Page 56 of The Bookshop of Forbidden Books

“And after that day?” she asked timidly.

“I stopped thinking about life outside. My world narrowed to the rhythm of the prison. Mealtimes. Going for a walk around the yard. The gym. The way the sky faded to grey at dusk. The dread I felt when I heard thunder at night, knowing the rain was carving into the Death Path. The race against madness every morning, as I woke up to another day in my cell.”

Anna eased her foot off the gas pedal, knowing she needed to keep driving as long as possible, to give Mitch time to unload everything that was weighing on his heart – knowing that his confession was part of this road they were travelling together.

“I haven’t told you everything about my trial,” Mitch confided. “Salinas didn’t just use those two books found in my back room. He presented others as ‘evidence’: Camus’s The Stranger, The Handmaid’s Tale by Margaret Atwood, Jack London’s The Confession, Jorge Semprún’s Literature or Life, Ray Bradbury’s Fahrenheit 451. He accused me of distributing those books to innocent kids, to corrupt them, to make them hate and fear authority, to destabilize society by undermining parents and teachers. I wasn’t listening very closely; I was stuck on the irony of it all. This man was highly educated, and he was afraid of the power of words. I couldn’t stop wondering what had happened in his life to make him this way. Turns out, the books he used against me came from his own bookshelves. Salinas was a big reader. He knew exactly what he was doing. He was lying to them. And to himself.”

They had left the city and its suburbs behind now; the road stretched out ahead of them like a ribbon through the open country. Beneath the starry sky, fields of wheat and barley extended on either side of the road as far as they could see. Anna rolled down the window and took a deep breath of fresh air.

“How did you find out where those books came from?” she asked.

“I broke into his house on the day he died.”

Mitch rested his head against the window and closed his eyes. Anna didn’t ask any more questions.

They arrived in a small seaside town just before dawn. She parked along the seawall and waited for the early light to rouse him. Then she opened the door and jumped out, full of life.

“Come on,” she said, grinning. “Take your shoes off and follow me.”

By the time he’d untied his laces, she was already running toward the waves.

The seagulls’ cries were even louder than the crash of the tide. The wind blew in strong gusts around them, obstinately whipping Anna’s hair into her eyes. Just yesterday, Mitch had been handcuffed in an interrogation room, convinced he’d only ever see the light of day through bars from then on. And this morning he was running barefoot in the sand, intoxicated by the sea air and the sound of a woman’s laughter.

Since meeting Anna, the line between dreams and reality had been rapidly fading.

Chapter 22

The Color Purple

The rising sun was already glittering off the foam of the waves. Mitch and Anna stripped off their clothes. Despite the growing warmth of the morning, the water felt ice-cold against their skin.

Later, lying on the sand with his head resting on Anna’s stomach, Mitch felt her heartbeat pulsing gently beneath his neck. An hour passed like that, while they were lulled by the sound of the waves. Eventually they gathered their belongings, climbed back into the van, and drove into town, looking for a place to have breakfast.

Walking through the town centre, Anna stopped at a kiosk to buy the morning paper. Salinas’s face was on the front page. She folded the paper and slipped it into her pocket.

Once they were seated in a café, she put the paper down in front of Mitch and asked him to read her the article.

“He died an agonizingly painful death,” he read aloud, trying not to look too pleased.

“How exactly did he die?” Anna asked, dipping her toast into her café au lait.

“Poisoned.”

“How original,” she drawled, with sincere indifference. Her eyes were crinkled at the corners, and she was smiling strangely. Mitch tried to read her thoughts, wondering whether she was still there with him or if her mind had wandered to the broken burner and malfunctioning cold-room latch in her restaurant, hundreds of kilometres away.

“Aren’t you going to ask me if I killed him?”

“Did you kill him?”

Around them, the café went silent. The waitress setting tables nearby stopped short, a fork in one hand and a paper napkin in the other, her mouth hanging open.

“In that case, let’s not mention it again,” Anna declared calmly. She rose, took two croissants from a basket on the counter, returned to the table, and offered one to Mitch.

“Incredible, what the sea air does for the appetite. I should have moved here; people must be constantly hungry. I know I am. Anyway,” she added, pushing the newspaper aside, “now we know what the murder weapon was, but we still need to find a motive.”

“Salinas had plenty of enemies.”

“I’m sure he did. But the police only arrested one of them.”