The Blue Place

two

There used to be several distinct kinds of gym. When I was growing up, school gyms—in whatever country—were sunlit and silent, the air dead and dusty with the scents of climbing ropes, ancient pommel horses sweat-soaked and bare on the handles, and a thin, greasy overlay of plimsoll rubber scraped off on the wooden floor during countless skiddings and bumpy landings. All very genteel and closed off. Working gyms in the city were meatier, more burly, with dim overhead lights, chalk dust, labouring fans, and metal everywhere: clanking Nautilus, ringing free weights, clinking dog tags. Male sweat and Ben-Gay. Hoarse huff-huff of pumping, the occasional burst of loud boy conversation: the game, the fight, the conquest. Dojos, on the other hand, were defined more by body sounds: the slap of open hands on arms, thud of bare feet on kick bags, the heavy, almost soundless impact of a rolling fall…and the voices, karate kiais like the cry of a stooping hawk; the very particular half-swallowed hut-hut, like a gun with a sound suppressor, of a whole school of people going through their katas; the endless, rhythmic susurrus of breath as half a dozen students meditate in zazen.

The precinct gym in City Hall East was less than a year old: beautiful sprung-wood floor, whispering air-conditioning, full-spectrum lighting. The sweet, cloying scent of new plastic and rubber grips on the weight machines vied with cologne and a very faint perfume. Rookies smelled different these days.

The fourteen newly minted police officers were wearing a variety of tees and shorts. I had told them to wear long sleeves and sweatpants. It doesn’t matter how nice the floor is; if you miss the mat, it’ll skin your knee. Two were very young but most were in their mid-to late twenties. One man had some grey at his temples. They all looked freshly showered. It was six-thirty in the morning.

“None of you are stretched out and ready. I have ninety minutes today. We don’t have the luxury of using any of that time on something you could do on your own. Take five minutes now.”

I watched them. How they chose to warm up told me a great deal about their experience and personalities. The older man started jumping jacks, probably what he had learned at school, which was probably the last time he had done any structured physical activity, apart from the mandatory classes at the academy. Two well-muscled men paired up and stretched each other’s hamstrings. A big woman was doing what looked like the kind of thing track athletes do in the last moments before an event. None of them looked very competent.

“Gather round. The first rule of survival is: pay attention. Usually that means paying attention to what’s going on around you. Today it means pay attention to me. Very close attention. I won’t tell you twice. You can call me Lieutenant.” I wasn’t, anymore, but I found it got me a faster response time. That and the Red Dogs sweatshirt I was wearing. “This isn’t the academy. Today you’re here to learn how to protect yourselves, first, and how to restrain a perp without injuring him, second. You can’t protect yourself from someone when you don’t know where he or she is. If they’re in cuffs and on their belly, you’re a bit more safe. You,” I said to a wiry man with red hair who looked as though he was supple enough to not hurt himself. “Pretend you’re trying to pull me off balance and run away.”

I held out my right wrist. He reached for it.

If this was real and I knew my attacker intended to hurt me, I would have crippled him without thinking: a kick to the knee, an elbow slammed into his floating ribs. But this was, perhaps, an elderly drunk who didn’t deserve to be hurt, so as Red grabbed with his right hand, I turned my wrist, drew it back just enough to pull him off balance, stepped behind him on the diagonal, and whipped his right arm straight and against the joint. He froze in pain and I swept his feet out from under him. He went down on his belly.

“If you keep hold of his arm like this, he won’t struggle, because if he does, you can pop it out of its socket as easily as pulling the wing off a turkey. Make sure you keep his palm turned up, like this.” I moved it just enough to show them and Red squealed. “As soon as it starts to hurt, slap the mat and your partner will stop.” Red slapped the mat. I eased off. “Your grip will be firmer if you keep your thumb on the back of his hand, and your elbows close in to your body.” I pulled cuffs out with my left hand and snapped them on. “You should practice with the cuffs until you can do this with either hand. Keep him on his belly while you pat him down, and when you let him up, keep that wristlock on until you can get him in the car.” I unlocked the cuffs, tucked them back into my waistband. “Questions?”

“How did you turn your hand over his, right at the beginning?”

So I showed them; in a group, singly and in pairs. Over and over. Some of them were quicker to grasp the concept than the others. Some didn’t bother with technique at all. The big woman was relying on her strength to simply overpower her opponent.

