The Sudden Appearance of Hope

Chapter 32

I ride the Istanbul metro, picking pockets as I go, and idly, between the faces, I think of Inspector Luca Evard.

Our relationship has not always been professional.

The first time I met him, he arrested me.

The second time, he’d come all the way to São Paulo to consult on my MO. I’d stolen $3.3 million of mixed jewels in an operation that had taken me seven months to plan, twelve minutes to execute. I’d formed relationships (which no one could remember), learned pass-codes, copied keys, corrupted security systems, it was a beautiful job, so sensational that for the first time in my career I kept a few of the lower-valued pieces for myself, simply to remind myself of how good I could be. Silly sentiment; these things are a crutch.

I should have left the country, but the heist was still on local news, and when I phoned Interpol under the guise of a harried policewoman on the case, I was informed that Inspector Evard was on the scene. A CCTV camera had caught the features of a woman who’d been identified in connection with several other cases, and so he’d come to town.

I waited outside police headquarters, a woman in huge sunglasses and a big blue hat, until Luca emerged, and trailed him to the scene of the crime, a meeting with forensics, and finally back to his hotel.

I stood next to him in the lift, and nearly giggled with excitement. I clasped my hands in front of me and wore red and wondered if he’d look my way, but he didn’t, and when he got off at the seventh floor I followed him until he looked back, at which point I pretended to lose my key in my handbag and he walked on.

The next day I put my camera on a ledge by Lago das Garças, set a ten-second timer, scuttled a few feet away from it, posed in what I hoped was a distracted manner with the day’s newspaper, and caught a photo of myself looking, I had to say, really quite mysterious and alluring.

I sent it to the police from a dummy email account with the words, Hey, is this the thief you’re looking for? and managed not to dance when I heard Luca Evard tell the receptionist he’d be extending his stay. That night he ate with his colleagues in a small café round the corner from the station, a bowl of rice, fish and beans, and I trailed him through the city, watching him struggle with the unforgiving traffic, wincing every time a boy on a motorcycle bucked up onto the pavement to dodge the gridlock. He was too neat, too quiet a man to be in a city as loud as São Paulo; he missed Geneva, perhaps.

The next day, while he was out, I stole the cleaning lady’s master key and broke into his bedroom. On the desk was my photo. Pages of notes, records of DNA, fingerprints, snatches of my features, here, in Milan; here, in Vienna; here, in São Paulo, lifted from scenes of crime, and around, scattered thoughts.

Not afraid of being seen?

No team; works alone?

Why does no one remember her face?

He’d written this last in thick black pen, a late-night scrawl, by a beautifully clear picture of my features from Dublin, the day I stole data on 4G phone networking for a client on the darknet. I was smiling at the camera, the name on my badge was Rachel Donovan, and the receptionist had told me about her kids and how she wanted them to live in the countryside, learn all about the real world, as she inputted my data onto the system.

In the bathroom, he’d rolled the toothpaste tube up from the bottom as he squeezed it empty. His aftershave was an old bottle from Germany, €2.50 from the pharmacy. I sniffed it, ran my finger round the edge of the plastic cup with which he rinsed his mouth, lay back on his bed, felt the indentation where his head had rested, traced the lines of disturbance across his sheets, wondered which side of his body he naturally slept on, or whether he tossed and turned the whole night through.

He had two books, perfectly aligned with the right-angle of the table by the bed. The smaller, cover faded, was called The Lemon and the Wave, written by a pair of initials only — R. H. On top of it was a newer, larger book, a macro-economic analysis of capitalism vs. environmentalism. The phone in his room had a number written on it; I copied it and let myself out.

In the afternoon I went shopping.

I bought a crisp new shirt, smart new shoes.

I bought a book on macro-economics and environmental policy.

I ate frozen yoghurt from a shop full of beauty queens, felt the blast of air conditioning on the back of my neck.

I closed the book and counted cars for a while, but the traffic was slow, so I counted bolts in the wheel hubs, and piercings in the ears of the women who walked by me.

I wondered where Luca Evard was, and smiled, to know that he was thinking of me.

That evening, at seven p.m. exactly, dressed in white shirt and navy jacket, I knocked on Inspector Luca Evard’s door and said, in English, “Hi, my name’s Bonnie. I’m with the Polícia Civil do Estado de São Paulo, I think you’re expecting me?”

