‘Your sister’s condition has suddenly worsened. We don’t know exactly what to expect and so I don’t know exactly what to tell you. But it isn’t looking good. I’m being honest with you. You told me that was what you wanted, right from the start.’
Vivien bowed her head, and let the tears run down her cheeks. ‘Of course, doctor, and I’m grateful. Unfortunately I can’t be there right now.’
‘I quite understand. I’ll keep you informed, Miss Light. I’m very sorry.’
‘I know. Thanks again.’
She hung up, and rose abruptly from the bench, turning her back on Russell and wiping her eyes with the back of her hand. Her first impulse was to drop everyone and everything, take the car to see her sister. But she couldn’t. For the first time in her life she cursed her work, the duty that confined her like a cage, the significance of her shield. She cursed the man who, in his madness, was keeping her away from the person she most loved and making that person seem ever more distant.
‘Let’s go.’
Russell understood that she had received some upsetting news. Anyone would have understood that. Obeying her curt voice, he got up from the bench, threw the tray in the garbage and followed her in silence to the car.
Vivien was grateful to him for that.
They went back to the precinct house the same way they had come, using the flashing light and the siren to get through the traffic.
They reached their destination without exchanging a word. The whole time, Vivien had driven as if the fate of the world depended on the speed with which they returned to base. She had barely seen the cars they passed – she had seen only her sister’s face.
As she loosened her belt, Vivian wondered if her sister was still alive right now. She raised her face and looked at Russell. She realized that for the whole of the journey she had forgotten he was even there.
‘I’m sorry. Today’s not a very good day for me.’
‘No problem. Tell me if I can help in any way.’
She erased the thought. ‘Thanks. It’s over now.’
They got out of the car, entered the precinct house and went straight upstairs to the captain’s office. By now, the presence of Russell was taken as an established fact, even though it might not have been accepted by everyone. Without supplying too many details, the captain had told his men that he was someone who had information about a particular investigation and was collaborating with Vivien on it. Vivien knew her colleagues weren’t stupid and that sooner or later one or other of them would suspect something. But for the moment, whatever surliness they encountered, they just had to pretend everything was all right until the case was solved.
When he saw them come in, the captain looked up from the papers he was signing. ‘Well?’
‘We may have a lead.’
Bellew immediately closed the file he had in front of him. Russell and Vivien sat down in front of his desk. Briefly, Vivien told him about Mr Newborn and the Phantom of the Site, a man with a disfigured face who’d been suspiciously eager to work on Major Mistnick’s house. She told him how perfectly the house had imploded and how carefully the charges must have been positioned to obtain such a result.
The captain leaned back in his chair. ‘Thinking about the letter, and how precise these recent explosions were, then yes, it could be the right person.’
‘That’s what we think, too.’
‘Now we just have to check if he worked on other sites, and find out his name. How we do that, and how long it’ll take, I don’t know. One useful thing we could do in the meantime is find out more about this major. We need to contact the army. Bowman and Salinas have just called me from Pike’s Peak. They have the material we’re looking for. I think they’ll be here soon. Nothing yet from the other men I sent out.’
The telephone on the desk starting ringing. Vivien saw from the light on the front of the apparatus that the call came from the lobby. The captain reached out his hand and lifted the receiver to his ear. ‘What is it?’
He listened for a moment, then allowed himself an angry outburst. ‘Christ almighty, I told them to come to me as soon as they got back. Now they’re suddenly concerned with etiquette and don’t ask for me? Send them up, and fast.’
The telephone returned to its natural home with a little more force than necessary. The light went off.
‘Fucking assholes!’
Vivien was surprised by this flare-up. Bellew was usually a restrained person, who tended to stay deadpan under pressure. Everyone in the precinct had had at least once to bear the brunt of his calm, cold voice, which made the dressing down they were receiving all the more effective. An outburst such as this wasn’t like him. Then she told herself that in these circumstances, with the burden of all those deaths and the prospect of other deaths to come, it would become increasingly difficult to say what was like him or anyone else.
Preceded by footsteps on the stairs, the outlines of two officers appeared on the frosted glass of the door. In a loud voice, and not without a touch of sarcasm, Bellew said, ‘Come in!’ before either of them had had time to knock.
Officers Bowman and Salinas entered, looking grim faced, each carrying a large, heavy cardboard box. The desk sergeant had clearly conveyed the captain’s words to them.
Bellew pointed to the floor next to the desk. ‘Put them down over here.’
As soon as the boxes were on the ground and Vivien was able to look inside, she felt a distinct sense of discouragement. They were full of printouts. If the employee lists from the other companies were as voluminous as these, it would take a very long time to look through them. She glanced up at Russell and realized that he was thinking the same thing.
The captain, still bent over and looking inside the boxes, expressed everybody’s thoughts. ‘This is like the fucking Encyclopaedia Britannica.’
Officer Bowman tried to rehabilitate himself and his colleague in his chief’s eyes by placing a thin square of black plastic on the desk. ‘We also had a CD made with all the data.’
‘Great work, boys. You can go.’
Freed by the captain’s words, the two officers headed for the door. Vivien could sense how curious they were about all this research they’d been asked to do without knowing the reason why. In fact, there was a general curiosity in the air. She was sure that by now everyone had figured out that it was connected with the two explosions that had taken place in the space of three days.
Russell was the first to express his anxieties. ‘If we want to be quick, we’re going to need a lot of men for this.’
If the captain had been overwhelmed with the same discouragement for a moment, he had already got over it. His voice was positive and determined as he came out with the only possible reply.
‘I know. But we can’t afford to fail. I can’t do anything for now, until the other data gets here. But we’ll have to get it done, even if it means putting every police officer in New York on the job.’
Vivien went to one of the boxes, and took out a file. She sat down again and placed it on her lap. There was a long list of names, in alphabetical order, on the white and blue lines of the pages. To get rid of the sense of stagnation that everyone was feeling she started running through the names.
The endless series of letters became almost hypnotic as her eye slid down the page.
A
