‘Are you suggesting I might be in possession of a stolen painting?’

Not sure why she said that, either. Other than she was not a fool.

‘Of course not. I admire his work, that’s all.’

A pause and a stare; the stare not returned by Lomita.

‘I am of course interested in any pieces in a collection – the motive behind the collection.’

She parted with the unbearable taunt.

‘My first husband had a Caravaggio.’

And on the slow walk, the tap of her cane punctuated the wind-blown silence as she approached the waiting Ever, what to tell him she knew not. Yes, she smiled in her heart, privately down in there, at the fuck you of her thought: the Caravaggio was stolen: so was the Metzinger: but not by her.

*

She climbed into the Suburban.

She expressed a tiredness that prevented words and dwelt on having been sussed by Mr Lorken.

‘I agree with you, Ever,’

She said.

‘I think we have a problem.’

*

The decision was made that the debrief of the evening would take place at breakfast.

Lomita was truly exhausted and could hardly afford the turn of her head to say goodnight. She almost felt she had stooped to a crawl on her way to bed.

Valentino would have to spend the night on the floor.

Her hair was lowered and her lipstick and eyes were removed; she could not wait for the lying down to begin; the heaviness of body was out of proportion to its size and her head had started its stress pain. She fingertipped the scar on the right side of her head, now long since covered by her lush hair, and she remembered her pain.

The opening of her head to the elements.

Chapter Twenty-nine

Baja California is the twelfth largest state, by area, in Mexico.

It hangs like an undernourished limb on the map; Baja translates as lower, Baja California Sur is the southern portion of this land mass. Its capital, La Paz, lies a thousand miles south of the border town of Tijuana. The southernmost tip rounds into the East Cape, its shore is washed by the Sea of Cortez, the Vermilion Sea, so named as the reflected sunset for brief moments in its daily death paints the resplendent colour across the sea.

This is where Lomita had found a sanctuary, a peace, an avoidance of the questioning of life and the exposure of her history.

In the early eighties she travelled to this part of the world and came upon the town of San José del Cabo, a quiet, locally populated town forty-five minutes’ drive to the east of the familiar destination of Cabo San Lucas.

She wanted more isolation than the golden corridor could provide. On arriving at San José she wanted even more isolation.