“Did she tell you anything about herself?” Sylvia pressed, unaware that her jaw was clenched from tension, her molars clamped together like a vice. Fear, excitement, hope—all glimmered in her keen eyes like silver goblets waiting to be filled with fine wine.
“No, she was really shy.”
“That’s not like Grace. She’s usually so confident.”
The teenager said, “Not this little girl. She was quiet, very reserved. When she spoke, she whispered.”
Sylvia clutched the girl’s wrist. “What did she say?”
“Anyone remember what she said?” the girl asked her friends.
Everybody looked clueless.
Sonia spoke. “Actually, the other girl she was with said they lived together. She lived at her house. She was the one who did all the talking.”
“Where?” Melinda asked.
Casey said, “A lot of them live near the dump. Be prepared though, it’s real disgusting there.”
Sylvia leaned over and grabbed the girl’s other wrist. “What time did you see them here last night?”
“About eight o’clock. They should have arrived here by now.”
Sylvia looked at her watch. “It’s past that now. We’ll wait a couple of hours—see if they show. Actually, no! Melinda, you and Elodie wait here in case she turns up. And I’ll go to the dump.”
“We can show you where,” Sonia offered.
“Really no, finish your dinner, I—” Sylvia stopped herself mid-sentence. Why had she spent her whole life denying help? Feeling like she was strong enough to handle things, always alone? The tough one. The Amazonian woman. Somebody was offering her help and she should accept. “You know what? Thank you for your offer. I would be extremely grateful if you could show me the way. Thanks.”
“You’re welcome.”
“What did this other child look like? The little girl she was with?” Sylvia asked.
“Kind of cute. Older. Maybe six or seven. A sort of wide, open face, darker skin. Wild and grubby looking. Outspoken. Kind of adorable.”
“Okay you guys. Let’s get going. Elodie, can I take your flashlight?”
Elodie stood up. “I’m coming too.”
“No, you stay with Melinda,” Sylvia said assertively. “Let’s go, girls. Let’s find Grace.”
Tommy
F
inally—it seemed like
finally
after forty-eight, long hours—Tommy had tracked down his target: Ruth.
Tommy was somewhat of a computer nerd, it was true, but it was his old coder friend at his last company—a loner who lived with his pet snake—who had nailed it. At least, Tommy was pretty convinced that the guy had zoned in on Ruth’s whereabouts, tracked back to her IP address, from the three new messages that had been sent to the
Lonely Planet
forum. The messages came from different e-mail addresses, yet were pinned down to the same source by his friend. Ruth was obviously still in Rio. But Tommy would need to move fast—he wanted to get to her before the police did.
For personal reasons.
It was the first time he had been alone at nights, and it made him uneasy. His family, college, the army, friends, work—he had always been with someone, always with a group or a team. As each new moment marked itself off, he understood the vows he’d made to Sylvia as he had never done before. Marriage really was sacred. He longed for her, aching with desire for even a crumb of what they had once shared. Quiet, distant, aloof, the more unkempt the better, he’d take her any which way she came—in jeans, woolly hats, ugg boots, no make-up—he didn’t care—all the more tangible she’d be, all the more possible for her to accept his faults. To love him. He—who was nothing, really, when he thought about it. Just a passably attractive guy with a basic skill, a smattering of talent—a dime a dozen. He was a speck of sand without her and without Grace.
He’d been through the wringer in the last forty-eight hours. His stupidity about Ruth, finding out that Grace was not at the beach cabin, but had gone missing. Everything seemed so hopeless—like a gaping wound waiting for flies to ravage. Sylvia and Melinda had kept him up to date, and his wife’s conversations with Agent Russo (Sylvia had assured the detective of Tommy’s innocence and ignorance about who Ruth, aka Ana, was) had kept the FBI off his tail. Agent Russo was no longer beckoning him to come in for questioning, but letting him know what was going on. The FBI was making progress, she assured him. Tommy guessed it wouldn’t be long before they’d swoop down on Ruth. But he’d get there before them. Ruth must have counted on them expecting her to jump ship and leave the country, so she’d do the opposite. Call their bluff. Clever.
The game of chess which, up until now, she’d been playing so well.
