savouring the idea, and as he repeated the words they took on an aura of menace she felt to the bone. “We do as we do.”
“Really,” she said. “I have never heard of Harrington D’Arcy.”
The man leaned forward so that the circle of light from her bedside lamp washed over his distorted features, making him look for a moment like he was wearing a death mask. He picked up a book and leaned back into the shadows.
“You are reader of Mr. Thor Heyerdahl, yes?”
She shrugged noncommittally, suddenly realizing they must be after the handsome Englishman, annoyed that it had only now occurred to her.
“This is not your book.”
“Yes,” she said. “No, it was a gift.”
“From Mr. Harrington D’Arcy?”
“From my partner.”
“Sexual?”
“What! No, professional. What business is it of yours?”
He smiled.
“Mr. Harrington D’Arcy gave you this book. On the airplane from Toronto to São Paulo.”
Nothing makes you so vulnerable as knowing you have been watched unobserved.
He reached into a leather satchel the size of a human head. She had not noticed it before, as it was resting on the floor by his feet. She flinched at the macabre possibilities. He withdrew a book and handed it to her. She let it slip through her fingers onto the bed. She half-expected it to leave a bloodstain.
“He left this book behind. It has your name inscribed in it. Open, you will see, it is your name.”
She reached down and tentatively folded back the cover. On the flyleaf were the words “Miranda Quin.” They were written in ballpoint, in an elegant script that was unnervingly familiar.
“Yes,” she said. “That’s my book, and this, the one in your hands, that’s his, the man’s. I didn’t know his name. I’ve never seen him before, I haven’t seen him since the plane from Toronto. I know nothing about him.” She remembered wondering if he was a spy. She almost forgot finding his note, where he virtually declared his covert and endangered status.
The Englishman had asked for help. She was police. These men were menacing and possibly murderous. Miranda stood up, forcing the smoking man to back deeper into the shadows. She decided to take the position that she was no longer afraid. The man turned and flipped on the overhead light, and in the brightly illuminated room, Miranda felt a rising sense of control.
“I do not know the man,” she said. “I have to go to the bathroom.”
“No,” said the man.
“I have to pee.”
“No pissing.”
“That’s easy for you to say,” said Miranda. “There will be pissing, one way or another. You can watch, if you want, but I am now going to pee.”
She moved past him into the bathroom.
“No,” he said. “I do not watch lady piss.”
He reached out and pulled the bathroom door shut as she began to slip the waistband of her slacks down over her hips. She sat down amid shadows cast from the dim light that seeped under the door. The door then opened a crack and a hand reached in, scraped along the wall, and switched on the overhead before rapidly withdrawing. Superstitious, she thought. Afraid I’ll disappear in the dark.
She really did have to pee and it gave her time to think. As she rearranged her clothes, she decided the best strategy was to be volatile. Not grace under pressure, but explosive. She banged her forehead a couple of times with the heels of her hands, re-channelling the adrenaline from roiling to rush, and, swinging open the door, she strode out into the bleak light of the room.
They were gone.
She held her breath, then gasped, shivering, walked over to the window and looked out on the street. A few people were trudging to work; it was too early for traffic. Behind her, the carpet smelled like smouldering brimstone. She turned and surveyed the room. She coughed and it echoed. They had left both copies of the Heyerdahl book discarded on the bed. The note from the Englishman lay open on the bedside table.
Whoever he was, the man who signed himself T.E., was not Harrington D’Arcy. Miranda had seen Harrington D’Arcy once. She had been leaving Alex Rufalo’s place after a staff party. Rufalo’s wife, Caroline, was a high-powered lawyer, a colleague of D’Arcy’s who was dropping her off before the last guests had departed. Curiosity compelled Miranda to peer into the shadows of the limousine when the car door swung open. D’Arcy was sitting back against black leather, washed in the pale light seeping through the tinted glass. Her endangered Englishman with the flashing eyes and irritating self-assurance looked nothing at all like Harrington D’Arcy. She admired his wit and panache for having chosen the name as a nom de guerre. The real D’Arcy was exceptionally wealthy, very influential, but competely unknown beyond a rarified world defined by his own corporate interests.
* * *
In the morning, Morgan went directly to the morgue after a brief stop at The Columbian Connection on the edge of the Annex, a new place that made him think of a Starbucks made over by Tim Hortons, a place of such compromised authenticity he found it unnerving. He doubted he would become a regular patron.
Coffee and bagel in hand, he flagged a taxi. The driver had no idea where the city morgue was located. Morgan was surprised. He did not often take cabs, but he trusted that the cabbies would be familiar with notable locations.
Morgan preferred to walk or take public transit — the subway, never buses. Together, they usually took Miranda’s XK 150, her consolation for a sordid episode in the recent past, something to remind her she was a survivor. She was a better driver; he liked her car, but not driving.
Although it was early, Ellen Ravenscroft was already at work. Morgan apologized for not bringing her a coffee. He offered her part of his unfinished bagel, but she declined. He nodded in the direction of the shrouded cadaver. “What’s the verdict? Was it murder?”
“You tell me, love. Did someone want her dead?”
“Wanting a person dead doesn’t make it murder. Possibly a gruesome coincidence. Of course, there is no such thing as coincidence,” he said, mouthing a cliché he didn’t believe.
They approached the stainless-steel table isolated in a pool of light. Ellen pulled back a plasticized sheet, revealing Maria D’Arcy’s face. It was empty, now, the personality vanished. Death was not unkind, only indifferent.
“You don’t want to see the rest of her, not until I’ve done some tidying up.”
“No,” Morgan agreed, leaning down so close to the dead woman, in another context he might have been her prince, come to kiss her awake.
“What are you looking for, love?”
“Perfume.”
“Very expensive. With all she’s been through, it lingers, doesn’t
