The Truth Commissioner (6 page)

The taxi driver's lascivious eyes fasten on each group of young women he passes and when he clocks a particularly scantily
clad girl he blows a little stream of breath that Stanfield is unsure whether registers pleasure or a type of excited disgust.

‘Some rare sights,' the taxi driver says. ‘More in than out some of them.'

‘A bit cold for it,' Stanfield says.

‘Some of the goose bumps have goose bumps. Look at yon! What do they think they look like? You want to come back when it's
getting-out time. You wouldn't believe what you see. If it was my daughter …'

Stanfield doesn't want to hear any more and he interrupts by asking if they're nearly there but the question is rendered redundant
as the taxi pulls in at the front doors of the hotel. He pays while declining the opportunity to book a return journey then
hurries out of the cold. He's been here once before when speaking at a conference and even though the foyer looks as if it's
been refurbished he knows the layout and heads immediately for the bar. He buys a drink and then takes it back out to one
of the leather sofas that litter the ground floor. He is a little early and so he sits back and observes the clientele. There
aren't many people about and all of them seem preoccupied with their own conversation. A group of four businessmen stare at
a laptop, pour each other cups of tea and eat sandwiches. Their accents are English and in between the tea and sandwiches
there are bursts of mobile phone calls. He tries to remember what people did before their technological toys arrived to make
them feel important, to advertise their membership of some exclusive club. He supposes it all came down to clothes and accent
so he takes pleasure in registering their scuffed and chain-store shoes, the cheap functionality of their briefcases and hand
luggage, their estuary accents.

Beyond them sit two couples, perhaps a set of parents and their son- or daughter-in-law. He wonders who is trying hardest
to impress and then he remembers that he has never met the man Emma married. What did she tell his parents was the reason
for his absence from the wedding? Has she persuaded her new husband of his culpability, his supposedly deeply engrained corruption?
Who gave his daughter away or did they have a registry office ceremony laughing off all the moribund church traditions? Perhaps
he had already given her away a long time before. ‘He sips his whisky – tonight he feels the need for something stronger than
wine, something to light a fire where only smoulders a grey bed of ashes. He has come early deliberately because the anticipation
is part of the pleasure and it allows him to subsume each single woman he sees into the unfolding arms of his desire. So for
a few seconds it might be the woman with the long black hair and the equally dark eyes, or the young woman in the red coat
whose shorter hair accentuates her cheekbones and gives her face an attractive sense of innocence. But each walks past him
oblivious, or indifferent, to his admiring gaze. For a brief moment one returns his gaze but before he can reach out to her
with a smile she has fallen into the arms of the man waiting for her. And then just as he lowers his eyes to glance at his
watch as if from nowhere she is standing in front of him.

‘Hello, John.' Her accent and her face tell him that she is probably of Eastern European origin and as he stands to greet
her he realises that she is about an inch taller than him. As she sits down opposite him he summons a waiter with the raise
of a hand and asks her if she would like a drink. She orders vodka and Coke and smiles at him. He is glad she is from somewhere
far away. He is glad about everything he sees – the blueness of her eyes, the pale unblemished skin, the light skim of pink
lipstick and the blondeness of her shoulder-length hair that has an expensive cut. She is about thirty, perhaps a few years
older, and when he looks at her he thinks of snow – cold and beautiful snow bereft of footprints, seemingly untrammelled or
untainted.

‘Hello,' he says, and then in the second of silence, ‘You look good.'

‘Thank you,' she says, moving her head slightly but in a way that seems to set her hair in temporary motion.

‘It's cold tonight,' he says, still thinking of snow and then embarrassed by the banality of what he's just said.

She nods but says nothing as the waiter arrives with her drink and he is disappointed to see her thank him with the same smile
she gave him a few moments earlier but he tells himself it's the currency she uses and that she will grant him exclusive trading
rights in exchange for his. Before she can sip the drink her phone rings and she apologises before answering it and the conversation
lasts no longer than the time it takes her to say ‘yes' and ‘everything's OK'. He looks at her clothes and they, too, please
him. Nothing vulgar or loud, just a simple well-cut black suit that shows her skin and hair to advantage. At her neck is a
single string of pearls one of the few things he has never mastered the skill of evaluating. She turns off the phone and apologises
again, saying, ‘Just checking everything's OK. No more disturbance.'

