Page 55 of A Good Heart is Hard to Find
I wondered if he was inhabiting a parallel universe, and so only appeared to us on those brief occasions when there was a kink in the vortex of time?
He did wanderback in later, to watch the video I’d recorded about rock climbing. Not that I’m interested in that sort of thing, but it was pretty gripping watching my brother Francis swing under a mountain ledge like an insecurely attached spider.
We already knew he’d survived the experience, because he was currently up in his little Scottish climbing shop regaling his customers with the tale.
Eddie laughedwhenever it looked like Francis might lose his grip as though he was watching a cartoon, which was disconcerting; but he does love us all, even Jane, in his way.
And he’d found time to change the leaky washer on the bath tap and mend a wonky kitchen chair while I was out.
Later, I discovered some folded papers in the side pocket of my bag: the printouts of articles about Dante.
Orla must havepushed them in there at the pub, then forgotten to tell me.
FIVE MISSING AFTER COLOMBIAN HOSTAGE RAID. Five men, including British journalist Dante Chase (on right in photograph), American TV cameraman Paul Vance (left), and three German agricultural advisers, were kidnapped yesterday while travelling to Bogota in the same vehicle.
It is feared left-wing guerrilla group FARC are responsible…
The photo of Dante showed a younger, less gaunt version of the man I’d met, leaning against a car in the middle of what looked like a desert. The one taken on his release showed a hollow-eyed, thin man with a haunted expression and hair even longer and shaggier than it was now – plus rather Che Guevara facial hair.
BRITON FREED IN COLOMBIAN HOSTAGE RAID SHOOT-OUT. Hundreds of soldiers yesterdaytook part in a raid on a former FARC safe haven, after the lack of progress towards peace talks…
There were several articles, but most repeated the same facts: Dante and Paul had accepted a lift from the German agricultural advisers, who were there to encourage the growing of crops other than those for the lucrative cocaine and heroin trade. The left-wing guerrilla group, FARC, who deriveda considerable income from drug production, promptly kidnapped them, and the other two men with them.
From what I read, someone gets kidnapped and held to ransom by FARC practically every day there. Dante and Paul were just unlucky – in the wrong place at the wrong time – and Paul was doubly unlucky because he was killed, along with three soldiers and one of the Germans, in the raid.
WIFE OFBRITISH HOSTAGE IN COLOMBIA DIES AFTER TV APPEAL FOR HIS RELEASE.
A fuzzy picture of a pretty, dark-haired woman: Dante’s wife, Emma. So far as I could tell she didn’t look a bit like me, which was somehow a relief. After that, the last hostage story was a short piece in a Sunday paper written by Dante himself, giving a brief description of the conditions they were held in, and a glowing tributeto the two hostages who had been killed. The paper disclosed that he had received an advance to write his autobiography, and it would be serialized before publication.
I thought that was it, but there was one more sheet with two small news items about Dante: in the first, police and an ambulance had apparently been called by neighbours after a fracas at his London flat. A Mrs Dufferin, the motherof his dead wife, was later released from hospital after being treated for a suspected heart attack.
In the second Dante appeared to have been involved in a fight with his sister’s boyfriend, who seemed to have got the worst of it, although no charges were brought.
That was it, the tantalizing bones of Dante’s past, already picked over in public and now on the internet, for anyone to see.
I studied the before and after pictures for a while, but they didn’t tell me anything I didn’t already know.
