Chapter 23 In Cold Blood
In Cold Blood
“Do you know where we can find that antique dealer?” Anna asked as they left the café.
“He lives in a building that backs onto the courtyard behind my shop. At least, that’s what he said.”
“See? You doubt the man’s sincerity already. You should trust my instincts more.”
Tossing Mitch the keys to the van, Anna climbed into the passenger seat.
“I haven’t slept a wink since yesterday.” She yawned.
They’d driven all night to reach the seaside town, and now they drove all day, returning to the city at sunset.
Anna dozed only a little along the way, instead spending most of the time telling Mitch about her years in the Great White North: how she’d arrived with almost nothing, how she’d saved enough to buy the walls of a crumbling restaurant.
She spoke of the excitement she’d felt when she moved into her little cabin on the high plains, of enduring winters far harsher than she’d imagined, of the bewitching blizzards and the beauty of the wild landscape.
In her first few months, she’d struggled to find her place within the brigade in the fine-dining restaurant that had hired her.
She’d had to adjust to working with a chef who was as authoritarian as he was passionate – a man whose talent she deeply admired.
After a year of hard work, the respect became mutual.
Bit by bit, he gave her freedom to create – first with curiosity, then with genuine interest in her work.
He taught her much, then encouraged her to strike out on her own.
“At least you had people around you,” Mitch commented.
“Well… it was a bit more complicated than it seems.”
She told him about the intimate relationship she’d developed with her own solitude: how people in exile, hurling themselves against the walls of their own minds and memories, could be difficult to live with.
They missed the sun rising over their native lands and night falling on their hometowns.
Prisoners feel a similar ache. Mitch saw himself in every one of her words – in her description of nights so dark they almost choke you; of days filled with hope; of the sadness that floods you without warning; of the anxiety that comes when you hear the echo – so close and yet so far – of your own voice as you talk to yourself; of the sense, when sleep won’t come, that solitude has taken root so deeply it may never leave again.
And even when you resign yourself to that feeling, the night always returns.
Working in the chaos of a kitchen, in the cacophony of the dining room, blending into the crowd when the evening sidewalks filled with passers-by, grabbing a late meal at a pub surrounded by strangers… none of it changed a thing.
“Who did you think about when you were in prison?” Anna asked.
“My mother, in her nursing home. My father too. They knew what it was to be poor, but they never felt sorry for themselves. Dad was always fighting other people’s battles – he only found peace in books.
He often had trouble sleeping because he was always worrying about other people’s pain.
At night, in my cell, I used to wonder how he would have handled my situation – whether it would have broken his heart, or filled it with pride. Maybe both.
“I hated Salinas. I swore to myself that I’d never forgive him, that I’d keep him from harming anyone else. My father wouldn’t have liked that. He despised anger. But I would have argued the point with him, because I believe that if you let yourself be walked on once, you do so forever.
“I remember what he used to say when he read me bedtime stories – which he did a lot. He always said it only takes a single moment of cowardice to lose your dignity; that you have to be very careful in life; and that people who’ve lost their humanity carry a terrible pain, so they need to be healed.
That’s what books are for: remedies against fear, prejudice and hatred.
My father simply wanted to be human, and even though his life was too short, I know he succeeded. ”
Anna, whose father had been an abusive tyrant, remained silent. Her eyes filled with tears. When Mitch took her hand, he knew it wasn’t sadness she was feeling, but the realization that her solitude was over at last.
She kept her eyes on the road for a long time without speaking. Mitch turned on the radio. A hundred kilometers later, she turned it off and looked over at him, her eyes twinkling mischievously.
“Was there really no one else you thought about in prison? Tell the truth!”
“Well… sometimes I thought about this girl I’d been seeing before my arrest. It wasn’t going anywhere, but it had the merit of being real.”
“Why wasn’t it going anywhere? Her choice, or yours?”
Mitch glanced over at Anna. Leaning against the passenger door, knees tucked up with her bare feet on the seat, she looked perfectly at ease – as though she were at home in her living room.
“We never talked about it,” he admitted. “We were okay with things as they were. We didn’t need to think about the future.”
“I see. And how did things end?”
“She mustn’t have been cut out for long-distance. After I got arrested and was sent to prison, I never heard from her again.”
“What about when you got out of prison?”
“It didn’t even occur to me to get in touch with her.”
“Were you still in love with her?”
“No,” Mitch admitted. “But for a while I held on to the memory of what we shared.”
“If she vanished so suddenly, she might have been the one who turned you in.”
“She was a student. Fiercely against the regime.”
“That’s what the Soviet spy girls used to claim.
They were call girls who pretended to be university students and seduced men suspected of being traitors.
Sexual espionage is alive and well these days, you know – and not only in totalitarian nations,” Anna added.
“Not long ago, British intelligence discovered that one of their cabinet ministers had been spilling state secrets during pillow talk with his girlfriend… who turned out to be working for Russia.”
“Don’t. Please. I don’t want to think about Mathilde like that.”
“Do you know what happened to her, at least?”
“No idea. She must have finished university by now. She’s probably working in a lab somewhere. Maybe a pharmacy.”
“Or maybe she never really went to university at all,” Anna suggested.
“Why are you so set on the idea that someone betrayed me?” Mitch felt exacerbated now.
“A prosecutor has been killed, Mitch.” Anna leaned forward in her seat.
“That inspector isn’t going to give up. He needs to pin this murder on someone – and fast. He’s already got enough evidence to press charges again and send you back inside.
I’m your only defence. But my testimony could put me under scrutiny too. ”
Mitch thought about it. Yes – things would very likely only get worse.
“You have to retract your statement first thing in the morning,” he told Anna. “Just say you got the date wrong.”
