SENIOR DETECTIVE OLMI has an obsession and he is a patient man.
I become convinced that Daniel has for once misjudged the seriousness of his situation. Olmi would not have started the process if he didn’t believe he had enough evidence to make a deal with Daniel. He knows Daniel will not be able to stand a life sentence in a French prison.
But matters take an unexpected turn. The following day, CNN shows footage of Daniel’s smooth-talking lawyer making the best of an unusual situation as he tells the media that the last time he spoke to his client was at the extradition hearing. His client was then led away by police. The information he has is that Monsieur Kaas was left alone in a room while arrangements were made for the electronic surveillance. It would appear that somehow the door was left unlocked. Monsieur Kaas’s whereabouts are not known at this point. The possibility that some kind of harm has come to his client cannot be discounted.
The Canadian forces of law and order issue a brief statement confirming that the whereabouts of Gabriel Kaas, whose extradition case is under review, are unknown. There are plenty of questions asked about why he was left unguarded in an open office, and two of the officers are suspended. Their stories are contradictory. The French media have a field day. Nobody knows where he is. He is now officially a fugitive from the law.
That night I go for a long run. I stick to the well-lit promenade patrolled by roving police cars and private security companies that operate in the vicinity of the luxury seaside properties, which stretch all the way from Camps Bay past Bantry Bay and Clifton to Sea Point with its high-rise apartment blocks. I run until I reach the Mouille Point lighthouse, with its working light still visible to the ships entering the harbour, and then I walk down some stairs onto a strip of seashore that is too rocky for tanning or for children’s feet. The last time I’d run this way, I’d seen the local French bulldog club having some kind of a Sunday club meet here. I know that it’s not a good idea to seek out a dark lonely spot late at night, but I need to get away from the city lights and the constant sound of traffic. I sit on the cool sand and I rage at the glinting colander of star-pricked black sky above me. And it is as if something finally gives way.
Far away, in a cold, cold country where dogs’ water bowls cannot be left out or the water will freeze overnight and the temperature drops to minus 50 degrees Celsius, my husband Daniel has eluded capture once again. I see him through sandblasted glass as one might see a man in a bottle washed up onto the shore, pulled out of hiding by swirling currents and inexorable wave action, and then letting himself be swept away again, out to the deepest ocean where the great container ships ply their trade in the midst of giant swells. I rock back and forth, mourning everything that could have been and that has been destroyed. We are not the people we once were. I wonder what it would be like to walk into the cold sea and let the waves roll me under into their roaring open maw and not return. But Simone is expecting me back home.
I go down to the edge of the sea and scoop up some icy water to wash my tear-streaked face, backing off quickly to keep my trainers dry, and I look out to the familiar twinkling lights of waiting ships and tell myself that this liquid feeling of fury at the centre of my being is better than the numb ache I have lived with for so long.
On the way back I keep thinking I can hear footsteps behind me but when I stop near a parked security vehicle and look back there’s nobody there and nothing to be heard besides the usual sounds of ocean and traffic.
Simone is still up when I let myself into the apartment.
‘Is something wrong, Paola?’
‘Just a bad day at work, poppet. There’s nothing like a long run to get rid of stress.’
I lie to my adoptive daughter like that all the time.
If I must keep secrets, then so must she. In the end we all do what we think we have to do.