Cold and warm currents meet in Chōshi’s waters. Every morning at Wholesale Fish Market Number 1 boat after boat unloads a hearty catch and the tuna auctions go nosebleed high. Large bays open on to the sea where trawlers unload directly for maximum freshness. Fishing is the lifeblood of Chōshi so when a man is stabbed over swordfish Iwata is not surprised that Morimoto calls on him, despite the time off he has been granted. Can’t have bad blood at the fish market, Iwata. I’m sorry, I know your wife is, uh, unwell, but you’ll be done in a few hours. With little choice, Iwata responds to the call.
He parks the squad car behind a warehouse, preferring, as always, to arrive unseen. This draws less attention and minimizes time for people to think up excuses. Skirting old forklifts, Iwata squints as the cold morning sun catches the glistening, dismembered fish in the ice boxes. Wooden pallets are laid out on the wet concrete. They hold countless neat rows of tuna fish, their expressions in death identical. Men in caps and rubber boots crouch down to inspect the carcasses. Wholesalers and private bidders are covering their mouths as they speak into their phones. The oily stench of guts is thick on the ocean air. And then, just as Iwata spots the uniformed officer talking with the stabbing victim in the first-aid room, his phone rings.
‘… Where are you, Kosuke?’ Cleo sounds distant, sleepy.
‘I’m at work. Are you okay?’
‘It’s a beautiful day today.’
‘Yes. How is Nina?’
‘We’re going for some air.’
‘Okay. I’ll be back soon, I promise.’
‘I love you, Kosuke. Goodbye.’
‘Me too.’
Iwata hangs up, then stops still. He calls Cleo back but she doesn’t pick up.
‘Oh no.’
Iwata sprints back to the car. He backs out of the wharf and screeches along the oceanfront road. Telephone poles, fluttering grass banks and warehouses blur by. He swerves around lorries and powers through intersections until he reaches the road leading to the lighthouse. Iwata makes the turning at the old seafood stalls, then speeds over the paving stones towards his apartment. He screams to a halt outside his apartment and is running up his stairs when he sees it. A police cordon has been set up around the lighthouse. Already, a pack of journalists are jostling with each other, craning their necks to catch a glimpse. A busload of tourists has just arrived.
In the scrum, Iwata identifies himself and a paramedic leads him to the ambulance. His shoulders are covered with a shock blanket and the paramedic asks inane questions. What’s your date of birth? Who is the prime minister? Iwata answers numbly and just looks out over the Pacific. Today it is a vitric blue. The blanket crinkles in the wind, its silver surface sparkling in the afternoon sun.
Taba and Morimoto are off to one side. Iwata supposes the chief is trying to convince his old partner to come and comfort him. Iwata hopes Taba does not come. There is no point. The paramedic instructs Iwata to lie back and lift his feet over his head. He feels empty and clammy.
‘What have you been doing this morning?’ the paramedic asks.
‘What?’
‘Well, what do you remember?’
It has been a normal morning, or whatever passes for normal these days. Cleo seemed in a good mood. They ate slices of orange before he had to leave.
Iwata will not remember, for a long time, slipping under the police cordon. He will not remember, for a long time, the sight of his wife on the rocks below the lighthouse, her legs broken at horrific angles. He will not remember, for a long time, the way Nina looks next to her mother, wrapped in a yellow blanket, her head like a little garlic bulb torn in half. He will not remember, for a long time, the airlift helicopter coming for the loves of his life, nor the seagulls inquisitively circling above.
Iwata feels a thick hand on his shoulder and Taba appears next to him.
‘I just got off the phone. The helicopter arrived at the hospital and it’s good news, Cleo’s still fighting.’
Iwata doesn’t respond. He looks at the witness, who is being questioned off to one side. He looks like a fisherman, his rubber boots bright yellow. He looks upset and embarrassed all at once.
‘Look, Kosuke.’ Taba sits down next to him and the ambulance creaks. ‘I wanted to let you know, what happened with us is over. And I just want to say I’m sorry. For all of it, I know you love Cleo and Nina.’