‘And everything's OK?' he asks.

‘I think so,' she says, smiling at him and moving her hair again. It looks like a little flurry of snow. Everything about
her is calm and confident and as she sips her drink she never takes her eyes from his and he knows that whatever disappointment
or indifference she might feel he will be shown no trace of it.

‘And what do I call you?' He knows immediately that it's a question that invites the stock response, ‘Anything you like,'
but she apologises again and formally offers her hand and tells him her name is Kristal. It feels slight and cold to the touch,
the nails painted the same colour as her lips. He would like to put it to his lips but after holding it slightly longer than
a normal handshake he lets it go. It slips slowly away, her fingers lingering against his. He wants to ask where she comes
from, runs possible origins across his brain, but he knows it would be impolite and that the answer would be no more truthful
than her name. What he is sure of is that she is in the country illegally, part of the economic diaspora that has started
to play the Irish at their age-old game. Now some call them an economic necessity – ‘they do the jobs that no one wants' -
so here she is this young woman from somewhere far away who drifts across his senses like the first snow of winter. He hopes
they take good care of her, that they treat her well, that she makes her money quickly and gets out. And as he drinks in the
cold beauty of her he tells himself that it's not about economics but a spiritual necessity. That he will treat her well.
That he will pay her well. And that will make it all right for both of them.

One of the businessmen is looking at her, looking at him. He starts to feel uncomfortable. The place is too public. She glances
to where his gaze strayed and reads his thoughts immediately. ‘We should go,' she says. ‘I'll go first.' Then she pushes a
small square of paper towards him with a room number on it. ‘Give me ten minutes. Third floor. Take the number. Sometimes
someone forgets, spends whole night looking for the right room.'

He watches her leave and then tries to turn casually to his drink. It's the first thing that she's said or done wrong in reminding
him that there have been others. Better to have allowed him to console himself with the illusion that he was the only one.

He finishes his drink with what he believes is appropriate nonchalance, then glances at his watch. The group of businessmen
are refocused on the computer screen – one of them points things out to the others with the tip of his pen – so he stands
up slowly and buttons his overcoat. Perhaps it is the drink, perhaps the heat of the building, but he has started to feel
too warm and he reopens the buttons, takes off his coat and drapes it casually over his arm. Once again he finds himself in
a lift but this time is glad there is no mirror. Things are slipping away from him. Something has been lost. He understands
now that it was a mistake to take this job and come to this city. He doesn't believe in ghosts but there is something spectral
about the thoughts that have started to haunt his consciousness. He tries to fasten on the memory of how blue her eyes were
but the growing awareness of a deepening desperation begins to blunt the edge of his desire. How would he look if he were
to see himself now? What did he look like in her eyes? He smiles as he remembers the light-washed greyness of the sharks then
shivers a little. Does she see beyond his money and his expensive suit to something predatory? For a second he slips into
the self-pity he abhors so much but then he remembers the apartment's spreading net of emptiness that threatened to trap him
in its mesh, the black sheen of the river below, and when the lift door pings open, he steps into the corridor with a renewed
conviction of his need and his entitlement to have it met.

She opens the door almost immediately, takes his coat from his arm and hangs it on the rail inside the door. He sees her hand
instinctively brush away a little speck of fluff from the lapel – she is obviously a woman for whom detail is important.
She has softened the lighting and on a bedside table sit two drinks. Everything is ready. But he needs to talk and he wants
to hear her talk, wants to show her something more than she expects. He knows it is a vanity but he hopes to make her understand
that he is different from what has gone before and that despite the exchange of money that she quickly and discreetly slipped
into her handbag, despite the anonymity of the room, he has the capacity to give as much as take. So when she sits on the
edge of the bed and starts to remove the jacket of her suit he stops her and taking her hand presses its white coldness to
his cheek. More than anything he wants to give her tenderness, to have the same from her. If he can only have that, he will
pay all the money in the world. Something is breaking in him and he drops to his knees at her feet and places his head in
her lap. He doesn't care about dignity, doesn't care about anything, and for a second there is nothing and then he feels her
hand gently stroking his hair and she's telling him that everything is all right.

