by Tom Wood
Raven wasn’t surprised when Heno said, ‘Why don’t you wait outside, Ken? Get yourself a cup of a coffee, yeah?’
Willitz clicked his tongue and sauntered out of the room. He didn’t bother to close the door behind him. A pathetic act of defiance, but some people needed to fight the power however they could. Heno did so for him, easing it shut. Measured. Controlled. The thinker.
Raven said, ‘I’m getting tired. Can we wrap this up?’
Heno said, ‘In a few minutes. I have only a couple more things to go over.’
‘Don’t take offence if I begin to snore.’
Heno smiled a little. ‘I have five brothers. There’s nothing you can do or say that will offend me.’
‘Six of you, wow. Your parents were busy. Latex allergy?’
‘Seven of us in total, as it happens. I have a sister too.’ She shrugged. ‘Catholic family.’
Raven smiled as if she couldn’t see through Heno’s attempt to humanise herself, revealing personal details to appear less threatening, trying to establish rapport now Willitz had gone, now it was two women talking together.
‘I can’t remember if I have any siblings,’ Raven said. ‘I’ve been lying here trying to think if I do. I hope I do. I want some brothers too. I want to remember us fighting and playing. Isn’t that funny?’
Heno nodded and smiled, like they were having a chat – friends catching up.
‘You know what’s also funny?’ Heno said. ‘I can’t find you on the system.’
Raven felt cold. ‘System?’
Heno nodded. ‘Yeah, system. Couldn’t find diddly squat on you, which is more than a little odd.’
‘Wait, what? I don’t understand. Why have you looked? You only took preliminary notes last time. Surely you wouldn’t have anything to input, anything to search with?’
‘Why does that matter? We had your fingerprints. That’s enough. But we couldn’t find you, so you’re obviously not a criminal, and you haven’t been in the military on either side of the border.’
She didn’t know she had been fingerprinted. It must have happened while she was unconscious.
‘You don’t look too good,’ Heno said. ‘Why does it bother you? What aren’t you telling me?’
‘I…’
She couldn’t speak. She wasn’t on any system because all of her records had been erased. But she was on systems Officer Heno couldn’t access, systems that would recognise her fingerprints and send out all kinds of warnings and messages.
That they hadn’t already found and killed her was itself a miracle. She guessed Heno hadn’t looked for her straight away after that first conversation. There had been a delay. More pressing matters. Unless they were waiting for the right time when they could make her disappear. That made sense. They would struggle to do what they needed to do at the hospital. Not with all these witnesses and cameras. They couldn’t hide something like that. Not their style. If she died here in suspicious circumstances, or vanished, it would only draw more attention to her and to them. Anonymity was everything to her enemies.
They needed to get her out of the hospital before they could kill her. They needed some excuse. Something to legitimise her absence and failure to return.
Heno said, ‘Say, do you think you’re well enough to take a little trip down to the precinct?’
Raven’s pulse spiked. Heno and Willitz had seemed like real cops. They looked the part, and acted it. They had to be genuine. Raven didn’t believe they could get away with impersonating officers on two separate occasions in the same place. Assuming they could, it was too risky to try. So they were on the payroll of her enemies, either long term or ad hoc. Her enemies had people everywhere. She knew this because she had been one of them. She hadn’t realised their reach extended to Canada too, but she shouldn’t be surprised by it either.
She tried not to stare at Heno too hard, but she failed.
‘Why are you looking at me like that?’
Because she was assessing the threat, both posed by Heno in her room and Willitz outside, and their relation to her wider enemies. They had cops, spooks, politicians on their payroll.
‘Why do you want to take me to the precinct?’ Raven asked.
Heno said, ‘We can go through mug shots. See if we can identify the man you spoke to in the hotel bar. No CCTV in the hotel got a shot at his face. Can you believe that? You can help us out. Let’s get this guy. Let’s find out what he did to you.’
‘I’m sick.’
Heno seemed to shrug with her face. ‘We can ask the doctors. You’ve been walking around the grounds, haven’t you? They tell me you’re coming on in leaps and bounds. A little car ride can’t be more taxing. I’m sure they’ll allow for a temporary discharge.’
‘Temporary,’ Raven echoed.
‘We’ll bring you straight back. Might do you good to get out in the fresh air. Change of scenery. We have decent coffee too. I’m not talking a drip machine here. We have an espresso maker. Coffee’s so good it makes your hair stand on end.’
‘I don’t like coffee.’
‘Doughnuts then,’ Heno said with a big smile. ‘Plus croissants and pains au chocolat. We have a fresh delivery every day from a local patisserie. Bet you have a sweet tooth.’
Raven was silent while she thought, and thought fast.
Heno looked towards the room’s lone window. ‘Don’t you want to get out of here? Must make you all sorts of crazy, cooped up like this. I know it would me. It’s a nice day outside. Sunshine. It’s glorious out there.’
‘My eyes are sensitive to light at the moment.’
‘Bet you’ve never been inside a cop car, have you?’ Heno asked. ‘Could be fun.’
‘I doubt it.’