Tommy had hung around, too. After much contemplation and reflection on Ruth’s character, something told him that she, far from getting out of Rio as soon as she could, would be lying low, biding her time before she made that Burma exodus. It would be easy to hide in such a huge metropolis like Rio. She’d be waiting for the fuss to die down, waiting for Grace’s parents to reunite with their daughter at the beach cabin when, soon, it would all seem like a mishap, not a kidnap. She’d be downgraded from “most wanted” to just “priority.”
But Ruth wouldn’t have reckoned that poor little Grace would do her own thing in an effort to be heard. Tommy knew his daughter. She was independent but liked being the center of attention. Normal, he thought, she was an only child, and a bright one, too. Not so much spoilt, but treasured. She needed love, mental stimulation, and if she didn’t get it, she’d hunt for it. It hadn’t surprised him that she’d pottered off on her own. Grace was a curious teenager in a five-year-old’s body. Sylvia had still not invited him to join her search in Chinandega. Too many cooks? Or she still couldn’t bear to see his face?
Tommy’s mind had been playing volley with malevolent plans, although, when he analyzed it, he didn’t perceive it that way, except in glimpses. He saw it as pure justice. He wanted Ruth gone—no future threats, no lurking about his family, no possible schemes that could bring them down. He wanted her
out.
Neat. The job done and dusted. He was aware that some people might perceive that as crazy, psychotic even, but if they had been through what
he’d
been through, perhaps they’d understand.
He had organized himself a precision rifle which, in one hour, he’d collect from the seller. They’d made a deal. He’d rent the weapon, not buy it. After all, once he was done with the piece, the last thing he’d want to deal with was finding it a new home. His international arms license had expired long ago. And he could hardly try to explain his way through customs, even if the gun was US made—it wasn’t the sort of thing you went about with on a Sunday afternoon. Plus, there would be no tracing from the FBI, or local police. The key was to be clandestine. It had been a long haul tracking the right weapon down because of the relatively new gun control laws in Rio—the ban on possession and sale of firearms—despite half the population illegally owning one. But with help from an old army buddy who had a contact here, Tommy found himself a nice Barrett M107 from a gang-leader in a
favela
on the edge of a shantytown, up in the hills. A place called Rocinha. Ironically, not far from where his snake-loving ex-colleague had located Ruth.
Tommy knew he’d be happy with his find. A sleek, Long Range Sniper Rifle .50 caliber with attached optics that would do nicely in all weather, day or night. Accurate at two thousand yards. Not bad to be able to hit your target at over a mile away. And possible, too, with the clear light of a full moon, as it was now.
There were drug gangs everywhere, all weaponed-up to the nines, controlling the cocaine trade. It was part of life in Rio and beginning, even after his short stay here, to feel normal—the eyes in the back of the head, the gut reaction, the sixth sense, all of which had been missing when he was duped by Ruth.
Melinda had rung him on his cell and recounted in detail Grace’s recordings on the magic pen. The poisoning of the neighbor’s cat, the threats Ruth had made about plunking Grace on a dump and giving away her teddies, the merciless scolding about wetting the bed. Ruth’s malicious cruelty made his blood bubble over. She deserved a taste of her own toxic medicine.
He had spent nights fantasizing about what he’d do when he found her. At first, he thought he’d terrify her at gunpoint, to give up the whereabouts of the stolen money. He’d make her transfer it into Sylvia’s account, there and then, online. All of it. Then he’d take her out onto the biggest, shittiest most repulsive landfill wasteland in Rio and dump her there like the piece of garbage she was. Humiliated. Penniless. Maybe he’d even make her remove her clothes and hand them over, so she could feel how demeaning it was to have everything stripped from you. Then he’d call the cops.
But then, as quickly as he weaved this fantasy, he unraveled it. It could backfire. The whole thing could turn dangerously pear-shaped. No, what he decided to do was impersonal. Well, personal at the root, but impersonal in the execution. This baby could fire at an exceedingly long range. He wouldn’t have to get up close and personal, at all. Ruth wouldn’t even know he was there. It would be like a mercy execution. Clean. Quick. He might even catch her mid-smile, opening her front door, popping out to look at the full moon. Nobody would know where it had come from, least of all Ruth herself. She’d be dead almost before he pulled the trigger.