“You. Yes, you. Over here.” We stood eye to eye. I took her wrist. “Try with me.” She tugged. I shifted easily. She tugged harder. “Don’t use your muscles. Besides, what if I was a seven-foot biker on PCP?”

“I’d shoot you,” she said, looking around, playing for a laugh.

“Guns are vastly overrated,” I said mildly. “Go get your weapon and belt.” She smiled uneasily, obviously wondering if she’d heard right. “What’s your name?”

“Miebach. Linda.”

“Miebach, go get your weapon.” I let her see I meant it. She practically ran and came back with the heavy belt with gun, cuffs, baton and extra clips. “Put it on.”

She buckled on the belt.

Everyone was watching. “The only safe place to be when someone is about to draw a gun is behind them. Everyone stand behind Miebach.” They did, looking nervous. “Now, Miebach, draw your weapon. Eject the clip.” She tucked the clip into her belt. “I’m glad to see you have the safety on. Now take it off.”

“But—”

“Take it off. Reholster the weapon. I want you to draw and try to shoot me.”

“I—”

“This is not the police academy. This is what it’s like out there. Do it.”

So she tried, and I took it away from her and put her down and touched the cold metal ring to her forehead. “Better not move, Miebach. You didn’t check to see if the chamber was empty.” A bead of sweat trickled into her eye but she didn’t dare blink. I don’t think anyone in the room breathed except me. I stepped away and worked the chamber. A round shot out and tinkled on the wooden floor.

There was absolute silence. “She could have shot you,” someone said in a shocked whisper.

“No. But I could have shot her. Remember that. Never draw your weapon when the perp is within reaching distance. Miebach, put that belt away and collect yourself.” I fished out my watch. Twenty minutes to go. “You.” One of the muscle guys. “Come here.” He stepped up warily. “Miebach seemed to think that her weapon would protect her from anything. Guns can be taken away. Now let’s take a look at strength. This man is bigger than me.” He was certainly wider. I held out my wrist. “Try manhandle me.”

He didn’t want to, I could tell, but he tried anyway. I slid my hand over his, sidestepped past him on a diagonal and, going to one knee, brought him down in a back-arching bow over my thigh. He breathed fast and shallowly, toes just touching the floor. “If I sneeze, I break his back. He’d never walk again. If I move him a few inches higher…” he gasped, “he’d never feed himself.” I rolled him off and looked around the white faces. “There will always be someone bigger than you. Muscle is not the answer. All of you, try it again.”

The two most inept rookies had paired up. It usually happened that way. I watched them flailing uselessly at each other and wondered why I bothered doing this.

“Break,” I said. “Let’s take it one step at a time.” I held out my wrist. I gestured for the pale-haired one with the freckles to take it. He looked terrified. “We’re going to do this in slow motion, one stage at a time. I won’t throw you. I won’t hurt you. Reach for me slowly.” He grabbed nervously. I just smiled encouragingly and moved my arm as slowly as treacle, twisting up and over his. I stopped just as the tendons began to pull tight in his forearm, before he started to hurt. “See how I’m keeping my elbow tucked into my waist? All the movement is in the lower arm. And the pressure goes on there, on your wrist. Remember, where there’s a joint there’s a weakness. Again.” I showed him twice more. “Now you try it.” I reached for his wrist. He jerked in panic. “Slowly for now. Let’s try again. That’s right…no. Let go a second. Have you ever drawn a circle using a pin and a piece of string tied to a pencil? Well, imagine your elbow is the pin at the centre of the circle. Your forearm is the string, and you have a pencil fixed to the tip of your middle finger. Keep the elbow still, tucked in, and draw that circle perpendicular to the floor.” I demonstrated. “That’s the basic movement. Let’s try again.”

And on the third try, he got it. He smiled tentatively.

“Good. Very good. Now let’s try a bit faster, about a third speed.” It was still right. “Half speed.” It got a little raggedy as he tensed up. “Remember to keep those shoulders relaxed. A bit faster.” He did it as fast as he could and got me in a very respectable arm lock. He grinned like an idiot. “You can let go now.”

He did, and swung his forearm in a circle a couple of times, as pleased as if he had discovered a cure for AIDS.

He was wearing a Braves T-shirt. “It’s a bit like pitching: get your elbow in the right place and everything else follows. Now show your partner how it works.”

I surveyed the room. They all seemed to have the basics, now.

