outside — hoping that no Bell engineers passed or that none of the on-looking neighbours thought something was suspicious and decided to phone in — Funicelli drove away.
Roman was probably right: if anyone, Donatiens was bound to contact his stepparents at some stage. But word was settling deeper on the streets that Roman had already taken Donatiens out, and all of this frantic, blanket search activity was merely a smokescreen for Jean-Paul’s benefit. Funicelli had no firm thoughts on it either way: if Roman wanted to waste time with planting bugs that he knew already wouldn’t bear any fruit, it was his money.
Viana couldn’t help looking around as she stood in the boarding gate queue for her flight to Haiti at New York’s JFK, afraid that Roman or one of his goons would appear at the last minute and stop her escape. She’d done the same at ticket check-in just an hour ago and at check-in and boarding for her flight from Montreal to New York at 5.14 a.m that morning.
Only five people ahead of her in the queue now. She could hardly believe her luck that she might actually get away.
The first warning sign had been Azy early on last night. ‘You know that Georges has disappeared. What happened with you two the other night?’ Azy looked heavily concerned and kept his voice low, even though he’d chosen a moment when there was nobody at the bar. He obviously saw her answer as potential dynamite, not for anyone else’s ears.
‘Nothing. I don’t know what you mean.’ She acted nonchalant.
He leant closer as he gave the bar a couple more wipes. ‘Look, Viana. What you get up to in private is your own business. But the thing is I saw you get in his car the other night. And then the very next day he disappears. Gives you plenty to think about, no?’
‘It was nothing. He just gave me a lift home, that’s all.’ She shook her head and got up from the bar. ‘How should I know what’s happened to him?’
But she could tell by Azy’s eyes following her as she went back to dance that he’d picked up on her nervousness, was doubtful.
Then Roman came by the club two hours later with the same thing. ‘He disappeared the night after your place. Not a trace since. Hasn’t been on to you, has he? If nothing else to ask what happened at your place that night.’
‘No, no. Nothing.’ She tried to read the bluff in Roman’s eyes, but as usual she just couldn’t tell: poker face, poker heart. Then she recalled him gloating at Georges powerless on the bed and him pinching her cheek and telling her not to worry about what was going to happen to Georges. She felt certain in that moment that Roman had killed Georges: he’d been dumped at the bottom of a river or chopped into two or three sacks for a garbage- truck mangle or incinerator, never to be found again. And all of this was just a pretence to throw her off the scent. He didn’t want any possible leads back to his connection.
But how long was that going to last? At some stage he was going to panic that with her knowing about the sex sting with Georges, she could provide a lead back. And that would come sooner rather than later if Azy let slip to Roman that he’d seen her get in Georges’ car that night. She’d be next for the garbage sacks and incinerator!
Roman kept her dancing for him for four records in a row, and it was one of the hardest things she’d ever done. She was desperately afraid that he’d notice how nervous she was — a couple of times she’d had to lithely snake away from his hand in case he connected and felt her trembling — or how hard it was for her to force a smile and keep the small talk going. He stayed another twenty minutes nursing a brandy at the bar with Azy — all the while her panicking that Azy might mention about her getting in Donatiens’ car. Then as soon as he’d gone she headed for the bathroom and emptied her stomach.
She resolved then to leave that night: she couldn’t face Roman another minute, let alone night after night sitting like a caged bird waiting on when he’d finally decide to kill her.
She got clear of the club at 2.18 am, and forty minutes later she was packed and heading back out of her apartment to Mirabelle airport. New York, Atlanta and New Orleans were the best hubs for Haiti: the earliest she could get on was the 5.14 am to New York. Now the 12.10 pm from JFK to Haiti.
A smiling stewardess held out one hand for her boarding card and welcomed her on board.
Viana couldn’t resist one last glance back to make sure that she’d actually made it before returning the smile. ‘Thank you.’
Elena found her eyes drifting to different objects in the room as Sotiris Stephanou talked: a decorative plate with five different harbour and city views of Limassol, photos of a boy and two girls at what looked like their holy communions, a horribly syrupy wedding portrait in sepia with its edges fading into misty, heart-shaped clouds. Elena could still see the likeness in Sotiris of the young man he was then, but it was harder to discern in his wife Nana, now a good fifty pounds heavier, ferrying in with halva and cakes and a pot of thick strong coffee both to show good as a host and presumably the fuel to help her beloved recall events from almost thirty years ago.
Sotiris shook his head. ‘A tragedy. A real tragedy.’
Elena found it hard to catch up, assimilate it all. She’d been starved of detail for so long: twenty-nine years without hardly thinking about it, then the forced drought of the last days and weeks, and suddenly there was a torrent of information hitting her all at once. A car accident over twenty years ago, the boy’s stepmother Maria killed, his stepfather Nicholas — Sotiris’ younger brother by three years — heavily injured, the boy surviving with only minor injuries.
When Sotiris’ eyes had clouded with the first mention of tragedy and accident in the same breath, her heart fell like a stone thinking for a moment that her son was dead. She quickly masked her look of relief as Sotiris filled in the details, nodding in sympathy as Sotiris remarked what a terrible ordeal it had been for his brother and how he’d never really recovered from it.
‘Believe me, the last thing he wanted to do was let the child go. If he could have possibly avoided that, he would. But he just couldn’t cope.’
The second stone fall. ‘What — you mean let him go to another family?’ Elena’s voice was slightly high- pitched, strained.
‘No, that would have taken eight or nine months, even if at that age — little Georgiou was almost four by then — he could have been placed anywhere. And when the problem hit with Nicholas, it hit hard and quick. He felt he couldn’t cope another day, let alone months.’ Sotiris cast his eyes down, found it hard to meet her searching stare directly. ‘I’m afraid the only choice in the end was an orphanage.’
The third. But this time the stab of pain went deeper, made her feel emptier and number inside than a whole bottle of valerian pills. Her eyes shifted inadvertently to Lorena in the car outside.
Sotiris still clearly saw her distress and tried to lighten the impact. ‘It was a very good orphanage — run by Gray nuns if I remember right. Nicholas visited a couple of times and it was a nice place, apparently. They were very kind, very caring.’
‘I don’t doubt that. But what I don’t understand is why your brother didn’t keep him.’ She’d managed to push back the tears, but still her voice was strained. ‘Why he didn’t at least try to make more of- ’ Elena broke off.
Sotiris looked genuinely relieved at the shift to more comfortable ground, where he could also be more helpful: his cousin worked as a cabbie. ‘…I’ll make sure it’s either him personally or one of his close friends that he knows he can trust.’ You didn’t want a ten-year old girl jumping in any old cab.
Because it was a quiet time of day, they were able to get his cousin Dimitrios. He arrived in only four minutes and Sotiris gave him instructions that he was to walk the girl right to this doctor’s door and she wasn’t to be left on her own for a minute.