Raven couldn’t make a break for it. She couldn’t run, even if she had the strength and energy for anything resembling a run. Any resistance would give them a perfect excuse to take her away. They might have hoped for just that situation. It could be the plan all along.
All they had to do was get her into a pair of handcuffs and it would be over.
She pictured a couple of square guys in suits and raincoats, with genuine IDs from south of the border to make them look official, to give them the unquestionable air of authority her enemies liked to operate within. Maybe Federal Marshals pursuing a fugitive. We want this handled quietly. Heno and Willitz were going to drive her out of the hospital grounds and pull over on a lonely stretch of highway where another car would be waiting.
Maybe the guys pretending to be Federal Marshals would be contractors with no idea who she was or why they had been hired to kill her. A couple of ex-military types with a whole string of bad things on their résumés. Or maybe she knew the two guys who would be waiting for her. Maybe they had worked together overseas in the days when she had been part of the intelligence community performing black ops. But that connection wouldn’t stop them, just like it had never stopped her.
Nice to see you again, Constance.
Wish I could say the same.
However dangerous those two guys were, they were waiting on the side of a highway. Raven was in the hospital, protected by walls and distance and witnesses. She was safe here, as long as she stayed here. They must know that. In the same way they must know her guard would be up and she would be suspicious. So perhaps Heno and Willitz had been told to use force, to bend or break the rules to get her into custody if she didn’t come along of her own volition.
Her throat was dry because Heno was inching closer with every word.
Raven thought of Willitz, waiting outside. The man. With him outside it gave legitimacy to anything Heno might have to do to control an aggressive witness. She threw herself at me. I had no choice.
She realised Heno had one hand out of sight by her side.
Raven said, ‘What are you doing with your hand?’
‘What hand?’ Heno’s expression changed. ‘What are you afraid of? I’m just scratching my ass.’
Raven readied herself. She cou
ldn’t put up much resistance in her condition, but she wouldn’t go down without a fight.
The door opened, surprising them both, and the cute nurse strolled inside the room, eyebrows rising in surprise when he saw Heno’s proximity to the bed. Willitz followed the cute nurse into the room. He gave Heno a glance that said I couldn’t stop him.
Lionel said, ‘Hey… sorry to interrupt but it’s time to see the physiotherapist.’ He sensed the atmosphere. ‘But I can come back later if you like.’
‘That would be great,’ Heno said without looking at him. ‘Be a good boy and come back later.’
‘No, no,’ Raven said. ‘Now’s good. I’m ready. Perfect timing.’
Lionel helped Raven out of bed and into a wheelchair he had brought along while Willitz and Heno had a whole conversation between them with just facial expressions and gestures. Neither was happy and even Heno couldn’t hide that fact.
‘Excuse me,’ Lionel said to the officers. ‘A little room to squeeze by, please.’
‘Beep, beep,’ Raven said, smiling.
Heno didn’t smile back. ‘We’ll wait.’
Lionel said, ‘She’ll be gone for a couple of hours, at least.’
Willitz rolled his eyes and stroked his moustache.
Heno checked her watch. ‘We’ll come back tomorrow. Please don’t schedule any therapy until after we’ve gone.’
Lionel said, ‘Then perhaps you’d better phone ahead next time and give us some warning, hadn’t you?’
Raven said, ‘You tell ’em, Tiger.’
SEVEN
The piano teacher was almost as tall as her student. She was a lean, graceful woman who had glided through seven decades of life with her back straight and her stride long. Her mother had been tall and her father taller, so it was no surprise their child had taken their height and added to it. She had dwarfed her female classmates and most of the boys too, and in adult life had turned heads wherever she walked. Now, age had taken away a little of her stature, but she still stood out in crowds and could intimidate men and women alike. She had straight grey hair that reached her middle back. She kept it tamed and smooth with daily treatments of raw coconut and jojoba oil. It was in a ponytail while she taught or cooked, but untamed the rest of the time.
‘In my youth, I dare say I might have been taller than you,’ she told her student. ‘In my heels, I would have towered over you.’
‘I’m sure you would have,’ he replied, polite and reserved.
She liked his careful manner and quiet personality. He wasn’t shy, but he was not outgoing either. She had had her fill of loud and brash men. Her late husband had been such a man, and she had tolerated him when now she wished she had put him in his place. He had been a heavyset man, big but soft with it. Her student cut a lean silhouette in his grey suit but she felt the surprising solidity of him when they sat together on the bench. He tried to hide it, but he didn’t like the intimacy of their closeness in front of the piano. She, who had spent more years teaching people how to play than he had been on this earth, detected this unease.
She would have enquired as to why he felt uncomfortable, but no doubt such a line of questioning would only further this, and she respected how he tried to fight down his discomfort. Manners were everything to her because there was no reward to them. They were done in selflessness. They were perhaps the truest indicator of character, and so she liked this student.
He was no master, but he was no beginner either. He had the natural dexterity of a classical pianist and within a few lessons had risen in skill at an exponential rate. Out of practice, he had told her at first, but there was something missing. Something that was preventing him reaching his potential. She tried to work out the cause.
