His courtesy puzzled her, given that they had broken into her room in the dead of night. The man who spoke English handed her the clothes she had left in a neat pile on a chair for dressing in the early morning. He waited until she had squirmed into her panties and then he withdrew the sheet. Awkwardly, she continued to dress, wavering for balance on the soft bed as her weight shifted, feeling unutterably vulnerable.
Their thinking: it would be easier to explain away a fully clothed corpse than a naked one. They must be police of some sort. Gangsters or revolutionaries would simply kill her, dressed or not. There seemed no threat of rape, which upset her because it implied something more complex, even more sinister.
* * *
Morgan had finished out his day watching bad television. Usually he read, but he was feeling uneasy. His eyes were sore from researching Harrington D’Arcy. He wondered how Miranda was doing in Santiago. She was staying at the same Best Western where he had spent the night a year ago. The beds were excessively soft, but it was a clean, well-lit place. When he turned in, he thought of her asleep, and when he awoke in the morning, it felt as if they had spent the night together, but she had left early.
2
Easter Island Cryptic
To Miranda’s surprise, she was still alive. The city stirred outside her window and she was not a corpse, she had not been molested, she had not been tortured. So far, she had been treated with a kind of deferential civility calculated to invoke terror. The acrid smell of burned synthetic fabric made her nauseous. The smoking man who did the talking frightened her more than the man who was silent, even though his voice was amiable. He had absolute power in a room swarming with ghosts of the disparu, because in the dead hours of early morning he was responsible to no one. He smiled politely as she arranged herself against the headboard, drawing her knees up to her body.
“You are ready now to talk?” he said.
“About what?”
“This is not a social visit, Mrs. Quin. You know why we are here.”
“It’s Ms. Quin.”
“Yes. That is good. You will tell us, please, where is that man?”
His high-pitched voice was smooth and she thought of drowning in oil, suffocating.
“No,” she said. She had no idea who they were talking about, but it seemed a good idea to answer in the negative.
He moved close to the side of the bed. The other man moved close on the other side. She felt squeezed, twisted inside, like meat in a grinder.
“Mr. Harrington D’Arcy. You know Mr. D’Arcy?”
“I’ve never heard of him.” The name sounded vaguely familiar. “Are you with the police? I assume you are armed.”
“It is not necessary, Miss Quin.”
The implication was that the two men could kill her with their bare hands, although his tone was conciliatory. The feeling of drowning in warm oil.
“Strange,” she said. “In Canada, we need warrants.”
“There are police you do not know, Miss Quin, even in your country, they do not need warrants. Public police, you serve the law. Carabinaros, we serve the state. We do as we do.” He paused, savouring the idea, and as he repeated the words they took on an aura of menace she felt to the bone. “We do as we do.”
“Really,” she said. “I have never heard of Harrington D’Arcy.”
The man leaned forward so that the circle of light from her bedside lamp washed over his distorted features, making him look for a moment like he was wearing a death mask. He picked up a book and leaned back into the shadows.
“You are reader of Mr. Thor Heyerdahl, yes?”
She shrugged noncommittally, suddenly realizing they must be after the handsome Englishman, annoyed that it had only now occurred to her.
“This is not your book.”
“Yes,” she said. “No, it was a gift.”
“From Mr. Harrington D’Arcy?”
“From my partner.”
“Sexual?”
“What! No, professional. What business is it of yours?”
He smiled.
“Mr. Harrington D’Arcy gave you this book. On the airplane from Toronto to São Paulo.”
Nothing makes you so vulnerable as knowing you have been watched unobserved.
He reached into a leather satchel the size of a human head. She had not noticed it before, as it was resting on the floor by his feet. She flinched at the macabre possibilities. He withdrew a book and handed it to her. She let it slip through her fingers onto the bed. She half-expected it to leave a bloodstain.
“He left this book behind. It has your name inscribed in it. Open, you will see, it is your name.”
She reached down and tentatively folded back the cover. On the flyleaf were the words “Miranda Quin.” They were written in ballpoint, in an elegant script that was unnervingly familiar.
“Yes,” she said. “That’s my book, and this, the one in your hands, that’s his, the man’s. I didn’t know his name. I’ve never seen him before, I haven’t seen him since the plane from Toronto. I know nothing about him.” She remembered wondering if he was a spy. She almost forgot finding his note, where he virtually declared his covert and endangered status.
The Englishman had asked for help. She was police. These men were menacing and possibly murderous. Miranda stood up, forcing the smoking man to back deeper into the shadows. She decided to take the position that she was no longer afraid. The man turned and flipped on the overhead light, and in the brightly illuminated room, Miranda felt a rising sense of control.
“I do not know the man,” she said. “I have to go to the bathroom.”
“No,” said the man.
“I have to pee.”
“No pissing.”
“That’s easy for you to say,” said Miranda. “There will be pissing, one way or another. You can watch, if you want, but I am now going to pee.”
She moved past him into the bathroom.
“No,” he said. “I do not watch lady piss.”
He reached out and pulled the bathroom door shut as she began to slip the waistband of her slacks down over her hips. She sat down amid shadows cast from the dim light that seeped under the door. The door then opened a crack and a hand reached in, scraped along the wall, and switched on the overhead before rapidly withdrawing. Superstitious, she thought. Afraid I’ll disappear in the dark.
She really did have to pee and it gave her time to think. As she rearranged her clothes, she decided the best strategy was to be volatile. Not grace under pressure, but explosive. She banged her forehead a couple of times with the heels of her hands, re-channelling the adrenaline from roiling to rush, and, swinging open the door, she strode out into the bleak light of the room.
They were gone.
She held her breath, then gasped, shivering, walked over to the window and looked out on the street. A few people were trudging to work; it was too early for traffic. Behind her, the carpet smelled like smouldering brimstone. She turned and surveyed the room. She coughed and it echoed. They had left both copies of the Heyerdahl book discarded on the bed. The note from the Englishman lay open on the bedside table.
Whoever he was, the man who signed himself T.E., was not Harrington D’Arcy. Miranda had seen Harrington D’Arcy once. She had been leaving Alex Rufalo’s place after a staff party. Rufalo’s wife, Caroline, was a high-powered lawyer, a colleague of