“Okay, people. Now that you understand how it’s supposed to work, let me tell you that it often doesn’t. When you get someone who is dusted, or a certifiable lunatic, they don’t care whether you rip their arm off. They don’t feel it. So when you’re faced with someone like that, you disable them.”

I had their attention.

“Captain Denneny wouldn’t approve of what I’m going to say but he’s not here. If you’re not sure you can handle a suspect, hit them a good one in the stomach. About here.” I pointed to my solar plexus. “It won’t bruise or swell so you can deny it later if you have to. Use the tip of your baton. If you’re too enthusiastic you could damage them. Then you say they fell onto the corner of an open door of your vehicle as you were trying to restrain them.”

Red was looking around uneasily. The two muscle guys were impassive. Miebach seemed to be listening to her internal organs.

“If you want to knock someone senseless without leaving a bruise, go for a palm strike to the forehead. Then there’s the knee. They can’t run after you if they can’t use one of their legs. Some places you must never hit: the throat and neck, the eyes, the back of the head, the genitals. If you get hauled up on a case with the perp showing injuries in those areas, you don’t have a chance. And remember this.” I smiled. “Any perp could be someone important. If you hurt them, their lawyers could take your badge or maybe even put you in jail. And we all know what happens to police officers in jail. Be clear on this point: if they’re not crazy or dusted and you hurt them, you’re incompetent. All your fellow officers will know that. They won’t want to work with you because if you’re incompetent you won’t be any good in a situation. So don’t hurt a perp if you don’t have to. And if you have to hurt them, don’t hurt them more than necessary. And don’t get caught.”

I looked at my watch. Seven fifty-five. “Okay, people, that’s it. Next time I want you warmed up by the time I arrive.”

I sent them on their way. They wouldn’t have time to shower before reporting to the squad room for day shift. Too bad.

When they had gone, I took off my shoes, stood in the middle of the floor and closed my eyes. Soft hiss of air-conditioning. Faraway rumble of East Ponce traffic. Slow-turning thump of my heart. I breathed deeply, in and in until my belly swelled with air, out again through my nose, in, out, letting my hands rise a little with each inhalation. Then I stretched up, and up farther, held it, came down, palms to the floor. Held it, held it, and on the outbreath bent my elbows farther.

I moved through my routine automatically, stretching tendons and ligaments and muscles, and after twenty minutes I was as flexible as a whip.

There are only four schools of Shuto Kai karate outside Japan. I had learned it in England, on Tuesday evenings and Sunday mornings in an old community centre whose concrete floors were always still sticky with spilled beer and cigarette ash from the event the night before. I had studied with five men under the instruction of a truck driver with a sturdy Yorkshire accent and a real love of the art. He taught me the way of the empty hand. I would kneel in zazen on that unheated concrete floor in the middle of winter and extend my arms. He would lay a heavy pole across my wrists, and the battle would begin, the battle of breath and pain and will. The first five minutes were easy, the next ten just about bearable, the next thirty a nightmare. Sweat would roll down my neck, and Ian’s voice boomed from the walls and rattled the children’s drawings pinned there. “Breathe through the pain! Breathe! With me, in and out. In and out.” And my shoulder muscles, which had already taken me through two hundred push-ups and an hour of sparring, burnt dully, then sharply, then with pain bigger than the world. And the only way through it was the breath. In and out. Falter and you are lost.

And after forty or fifty minutes, the endorphins kick in and the childish drawings on the wall assume a crystalline edge, the colours deepen and bloom, and my face relaxes utterly. All there is, is a tide of breath, sweeping up and down the beach of my body, until each cell is as distinct as a grain of mica and I feel washed clean. I sometimes wondered what would happen if I just…stayed there; whether the endorphin high would burn itself into my cells permanently and for the rest of my life I would smile gently around the edges, even when I was breaking someone’s legs. But then Ian would take the pole away, shout, and we would run around and around the hall. Twenty minutes. Two or three miles, usually. Then we would do a kata.

Katas are choreographed series of fight moves against one or more imaginary opponents. Done well, they are a meditation and a dance. They range from the most simple, railway-straight line moves against only one opponent where you use nothing but punches, to the flying, whirling battle-an-army dance of the Basai Dai. You don’t learn the Basai Dai until you get your black belt.

