the ignition. I notice the scrape on his knuckles and wonder what else those hands have done. He doesn’t seem to be a stranger to violence and I ask myself again what I am doing driving around with someone who I know almost nothing about except that he’s very good at extracting information from people and also at casual violence.
‘How did you know he was lying?’ I ask, wiping the sweat off my brow. I’m still hot from the running and from the confrontation with Joaquim.
Konstandin turns up the air conditioning and pulls out into traffic. ‘I can tell,’ he says. ‘When you are around liars and have to make decisions about who to trust – decisions that might lead to your death – you learn how to read people very fast.’
He must be talking about his family and the war.
‘What happened to you?’ I ask, bluntly and without thinking. ‘I’m sorry,’ I say quickly. ‘It’s none of my business.’
‘It’s OK,’ he reassures me, reaching for his pack of cigarettes. He offers me one and I take it. I’m too old to be smoking and I have a baby to think about but I can already feel the nicotine cravings kicking in from the one I smoked earlier. I’ll live to regret it I’m sure but right now I think I deserve a free pass. Something terrible has happened to Kate. The thought keeps spinning around my head, like a horse broken out of a stable. I can’t seem to catch it or rein it in.
‘She’s dead,’ I say, blurting it out before I have time to catch myself. I cover my mouth with my hand.
Konstandin doesn’t say anything or try to argue with me, which only makes my words sink further into me, dragging with them a sense of doom.
He winds the window down and blows smoke out the car before inhaling again, short and sharp like his lungs are demanding he fill them with tobacco smoke, not oxygen. ‘We don’t know that,’ he says, exhaling for a second time.
I bite my lips together. I know Konstandin is only telling me that to reassure me. He thinks she’s dead too. I light the cigarette I’m holding and take a deep drag. My hand is trembling slightly. I wind the window down and exhale. ‘I need to go to the police. Tell them what we just found out.’
Konstandin nods. ‘Yes. After we get the phone I can drop you back at the police station,’ Konstandin says.
‘Thanks,’ I murmur. That woman detective might be there by then. I can speak to her. I’ll have to tell them about Joaquim and what we found out about the stolen bag, and I’ll need to admit to them too what I’ve discovered about Kate hiring Joaquim and Emanuel for sex. I wonder if I can avoid telling them about Konstandin? I don’t want to get him into trouble. But everything needs to come out now. If they interview Joaquim they’ll find out about him anyway.
‘I won’t tell them your name,’ I say. ‘I’ll just say you’re an Uber driver.’
He grunts under his breath and I’m not sure if he’s agreeing or disagreeing with me.
‘I really appreciate everything,’ I say to Konstandin. ‘Not just the driving me around.’
He grunts again. He knows I’m talking about his interrogation technique. Yesterday I’d been horrified by the idea of him threatening people but now I’m glad of it. I wouldn’t have found out this much without him. And I doubt the police would have either, or not this fast. And I’d also be lying if I said that watching Konstandin punch Joaquim in the face wasn’t intensely satisfying.
We drive in silence for a few minutes. I’m not sure how getting Kate’s phone from the pawn shop where Joaquim sold it is going to help us locate her, and I wonder if we should go straight to the police or whether I should be working through the list of things to do, like also calling the British Embassy and the English newspaper, but we’re almost at the pawn shop so I decide to wait.
Having Kate’s phone will be useful when I go back to the police. It’ll prove something has happened to her. They won’t be able to fob me off so easily if I can show them she doesn’t have her phone or her bag or her wallet with her. They’ll have to start taking the case more seriously.