Iwata puts his head between his thighs and throws up. A few cameras flash. Taba pats his back like it’ll all be okay. Iwata blinks tears out of his eyes. ‘What about Nina? Where is my baby?’
Taba says nothing. They both listen to the policeman off to one side questioning the fisherman. ‘And can you remember anything else?’ he asks. ‘Anything at all?’
‘Just what I told you,’ the fisherman says. ‘She was telling the baby it would be over soon.’
Iwata woke up in a mobile home. It was small and neat except for a stack of cardboard boxes filled with papers in the corner. Iwata was tied to the bed, his head distantly pulsing with pain. He couldn’t tell how tightly he was bound, not that he had the strength to test his restraints. His right arm, where he had been shot, had been elevated, the wound dressed. There was a small bedside table. On it he saw a blood-splattered Top Cat wallet. Next to it there was a framed photograph of Evelyn Olivera hugging Adelmo Contreras. Iwata finally understood. It felt as simple as just waking up.
‘You were lucky.’ It was a woman’s voice. ‘The bullet only grazed you. When the painkillers wear off it’ll hurt, but you’ll be okay.’
Lifting his head, Iwata saw that it was Mara, sitting before a mirror, two lamps duct-taped to it. She was doing her make-up, her movements, quick yet precise, almost like incisions. Her vanity was heaving with products, an altar to cosmetic perfection. Ben Nye Creme Stick in soft beige. Mehron CreamBlend in Cocoa No. 3. Honey-chocolate hues for the cheekbones, temples and hairlines. Pigment for delicate application to the eyelid. Extra Dimension Eye Shadow in Dark Dare to line the eyes with feline essence. On and on it went.
‘Mara.’ Iwata’s voice was sluggish.
‘I’m working.’ She blinked her eyes gently as the bristles tickled. Her movements were meticulous, her words clear. But her voice and her gaze seemed to come from somewhere else. There was a veiled distance there, as if she were programmed.
In this light Iwata could see Mara clearly for the first time. His mental image of her, one always rooted in glances, in darkness, in cloudy deliriums, was now gone. In its place, he saw her, at last, in truth. And there was the tattoo along her collarbone.
‘Isaiah 1:18,’ he whispered.
Mara paused her brush and looked at him in the mirror. ‘Si vuestros pecados fueren como la grana, como la nieve serán emblanquecidos. You know what that means, don’t you, Inspector.’
‘Though your sins are as scarlet, they shall be as white as snow.’
‘Those words matter.’ She considered him in the mirror for a moment. Then she carried on with her routine as if someone had pressed Play on a tape. ‘The look must be absolute.’
‘It’s you. You were Adelmo Contreras.’
Mara put down the brush, turned, and looked at him. Her eyes held his at first, then seemed to fade, as though drifting away. ‘Yes.’
‘Those women aren’t missing, are they? You killed them. You killed Meredith. You killed Talky. You killed Geneviève. You killed them all.’
Mara walked over to the little window. She looked out at the desert and gave a slight shrug, as if it was water under the bridge. ‘I did what I had to do.’
‘But why?’
She snapped her head round, her gums revealed, the rage beneath the make-up impossible to mask. ‘You think I wanted this? You think I started this?’ Her glare fell on the photograph of Evelyn and Adelmo on the bedside table and she softened. ‘No, Inspector. I just wanted a life.’
‘Then why Meredith?’
Mara’s eyes were glazed now; she still hadn’t blinked. A single tear fell and immediately she wiped it off, like disinfecting a wound. The name ‘Meredith’ was nothing to her; Mara’s tears were for herself.
