Chapter 38: The car outside

Rosa did not move from her chair.

Bruno stood and crossed to the window and looked out from the side of the curtain without touching it. I stayed at the table with the envelope under my hand and watched his face.

"Black car," he said. "Two men. Neither of them Richard."

"He sent people," Rosa said.

"Yes." Bruno came back to the table. "How many times has he come himself?"

"Twice," Rosa said. "Last night was the second. Before that, four years ago when he wanted to remind me what I had signed."

"He does not like to come himself," I said. "He sends people for the things that can go wrong."

Bruno picked up the envelope and looked at Rosa. "We need to leave. Now. All three of us."

Rosa looked at the window. "My cat," she said.

"Rosa." Bruno's voice was firm but not unkind. "We need to go."

She stood and went to the dresser and picked up a set of keys and a purse that had been sitting there like she had packed them the night before and was waiting for someone to tell her it was time.

She had been ready.

She went to the back of the kitchen and opened a door and a large grey cat walked in and she picked it up and held it against her chest and looked at Bruno.

"Fine," Bruno said.

We went out the back door into a narrow garden and through a gate at the bottom that opened onto a lane running parallel to the main street. Bruno went first and I came behind Rosa and the cat sat over her shoulder and looked back at me with complete calm.

We moved fast along the lane without speaking.

At the end Bruno looked both ways and turned right and we walked two streets over to where the car was parked and got in. Rosa sat in the back with the cat on her lap and I sat in the front and Bruno started the engine and pulled out onto the road heading north.

Nobody spoke for five minutes.

Then Rosa said, "They will know I am gone within the hour."

"Yes," Bruno said.

"And they will tell Richard."

"Yes."

"Then Richard will know the envelope is gone too," she said.

"He will know," Bruno said. "It does not matter anymore. The envelope goes to the investigators today. Luca will take it directly and have it processed before Richard can file anything else."

Rosa stroked the cat and looked out the window at the fields going past.

"What happens to Daniel?" she said.

Bruno kept his eyes on the road. "Daniel gave a false statement. He will face consequences for that." He paused. "But Rosa's full account changes the context. A frightened young man at twenty-two is different from a calculated criminal."

"He was not a bad boy," Rosa said. "He was a frightened one."

"I know," Bruno said.

I looked at Bruno's hands on the wheel and thought about Daniel opening his front door on a dark night and handing me a brown envelope and saying don't let him win. He had known then. He had been living with it for eight years and it had made him small and quiet and apologetic in ways that had never made sense until now.

"Bruno," I said.

"Yes."

"When this is done you should go and see him," I said. "Daniel. Before the lawyers get to him."

Bruno was quiet for a moment.

"Yes," he said.

Rosa reached forward between the seats and put her hand briefly on Bruno's shoulder the way someone does when words are not the right size for what they mean.

He put his hand over hers for a second.

Then she sat back and the cat resettled on her lap and the road opened up ahead of us and the city appeared on the horizon, grey and solid and waiting.

Luca met us at his office building.

He took the envelope from Bruno without opening it and looked at Rosa and said her full name as a question and she said yes and he nodded and took her inside and we waited in the car.

Forty minutes.

Bruno sat with his head back and his eyes closed and I sat beside him and put my feet up on the seat and watched the street.

"Sleep," I said.

"I'm not sleeping," he said.

"Your eyes are closed."

"I'm thinking," he said.

"You're sleeping," I said.

He opened one eye and looked at me.

I looked back at him.

He closed it again and the corner of his mouth moved and I turned back to the window and watched the street and let him sleep.

Luca came out forty-five minutes later and bent to the car window.

"Rosa's statement is being processed now," he said. "Full account. Witnessed and sealed." He looked at Bruno. "It is enough. Combined with everything else, it is more than enough."

"Richard?" Bruno said.

"Coast guard located the boat this morning," Luca said. "He was not on it. But they found Harlan."

Bruno sat up properly.

"Alive?" I said.

Luca looked at me with the expression of someone choosing words with care.

"Harlan is talking," he said. "Very fast. To anyone who will listen."

"Where is Richard?" Bruno said.

Luca straightened and looked up the street.

"That," he said, "is the question."

Luca dusted his jacket and looked at Bruno with the careful expression he used when he had more to say and was deciding how much.

"There is something else," Luca said.

Bruno waited.

"The coast guard found something on the boat besides Harlan," Luca said. "A bag. Locked. They forced it open." He looked between us. "Inside was a phone. Fully charged and logged into an email account."

"Richard's account?" Bruno said.

"No," Luca said. "The account belonged to Reeves. But the sent folder had emails going back fourteen months." He paused. "Every email was sent to the same address. An address registered to a law firm in Geneva."

"Whose firm?" I said.

Luca looked at me.

"That is what we are trying to establish," he said. "But Bruno. The billing address on the account." He stopped. "It is your father's house."

Bruno went very still beside me.

I looked at him.

His father's house had been sold eight years ago. The week after the funeral. Bruno had handled the sale himself from Geneva, quickly, because he could not face going back.

"Who bought the house?" I said quietly.

Bruno already knew.

I could see it in his face before he said a word.

"Richard," he said.

He had bought Bruno's childhood home and used it as a billing address for a law firm that had been receiving Reeves's emails for fourteen months.

He had been inside Bruno's life from the very beginning.

Not from Monaco. Not from the deal.

From the night Bruno's father died.

Bruno turned away from Luca and walked to the end of the pavement and stood there with his back to us and his hands in his pockets and I let him have that moment because some things need thirty seconds before they can be carried and this was one of them.