Time slows again. But by now Jonny is primed to seize the illusory extra seconds, prolong every last one. Locate escape routes – Paloma’s tiny balcony beyond her wide-open window. Identify defensive weapons – the pointed corners of her bookcase, the chipped edge of a heavy china plate. Assess threat level – these are the short, sharp, deliberate clicks of a key fitting into the lock, not the frenzied jab of a mismatched coat hanger or a pin.
There Jonny tenses. Because the only sound that is conspicuously missing from these illusory extra few seconds is any kind of sound from Paloma herself.
All the possible explanations for why it doesn’t seem to be coming as a surprise to Paloma that someone else has a key to her apartment and is unlocking the door in the most covert way possible coalesce into a single, inescapable one.
That she must already know who it is.
And then those precious extra seconds fold.
The apartment explodes into commotion.
Jonny’s already on his feet as the door flies open. A yank at his arm and Paloma is in front of him, feet planted, hands out. A chair crashes over, a dark shape materialising in the door frame. Spanish, too frenzied and rapid for Jonny to identify a word from the next, ricochets between them. The door closes again with a thump, more shapes whirling in the dark – outlines, shadows, reflections – and the ghostly gleam of white porcelain.
Jonny lunges, but Paloma gets there first. The steak knife lands 128with a dull thud. The dark shape slumps, heavy as a felled tree. The commotion falls away almost as quickly as it arrived.
Jonny wills time to slow again, for the shadows to languidly warp and shift, but there’s nothing except white porcelain, shimmering insolently up from the blackness on the floor.
‘Fuck.’ Jonny sags, staggering backward. ‘Fuck, Paloma. What did you do?’
Between them, the shape lets out a hiss like a deflating balloon. Somewhere on the street below, a motorbike backfires before zooming away.
Jonny fumbles for the switch by the door, flooding the room with light and immediately wishing he hadn’t. The body on the floor is an unidentifiable heap clad in black from head to toe save for the gun complete with cylindrical silencer on the end falling from a slack, gloved hand. He stares at the chest – muscular, barrel-shaped – willing that it rise and fall a fraction enough to confirm Paloma hasn’t just killed a man before his eyes. But all he seems to be able to focus on is the gleaming china handle protruding at a grotesquely jaunty angle from the man’s side.
Jonny curses again. ‘I don’t … I don’t think he’s breathing. Is he breathing? Fucking hell, Paloma. Did we – I mean, did you…?’
‘Shhhhh.’ Paloma lifts a finger to her lips. She opens a cupboard, the one he was sure held nothing but a pathetically mismatched set of crockery. Instead out comes a roll of paper towel and a plastic bottle of bleach.
‘What the fuck are you doing?’ Now Jonny sounds like he’s being strangled. When he looks back, Paloma is already wiping off the porcelain sticking out of the body on the floor.
‘I don’t understand,’ he mutters, propping himself against the wall.
‘I think you do,’ Paloma replies softly, rocking back on her heels.
Jonny’s heartbeat accelerates up his throat like vomit. For all he thought he was finally starting to understand about Paloma, he 129now knows for sure she is capable of stabbing someone with a steak knife at a moment’s notice. Tears are suddenly leaking from her eyes, their tracks shining in the dark.
‘What the hell is going on, Paloma? Did you … did you set me up?’
‘Of course I didn’t. You have to believe me. I could never do that, not in a million years.’
Jonny laughs suddenly, high and mad. ‘Well, I’ve just watched you do a whole lot fucking worse.’
‘I saved your life. And I had to. You didn’t stand a chance.’
‘Why? Because I didn’t know what was coming, and you did?’
‘No. I mean, I suspected, but —’
‘Suspected what? That people were coming after us? Like it wasn’t already obvious?’
‘They told me I had to,’ Paloma is suddenly whispering. ‘That we were getting too close.’
‘They told you? Who are they? Too close to what?’
‘You tell me what.’
Jonny hesitates again. His eyes flutter closed for a moment. He’s trapped in a liminal emotional space, the blessed relief that he can still trust his instincts jostling with the terrifying consequences of them being right. When he opens his eyes again, Paloma looks like a completely different person. The one he’s gradually but inescapably started to suspect as having a different agenda to his.
‘I don’t know,’ he begins, acting on another hunch. ‘Not least because someone stole my notebook. A notebook full of fragments and scribbles that would only make sense to one other person in the entire fucking world. That’s you, by the way. In case it wasn’t already obvious.’
She has the grace to look uncomfortable. ‘I didn’t plan to steal it. I thought you’d assume you’d just lost it, or someone else had taken it, and then I could return it without you realising what had really happened. I just panicked —’
130‘About what? Why didn’t you just talk to me instead of paying some random woman to tell me I was being followed so I wouldn’t suspect you? How stupid do you think I am? It was crammed in next to a wallet with actual money in it – of far more interest to everyone else in this city except us. What was so important to you that you had to go to such absurd lengths to steal it from me?’
‘I didn’t even know myself until I realised one of my photos was missing too.’
Jonny shakes his head. ‘You paid someone to fabricate a conspiracy only to discover there actually is one. Great. You should have just listened to me to start with. Would have saved you a whole lot of trouble.’
He flinches as Paloma suddenly gets to her feet, finger stabbing between them.
‘How about you answer my questions for a second? Like everything you’ve been hiding from me too, for a start.’
‘I haven’t hidden anything. You’re the one who’s wanted to drop the story at practically every turn over the last couple of days.’
‘Don’t lie to me. Why else would you start writing notes in Hebrew – a language I can’t even read?’
‘Because by then I didn’t think I could completely trust you. And it turns out I was right. You were already insisting on translating rather than letting me ask any questions myself. You were arguing over taking any more pictures – as if that was ever going to make any fucking sense coming from a photographer almost totally out of work. You were lying about where you were going, what you were doing. What were you really hoping to achieve in that internet café before you discovered I was already there? And never mind all the banging on about dropping the whole thing. I’m still not sure —’
‘Of what?’
‘Of anything!’ Jonny can’t keep the panic out of his voice. ‘You 131think I’ve been hiding things from you? How about what you’ve been hiding from me! There are more than two sides to this story. We’re supposed to be the journalists not taking sides, but you’re nowhere near neutral are you? You’re part of this. I know you are, but I don’t know …’
‘…why?’ Paloma finishes his sentence.
Jonny’s hand trembles as he gestures at the unconscious body on the floor. ‘You also don’t seem to care about the fact you might have just killed someone.’
‘He’s not dead.’
Jonny blanches. ‘How do you know? Who is he? And who the hell are you?’
‘That’s just it.’ Paloma is suddenly mumbling, hanging her head. ‘I don’t know.’
Another piece of the puzzle clicks nauseatingly into place inside Jonny’s mind. His hand drops to his side. Paloma continues in little more than a whisper.
‘I’ve always known I was adopted. A longed-for only child. My parents even kept my original name. They said it was to respect my heritage. That it was in honour of my roots. But that was the only part that made sense. Nothing else did. Nothing else at all.’
Jonny reels.
They know babies were stolen.
They know these same babies were given to so-called suitable families, to supporters of the regime, to military couples struggling to conceive.
Of course it is equally conceivable that some of those families were Americans. That some of those babies might have been trafficked across international borders. At the time, there was no greater or more powerful supporter of Argentina’s military regime itself than the United States.
Jonny eyes the motionless shape on the floor. The rest of his questions dead-end into the inescapable reality that this particular 132body should, in fact, have been his own. ‘We need to get help,’ he mumbles.
‘No.’ Paloma straightens up, whites of her eyes flashing in the dark. ‘We need to run.’