Notorious Read Online Free PDF Page A

hide the older misdemeanours. Useless to ask for a DNA swab or a hair sample; Mitch won’t give me the time to get them analysed.
    ‘I need to see her face.’
    Laforche looks at the Sister. My fingers grip the ampule in my pocket.
    The Sister’s gaze drops to my wrist. She crosses herself.
    After a long pause, she steps forward, slips a hand under the woman’s neck, raises her head and slowly unwinds the bandages. The creamy cloth comes off, round and round, an endless white tongue.
    The woman’s forehead is visible. I see welts as long as my fingers dissecting her cheeks from forehead to chin, shining like burns from the lotion. Her lashes tremble against the shadows under her eyes.
    I stare at the smattering of freckles over her skin. The desert sun must have brought out the freckles. I tried to remember whether I had seen them in Sicily.
    I replay scenes like photographs. No, I couldn’t remember freckles.
    I look at her face.
    For the first time in eight months. Thirty eight weeks. Two hundred and forty days.
    I look at her.
    And look.
    Her eyelids tremble. She’s awake, I’m sure of it. But she remains still.
    The Sister steps back. ‘You can make your identification now.’
    ‘I need to talk to her,’ I say. Laforche raises an eyebrow at the note in my voice.
    The Sister says, ‘She is beyond sleep, Monsieur. The poison will soon make her skin hang from her bones like flags.’
    I shrug and look to the door as though someone is entering. When the Sister and Laforche turn, I lean over the woman and break the ampule under her nose.
    The bitter smell of amyl nitrate fills the room. Laforche curses and comes forward.
    ‘I’m authorised,’ I say to him.
    The woman jerks like a marionette and her eyes open. I draw back out of her line of sight. She is staring at the ceiling. She shudders; her eyelids begin to close.
    I wave the ampule under her nose. ‘Look at me.’ I lean over her. She is still staring straight up. I bring the ampule under her nose again but quickly; any more and she will be sick. The smell is making even me gag.
    ‘Look at me.’
    Her eyes are all blue, like light hitting shallow water at noon, the pupils contracted from the pain. I want to tell her she looks like the heroin addict she once was. I want to remind her who’s in charge here, who’s in control. I know that fear is driving my anger. The pain is beneath my ribs again, the hollow feeling, the void needing to be filled.
    Laforche throws back the remaining shutters to let the smell out. Light floods the room. The welts are livid, distorting her face.
    ‘Do you know me?’ I say.
    She starts to shake her head, stops; it is too painful. Her eyes are a clear unflinching blue.
    ‘No,’ she says in a thickened voice. Then, ‘Police man. Government man.’ No recognition in the swollen features.
    ‘We’ve never met?’
    ‘No.’
    She blinks. Her mouth relaxes. She is losing consciousness.
    ‘Wake up!’ I shout.
    ‘Move away from the bed.’ Laforche stands opposite me. Any cordiality he felt – had begun to feel, towards me – has gone. He is furious.
    ‘It’s her.’ I can barely speak.
    ‘She says she doesn’t know you.’
    ‘Pretending.’
    Laforche snorts. ‘Is she?’
    It is too enormous a question to lie about. ‘I don’t know.’
    The Sister slips past me, bends over the woman, listens to her breathing. ‘She’s unconscious.’
    ‘Faking,’ I say. ‘Lying.’
    Laforche says, ‘For God’s sake, have some pity.’
    I can’t meet his eyes.
    ‘There was – she made mincemeat of one of our men,’ I say. ‘In Sicily. A stupid man. There was an opportunity but she slipped away with crucial information. He let it happen. The stupid man.’ All I could think, once the words slipped out, was that I was under pressure, rattled, not my usual self.
    Laforche looks at the Sister who places her hands inside her wide sleeves and withdraws into her oval of darkness.
    Laforche says, ‘You can’t question her any