‘We lived in an old cottage. When I was sick, Evelyn would boil lemons so that our whole apartment smelled like’ – she closed her eyes – ‘beauty itself. We had nothing, you understand. But we cooked stews on an open fire. Jackrabbit meat tasted smoky in a way I wouldn’t know how to begin describing. We had an old school projector and we’d watch movies on the wall while we ate. His Girl Friday; Dr Jekyll and Mr Hyde; A Farewell to Arms; Mambo; Le Notti Bianche. When I think of happiness, it’s the smell of lemons, the taste of smoke, the sound of dialogue from old movies …’ Mara’s chin trembled. ‘Evelyn knew who I wanted to be. Who I was. We were cousins but, even from an early age, we knew it was something more. We understood each other more than we understood ourselves. And the closer we got, the clearer it was that there would be nobody more perfect than Evelyn for me. It didn’t matter that we wanted different things. It didn’t matter that I’m a woman. That I want men. We were never lonely, we had each other. We loved each other.’
‘But she came to the priest and asked for his help. She wanted to escape. It was the baby, wasn’t it?’
Mara closed the window and looked at him like it was obvious. ‘Evelyn wanted to be a mother and I loved her. Of course I was going to look after her. But we knew we had to get out of Ciudad Cabral. Leave for ever.’
‘You went to the refuge.’
‘We took the medical tests like everyone else. The price was much better that way. You must already know what happened to us after that.’
‘Yes. You were double-crossed.’
‘You got my coordinates, you know how they operate by now.’
‘They get the migrants across the border in the normal way. Somewhere in the desert they’re intercepted by Border Patrol. They’ve already done the tests to determine who’s valuable and who’s expendable. Those carrying the right colour wristbands are loaded on to trucks; those who aren’t are killed.’
‘Huxley is the same as Valle Dorado. They look like small towns but they’re operating theatres for black-market body parts. There are countless others just like it. Rich people with sick children come and they leave with a brand-new kidney. The rich take the very last thing the poor have left to give, their own blood, their own organs. The First World eats the Third World and La Familia turns a profit.’
Iwata felt like a telephone operator who had accidentally patched into a hundred conversations at once.
‘For the first few metres, we were free. I just remember Evelyn’s smile in the moonlight. I’d never seen her so happy. And then Border Patrol arrived. They told us to get down on the ground. They started shooting. We managed to get away, but it was dark …’
Mara Zambrano returned to her vanity. Her gown hung open. It was a hard body, an obvious power beneath the skin, each curve, each plateau. All over it there were tattoos, her symbols, her folklore – the stifled language of a woman living in shadows.
‘But I didn’t bring you here to talk. I need to finish.’
‘Mara, I understand what happened to you. But what you’ve done? You murdered Meredith. You murdered Geneviève.’
‘I told you, I didn’t want to. But none of them would help me. I couldn’t let them live once I had confided in them.’
‘And what about the others? The missing?’
‘Don’t you see? Everybody knows what Bebé Rivera likes. I had to kill them. To eliminate the competition. That was the only way I knew that, eventually, Bebé would call on Mara Zambrano. He had to choose me. And finally the call has come. In the end it was you that led me to Benedict Novacek. He was worried at first, but I talked him round.’
Iwata shook his head. ‘You feel nothing after what you’ve done?’
‘ “Feeling”. What does that word mean to me?’
‘How can all these lives be worth it to you? Just for revenge.’
‘You think that’s what this is about? I watched Evelyn die and there was nothing I could do. Revenge won’t change that. Do you think, when I killed Ortega, I felt happiness? No, I felt nothing. But I didn’t come to Huxley tonight for revenge, Iwata. I came for you.’
‘Why?’
‘You wanted to know the truth. And now you do. But you’re weak and I knew you would get yourself killed.’
‘So why save me? I’m nothing to you, like everyone else.’
‘Because you can make a difference.’ She pointed to the stacked boxes in the corner. ‘I saved you for them.’
‘What are they?’
‘Financial papers. Deeds. Medical records. Evidence. It’ll take you a while to get out of those ropes. And when you do I know you’re not going to follow me. You’ll take my findings to the right places. You’re going to talk to the prosecutor. She’ll know where to take this. You’ve seen what La Familia do. This is a chance to stop them. To hurt them. To protect those who will be victimized by them. But if you don’t, it will all have been for nothing.’