The first few months I studied, the katas were my reward: the fluid dance, the grace, the hot whistling power of punching tight air, of using my whole body. It was only after my blue belt, the second kyu, that I learnt that the real reward of Shuto Kai was understanding my will. I learnt that pain is only pain: a message. You can choose to ignore the message. Your body can do a great deal more than it wants you to know.

And so, although for all practical purposes Shuto Kai is not a particularly good martial art, I still dance its katas.

I did the fourth, which has all those difficult kicks, and the Basai Dai. My breathing was as smooth as cream, my blood oxygenated and rich. I was probably smiling.

I moved on from karate to kung fu, a Wing Chun form, the Siu Nim Tao, or Simple Idea. I was on the second round of pak sao, the slapping hand, when the door opened. Even with my eyes closed I would have known who it was. Her scent was a little more pronounced today, even though her hair was dry. I nodded very briefly but did not stop. Ding jem. Huen sao. She started stretching. Bill jee. Moot sao, the whipping hand. She was wearing black spandex pants and an emerald body sheath. I concentrated on the form.

When I took the last slow breath and released it, she straightened. “First form?”

“Yes.”

“Want to chi sao?” It was a challenge.

“Take off your shoes.”

“My shoes?”

“I value my feet.”

That angered her. It was meant to. Always take the advantage. I extended my right leg, and my right arm, elbow down and in, wrist level with my sternum. She did the same. The backs of our wrists touched. Well-shaped nails, no wedding ring. Her skin was dense and fine-grained, taut over smooth muscle, and her bones slender. She looked the sort of woman who has studied ballet for twelve years. Her eyes were blue, the deep blue of still-wet-from-the-dye denim, with lighter flecks near pupils tight with concentration. Her hair was in a French twist. A French twist for the gym.

Chi sao means sticky hand. The wrists stay touching. All moves are in slow motion. It’s a game of chess using balance.

I moved my hand forward, the first inch of what could have become huen sao, the circling hand, but she stepped smoothly to the side and, without even moving her arm, countered. But the counter of course became her own move, which was to keep stepping, trying to lead my arm away from the centre of my body and leave me unbalanced. So far, all beginner’s moves. Her baked-biscuit skin slid back and forth over her collarbone. As the pace intensified, I wondered how women got those tans. The colour was delicate, never too heavy, never too light, and they had it in February and November yet they never seemed to use tanning salons. Their eyebrows always arched perfectly and their hair was never out of place.

Who are you? Blank concentration for a reply.

She was good: well balanced, smooth, knowledgeable about the connections between feet and belly, wrist and elbow and shoulder. She centred well and breathed unhurriedly.

I wanted information, and stepped back, signalling a pause. “Sern chi sao?”

She merely nodded and extended both arms. Double sticky hands.

We moved faster this time, our legs bent lower, circling around the gym in jong tao, a deadly waltz. A woman’s centre of gravity is generally about two inches below her navel, just where the belly rounds. No matter how fast you travel across the floor, that point should move in parallel. I was taller than her but having one’s centre of gravity higher is a disadvantage, so I moved in a lower stance. We were both sweating lightly now, and our breath came faster. Her skin felt marvellously alive beneath mine. We moved back and forth, and my belly warmed, and I knew hers warmed, too, as we revolved around the gym and each other, a planet and its satellite turning about the sun.

Time to let her know which was which, to show her I didn’t much appreciate having my wallet stolen at the scene of an arson and murder. I moved more strongly, breathed in great long gushes, as though my breath alone would move her aside. Her body sheath was dark under the arms. My belly burned hotter. She began to move just a little out of balance. I made a slow biu tze, the shooting fingers, up towards her eyes, with my left hand, and a going under hand with my right. Being out of balance, even so slightly, meant she had either to let me through or speed up to regain the advantage. To speed up meant it would become almost a sparring session.

She sped up.

Differences in skill become more apparent with speed. I harried her round and round the gym, in no hurry, enjoying testing her. She began to spar in earnest. She snapped a punch at my head, which I palmed away easily enough, then launched into a series of battle punches, hoping to drive me off balance. I centred, then stepped right through her with a double circling hand—and in my head, for a split second, moved over both her wrists and dumped her on the floor—but in actuality let the moment pass.

She felt it, felt the moment when I could have thrust the heat of my belly against hers and taken it all, and now the whole character of our sparring changed. I led, she followed. It became a dance, teacher and pupil. I would ask, she would answer.

