“We should tell the police,” said Debbie.
Ethan looked at her, though Finn couldn’t see what passed between them.
“I don’t think that’s necessary.” Finn had their attention again. “I just need a day or two more to piece things together. Besides, I don’t think the police will take seriously anything you say about Gibson now, and for what it’s worth, I don’t think he’s directly connected to her disappearance.”
Ethan said, “On what basis?”
“Instinct, which is fallible, of course.” Finn stood up. “Give me another day or two. I’ll find her.”
For the first time in the last two days, they looked as if they doubted him, perhaps only because he was making promises that seemed without foundation. And yet, also for the first time, he was determined he would find her, because the girl was carrying a memory stick that had the details of his past on it—and, in one way or another, the key to his future.
Ethan saw him to the door and Finn walked away toward the stairs, but once he heard the Portmans’ door closing, he strolled back along the corridor. He put his ear to Gibson’s door and stood for a while. It was silent.
Had they cleared out after all this time because they’d been rumbled by a couple of curious teenagers? Or was that just coincidence? For all Finn knew, they’d wound up the surveillance because they had whatever they wanted, or because they were moving into the next phase.
Finn briefly entertained the idea that they’d given up on him, but he doubted that. He’d witnessed plenty of waste and incompetence in his time, but they wouldn’t commit to a surveillance operation of at least a year—maybe two—unless they were after someone or something specific.
Whatever this was, he suspected it was only the beginning as far as he was concerned. Beyond that, the only thing he knew for certain was what he’d learned from Jonas’s notebook, that they weren’t interested in his skills as a popular historian.
Chapter Eleven
The next morning, he started training again. He rescued his weights from the closet they’d been stored in for the last couple of years, then went for a run. Perhaps he would have done it anyway, shocked into action by his failure to keep up with Jonas the night before, but there was no question that he had to be in shape now.
The run proved less of a trial than he’d feared, and once he’d relaxed into it he found his old pace coming back to him. He’d let things slide over the last six years, but the memory of the fitter person he’d been was still there, and wouldn’t take long to be reactivated.
He knew, though, that reactivating the other part of his life would be tougher. He hoped the kid’s notebook would provide some clues, but he needed to get his hands on the memory stick if he was to have a real chance of finding out why they were interested in him again. Even then, he wasn’t sure how he could go about responding to that interest.
He went early to the coffee shop, but before he walked in he saw that Jonas was already there, one of the few customers during this hollow part of the afternoon. The waitress from the previous night was standing at his table, talking shyly, making lots of eye contact—she was pretty, Italian-looking, dark-haired.
Jonas waved at him as he walked in, even though they were only feet apart. He had a tall glass of some sort of fruit tea in front of him, and Finn smiled at the waitress and said, “I’ll have one of those, please.”
She smiled back and threw a glance at Jonas before walking off.
As he sat down he said, “How’s it going, Jonas?”
Jonas stared at him for a second, then said, “Hello.”
“Hello.”
Quietly, Jonas said, “She’s a university student, studying business law.”
“She’s very pretty. Does she know how old you are?”
Jonas looked at him askance. “Why would she need to know that?”
Finn looked across at the waitress as she put his fruit tea together, a more complex process than he’d anticipated.
“Jonas, she’s crazy about you.”
Jonas laughed a little, embarrassed, not so much for his own part but as if it was Finn making a fool of himself.
“No she isn’t! She was just telling me about her life—she doesn’t think she wants to do law anymore. I think she’s confused, that’s all.”
“Jonas, since I became a writer I’ve met a hell of a lot of women who just wanted to tell me about their lives and their problems, and I’ve met a much smaller number who were crazy about me—you’ll just have to trust that I’ve learned to spot the difference.”
“What about before you were a writer?”
He smiled at the way Jonas picked up on even the ballast of a sentence, and said, “The same, I suppose—I just meant that if you’re a writer, people want to tell you their life stories.”
“I’m not a writer.”