Chapter 43: Seven floors down

Bruno stood up from the table.

"His name is Matteo Frin," he said. "He has handled my accounts since I started the business. My father introduced us." He looked at Luca. "My father introduced us."

"Richard knew Matteo before you did," Luca said.

"Yes," Bruno said. "Richard put him in front of my father the same way he put Harlan in front of me through Daniel." He picked up his jacket. "He has been inside my finances for seven years. Every deal. Every account. Every transfer in and out."

"Including Monaco," I said.

"Including Monaco," Bruno said. "Matteo processed the initial funding for that deal. He would have seen every name attached to it before anyone else."

"He set the structure up," Luca said. "From inside your own accounts."

"Yes."

I looked at Bruno standing in Rosa's kitchen with his jacket in his hand and his face very still and thought about seven years of a man sitting across a desk from him going through numbers and asking the right questions and building a picture of everything Bruno had and everything Bruno trusted and handing it piece by piece to Richard.

"Where is his office?" I said.

"City center," Bruno said. "Four floors below Luca's building."

"He does not know we have his name yet," Luca said.

"No," Bruno said. "Reeves gave it to us twenty minutes ago. Matteo will not know until someone tells him."

"Then we move now," I said. "Before Richard's lawyers find out Reeves talked."

Bruno looked at me.

"You are not coming," he said.

"Bruno—"

"Phoebe." His voice was not hard. Just certain. "Matteo knows your name. He has seen every document connected to you that passed through my accounts. If he sees you walk in he destroys whatever is on that computer before we reach the desk."

I looked at him.

He was right and I did not want him to be.

"I go with Luca," Bruno said. "You stay with Rosa."

"I am not staying with Rosa," I said.

"Then wait in the car," he said. "Outside the building. On the phone with me." He held my gaze. "I need to know you are somewhere I can reach you in thirty seconds if something goes wrong."

I looked at him for a long moment.

"Thirty seconds," I said.

"Thirty seconds," he said.

He crossed the kitchen and kissed me, brief and certain, his hand at the back of my neck for just a moment, and then he stepped back and looked at me once more and went to the door.

Luca followed.

Rosa and I listened to the car start on the road outside.

She put the kettle on.

I sat at the table with my phone in my hand and watched the clock on the wall and thought about Matteo Frin sitting four floors below Luca's office going through someone's accounts with his careful hands and his careful questions and no idea that thirty minutes ago a corrupt detective in a holding facility had given up his name to save himself.

Twenty minutes passed.

Bruno called.

"We are in the building," he said. "Eighth floor. Matteo's assistant says he is with a client."

"Which client?" I said.

She didn't answer immediately.

"She does not know the name," Bruno said. "Walk-in appointment. Came in forty minutes ago."

Forty minutes ago.

Ten minutes before Reeves gave us Matteo's name.

"Bruno," I said.

"I know," he said.

"Someone told him," I said. "Before Reeves even finished talking. Someone in that facility made a call."

"Yes," Bruno said.

"Is there another way out of the building?" I said.

"Luca is at the back now," Bruno said. "I am at the front desk." A pause. "The assistant just picked up the phone."

I heard her voice through the line, distant and professional.

Then Bruno's voice, sharp and close.

"He is gone," Bruno said. "Back door. Fire exit." The sound of movement. Running. A door hitting a wall. "Phoebe, he is coming out onto the street. South side of the building."

I was already out of Rosa's front door and running.

The street was unfamiliar and I ran south and took the corner fast and the city opened up in front of me, people and traffic and the ordinary afternoon moving around me and I scanned every face and every coat and every person moving with any kind of purpose.

Then I saw him.

Mid-fifties, grey suit, document case under one arm, moving fast along the pavement with his head down and his phone to his ear.

I had never met Matteo Frin.

But the man on the phone beside him, matching his pace, steering him toward a black car idling at the curb, was someone I knew.

I stopped.

Richard looked up at exactly the same moment.

We stood ten meters apart on a busy city pavement and looked at each other and the afternoon moved around us and nobody else on that street had any idea what they were standing in the middle of.

He did not run.

He looked at me with the particular expression of a man who had planned for every possibility and had just encountered the one he had not.

His hand dropped from Matteo's arm.

He took one step toward me.

My phone rang in my hand.

I answered without looking away from Richard.

"Phoebe," she said. "My name is Detective Inspector Anya Cole. I have been running a parallel investigation into Richard Simpson for eleven months and I need you to do exactly one thing right now."

"What?" I said.

"Do not move," she said. "And do not let him move either."

Richard was wearing the coat I bought him four Christmases ago. Dark wool, double-breasted. I remember standing in that shop for 40 minutes. The assistant showed me six options, and I picked that one because I thought it fit him. I got it wrapped. I watched him open it on Christmas morning. He held it up and didn’t say anything for three seconds. In those three seconds I was trying to read his face to see if I got it right.

That’s what 12 years felt like from the inside.

40 minutes choosing a coat. Three seconds waiting to know if you messed up.

He’s standing in it now on this pavement, looking at me. I’m looking at the coat and thinking about the woman who bought it. How careful she was in that marriage. How much energy she spent on those three-second silences. How she learned to make herself small in doorways, loud in the right rooms, and invisible whenever Richard needed her to be.

That woman picked a good coat.

She picked badly in everything that mattered.

Matteo said something beside him. Low and urgent.

Richard didn’t look at him.

“You look well,” Richard said. Same words as in the hotel bar. Same tone. Same careful warmth that didn’t have anything warm in it.

“I know,” I said.

He didn’t expect that.

He opened his mouth to speak.