He looked flustered, unshaven, a crinkle in his sweat-stained shirt; in short, a man caught off-guard, who lived his entire life guarded.

“Sorry,” he replied, “I didn’t think…”

“I phoned ahead!” I explained. “Did you get my message?”

“Ah, yes, the message…” He remembers a message on his hotel phone, can’t remember the voice, the words, or me. But a gentleman, always a gentleman is Luca. “Just… let me change my shirt.”

He stood aside to let me in, and I waited, tactfully staring out of the window, while he changed in the bathroom. With the door shut, I kept up a running commentary, lest he forget my presence.

“How do you like it in São Paulo? It’s a beautiful city, I think, so vibrant — I grew up in England, you see, but my mother’s from Rio and I always thought I wanted to come back here, see where they began, and once I was here, well, I couldn’t leave, could I? It’s just so alive!”

The view from his window: medium-rises blocking the view of more medium-rises, skyscrapers pressed together. On the horizon, favelas, breeze-block houses with iron roofs, trees popping up behind crumbling walls, the maripa palm and bacuri tree, whose seeds were rubbed on eczema. São Paulo, Terra da Garoa — land of drizzle. One in every 74 people owned a gun; of every 74 guns, 70 were illegal. To avoid the gridlock, the rich took helicopters to work; an estimated 70,000 flights every year.

“Yes sir,” I cried out, before my silence could let Luca forget. “This is the place to be.”

He emerged from the bathroom, tucking the back of his shirt into his trousers as I turned. “Sorry,” he mumbled. “I didn’t mean to keep you waiting… did you say Bonnie?”

“That’s right. Let me buy you a drink or something, to thank you for your time.”

“I don’t, thank you…”

“I insist, absolutely, my pleasure, it’s an honour to meet someone from Interpol — did my boss tell you I was interested in applying?”

“No, he didn’t.”

“I think the work you do is incredible, just incredible, please, let me buy you a drink.”

He was tired, frustrated, had walked into his hotel room, wanting to be alone.

I was charming, interested, fluent, friendly.

I was company.

I was everything I thought he might want me to be.

“All right,” he said. “Just one drink.”

I bought him a half pint of expensive German beer, myself a glass of red wine.

“We have CCTV of her face from a dozen different crime scenes,” he mused, as I sat, chin resting on the palm of my hand, nodding along. “She doesn’t wear a mask — that’s part of her MO. She looks like a wealthy woman who you might genuinely believe is going to buy a diamond ring, up to the moment where she robs you. No guns. No team. Her victims aren’t fools, someone should have noticed, should have raised the alarm, but no one did. You can show cashiers an image of themselves talking to her, sometimes for an hour at a stretch, and they deny it, while looking at the footage, they deny it, not possible, they’d have remembered her. How does she make them forget? Maybe people are just blind, maybe the world doesn’t know how to pay attention. I’m sorry; this must be boring for you.”

“Not at all. I’m interested in the case.”

He smiled, weary, a man tired from chasing shadows.

“I’m not sure there is a case,” he mused, eyes elsewhere. “Just one failure after another.”

I gripped my glass.

Feelings of…

sympathy, a desire to comfort, a desire to say it’s okay, really, it’s not you, it’s me… feelings of… guilt?

Is this guilt?

I look away and find it hard to look back, hard to meet his eyes.

“Tell me about her,” I said. “Tell me about the thief.”

He leant back in his chair with a puff, rolled the glass between his hands for a moment, drained it down, laid it on the table between us, stared into nothing much. “Cocky. Sometimes sloppy, though she’s getting more professional. Takes risks, but doesn’t appear to care. Whimsical. Her choice of targets aren’t always the biggest hauls or the easiest grabs; spiteful, perhaps? Ambitious, maybe. Milan felt like a crime of opportunity, and she was sloppy with the hand-off in Vienna. Self-destructive, perhaps. Wanting attention. She sells mostly on the darknet. Absurd: she should have a fence, couriers, reliable contacts. When I get permission, I try to bid, lure her out. Nearly had her in Vienna, but we found only the jewels, not her. We found hot coffee and a blue coat, stolen property in a paper bag, but she had vanished. Did we miss her? Did we blink?”

I don’t dare blink, in case this moment disappears for ever.

“How long have you been on the case?” I asked, barely breathing, words in my mouth, des mots, das Wort, , la palabra, a palavra, , come on, come on!