‘Music is not merely about notes, my boy,’ she told him. ‘It is about rhythm, it is about passion. Think of an orchestra. All the musicians can read music, all can play their instruments, but they need a conductor to really shine, to bring those instruments together, to harmonise and elevate. The conductor doesn’t supply that passion, but harnesses that which is already inside them. Do you understand that?’
‘I think so,’ he answered, and she did not believe he spoke with conviction.
It took more than practice to master the piano. It was an art, and required talent. His hands were strong and his fingers long enough to glide in an effortless dance across the keys that was a joy for her to watch. He made mistakes, but only once. He never missed a key he knew to tap.
She was used to teaching young people bullied into learning by their parents and old people looking for hobbies. He was neither. He was a grown man who already knew how to play the piano, but a man who did not often play and missed it. She had been a concert pianist when she was young. She had fallen in love with the greats as a child. Her mother had been a patron of the arts and she had been nursed to Puccini and Mozart. She had fallen for B. F. Pinkerton the same way Butterfly had, and had cried the same tears. She had played in Paris and Rome, Warsaw and Sydney. She had loved music so much that she had never known true love outside of it. Music had spoiled her, but she would not have it any other way. Any love was better than none.
She taught from her home. It was a grand townhouse in Lisbon’s artists’ quarter. She lived alone in a house built for a family, but she had never had children and so the bedrooms had stayed empty of beds and the doors stayed shut but for the weekly dust and clean. A cat had kept her company after her husband passed, but she lived alone now. Acquiring another cat, like another husband, seemed too thankless a task to be worth the inevitable pain. She was content with music and her students and an afternoon daiquiri.
She told her student, ‘Don’t get me wrong: you’re very talented. Reading and understanding music are one thing, knowing the keys and when to press them is another, but you need a rare dexterity to master this black and white maw. I call it a maw because not only do the keys resemble teeth if one looks at them in a certain way, but because they will bite you, they will hurt you, if you are not meant to sit before them. There are great pianists, revered and loved, who do not play certain tunes because their fingers are not nimble or their arms are short. They have all the skill in the world, but to be a true master you need the physical gifts. Look at my hands. They are slim but strong. My fingers have length. But when I flare my palm I lack breadth. This has always prevented me reaching the highest of heights. Your hands are powerful, but they have a lightness of touch. This combination is rare. So, I say again: you are talented. You have skill. You are out of practice, but that is easily rectified if you wish to put in the time. But,’ she said, pausing for emphasis. ‘And isn’t there always a but when we are paid a compliment? Isn’t there always a price to that small favour?’
He waited.
She said, ‘The best concert pianists are animated. You could wear earplugs and still enjoy them, still be enthralled, because of that anima. They don’t move as some sort of show, but because they must, because they ride the music, because they feel it. Now do you understand?’
‘No,’ he said, the honesty as stark as the disappointment that came with it.
‘Herein lies the problem.’
He was silent. He looked at the piano, as if it would grace him with answers.
The piano they played on was older than her. It was older than the house around them or anything else inside of it. It had been built in Milan and had been restored to its former glory at great time and expense, but she had no one to leave her money to and to use and teach on an instrument with so much history and majesty made life worthwhile. The keys were ivory, which her environmental conscience disapproved of, but the ivory was part of the piano’s legend. To replace them would be an insult to the instrument as much as the animal who had died to make them.
Her piano stood in the dining room, alone but for pictures on the wall she had painted in watercolour or oils when she had fancied herself as a painter first and musician second. Her student looked at each one in turn, but did not ask her abo
ut them. Most people did and she enjoyed talking about the follies of youth and ignorance. She took pride in her self-reflection as much as she did satisfaction that she had found her true calling.
She considered her student and the dilemma they faced together. It wasn’t the language that was holding him back. His Portuguese was basic, but he knew enough to understand what she told him, and each time he returned for another lesson his language was improved. By the fourth it was hard to believe he had ever struggled. He learned fast. He was from Switzerland, but a well-travelled man of the world. His accent was soft and his manners befitting a Victorian gentleman. She presumed he was from a wealthy family who had sent him abroad for his education, maybe to England, maybe to America; then on sojourns far and wide, exploring, seeing, becoming. She didn’t ask for exactitudes and he didn’t offer. He was there to be taught and she was there to teach. She had too many students to get to know them all, and she had more than a passing knowledge only of those who had been coming to her house for years.
She was a cynic, she knew. She took money from anyone with the means to pay for her services, but she seldom cared. She loved music, and she loved it too much to care about the unworthy. If a deluded father insisted on enforcing piano lessons on an untalented daughter, who was she to argue? But with this student, she cared. She knew the talent was there. She could feel the enthusiasm in him, the will to learn and improve. She knew she would feel pride if someday he reached his potential, but more than that she felt there was a potential to make her efforts worthwhile.
Something occurred to her.
Once, between dabbling with painting and still finding her love for the piano, she fancied herself as a singer, although she didn’t have the range or the lungs. She had a pleasant tone, her austere Hungarian singing teacher had once told her mother, and any talent at all was still a gift to treasure. She was more interested in the glamour than actual singing, which was ultimately what turned her away from yet another folly.