When we came to a halt, wrists still touching, in the centre of that beautiful gym, her face was as smooth as butter. We bowed to each other. I waited.

“Can I buy you coffee?”

The Beat Bean on Monroe is the kind of place I hate: seamless period decor of the fifties, orange chairs and Formica tables, the goateed servers wearing all black. The confectionery she bought for herself looked dry enough to be forty years old, too; the coffee determined and without grace. I like French roast, myself, but there are few places, these days, that serve it.

She chose the mustard vinyl sofa, I took the distorted design nightmare opposite.

“My name is Julia Lyons-Bennet.”

I wasn’t a bit surprised. “I gather you already know mine.”

She flushed, a quick hard colouring that turned her high, golden cheeks the colour of Madeira. “I hope you found your wallet.”

“Yes.”

“I suppose you’re wondering why I’m here.”

“You want something.”

“I want to know why you were lurking fifty yards from Jim’s house, in the rain, after midnight, five minutes before his house exploded.” It came out as a challenge. She was breathing hard with some righteous emotion and her flushed cheeks made her look quite, quite determined.

“I was out for a walk.”

“That’s about as informative as telling me you were breathing!”

“Like saying the cause of death was heart failure,” I agreed.

“What?”

“Look, Julia, I was out for a walk. Nothing more. I understand that the deceased was a friend of yours, and you must feel terrible, but I had no more connection to his murder than the fact that I was outside his house when it went up. I’m sure the police have already told you that drugs were found on Mr. Lusk’s property, that they believe his death was some kind of message to the drug fraternity in this city.”

“Don’t tell me you believe that garbage!”

“Not particularly. But I still want to know what you want from me.”

“I found out about you. You used to be in the police, but then your father died and left you money. I read your record.”

My record. Lists of deaths, the innocent and the guilty, and she had been paddling about in it. I stood.

“Please. I want your help.” She pushed her coffee cup to one side and lifted a worn pigskin briefcase onto the table. “Can you just spare ten minutes to listen?”

The briefcase was old, worn and comfortable. It spoke of a real person with a real life, real feelings.

“Please?”

Ten minutes is a very small fraction of one’s lifetime. I sat down.

“I run an art acquisitions and security business: buying and selling for corporations, mostly. Sometimes I set up corporate museums; on occasion I advise on the transport and security of travelling exhibitions. Two weeks ago I was approached by a man, a banker. He had a valuable painting, a Friedrich, to ship to France. Discreetly. Normally, of course, I don’t do that penny-ante stuff, but he was referred by a very good client of mine—the man to whom I had brokered the Friedrich in the first place. And so, as a gesture of goodwill, I agreed. In fact, I oversaw the packing personally.” She reached for her coffee, then changed her mind.

“I’m going to order some mineral water. You?”

“Thank you. Yes.”

The water came, we fussed with slices of lemon.

“Now, as you can probably appreciate, I very rarely do this kind of work myself, but I was in the building when the painting was delivered, so I went to take a look at it before it was recrated. It’s a lovely painting, lovely. I watched as my assistants took it out of its old packing case. They barely glanced at the painting, but I did. As I’ve said, it was a lovely painting, Luminous work. I had brokered it to the client I mentioned, the one who sold it to this banker. I wanted to see it again.” In this light her eyes were the rich blue of twelfth century stained glass. “I looked at it, and it made me uneasy. I brokered it two years ago. I know more now than I did then. I looked at this painting and knew it wasn’t a Friedrich. What I don’t know is if it was the same painting I had sold as a Friedrich two years ago.”

“What made you think this one was a forgery?”

“A fake. A forgery is a piece passed off as a previously undiscovered original. I don’t know. The brushwork, I think. It…well, it’s hard to describe, but it didn’t have the precision I associate with Friedrich.”

“You’ve seen a lot of his work?”

She looked troubled. “No. More in the last twelve months than ever before, but the German Romantics aren’t really my field of expertise. I’m much more familiar with work from the last thirty years. My specialty is investment. For small investments, anything under a million, you get the highest returns for contemporary paintings.”

“But you brokered the Friedrich anyway.”

“Its provenance was impeccable. The original seller’s reputation was unimpeachable. I had absolutely no reason to doubt either.”

“But now you do?”

“I don’t know what to think. All I know is that I don’t think the painting I was supposed to be crating to ship discreetly to France was a Friedrich.”

