‘Thanks for your help, Jim. It won’t go unrewarded.’
‘That’s not why I did it.’
‘I know. Dan, could you show Jim back down to the lobby and then come back.’
She shook hands with Jim and closed the door behind them. Her thoughts piled up into a sprawling and confused wreckage. She felt like she should be screaming, tearing the room up, that her heart should be spilling out in pieces on the floor, but she could muster none of it. It was as if her spirit had been hardening unnoticed, growing colder, and now at the moment of truth, there was no passion left within her.
Dan knocked and came back in, saying as soon as he sat down, ‘So, you want me to kill him?’
She nodded. ‘But we have to do this carefully. I need to think it through.’
‘Are you okay?’ She shrugged and he said, ‘Well, you just found out your uncle had your family killed, tried to kill you.’
‘Strange, isn’t it? I didn’t think I’d feel like this either.’ She laughed. ‘It’s funny, they protected me my whole life from the truth of what they did and yet, after one summer, here I am thinking about killing Simon—no doubts, no soul-searching, no reservations. What’s become of me? Surely I should feel something.’
She felt a sudden urge to look in a mirror, to see whether she recognized the person looking back at her. The Ella Hatto she’d been would have felt something, but her memory of that person was unsound, like a dream or like the unformed memories of early childhood.
‘You do want me to kill him?’
‘Of course. How could I do otherwise? If I didn’t see justice done I’d feel like I’d sanctioned the death of my own family.’
‘Too right. That’s how I’d feel.’
‘Do you have any brothers or sisters?’
‘Kid sister. She’s a marine biologist.’ He seemed full of pride for a moment, then regretful as he said, ‘Were you and your brother close?’
‘I don’t know. It’s the kind of closeness you take for granted, isn’t it?’
‘Yeah, I know what you mean.’
‘I think that’s why it upsets me so much. He got killed at the one time in our lives when we really didn’t know very much about each other.’
‘It’s a real bloody shame.’ He appeared genuinely saddened, displaying a warmth that Ella found attractive. As she looked at him, she thought of asking more about his own family but stopped herself, realizing it would be a mistake. Lucas had taught her that lesson: there were no real friendships in this business.
‘I’ve agreed to spend Christmas in the Caribbean with Simon.’
‘That’s good. People get murdered all the time out there. Very low detection rate.’
‘He owns a house on the shore on Saint Peter. He’s got his own boat, too. One year, we rented a house just along the coast and they came over in the boat.’ He was smiling at her and she got the impression he was hearing a reminiscence, not the foundation of a plan. ‘I’ll be able to speak to him on the phone but I know I won’t be able to look him in the face. So I’ll call him, tell him I’m going traveling, but that I’ll be in Saint Peter for Christmas. I’ll try to rent the same house, for old times’ sake, you know? Then I’ll invite him over and he’ll come in the boat. That should give us plenty of opportunities, shouldn’t it? A boat?’
Dan finally caught up with her but tried to sound like he’d followed her from the start as he said, ‘Oh yeah, too right! Especially if he doesn’t know I’m there. One thing, though.’
‘What?’
‘Like I said, the Caribbean’s a good place to make someone disappear. So we’re gonna have to be pretty damn careful we don’t give him the opportunity to make you disappear first. We need to cover our tracks but do it in a way that doesn’t make him suspicious.’
‘He knows I was in Budapest.’
‘Ah.’ He looked stumped for a second before saying, ‘Does he know why?’
‘He knows when, and by now he must know what happened when I was there.’ She was tempted to mention the visit from Vicky Welsh, but was afraid that Dan would back out altogether if he knew the police were closing in on her.
‘Even if he doesn’t suspect, that could rattle him enough to force his hand. So we really do need to take care. At the same time, I’ll get Jim to spread some misinformation. If he thinks for a minute that you killed Bruno, he’ll never take the bait.’
She’d had her doubts about Dan, but she could see now that he was smart and that she could almost certainly trust him, for the time being anyway. He was being cautious—part of his job, she supposed—but Ella believed unquestioningly that he’d deliver Simon into her hands.