‘It? Mara, you murdered people.’
‘I know there can be no forgiveness for me, Inspector. I’m beyond that.’ She leaned her head to one side and put on a large gold hoop earring. ‘You remember what my name means, don’t you?’
‘Bitterness.’
She smiled sadly. ‘I am Mara. It’s all I am.’
Looking at each other in the mirror, Iwata recalled seeing her at Club Noir. They had glanced at each other in reflections there too. ‘Mara, untie me.’
‘I wasn’t sure about you at first. I knew you liked me. But I also thought you were one of them, maybe hired by La Familia. How else you could have found me in Geneviève’s apartment? I had to defend myself. But after that I watched you. I followed you. I saw your eyes. And I know now that I can trust you.’
‘Like Meredith trusted you? Like Geneviève trusted you? You betrayed them.’
‘Bebé liked them. But they wouldn’t give me an introduction. When I explained my background, they said I was crazy. I never wanted to hurt them. Yes, what happened was sad. But it’s a sad world.’
‘Why Meredith? Why by the train tracks?’
‘We were in her room. She ran out down the fire escape. There was an old piano. A wire was hanging out. I didn’t plan for it to be that way.’
Iwata closed his eyes. He remembered the piano, running his finger along the keys, something missing in the sour notes. He’d been inches from the murder weapon.
‘Right and wrong is for those who want to exist, Inspector. When I saw Evelyn die I didn’t care about living anymore. I made up my mind to stay in that desert and wait for death. But then I thought about Bebé Rivera. I realized that, although he was miles away, safe in his black silk sheets surrounded by his whores, that really, he was the one who killed Evelyn. He was the one stealing those kidneys. He was all of it.’ She applied her lip gloss surgically. ‘That’s when I knew I would become whatever I had to become to get close to him. I survived the desert. I learned how to fight. How to steal. How to falsify. How to kill. I whored myself to anyone who would pay. All through Arizona. Texas. Nevada. California. On and on it went. Raymondville, Reno, Coolidge, Modesto. Ten, fifteen minutes. Anything the man wanted. Anywhere he wanted it. I’d stay a day or two, then move on.’ Mara picked up some car keys and tossed them into a black clutch. ‘That’s how this began. But as I said to you, Inspector. It wasn’t me who started this. It was Bebé Rivera.’
‘This is really who you are?’
‘I’m more myself than anyone I ever met. I was always going to be Mara Zambrano. I just wish it had been happier.’ She sprayed herself with perfume. ‘But that doesn’t matter. I’m close now. And nothing on this earth is going to stop me.’
‘Mara, don’t go.’
‘What would I stay for? Killing Bebé Rivera is the only reason I’m still alive.’
‘Mara, there are other things. I know there are. You’re lost. I am too. But maybe that means we’re in the same place. There are others like us –’
She took a rolled-up pair of socks and stuffed them into Iwata’s mouth then checked he could breathe. ‘You know, Bebé Rivera took everything from me. But after some time I realized he had also given me something – a great gift. Do you know what it is?’ She clenched her fist in front of Iwata’s face, the tightening skin sounding like rope. ‘The tremendous richness of rage, Inspector. The richness. Like pure gold stuffed deep in your pockets. And nobody knows about it but you.’
Mara Zambrano, who had been Adelmo Contreras before that, who had contorted and recast herself across countries, across characters, across seven seas of suffering, stood up now. Iwata saw she was no longer a person but intention itself, agency embodied – a masterpiece of vengeance. She gently brushed the hair from Iwata’s brow. For a moment it looked like she would kiss him. ‘You’re wrong about me, Inspector. I’m not like you. I’m an asteroid. And sooner or later asteroids have to collide.’
At the door of the trailer. Mara stopped. ‘Maybe in the next life.’ She smiled and the night breeze gorged on her hair. ‘Seems like we move in the same circles.’
Then she was gone.