“I think… three years. We don’t investigate so much, but coordinate. A repeating MO across international borders, a purple notice issued, I got drawn in and it has been… it is… stagnant.”

“Perhaps this time…”

“No,” he cut me off, soft, a shaking of the head, a curl of the shoulders. “No, I don’t think so.”

Silence between us.

I lounged in it a while, let it soak through my skin.

“Why are you a policeman?” I asked at last.

“Why are you?” he replied, quick, smiling, deflecting hard.

“I think we make things better.”

“Do you?” He bit back on laughter, then shook his head, raised his hands in an apology, sorry, sorry, of course.

“Also,” I added, wry smile, head down, “my dad was a copper.”

“That sounds more like it.”

“And you?”

He drew in his breath slowly, rolled his lips into his mouth, then puffed them out again with a little exhalation of breath. “I dislike arrogance.”

“Is that it?”

“The law is the great equaliser. All of us, we must obey the law, we must act within a certain code. To refuse that… it is very arrogant, don’t you think?”

“I suppose so, but I would have expected…”

He raised his eyebrows, pressing his palms against his empty glass.

“… something else,” I mumbled.

Silence between us, eyes looking away, apologising for things not said. Then I said, “Do you… think you’ll ever catch the thief you’re looking for?”

His eyes wandered up to the ceiling, an old question he’d asked himself many times before. “I don’t know,” he said at last. “Sometimes I think… no. Sometimes I think that. Sometimes you find yourself thinking it’s okay to be a failure.”

I opened my mouth to say something that Bonnie might say, something like no, it’s fine, you’re wonderful, don’t be…

I was slow, the words didn’t come, and by the time they were ready, it was too late.

Silence.

“Sorry,” he began, an apology for honesty, embarrassment at his life, his work, himself. “Sorry.”

“No — don’t be.”

Silence.

“When are you flying back?” I murmured, looking into my glass.

“Day after tomorrow. They wanted me to stay around a while longer, look interested.”

“What do you want?”

“The case to be over. Perhaps it’s worth being here. Perhaps we’ll find something.”

“I heard about a photo, the woman in the park…”

“It came from an anonymous email account. Upstanding citizens don’t send photos of international jewel thieves to us without making themselves available.”

“Then do you think…”

“I think it was her,” he replied, clear and simple. “I think she sent us the photo. It’s real, no doubt. I think she wants us to look for her; that’s how she gets off.”

“‘Gets off’?”

“Is it wrong?” he queried, eyebrows rising. “‘Gets off’?”

My face, hot. I would not flush, I drank red wine, the redness of the drink brighter than the rising blood in my capillaries. “In English, it implies sexual arousal from an action.”

He considered this a moment, lips narrow, eyebrows tight. “Yes,” he said at last. “Yes, I think that is correct.”

I am my fingers, perfectly at rest.

I am my legs, easy on the floor.

I am at ease.

“What you’re describing… sounds pathological.”

“Yes,” he mused again. “I would not disagree with that.”

“Do you… have sympathy for her?”

“Sympathy?”

“If she is… everything you think she is… do you feel sorry for her?”

“No. Of course not. She breaks the law.” He hesitated then, head on one side, considering the statement further.

I am at ease.

I am at ease.

I fail to be at ease. My face is hot; what is this? Excitement, terror, happiness, dread, guilt, pride, giddiness of companionship after too long alone, what a companion, a man who knows everything about me, who knows me, the shock of it, the delight, the…

His features flicker in unexpected concern. I am at ease, I am at fucking ease. He mumbles, “I’m sorry, you are… did I say something? I’m not selling my job well, it is of course—”

“No,” I cut him off, sharper than I’d meant. Then soft, smiling, I am my smile, I am my bloody fucking smile, “No, it wasn’t anything you said. Sorry. It’s been a long day for me too. Let’s… talk about something else.”

We talked, he and I, for another hour and a half.

Then he said, “I should…”

Of course, I replied, jumping to my feet. You’re very…

It’s been a pleasure…

… good luck with the…

… of course, you too.

A moment, perhaps.

But no: he looked at me, and saw a young woman, looking to him for ideas, inspiration, an example. He would set a good example.

Luca Evard was always a good man.

Good night, Inspector Evard.

Good night. Perhaps we shall meet again.