Chapter 36: The witness

"Who is it?" I said.

Bruno had his jacket on and his keys in his hand and he stopped at the kitchen door and turned.

"The housekeeper," he said. "A woman named Rosa. She worked for my father for eleven years. She left the week after he died and nobody could find her." He looked at the floor. "I tried twice. Both times she had moved on. No forwarding address, no contact number."

"Richard found her before you did," I said.

"He would have gone to her the moment he had a reason to," Bruno said. "Before the funeral. Before the investigation closed. Richard plans that far ahead."

"So he has been paying her to stay gone," I said.

"Yes."

"And if we find her before he does—"

"She has no reason to stay quiet anymore," Bruno said. "Richard is running. His money is tied up in court filings. Whatever he has been paying her, those payments will stop."

I grabbed my jacket off the chair.

"Where do we start?" I said.

"Luca," Bruno said. "He found Sara's location through a phone trace. He can run Rosa's name through the same channels."

We left the apartment and went downstairs and out onto the street and the morning hit us properly, cold and bright, the city loud and moving around us.

Bruno called Luca on the way to the car.

Two minutes. Direct and precise. Rosa's full name, the years she worked for the Blackfield family, the last known address from eleven years ago.

Luca said one hour.

We got in the car.

Bruno did not start the engine immediately. He sat with his hands on the wheel and looked at the street.

"She was good to us," he said. "Rosa. She made Sunday lunch every week. Daniel and I used to sit in the kitchen and watch her cook and she would chase us out and we would come back." He stopped. "She would not have stayed quiet willingly."

"Richard gave her no choice," I said.

"No." He started the engine. "Just like everyone else."

We drove to a café two streets from the apartment and sat at a window table and ordered breakfast properly this time, not eggs from a pan but a full table with bread and fruit and two large coffees and Bruno ate across from me and the morning light came through the glass and he looked at me over his cup the way he did when he thought I was not noticing.

"Stop," I said.

"Stop what?"

"Looking at me like that when you think I can't see you."

He set his cup down. "How am I looking at you?"

"Like I might disappear," I said.

He was quiet for a moment. "Old habit," he said. "Good things have not stayed long in my experience."

I reached across the table and put my hand over his.

"I'm not going anywhere," I said.

He turned his hand over and held mine on the table and we sat like that in the window of the café with the city moving outside and the bread going cold between us and neither of us in a hurry to be anywhere.

"Tell me something," he said.

"What?"

"Something I don't know about you," he said. "Something that has nothing to do with Richard or the last three weeks."

I thought about it.

"I can't sleep without a window open," I said. "Even in winter. Richard hated it. We argued about it more than anything else in the marriage."

"The window in my bedroom opens," he said.

"I know," I said. "I opened it at three in the morning."

He looked at me. "It was four degrees outside."

"I put the covers up," I said.

He shook his head and picked up his coffee and I watched him try not to smile and fail at it and the café was warm and the morning was good and under the table his foot pressed against mine and stayed there.

Luca called at half past nine.

Bruno answered and listened and wrote something on a paper napkin and pushed it across the table to me.

An address. A town two hours south of the city.

"She has been there for six years," Bruno said after the call ended. "Same name, same house. She stopped hiding three years ago."

"When Richard stopped needing her to hide," I said. "Once the investigation into your father closed permanently she was just a woman he paid to stay away."

"Not a threat to him anymore," Bruno said. "Just a loose end he managed with money."

"Until now," I said.

Bruno folded the napkin and put it in his jacket pocket and looked at me across the table.

"Two hours south," he said. "We could be there by noon."

"And back by evening," I said.

"And back by evening," he said. "And then Lisbon in five days."

"Lisbon in five days," I said.

He stood and left money on the table and held his hand out to me and I took it and we walked out of the café into the bright cold morning hand in hand and the city moved around us and nobody looked at us twice because we were just two people walking and that was enough.

We were almost at the car when Bruno stopped.

A man was leaning against the passenger door.

Not tall. Not threatening in any obvious way. Grey coat, hands in pockets, watching us come with the patient look of someone who had been waiting and had expected this exact moment.

Bruno's hand tightened around mine.

"Who is that?" I said quietly.

"I don't know," Bruno said.

The man pushed off the car and quickly reached into his coat pocket and held something out.

Sitting at a table across from someone whose back was to the camera.

The man across from her was not visible.

But the hand resting on the table in front of him was.

It wasn't just a mere photograph.

And on the third finger of that hand was a ring I had bought in a jeweler on Market Street seven years ago for a man I thought I knew.

Richard's ring and he had found her first.

The man in the grey coat held the photograph steady and looked at us without expression.

"Who sent you?" Bruno said.

"Someone who wants the same thing you want," the man said. "Richard stopped."

"That is not an answer," Bruno said.

"No," the man said. "But it is all I have been authorized to tell you." He held the photograph out further. "Look at the timestamp."

Bruno took it.

Bottom right corner. Last night. Eleven forty-seven.

While we were on the dock reading Richard's letter, Richard was sitting across from Rosa two hours south with his hand on the table between them.

"He got to her last night," I said.

"He left the boat," Bruno said. "He did not run south. He came straight to her."

"Because she is the only person left who can destroy him," I said. "He is not paying her to stay quiet anymore. He is making sure she stays quiet permanently."

Bruno looked at the man in the grey coat.

"Is she safe?" he said.

The man put his hands back in his pockets.

"Not for long," he said.

And what is that supposed to mean?

He looked at me and walked away.