“That’s the second time you’ve described the shipping as discreet.”

She looked surprised. “Art is almost always shipped that way to France. The French government enforces rather punitive tax laws that make it desirable for art owners to be somewhat secretive about their acquisitions.”

“Ah.”

“What do you mean, ah?”

I shrugged. She would not want to hear that she was aiding and abetting what amounted to smuggling, especially from someone who didn’t even know the difference between a fake and a forgery.

“Anyway, seeing that painting made me very nervous. So I took it over to a friend, an art historian and appraiser. I thought about calling the original client, but decided not to. After all, I didn’t know whether it was a fake or not and, besides, he had sold it for a good profit. It wouldn’t hurt him either way. But I had to tell Honeycutt, the banker, that there would be a bit of a delay. Of course he wanted to know why so I told him I had some doubts regarding the painting’s provenance. He was concerned, obviously—we are talking about a considerable investment for an individual—so I tried to reassure him. I told him how reliable and discreet my appraiser was; how he was doing all this on a rush basis for me; that I had an appointment at eleven-thirty that evening to get the definitive answer, one way or another.”

“An appointment with Jim Lusk.”

“Yes. With Jim. I was supposed to be there at eleven-thirty. But some things came up at work. And I know Jim. He’s…he was…a night owl. He wouldn’t mind if I was a few minutes late. But I was even later than I thought, so I’d parked and was running to his house when I bumped into you.” Her back was pressed flat against the back of her chair, creating an extra two or three inches between us. Probably reliving the look on my face as I had mused on breaking her neck.

I thought about that writhing tiger lily of flame, and the bright stamen at the centre of that flower; the burning, curling Jim Lusk.

“You walked away, his…the house burned, and I saw your wallet. It must have dropped when we collided.” I would give her the benefit of the doubt. “So I looked through it. And I went to the police. They more or less laughed at me. ‘Aud!’ they said. ‘Oh, not Aud! She was one of us!’ The odd thing was, underneath their bluster, they sounded uncertain, as though they thought you just might have been involved somehow. Then one of the uniformed ones came running to the detective in charge, and he sighed, and he told me he was pretty sure, given the new evidence, that this was a drug killing. I said it wasn’t. Jim always found…well, let’s just say that not only did he not take drugs, he found those who did rather amusing.” She shook her head. “I know people say this about their friends and family all the time, but believe me, I knew Jim.”

Ah, but we never really know even our best friends. Even the spouse who snores next to us every night. We can never see behind those glistening eyes, never get beneath the skin, venture inside that shining ivory bowl to the dark dreams and slippery lusts that slide through the crocodile brain without regard for civilization or religion or ethics.

“He was murdered for a reason. If there were no drugs, it was something else.”

“There were drugs. Several kilos of cocaine.”

“Then they were just window dressing,” she said impatiently, “a way to twist the truth.”

“Very, very expensive window dressing.” Which of course played both ways: why hadn’t the firebug taken the merchandise?

She shrugged away the importance of several hundred thousand dollars worth of evidence. “Yesterday, Honeycutt’s insurance adjuster showed up, which is normal for a claim of this size. Honeycutt had said nothing to her, of course, about the question of provenance. He would have been a fool to. I told her that, yes, everything was fine. That I had merely taken it around to the appraiser’s to get a second opinion as a matter of course.”

“You lied.”

“Yes. And I hate that. I resent it. But I did it because I have to consider my reputation. People trust me. It’s my job to be utterly reliable. I can’t afford clients thinking: She was the one who muddled up that Friedrich. I just can’t.”

“Honeycutt won’t say anything—after all, he wants his insurance. The previous owner won’t say anything because as far as you’re aware, he doesn’t know anything. The picture can’t talk because it’s now no more than a few greasy atoms in the stratosphere. So explain to me what your problem might be with this.”

“My conscience.”

We looked at each other in the artificial fifties gloom. Conscience. Such a high-minded kind of word. In my experience, people used the word “conscience” when what they really meant was, Oh god I shouldn’t have done that it was stupid what if they find out? “Conscience” sounds better to their internal censors. “Conscience is a matter for a priest.”

She gave me an odd look. “You would look good in the old-fashioned clerical garb, the long black coat and dog collar. Those pale, pale eyes, the way you nod intently and sit so still…” She laughed then, a brittle vocal shimmer that tried to hide the loss and bewilderment, tried to turn it all into an amusing game. “So here I am, confessing my sins. But what I want isn’t forgiveness. Or penance. It’s information.”