Afterwards she talks a little but always carefully about herself. She's Polish and she hopes to earn enough money to pay her
way through university. He smiles involuntarily when she tells him she wants to be a lawyer. He tries to ask if he can contact
her independently of her employers but she shakes her head, continuing to say it isn't possible even when he tries to persuade
her and is forced to use the vulgarity of the word ‘arrangement'. Her hair is splayed across the whiteness of the pillow,
the blueness of her eyes the only strength of colour, and when they close in sleep he knows he has lost her. He has paid for
the night but as he lies perfectly still beside her listening to her breathing, he knows, too, that he wants to leave her
now and not in the harsh and awkward light of the morning, so he quietly gets out of bed and going to the bathroom closes
the door behind him. He showers as quickly as he can but doesn't allow himself to catch his reflection, then going back into
the room he dresses, watching her all the time. The room is lit only by the city's neon and he goes to the window and stares
out at the streets below. Of course there should be snow but instead there is only the fading wail of a far-off siren and
occasional voices that fritter skywards in sharp-edged fragments. He looks at her one last time and then leaves.

Outside as he waits for the taxi he turns up his collar against the bitterness of the night. The cold and damp seep into the
marrow of his bones. He imagines himself as the spilt file, his secret pages caught and scattered by the wind, then shivers
as he thinks again of snow and how already the silent fall is covering the print he tried to tenderly lay down and feels the
sadness of knowing that by morning it will have vanished without trace.

Matteo is adamant. The file has been doctored. His face is animated and for a moment he reminds Stanfield of a bloodhound
straining at the leash, desperate to sniff out the renegade.

‘It's an amateur job. A pathetically amateur job!' he says and it's obvious his anger is laced with excitement. He drops the
file theatrically on Stanfield's desk then pushes his hand through his hair awaiting his master's approval for his perceptive
diligence. Stanfield looks at Laura who has stood up and come closer to the desk to stare at the file as if it is some alien
creature. He is suddenly conscious that they both know that he has perused the file without apparently detecting what supposedly
is an amateurish job. Connor Walshe. He wonders why the file doesn't have a photograph of the boy.

‘The whole thing is a sloppy mess,' he says neutrally. ‘It's just like a drain that they've poured everything in.'

‘It's what's been taken out,' he hears Matteo say and he's conscious that Laura is looking at Matteo and not him. She puts
her fingers on the file.

‘Perhaps it got spilt like the file the other day,' he says, attempting a joke. She has small, thin fingers. The ring is vulgarly
ostentatious and out of scale with the size of her hand. As Matteo suddenly lifts the file she pulls her hand away as if shocked
by the energy of his movement.

‘The index has been altered and some of the pages have been added afterwards. It's not even the same bloody paper. What do
they think we are – complete fools?' He splays pages across the desk then jabs his finger in relevant places. ‘You see?' he
asks and Laura nods her head. ‘You see?' he asks again, looking at Stanfield. But Stanfield has already seen and has already
understood. He thinks of the envelope Maria Harper handed to him but chooses to say nothing of its contents because already
he is conscious of standing at the edge of a brackenish bog, a shifting swamp of a landscape where an ill-judged step might
see him sucked into the morass. He has to be careful, perhaps more self-protective than he has ever had to be, as he increasingly
glimpses a bottomless mire that waits for the foolhardy. So to think he shuts his ears to Matteo's self-righteous screech
of the idealist and the simpering support he gets from Laura and stares at the grubby manila folder with its finger bruises
and scribble where it looks as if someone tried to get their pen to work. He wonders with what other prints this soiled and
sullen coloured folder are indelibly and invisibly marked. But his thoughts are called back to the moment as he looks up again
to register the burn of anger in Matteo's eyes and hear him ask, ‘So what are we going to do about it?'