Page 52 of The Collector
“You see my face?”
He made no reply.
“It seems we share the same affliction.” She lowered her chin and gave him a shrewd sidelong look. “Does your poor wife know about this?”
“I do my best to hide it from her, but she knows.”
“She must resent me terribly.”
“She loves you dearly.”
“Does she really?” She tried to smile, but the light was draining slowly from her eyes. “I want to hear the sound of my mother’s voice,” she said.
“So do I,” replied Gabriel quietly.
“Make sure Dani is buckled into his seat.”
“Be careful driving home.”
“Give me a kiss, my love.”
He knelt before her wheelchair and laid his head in her lap. His tears soaked her gown.
“Isn’t it beautiful?” she whispered. “One last kiss.”
It was dusk when Gabriel returned to Narkiss Street. He found Ingrid as he had left her, hunched over her laptop at the little café table in the kitchen. She had not changed her clothing or combed her hair, and there was no evidence she had eaten a bite of food all day. Indeed, it looked to Gabriel as though she hadn’t looked up from her screen in the seven and a half hours he had been away.
She did so now. “You look positively dreadful,” she said.
“So do you.”
“But at least I have something to show for it.” She rotated the computer and adjusted the screen. “Found her.”
“Who is she?” asked Gabriel.
“The dead girl in Magnus Larsen’s past.”
27
King Saul Boulevard
Returning to the fold, even temporarily, was not as simple as flipping a switch. There were documents to sign, declarations to make, and dormant security clearances that required resuscitation. To that end, Gabriel was required to endure a session with the bloodhounds of Security, who were still seething over his unauthorized visit to Sergei Morosov’s dacha in the Upper Galilee.
“Recent suspicious foreign contacts?” asked his inquisitor.
“Too many to count.”
“Try.”
“An art thief, an art forger, numerous art dealers, a crooked Antwerp diamond broker, the leader of a Corsican crime family, a reporter fromVanity Fair, the head of security at the Pierre Hotel in Manhattan, a Swiss violinist, a British supermarket heiress who tried to murder her husband, the usual crowd at Harry’s Bar in Venice.”
“What about foreign intelligence contacts?”
“A friend from MI6. He used to work as a contract killer for the leader of the Corsican crime family.”
“You neglected to mention the Danish woman.”
“Did I?”