“You know as much about all this as I do. More.”

“I want you to help me find out who did this to Jim, and why.” Her voice was raw, believable. “You would be paid by my company, Lyon Art. You would be paid well. Not quite as well as your investments, perhaps, but surely it would be better than…than grubbing about in the police gym with nervous rookies. Much more exciting.”

I wondered what excitement meant to her. A frisson, a brief hormonal thrill to flutter the muscles and pull tendons tight for a moment. Excitement is the product of facing something dangerous. I like excitement from danger that is carefully controlled: the bungee jump, skydiving, free diving off the coast of Belize. Danger of the uncontrolled variety has a nasty tendency to lead to people with guns or knives appearing out of the dark and a split second to live or die. Danger is that place where the space between one breath and another decides your fate, where your life and theirs are like two ice cubes sliding down a hot blade and the fulcrum is speed, where survival means the ability to move from one state to another faster than thought. It means suspending consideration and just being, acting and reacting, moving through a world where everything but you cools and slows down so you can glide between the blows and bullets and take out someone’s heart. Danger is desperately seductive.

“No. Thank you. I’m perfectly happy as I am.”

She leaned back in her chair, until the top of her head was almost touching the hideous orange shade on the hanging lamp and strange shadows pooled on her face. “If you’re so happy, why did you resign from the police? Why do you walk the streets in the middle of the night looking haunted by demons? Why do you hang out with dangerous, filthy people in loud, foul-smelling night clubs where no one would even give you the time of day if they knew who you are, knew that your mother is King Harald’s ambassador to the Court of St. James?”

My face is my most useful tool. I made it smile. “Did you practice that?”

Her high cheekbones stood out sharply in the light but the shadow hid her eyes and mouth. “I’m not a trained investigator like you, but Jim was my friend. I’m going to try to find out what happened. I’ll do it on my own if I have to—I’m smart and I learn fast—but you could help me, and I’m willing to pay.”

I know police work and death, I understand the intricacies of diplomacy and the strange sharp angles where performance art and outlaws, tattoos and high society meet and mingle. I also knew what she didn’t: that stalking a professional killer is not a game, not a hobby you can learn at the weekend. Not when the stakes are your life.

The lamp was warming her sleek, French-twisted hair, and through the brown bitter smell of coffee I caught a quick scent of her shampoo, light and sunshiny and sharp, the way cloudberries on the fjord smell when the sun comes out after a quick summer rain, and I saw her clearly. An innocent who believed herself a cynic, one too innocent even to understand that the timing of that incendiary device had been carefully planned; that she had to have been as much the target as Lusk or the painting. Someone had tried to kill this woman who had read my record and asked for my help, and if she blundered around making noise, they would try again. So I surprised myself, and said yes.

While I read through my transcribed statement, Denneny, immaculate in white linen short sleeves, leaned back in his chair on the other side of the desk and polished his spectacles.

“There is no ‘e’ in lightning.”

He ignored me. The spectacles had left deep indentations on either side of his nose and he had to bring the lenses very close to check for blemishes. His expression was utterly focused, as pure and concentrated as that of a boy studying the dissected body of his first goldfish.

I signed and dated the statement. “You should really pay for better-educated clerks.”

He slid the spectacles back on and his face was a man’s again. He picked up the statement, looked at my signature, and put it on the top of a pile on his left.

“Your new rookies were particularly raw this time.”

“I hope you didn’t hurt anyone,” he said, more distracted than concerned.

“You should take a session yourself.”

“I’ve spent too much time lately sitting behind a desk—”

The lack was more in his soul than his body.

“—besides which they wouldn’t listen to a captain. They’d say, ‘Yessir!’ but their eyes would glaze and they wouldn’t really hear a word I said.” Just as he wasn’t hearing a word I said, not really.

I stood. “If any of them don’t measure up, I’ll let you know.”

“Yes.” He made an effort. “I appreciate this, Torvingen. The department can’t afford to pay warm bodies to spend time in the hospital instead of patrolling the streets.”

His rookies had once been more than entries in a ledger, cogs in his cost-effectiveness machine. I tried to remember the last time I had seen him shout or laugh. I failed. Twenty years in the police force had killed everything, bit by bit: his ambition, then his passion, then his wife.