“We have to beat him to the finish,” Anna went on, as if Mitch hadn’t spoken. “Give him what he needs before he comes to any definitive conclusions, because once he does, it’ll be too late. For both of us.”
“And what would the person who betrayed me have to do with Salinas’s murder?”
“Maybe nothing. But the cops wouldn’t have got their hands on so much evidence so quickly unless they knew what they were looking for. I really think there’s a connection. At least, I want to believe there is.”
And as if she’d been holding out just long enough to say that, she closed her eyes and fell asleep.
Mitch pondered her words for the rest of the drive back, wondering who could have wanted to put him behind bars – and why.
The antique dealer had acted strangely after selling him the bookshop, and his sudden interest in the cellar might have been a reason to report Mitch.
Verner had no reason to hurt him, and neither did Madame Ateltow.
Her local bookseller… maybe, out of jealousy or conviction.
Old Madame Bergol had spent a lot of time in the shop, and had begged him to join the secret meetings.
Then she’d miraculously recovered her sight – which was an odd coincidence, but hardly enough to suspect her. And as for Mathilde…
“It can’t be Mathilde,” Mitch blurted aloud, determined not to give in to paranoia. “Anyway, the police never found the entrance!”
“What entrance?” Anna asked, yawning.
“To the secret bookshop.”
“I’m sorry, what? What secret bookshop?”
“After House Bill 1467 came into effect, I hosted meetings for students twice a week, sharing banned books with them. I wasn’t the only one involved; Mathilde and Madame Ateltow – you met her yesterday, she was my old literature teacher – they led the discussions with me.”
“Mathilde really was everywhere, wasn’t she?” Anna mused. “How many people came to these meetings?”
“Sixty or so at first, then more. There were almost a hundred and fifty students by the time I was arrested.”
“What did you do – move the tables out of the way so everyone could cram into the shop?”
“No, that’s the thing. The antique dealer who sold me the place had told me about a big walled-off room in the cellar.
He claimed it was only a legend, but I suspected he knew more than he was letting on.
One day I broke through the bricks and found out the room really existed.
Not long afterwards, he came back to see me and asked if I’d found it, because he wanted to rent it from me.
I lied and said I hadn’t even looked for it.
That made him furious – because he’d been watching from his window as I carted materials in and out.
The discussion never went any further than that—”
Anna motioned for him to stop. She reached into the back seat for her canvas bag and rummaged around. She pulled out a small spiral notebook and a pen.
“What are you doing?” Mitch asked.
“This is where I usually write down my recipes, but I don’t have anything else to write on, and I want to take notes. So,” she went on, scribbling, “why was the antique dealer so desperate to rent the cellar from you?”
“The room I found under my shop was a lot more than just a storage space. It was a hidden auction house – likely for high-end stolen goods.”
“And the antique dealer was the auctioneer?”
“Probably. In any case, the room had been sealed off in a hurry, because it was still fully furnished when I found it – sofas, tables, chairs, even a bar. Everything you’d need to accommodate quite a lot of people.
Originally, it could only be accessed by going down through the coal chute in the courtyard.
I created a trapdoor in the floor of my storeroom and built a staircase so you could get in directly from the shop without having to go around the back.
That way, guests could enter without being seen.
It was all a big success – far more than I’d expected – until the day… ”
“Until the police raided the place,” Anna supplied. “But you say they never found the secret room?”
“No. Thank God. If they’d taken the trouble to move a rug, Salinas would have had me put away for ten years.”
“And they never checked the chute?”
“Yeah, they did, but all they found down there was a dusty old cellar with nothing much in it. I’d built a fake bookshelf to hide the room. I used old panels and planks so it looked like it had always been there.”
“There’s one thing I still don’t understand,” Anna said thoughtfully. “So the antique dealer spies on you from his window, realizes you’ve found his old lair, then quickly comes back to reclaim it. But if it meant that much to him, why sell you the shop in the first place?”
“I wondered about that for a long time. I suppose there could have been a couple of reasons. He might have got worried that someone had worked out his legitimate business was a front for the illegal stuff he was doing in the cellar – and fencing goods that valuable would have earned him a long prison sentence. Once he lost a major part of his income, he’d have got desperate for money and been forced to sell the property. ”
“And then once things calmed down, he wanted to start up fencing again,” Anna concluded.
“That’s what I think.”
“Which makes him a suspect with a real motive. He had every reason to stay quiet about the room. Once you were in prison, the place was his for the taking. Did he do that?”
“I don’t know, actually. I haven’t had the strength to go back down there yet. It’s stupid, I know.”
“It’s not stupid,” Anna reassured him. “Acknowledging a wound isn’t a sign of weakness.”
“Even if we’re right about this, why would he kill Salinas?”
“To frame you again. To send you back to prison – for good this time. Then the state seizes the bookshop and auctions it off. He buys it cheap. A sweet deal for him.”
Mitch frowned. Anna’s theory made him uneasy.
The last glimmers of daylight were fading by the time they pulled in, in front of Anna’s home.
They ate dinner in heavy silence. Anxious and exhausted, Mitch avoided Anna’s eyes.
Even though he wasn’t entirely convinced the antique dealer was guilty, he’d now been forced to seriously consider the possibility that someone had tried to destroy him for their own gain.
Lying in bed beside Anna, he waited until she was asleep before resting his hand on her belly, as if clinging to her to keep himself from falling apart. As soon as he closed his eyes, faces paraded before him: Verner, Madame Ateltow, her bookseller, Madame Bergol, Mathilde…
There was only one way to know the truth: he needed to find the courage to enter the forbidden bookshop.
At midnight, sleep finally claimed him beneath a sky full of stars.