The Sudden Appearance of Hope

Chapter 90

Countdown to Armageddon.

Hard to make a convincing bomb threat when you’re forgettable. My first two attempts to convince the Venice police that I was a madwoman determined to blow apart the Hotel Madellena did nothing. Perhaps the person who took my call forgot the details by the time he’d rushed to inform a superior. Perhaps they get more crank calls than I realised. I wrote instead, a good, memorable typed message. Included detailed descriptions of the device I was building, and said, this is real, this is fucking real. If the 206 come here, I’ll kill them all.

They didn’t reply, and when I went to inspect the hotel the next morning, I saw no sign anyone was taking it seriously.

Gauguin was there, of course.

A message through the darknet:

Please desist in these antics. The event will proceed whether you wish it to or no. We will catch Byron if she comes.

Would that I had the time to weep.

I photographed the housekeepers and waitresses at the hotel; cut out the glam mag pictures of the fabulous and the perfect already arriving in the city. I picked the pocket of one of the security men, and found my photo in laminated plastic, and a piece of paper listing words to describe me, a commandment to memorise, if not my face, then at least the act of attempting to learn it.

On the back was an old grainy photo of Byron. She’ll probably wear a wig, said the notes. And glasses. And maybe prosthetics. And different clothes. And she’ll be older. If she comes at all. If she isn’t working by proxies. Other than that: she’ll be easy to spot, right?

I kept it to remind me of my purpose, and went about my business.

Three test passes at the hotel, in the four days leading up to the party.

Pass 1: as a potential guest, decked out in all the finery I can steal, adorned with the personal information of Awele Magalhaes, swiped from her mobile phone. Awele used to work in marketing, but she married a rich coal magnate three years ago and quit her job for a life of parties, very time-consuming; got Perfection two and a half years ago, got perfect four months back, loves the treatments, loves how they make her feel, they feel like… Oh, they just make me feel like me.

My identity passed without a hitch, and I explored the hotel, bustling in my white not-quite-fur coat, head held high, shoes impractical for running in. An ornate metal staircase in the main foyer, that divided a few steps up to curve out then in like the petals of a tulip. A landing above, decked out with an imitation of something famous of St Sebastian killed by arrows. Below: a bank of authentic 1600s elevators, lined with silver- and black-backed mirrors, at once inviting and discouraging reflection and self-contemplation. The top floor accessible only with a security key (stolen from the head of housekeeping), the basement leading directly out onto a private quay where punters could board their taxis.

I rode the lift to the top, and was not one step out of the elevator before I was confronted by security men, not here, ma’am, this floor is reserved.

I made an educated punt, exclaimed, “I’m here to see Mr Pereyra-Conroy,” and sure enough, this was the floor privately reserved for Rafe and his entourage but how did I even get access to it without a key?

“He’s not here, ma’am,” began one and I huffed and puffed and pressed the button for the floor below and as the lift doors closed, they barely had time to be confused before they began to forget.

The floor below was decked out in more black carpets, silver doors, the soft breeze of heating against the humid cold outside, cables along the ceilings and floors, newly put in. I looked through every open door with imperious confidence, noted TV cameras and men in black, women with tripods and notebooks, suites of rooms being set up with lightning-bright white lights for the interviews with the great, the famous, the fabulous and the rich. How much do you love being perfect? Oh, so much, it’s just the greatest feeling in the world!

A ballroom, being prepped. A low ceiling that rose rapidly away from the front door towards a dome of glass and steel, a Victorian extension to an older building, arches of black steel all around embedded in the walls as if someone had wanted to build a greenhouse, then given up halfway through and gone for a church instead. Hard to see the glamour in people gaffer-taping velvet drapes and hammering in steel platforms for the band. Tools across the floor, cables along the ceiling, but a few days and it would all be suitably

perfect

for its guests

Perfect: without blemish.

A security man spotted me, and this time he had the presence of mind to reach into his pocket where a little laminated photo lay, and so I turned, and fled, down the tulip steps and past the waiting guests, through the streets of Venice in my silly shoes, a snowball in a stolen dress.

Pass 2: as technician. Much easier costume. Black jeans, black T-shirt, leather belt, multitool, roll of gaffer tape. Access: universal. Security: utterly uninterested. I explored from the very top to the very bottom of the hotel, through the service corridors and behind the stairs. I photographed main power inlets, server hubs, stole a few more keys, lifted a couple of mobile phones, swanned around uninterrupted for nearly two hours until at last, sated on information, I packed up my goodies into a plastic bag, and let myself out by the service door.

A thought: if it’s this easy for me, I wonder how easy it is for Byron?

Pass 3: one day left, and I thought as I entered in my housekeeper’s blue that I saw… but no, easy to imagine these things, Byron couldn’t stay hidden from sight, not from all of Gauguin’s men, not from me, she’s good but not that good. The mind is a fallible, dodgy contraption to have to rely on, and yet not, complexity, complexity in the simple words that cascade meaning, that focus

made it forty minutes as a housekeeper before someone who should be in the know saw me, and didn’t know me at all and said, “Hey! Who the hell are you?”

Good thing about the housekeeper’s costume: excellent soft shoes. He was a senior management type, all hard leather and tight black laces. I outran him without breaking a sweat.