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Gabriel drops his hand, smiles back.
The boot is locked, as he thought it would be – but he thinks he saw a Honda-branded key fob hanging from a hook in the kitchen. As he walks out from behind the car he notices, trapped between the bottom edge of the boot lid and the lip of the surround, a flap of clear heavy-duty plastic.
It stops him dead, that sight. It empties his ears of sound. He stands there motionless for what might be ten seconds or longer before the gears of his brain re-engage. The pulse of blood in his arteries has become a torrent, a raging flood. He clenches his fists, unclenches them. Wordlessly, he follows Miah to the living room, where he observes once again the chair and table pushed back to the wall.
When he tries to breathe, his diaphragm spasms like a bowstring releasing its arrow. His lips feel numb, his cheeks.
‘You ever get scared?’ he hears himself ask, his gaze still on that inexplicable tableau.
Miah cants her head. ‘I’m sorry?’
‘I mean, you don’t know anything about me. And yet here we are, together, in an empty house. If something happened, it might be an hour or more before one of your colleagues raised the alarm. In that time …’ He shrugs. ‘I could attack you, rape you. And what could you do to stop me? Whatwouldyou do?’
Beneath the silk fabric of her blouse, Miah’s chest swells. She, too, throws a glance at that patch of cleared carpet. Her hand slips inside her shoulder bag. ‘I have to say you’re scaring me a bit.’
‘I should be scaring you,’ Gabriel says. ‘You should be scared because you don’t have a plan. You’re young, you’re pretty. You’re physically weak. That makes you an easy target for those with appetites they can’t suppress.’
His own breath is coming a little easier now. ‘I’m not going to attack you, Miah, but I want you to think about how you’d react if I did, because I guarantee you one thing – I could close the distance between us before you managed to dial even a single number on that phone you’re clutching inside your bag. So the questions remains: what would you do?’
Miah blinks at him, licks those plump lips. Then, softly, she says, ‘I’d give you everything you wanted. If you tried to touch me, I wouldn’t resist. If you tried to kiss me, I’d kiss you straight back.’
Steadily, she removes her hand from her bag. Instead of a phone, she’s holding a switchblade. When she presses the button release, the blade flicks out. Gabriel knows switchblades, and he knows Miah isn’t holding a toy.
‘This is from Maniago, Italy,’ she tells him. ‘Locals call the place the Town of Knives, the birthplace of the modern switchblade. Which means when I stabbed you through the neck with this one, you could take solace in the fact that you weren’t killed by a cheap Chinese copy.’
THIRTY-THREE
When Ralph Erikson answers the door, Tuesday morning, he’s wearing a traditional Japanese kimono in black silk featuring gold dragons and tigers in a complicated, interwoven design.
‘Joseph,’ he says. ‘What a pleasure. Would you like to come in?’
‘Thanks, I will.’
Ralph’s kitchen, although well kept, looks like it hasn’t been decorated since the eighties: peach walls, wooden cabinetry, terracotta tile floor. Trinkets and collectibles crowd every surface: Disney snow globes, Murano glass paperweights, a menagerie of bone china creatures. Plants share their pots with plastic gnomes and fairies. Mounted on the walls are decorative plates daubed with the names of various holiday destinations, alongside embroidered hoops and display cases filled with thimbles.
Many of the phrases stitched on the hoops reference heaven and the afterlife. Other oddments in Ralph’s collection share the same focus. Joseph sees porcelain angels, bronze crucifixes, hand-painted images of tunnels and light.
Among all this clutter are scores of photographs of Carole Erikson, Ralph’s late wife. There are snaps of Carole asa young girl; as a woman in her twenties, her forties, her sixties; even a few of her smiling in a hospital bed. Lots of the images sit inside frames stencilled or inscribed with messages:
Goodbyes are not for ever, and also not the end.
Because someone we love is in heaven, a little bit of heaven is at home.
Some of the messages are more direct, and strike Joseph as more disturbing:
I am watching you, every day.
Tonight, in your dreams, we will dance.
Watch for my signs – I’ll send them every hour.
‘Would you like some shogayu?’ Ralph asks. ‘It’s a ginger tea, brewed with honey and lemon. The Japanese mainly drink it in winter but I enjoy it in summer, too. Carole loves it. Don’t you, darling?’
Joseph frowns, glances around the room – until, finally, he understands. ‘I’ll try some, thanks.’
Ralph pours him a cup from a saucepan on the stove. ‘Please,’ he says, indicating the breakfast table. ‘We don’t get many visitors these days.’ He cocks his head as if listening, then smiles. ‘Well, youwouldsay that.’
Joseph carries his brew to the table. ‘You talk to her. Carole, I mean.’