Майкл Ридпат - The Marketmaker

‘Did you believe him? That it was the only time?’

‘Yes. Of course that’s what every dumb mistress wants to believe, but in this case I think it really is the truth. I think he was scared that he’d let his self-control slip. It certainly hasn’t happened again.’

I stared up at the ceiling, considering the concept of Isabel and Ricardo. I didn’t like it. There may have been an element of jealousy, but there was more to it than that. I wanted to get Ricardo out of my life, but here he was getting even closer to me.

‘How’s your relationship now?’ I asked.

She sighed. ‘Oh, he’s very professional with me. He’s friendly, he treats me just like the others. I try and be the same way with him, but I can’t quite manage it.’

‘So how did the rumours about you and Eduardo start?’

‘I think the others realized that there was something going on with me. They just guessed the wrong Ross, that’s all.’ She shuddered. ‘Yeuch. Just the thought of it makes me ill.’

‘And since Ricardo?’

‘No one. Until now.’ She turned to me and smiled. I melted.

‘You know, I definitely shouldn’t be doing this,’ she said, bending over to kiss me.

But she did. Twice more.

We were booked into a business hotel located between the metallic-smelling river Pinheiros and a highway. The dawn rose red in the São Paulo smog. From our window I could see a patch of wasteland that had been turned into a soccer pitch, and a small favela. Isabel’s theory was that there weren’t any nice locations in São Paulo anyway, and this hotel had good facilities and was convenient for the airport.

I went back to my own untouched room to dress, and returned a few minutes later to pick up Isabel.

She laughed when she saw me. ‘You look dreadful.’

I looked in the mirror. Dark patches edged with yellow surrounded my eyes. I glanced at Isabel. ‘You don’t exactly look fresh yourself.’

She yawned and stretched. She looked delectable. Tired but delectable.

‘What will they think at the municipal offices?’ I said. ‘Maybe they’ll assume we’ve been up all night working on the project.’

Isabel laughed. ‘They might if they were English. But they’re Brazilian. They’ll assume we had sex all night.’

‘Oh dear.’

Isabel laughed. ‘Don’t worry. It won’t matter. In fact, I think they’ll rather like the idea.’ And she put her arms around me and gave me a long, lingering kiss.

I suspected they could tell, but they didn’t seem to mind. We put in another hard day’s work, but it was fun, and we made good progress. We finished at six, and Isabel and I spent Saturday night in São Paulo in bed, with room service to provide us with sustenance.

To Isabel, a carioca, the prospect of a weekend spent entirely in São Paulo was appalling so she suggested flying to Rio on Sunday morning, and taking the shuttle back to São Paulo first thing on Monday. She would show me the beach, and then we could have dinner with her father.

Initially I was reluctant; I wasn’t sure I wanted to return to a Rio beach. But Isabel promised me that the beach she went to was completely safe, and that we would probably have dinner with her father at the Rio Yacht Club, which had armed guards. I agreed to go, ashamed at my nervousness.

I thought I knew Rio’s beaches, but I didn’t. The Point was a quarter-mile stretch of the Barra de Tijuca, a beach just down the coast from Ipanema. I brought my towel and my book, and a plan that would involve turning my pale body a delicate shade of pink. That wasn’t how it worked.

The beach was crowded, crowded with beautiful brown bodies. All the men had terrific muscular definition, the result of regular workouts, and the women had smooth, tanned soft skin, displayed to great effect by bikinis that revealed almost everything. In Brazil, the buttock was all, and swimming costumes were designed to show them off in all their glory.

Isabel was wearing one of these dental-floss bikinis, and she looked stunning. It was very hard not to stare. In fact it was impossible, so I did.

But the extraordinary thing about the Point was that no one was lying down basking in the sun or reading a book, as people would on a European beach. They were sitting, squatting or standing, and talking. It made quite a racket. I shut my eyes, and the chattering, shrieking and continuous chirruping of mobile phones sounded as though I was in the midst of a crowded café.

Everyone seemed to know Isabel, and they were friendly to me. Despite my absurdly pale skin, I was quickly made to feel at home. There were plenty of bottles of the local beach beer around, and I soon relaxed, mellowed by the friendly charm of carioca hospitality.

I watched Isabel and her friends with interest. She seemed much more relaxed than she ever did at Dekker. She smiled, laughed, gossiped and argued in a free and uninhibited way that I found enchanting. It was as though the real Isabel, the Isabel I had glimpsed privately before, had suddenly emerged from under the long shadow of Dekker Ward.

At four we left and headed back to the Copacabana Palace Hotel. We stopped at an intersection. On the corner, two policemen slouched by their blue and white car. They wore baseball caps and dark glasses, and their first names were taped on to their chests. Right in front of them two small girls were attempting to wash windscreens, with little success. Behind them a tall, scruffily dressed man leaned against a parked car, relieving himself on the passenger window. The policemen smoked cigarettes and posed.

The traffic moved us on, past Ipanema beach, and the spot where I had been stabbed. The favela on the cliff above the beach looked alive but peaceful. In there, somewhere, were our attackers.

Isabel saw me tense and squeezed my hand. ‘Try to forget it,’ she said.

‘It’s difficult.’ I swallowed, and we spent the rest of the journey in silence.

When we reached the hotel, Isabel joined me in my room. Eagerly, we made love again. It was long and slow, our bodies tingling from the sand and the sun. Afterwards, with Isabel’s black hair spread across my chest like a soft, lightweight blanket, I asked her a question that had suddenly become very important to me.

‘Isabel?’

‘Yes?’

‘Can I see you again? I mean, when we get back to London.’

She lifted her head, and smiled into my eyes. ‘Of course.’

I pulled her back down on to my chest. ‘Good.’

As I stroked her hair, I thought about what we might be getting into. My relationship with Joanna had been the only serious one of my life. It had lasted five years, five years which to me now seemed wasted. Of course we had had some good times, but I didn’t remember them well. What I did remember were the daily power struggles over small things, power struggles that I always let Joanna win. She hadn’t been worth it, and when she had run off to America with Wes, I had savoured my new-found independence.

Since then I had avoided another relationship. I had dated women, but had never let things progress. I was afraid of a serious attachment, and jealous of my independence.

Until now.

Isabel was completely different from Joanna, or at least Joanna as I remembered her. She was a strong, independent woman, but she was also natural, kind, warm. And she was very beautiful.

She was well worth the risk, I told myself, as though I was in control of my emotions towards her. Of course I wasn’t. I had lost myself to her long ago. I looked forward to the months ahead with her with optimism.

But, of course, there was the job. Although Dekker seemed a long way away, we’d have to get back to work the next day in São Paulo. And then we’d return to London, and I would resign. I wondered how Ricardo would take it. Not very well, I imagined. And Eduardo? I shuddered.