30

She was aware of sunlight against her closed eyelids and the sound of the doorbell ringing. She heard John get out of bed and leave the room. She drew a bedsheet round her face and tried to get back to sleep, but Rhees returned and said, ‘You’ve got a visitor.’

She opened one eye. The sun was a slit of revolting light. ‘Who?’

‘Dom Concannon,’ he said.

‘What ungodly time is it?’

‘Eight-forty.’

‘What the hell does he want at eight-forty?’

‘Who knows? I’ll brew some coffee,’ Rhees said.

Amanda sat up. She dragged herself slowly inside the bathroom, brushed her teeth, ran a comb through her hair, then decided she didn’t need to look her best. It was only Concannon, after all. She entered the living-room in her robe and blinked at Dom, whom she liked well enough except for the fact that he was always bright and switched-on, irritating if you’d only just awakened.

He was sitting on the sofa, long legs stretched out. ‘Got you out of bed, eh?’

She said, ‘Just don’t do your stage Irish bit, promise me.’

‘And here I was practising bejaysus.’

She sat down facing Concannon. He had a big frank face and untidy fair hair. His family had emigrated seventy years ago from Cork. He was an expert on the subject of Celtic religious artefacts. Like Rhees with his sporadic Welshness, Concannon was another herb in the American stockpot.

‘Just tink of me as yer postman,’ he said.

‘You promised, Dom,’ she said.

‘It comes over me and I can’t for the life of me stop. What can I say?’

‘As little as possible would be considered a start,’ she suggested.

Rhees came in from the kitchen with a jug of coffee and three cups on a tray. He set it down on the table and poured. Amanda sipped and waited for the brew to kick in.

‘What’s this postman business?’ she asked.

Concannon took an envelope from the inside pocket of his jacket. ‘This came for you care of the office. It looks like it’s been in the wars.’

She looked at the creased brown envelope. Her eyesight was out of focus. ‘You didn’t come just to bring me this, did you?’

‘I’ve been missing you around and the letter gave me a good excuse, and anyway I happened to be in the vicinity. So, how are you doing?’

‘OK for a person whose sleep has just been rudely interrupted by a fake Irishman. Don’t you have cases to try or something?’

‘Matter of fact, yeah. There’s this interesting little thing I’ve got in court in a couple of hours. Some guy selling humongous parcels of Northern Arizona that aren’t his to sell. Complicated fraud, involving misuse of the US mails. The guy says he’s been framed by an associate. Same old, same old. Your friend Randy Hanseimer is defending.’

‘Kick ass, Dom.’ She took another mouthful of coffee and turned the envelope over in her hand. She still wasn’t focusing properly. She made out her name scribbled in caps with a ball-point. The stamp was stuck on upside down.

‘Funny business about Galindez,’ Concannon said. ‘I thought he was protected. The whisper going round is you’re worried about witness security.’

She said nothing. She wondered about whispers, leaves stirring on the old grapevine. Gaggles of attorneys gossiping in stairwells, feeding on this snippet of truth or that crumb of misinformation.

‘I understand they don’t tell you shit, those Witness Program guys,’ he said. ‘I haven’t had a whole lotta experience of them, but from what I gather they run their business like Fort Knox.’

‘Allegedly.’

Concannon drew his long legs back and rearranged his sprawl. ‘If I can help, let me know. Because if there’s a leak in the Program, it’s bad news.’ He finished his coffee and then stood up. Six feet four and legs like stalks. ‘Gotta run. Nail another shithead to the cross of justice. Oh, before I forget, you had a phone call day before yesterday. Bernadette Vialli.’

‘Bernadette Vialli?’

‘A blast from the past,’ Concannon said. ‘Said she wanted to talk to you about something. I said I’d have you call her.’ He touched his forelock in an exaggerated way. ‘Good luck to ye, me dear.’

She picked up a cushion to toss at him, but he’d already slipped out the door and was gone. She wondered a moment about Bernadette Vialli, whom she recalled as a small bespectacled widow with permed hair. She remembered her son, Benny, and the shy way he’d answered questions in the witness-stand. A pale downtrodden kid, he’d directed his gaze somewhere into mid-air, never once meeting the eyes of the two defendants who stared at him with brooding hatred. Both were blood relations, Uncle Charlie Ravanelli and Uncle Giovanni ‘Ironhead’ Luccini, a couple of funereal mob types who’d seen too many Mafia films and had copied all the moves and the mumblings. Not the brightest kid on the block, Benny had drifted into the old family businesses: extortion, narcotics, prostitution. He was the invisible nephew and nobody paid him much attention. Run here, run there, fetch, fetch, fetch. The eager gofer. But Benny had a memory that was almost photographic, and when his time came in court he was an encyclopedia of names and places, dates and conversations he could remember verbatim. A prosecutor’s wet dream.

Rhees said, ‘I didn’t hear you come in last night.’

‘I didn’t want to wake you.’

‘How was your undercover meeting?’

She briefly told him about the talk with Dansk.

‘You’re suitably reassured,’ he said, ‘so now we can get back to the pines?’

‘Sure.’

‘I’m not hearing absolute certainty,’ he said, and gave her a doubtful look.

She gazed again at her name on the front of the envelope and noticed the postmark. She raised her face towards Rhees and felt blood rush through her head, and when she ripped the envelope open it seemed to her that her hands were numb and not her own and a strange wind, like a cyclone twisting through a canyon, stormed in her ears.