“Truth is I just do. I get paid, I do the job I’m paid to do. I’ve killed some people, I’ve handed people over to be killed, or tortured, or imprisoned, but the targets are never exactly innocents themselves.”
Even as he said it, though, he thought of Ramon Martinez, torn away from his family—Dan had been well paid for tracking him down, but he wasn’t certain he’d been paid enough to justify it, and he couldn’t help but think of the boy, wondering who would take him to school each morning now.
With what seemed an uncanny change of subject, as if she’d been reading his thoughts, Inger sounded curious as she said, “Have you never been tempted to settle down, have children?”
He looked back at her. It had been the one thing in his life he’d found hardest to talk about, even with his closest friends, and yet for some reason he wanted to tell her, and it seemed the easiest and most natural thing in the world to do so. He wasn’t sure why he felt so comfortable around her, why he felt able to share thoughts he’d hardly dared acknowledge himself, but he did all the same.
He shrugged and said, “Actually, I did, kind of. I had a son nine years ago.” He could see her astonishment, and knew it was the one thing that wouldn’t have shown up in her research. “We weren’t a couple. It was just a fling really, a bit of fun . . .”
“Why am I not surprised?”
“Don’t get me wrong, it wasn’t a one-night stand or anything like that. What I mean is we both knew we probably wouldn’t stay together. We didn’t even live together. And then Emilia fell pregnant and we had a son. Luca.”
She looked mesmerized by the revelation, and said, “You don’t see him anymore?”
He hesitated, certain he should have made it clearer, sooner. Her face fell in response, as once again she seemed to preempt what he was going to say.
“He died.” He nodded to himself, conscious of how rarely he’d said those words aloud, how rarely he’d even acknowledged them. His son had died, and a bit of Dan had died with him, leaving him not quite whole. “He died. I was away on a job, off the grid, just a couple of weeks, and he got meningitis.” She gasped a little in shock and sorrow. “Killed him within twenty-four hours. When I left he was thriving, you know, eighteen months old, healthy, strong. He’d just started calling me Papa, and then I came back and he was gone, like he’d never been there. Something I always say, you can’t disappear completely, but Luca did. He vanished, like he’d never been there at all.”
She put her hand on his and said, “Dan, I’m sorry, I . . .”
“Wish you hadn’t asked?”
“No, I’m glad I asked, and I’m glad you told me.”
“So you haven’t changed your mind about coming with me?”
She looked nonplussed and said, “Not at all. Why would I? And in fact I know it might sound strange, but it makes me hope more than ever that we’ll find the person who killed Sabine Merel and, if we can bring him to justice, even better.”
Dan nodded, liking her sentiment, though he wasn’t sure of the connection she’d made. Perhaps it was only that so many of the bad things in life were beyond their control, that it was all the more important to take on the things that could be tackled.
For every random death—Luca’s, Redford’s, the other children on that bus—there were those that should not have happened, that demanded justice, and Sabine Merel’s murder was among them.
Chapter Twenty-one
They arrived in Limoges late the following afternoon. Dan had managed to call the Merels from a payphone in Gare Montparnasse so they were at least expecting them. The man he’d spoken to had been surprised at first, but had accepted Dan’s request without any questions. Maybe, after all these years, they were just happy that anyone was showing an interest, no matter who they were.
They booked into the Candide, a grand-looking hotel near the center which had seen better days but still had a dash of old-world charm. And then they immediately took a cab the short distance to the Merels’ house. Dan noticed Inger looking a little nervous now that they were here and about to do this.
He’d never been to Limoges itself, but it reminded him of plenty of other French cities. It had that mixture of old and new piling on top of each other, vying for precedence, a jumble that should have looked anonymous and yet still managed somehow to look entirely French.