And in Rio, in the land of shootings and daily murders, nobody would even notice. Let alone give a damn.
Perfect.
ROCINHA WAS LESS of a slum than Tommy had imagined. It was a bustling community of maybe two hundred thousand inhabitants, with shops, banks and businesses, mingled with houses of concrete and brick. It looked like a massive patchwork quilt of jerrybuilt edifices piled on top of each other in a higgledy piggledy jumble, set on a steep hill, edged with trees. Great swathes of electricity and telephone wires crisscrossed in front of houses like curtains of spaghetti. The streets, even at this time of night, throbbed like clogged arteries with putt-putting mopeds, bikes and
combi
buses. It took a while for him to locate his contact: a drug lord cum arms dealer. Tommy assumed the two professions must go hand in hand in a place like this.
Tommy had taken no risks. Earlier, he’d called the man from an Internet café and adopted a hammy Mexican accent. At the meeting, he decided, he would pull a bandana across the lower part of his face. Anybody could snap a picture with a Smartphone these days—he didn’t want to be set up: sold a gun and have the very same dealer grass him to the police later. He thought of Grace. That little pen she had taken a fancy to, well, one like that had brought down the
News of the World
. Its covert recordings opening up a can of squirming, British, hacking worms—clever Grace to have even thought of slipping that pen into her teddy bear. Her instincts obviously told her it could be useful.
Tommy arrived at his destination. He climbed some concrete steps, topped by a graffiti-torn house. Not quite the abode he expected for a honcho dealer. He could hear a dog barking inside. He stretched his hand through the wrought iron bars of a firmly locked gate, and knocked on the door behind. A woman with a face as charmless as a pair of nail-scissors immediately appeared, her hand clutching the studded collar of a friendly, but simultaneously terrifying-looking pit bull. That wag could turn mean, Tommy warned himself. He already felt scared. What was he doing? He wanted to turn back, tell her he’d got the wrong address, but she opened the door and said in English, “He’s expecting you. Come in.”
Tommy followed her into a sparsely decorated room. There was a poster of the Brazilian football team in their yellow and blue, taking up prize position on the living room wall. The room was simple, not at all how Tommy had envisaged. No shiny marble, no four-poster beds and gold taps. Al Pacino’s
Scarface
was a long way from
this
home. The wife pressed a button and spoke through an intercom. A six-inch thick, metal door buzzed open. Tommy took a step back, paused and turned around. But the unsmiling face urged him inside, and he heard his own, gingered footsteps creep into the room. It housed nothing but a limp double bed, a chair and a table. Tommy’s whole “incognito” guise fell apart even before it had started. His pathetic attempt at hiding his face was hopeless. He stood there, brazenly exposed, green as a virgin at a brothel.
A smile spread across the man’s face. “Come, I’ve been expecting you. I have what you need.”
What I
need?
thought Tommy. The word “need” sent a shiver down his spine. In the army, the idea of killing somebody had never entered his head. The technicality of it, of course, but not the cold reality. Surprisingly. Despite his training. As if being part of a legal killing force had nothing to do with death. He was just in the army as an exchange, his time for help with university fees. The target was always a thrill. Like his fly fishing or photography. But incongruously, he had never imagined the target to be a human being. Certainly not a woman. What was he
doing
here? Negotiating death? Exchanging his soul for retribution? Revenge? Warped justice? He wanted to walk out, but the intensity of the man’s pockmarked face, the hills and valleys of his foreboding countenance, his summoning eyes, lured Tommy closer.
The guns were laid out on the bed the way a child might spread out his Action Man dolls.
“Here’s what you asked for,” the man said. “This one’s a real beauty.” He picked up the M107. His American English was accented but perfect—a consummate salesman, not tripping up once. “A clean, shoulder-fired, semi-automatic with a manageable recoil. Nice and easy. Good for absorbing force, moving inward beautifully toward the receiver against large springs with every shot.”
Every shot? Tommy had been thinking of one clean shot to the head. But now, his knees buckled beneath him. He lowered himself onto the edge of the bed and sat there trembling. He was speechless. The man’s dancing eyes shifted from Tommy’s edgy face back to his array of toys, taking Tommy’s proximity to the weapons as a sign of enthusiasm. Tommy’s arms felt weightless, floating, his legs like jelly.