’s store and then it was easy. People get lost in Venice, it’s disorientating because the streets are winding and the buildings high so there are few sightlines or landmarks, but we found the courtyard again and saw her door. We didn’t notice it was hanging open until we were quite close.

  Fin reached forward, pushing it with his fingertips. The door shrieked open into the dark blue room. I had to grab Fin’s arm to stop him going in.

  We stood in the doorway and blinked into the dark room. I saw Julia’s feet. A hole in the sole of her pink sock. One of her Crocs had come off and lay, marooned, ten feet away, towards the bedroom door.

  I stepped in front of Fin. He was gagging.

  Julia was on her back, her face waxen, her mouth and chin a black bloody mess. The knife must have hit a lung. She had been stabbed so many times that her pink smock had turned a deep red, a glistening wet bloom on her chest. A kitchen knife lay on the floor. It must have taken minutes for her to bleed to death but in that time she had dragged herself across the room to the coffee table of framed photos, her passage marked by a bloody, puddled smear across the floor.

  She had dragged herself all the way and was holding the framed photo of Violetta. She was about seven, standing in a ballet pose, her little tummy rounded in her tutu.

  Then I noticed that Julia’s eyes were open.

  The urge to shut the eyes of the dead is, I think, a universal. When my mum died I needed to shut her eyes, to protect her because she couldn’t blink, even though she was dead. No one had shut Julia’s eyes.

  The bedroom had been ransacked, bed tipped over and the contents of the boxes scattered around the floor. An empty box lay on its side, the trail of blood under it.

  Was Julia dragging herself acr
oss the room as they did that? Or did they wait for her to die, watch it and then search her pitiful belongings afterwards? Julia had nothing. Whoever ransacked the place was looking for something other than money.

  ‘Now we really should call the police,’ Fin whispered behind me.

  ‘Christ, no, not the Italian police. They’ll hold us here for bloody years. We’ve got to get out, right now.’

  We left and pulled the door closed. We walked back to the station quickly, panting and dizzy.

  ‘Our DNA is all over that room,’ whispered Fin as we passed Malik’s store.

  ‘Just walk, Fin, just keep walking.’

  We walked very quickly. It was a mistake. Now we were lost. I couldn’t focus or see properly because my eyes were brimming, heart racing and everywhere looked the same. We were going to miss the train.

  ‘Stop,’ I said. He did and so did I. We leaned against a wall. We breathed.

  ‘Our DNA…’ whimpered Fin.

  ‘Look: we gave the taxi driver her address, we made him read it three times, then we broadcast an interview with her. DNA traces are the least of our problems.’

  ‘What’s going on? Who’d kill her?’

  I wanted to believe Julia’s murder had nothing to do with us but I knew it did. We were the first people the police would look for when her body was found. They wouldn’t let us leave the country. We had to get out right now.

  Not daring to ask for directions, we followed the light to the banks of the Grand Canal and walked along with the throng of commuters to the Santa Lucia Station.

  Inside, through a glass maze of shops, a passageway led to the open-air platforms. A crowd had gathered around the Orient Express, boarding for Vienna. Our train was on the neighbouring platform and we had to fight through the star-struck mob.

  We found our seats at the very front carriage of the train and sat at a table opposite each other. It was quiet, too far along the train for hurried latecomers to join us. A lone businessman slunk in and sat at the other end of the carriage, diagonally across from us, as far away as it was possible to get, which suited us just fine.