Free Broken Heart by Tim Weaver Page A

Hosterlitz in the first place.
She thinks about it. ‘He was clean by 1976 – he’d even given up smoking – and it was hard to tell he’d ever had a stroke. But there remained a sadness about him, and I guess that drew me to him. He wasn’t attractive in the way I’d always thought of people as being attractive; not chiselled, or even that confident. I think his confidence had been beaten out of him by then. But he was mysterious. I used to think, “I bet he’s got a secret to tell.” And the more time I spent with him, the more I wanted to know what that secret was.’
‘Did you ever find out?’
She doesn’t answer.
‘Is that a no?’ I ask her.
Korin just looks at me. ‘Next question,’ she says.
    I read the rest of the article but didn’t find anything as interesting as what she’d said about her husband; about her belief that he was harbouring some sort of secret. When Collinsky had pressed her on what it was, she’d sidestepped it.
    Why?
    I read and reread the same section again, trying to figure out if it was directly relevant to this case, relevant to finding out what had happened to Lynda Korin after she’d driven down to Stoke Point ten months ago. It seemed unlikely, given that Hosterlitz had been dead twenty-six years by then.
    But that didn’t mean it was impossible.

12
    At a couple of minutes before 1 p.m., Marc Collinsky emerged from an elevator on the ground floor of his office building. He may have been writing about film, but he looked like every music journalist I’d ever known: boots, skinny black jeans, a mop of messy hair and a leather jacket, despite the heat. He was about thirty-five, his blue eyes bright and youthful, his face covered in a fine scattering of stubble.
    We shook hands.
    ‘Thanks for sparing me the time,’ I said.
    He nodded. ‘I don’t know if I can help.’
    He was Scottish and quietly spoken.
    ‘Well, I appreciate it all the same,’ I told him, and then asked where was good for lunch. He suggested a deli on Earlham Street, five minutes’ walk away.
    We headed there and he managed to find a table at the window, and once I’d paid for our food, I returned to him with two overpriced sandwiches and a couple of bottles of still water. Shrugging off his leather jacket, Collinsky uncapped one of the bottles and chugged most of it down in one gulp. ‘Thanks for this,’ he said, then pushed it aside, unwrapping a ham and pickle sandwich.
    ‘I just finished your article on Hosterlitz.’
    He looked up. ‘Oh yeah?’
    ‘I thought it was brilliant.’
    His gaze lingered on me for a second, as if he thought hemight be the butt of some elaborate joke. ‘Thanks,’ he said, clearly still uncertain.
    ‘I mean it.’
    ‘Well, I appreciate it.’ He shrugged. ‘For me, it was about scratching an itch. Hosterlitz was a genius, a bona fide genius, and we’re supposed to be a magazine about film, not just the last year of film. Sixty years on, those film noirs he made are works of art. Sixty years from now, they’ll still be works of art.’
    I got out a pen and a pad, and started to steer the conversation around to Lynda Korin. I gave him some background on who I was, why I wanted to speak to him and who I was working for. He listened, asking the occasional question, but mostly remained silent.
    When I was done, I said to him, ‘I don’t think this is about some falling-out with her family, because her sister is back in the US. It’s not about friends either, because – to be frank – Lynda didn’t have that many. She seemed happy at work, didn’t have any enemies, was in good health, physically and financially. So far, the thing that’s most interesting to me is that, five days after your article was published, Lynda disappeared. That might be important or it might not. But if it was a catalyst for her going missing, I need to find out why.’
    ‘Why would it be a catalyst for her going missing?’
    I shrugged. ‘That’s what I was hoping to find out