Capital Punishment by Robert Wilson Read Free Book Online Page A

he’d hired a car and spent the rest of the day going to the sights he’d planned to see with Amy. Despite the clear, sunny, warm spring day, he felt bleak, lonely and cold. He missed her, hated this loneliness, which was different to being a loner with purpose.
    Later, sitting on the beach with a cold wind from the Atlantic battering his face, it hit him that he’d had every intention of playing cards while Amy slept. The reason for the ferocity of the row was his anger at being found out. He was disgusted by himself: a man who lied to his own daughter. There was something missing in him. Maybe the same thing that had been missing in his own father, who probably hadn’t spared him a moment’s thought in thirty-odd years. A failure to connect. An inability to reach out. He held himself by his sides, not through the chill of the wind, but because he felt the hole inside him expanding.
    His thoughts made him edgy. He needed to reel himself in. He drove back to the Parque das Nações to prepare for his night’s work.
    He finished his meal and went to the underground car park near the Camões theatre, where he’d left the car and picked up his afternoon’s purchases. He let himself into Diogo Chaves’ apartment building and listened at the door. Silence. He unlocked the apartment, checked the rooms. Empty. He took the step ladder and heaved himself up into the storage area and looped the rope he’d bought that day behind the exposed steel rod and secured it. He placed the shoebox full of the ransom cash by the trapdoor. He paid the rope out and measured it, took a knife from the kitchen and cut it to the right length. He replaced the trap with the rope coiled over it and the money on top. He put everything back in its place, found a broom in the cupboard and swept the hall. He walked through the rooms, committing everything to memory one last time.
     
    Isabel Marks was in bed, make-up removed, the dull sheen of night cream on her face. She had an iPad propped up on her knees, reading an author’s typescript, with her mind only partially on the job. The smell of duck stock filled the house. She’d boiled the birds with an onion stuck with cloves, bay leaves and peppercorns. Now the stock was in the fridge, the fat congealing on top for her to skim off in the morning.
    She’d shredded the meat and put that in the fridge, too. All the time she was working, she was subliminally conscious of a sense of unease. Stripping the skin off the duck and tearing a fork through the flesh had left her feeling apprehensive. She fingered the mobile phone on the duvet. Alyshia couldn’t stand phone calls concerned for her safety. Her voice had the terrible scathing edge of someone who’d never known the fear of loss. Isabel toyed with using the excuse of Chico’s premonition. That might amuse Alyshia in a way that maternal worry wouldn’t. Isabel knew now that she wouldn’t sleep unless she called. What the hell.
    The phone rang once before it was answered by a male voice, slightly distorted.
    ‘Hello, Mrs Marks.’
    ‘Who is that?’ she said. ‘Is Alyshia there?’
    ‘She’s here.’
    ‘Can I speak to her, please?’
    ‘She can’t come to the phone at the moment.’
    ‘Is she all right?’
    ‘She’s perfectly all right.’
    ‘This line is terrible,’ she said.
    ‘There’s nothing wrong with the line, Mrs Marks,’ said the voice.
    ‘And who are you?’
    ‘You can call me Jordan. Why be formal when we’re going to be talking to each other over the next few weeks, months ... possibly years?’
    ‘Are you a friend of Alyshia’s?’ she asked stupidly, knowing there was something about the tone of the voice that she wasn’t prepared to face up to.
    ‘Not yet. I’m working on the relationship side of things. Men aren’t so good at the initial getting-to-know-each-other phase. Not like women.’
    ‘I want to speak to Alyshia,’ said Isabel, irritation rising in her voice.
    ‘Understandable, but not