Opposite the station were three high-class hotels — the Aral, the Tethys and the Varuna. I remembered their ornate, decaying façades from my previous visit, but with my limited finances and little or no idea of what the next few days might bring, I decided it might be prudent to economise. I turned right, then right again, away from the city centre, opting for the maze of obscure canals that lay to the west of the station. Within minutes, I found myself in a different world — rubbish bags dumped everywhere, the scuttle of rats, and a smell that was almost sweet, like rotting celery. Wooden boards had been nailed over the ground-floor windows of all the houses. Once, I was able to peer between two slats that had come loose. The dark glint of floodwater, a framed photo of three children floating on the surface … Further on, a crudely painted arrow pointed to a basement. A palm-reader known as Undine plied her trade down there. I pictured Undine as a fat woman in a rowing-boat, which she would steer from one room to another using a frying pan or a spatula or the lid from an old biscuit tin. I hurried on, passing beneath the tattered awning of a fish restaurant. Sooner or later I was bound to find a cheap hotel, the kind of place where they wouldn’t care about documents or think it untoward if someone had no luggage.
As I crossed a metal footbridge, I looked to my left and saw a pale-blue neon sign fixed vertically to the front of a building and glowing weakly through the fog. HYDRO HOTEL, it said. Then, in smaller horizontal letters, vacancies. The canal was so narrow that there was only room for a path along one side, the houses opposite sliding straight into the water like teeth into a jaw. I retraced my steps and turned along the path, pausing when I reached the hotel entrance. The lobby had a beige tile floor with a strip of orange carpet running up the middle. Reception was a hatch cut in a chipboard partition. I pressed the buzzer on the counter. Behind me, on a drop-leaf table, stood an aquarium. I put my face close to the glass. A single goldfish was swimming upside-down among the weeds.
‘You know anything about fish?’
I straightened up. The hatch framed a woman, middle-aged, with dyed blonde hair and fleshy arms. Aquaville was printed on the front of her white T-shirt in silver script, as if a snail had crawled across it in the night.
‘When they swim upside-down like that,’ I said, ‘it means they’re dying.’
The woman nodded gloomily. ‘Oh well.’
‘Have you got a room?’
I told her I would be staying for two nights and paid in advance. This would establish my respectability, I thought, and stop her asking any awkward questions. She handed me a key. It was on the second floor, she said. At the front. Thanking her, I set off up the stairs. When I had rounded the first corner, I allowed myself a brief smile. Documents hadn’t even been mentioned.
My room smelled of cologne, something lemony, as though it had only recently been vacated. Either that, or nobody had cleaned. I walked into the bathroom. At first I thought the washbasin was cracked, but then I realised it was a black hair, six inches long. I flushed it down the toilet. Back in the room, I stood at the window, staring out into the fog. For days, if not for weeks, I’d hardly dared to think about the city in case all my attempts to return to it were thwarted. But I had managed it. Everything I wanted was no more than a few light steps away. Her hand resting on my forehead, her skirt a blur of brightly coloured flowers. There you are… A motor launch passed by below, its engine beating like a bird’s heart, soft and rapid.
That evening I ate dinner at the restaurant I had seen earlier. Called, rather touchingly, My Plaice — a fish which, as it happened, did not feature on the menu — it was a small, chaotic establishment where each new arrival was treated as an almost insurmountable catastrophe. My waiter, a bony, long-fingered man in his late twenties, seemed threatened by every word that was addressed to him. When I ordered fish of the day, for example, and a carafe of dry white wine, he just stared at me, his forehead pearled with sweat. Surprisingly, the food was quite good, and I lingered over it, exchanging a few words with Mr Festuccia, whose ‘plaice’ it was, and accepting a liqueur on the house. By the time I paid my bill it was almost eleven o’clock.
I asked my waiter to call me a taxi, but he gave me a look of such consternation that I instantly revised my request. Did he know where I could find transport at this time of night? Yes, he knew. I’d just have to let him think for a moment. Fingers in his mouth, he squinted at the ceiling. Yes, he’d seen a taxi-rank, he said finally. In the direction of the railway station. Five minutes’ walk. Well, maybe seven.
Once outside, I walked as fast as I could. I saw no point in delaying any longer. I seemed to have been waiting an eternity for this moment without ever knowing whether it would actually arrive. Now, at last, it was just a matter of a taxi ride. The city was still wrapped in fog, the light of the street lamps blurred as candy-floss. As I turned into a narrow passage that linked two canals, a door slammed open and a man whirled out on to the pavement with such velocity that I assumed he’d just been forcibly ejected from the house. We collided. He almost fell. As we muttered our apologies, I caught a glimpse of him. Something vulpine about the face, something canny. A quarter of a century collapsed in a split-second.
‘Cody!’ I said.
‘What? Who are you?’ He pushed his face close to mine, and I smelled his breath, sugary and yet corrupt, like over-ripe fruit. He must have been drinking for hours. Days even.
‘We were at Thorpe Hall together. I sat next to —’
Gripping my sleeve, he led me down a cul-de-sac that was still more narrow and obscure, then pushed me into a doorway. ‘What’s your name?’
‘Then or now?’
‘Now,’ he hissed. ‘Now, of course.’
‘Thomas Parry.’
‘And before?’
‘Micklewright. Matthew Micklewright.’
‘You really expect me to believe this is a coincidence?’
I laughed. ‘What else?’
His head swivelled towards the alley, as if he had heard something. He kept one hand on my chest, though, pinning me against the door. We remained in that position for at least a minute. I could probably have freed myself, but I chose not to. He turned to me again. ‘We could go somewhere,’ he said, ‘if you’ve got time.’
‘Yes,’ I said. ‘All right.’
He stepped away from me, sliding both hands into his trouser pockets. Though he was still staring at me, his face seemed to have been decanted of all expression, like someone daydreaming. For the first time he was thinking back, perhaps, trying to place me. I straightened my jacket, brushed myself down.
‘Are you still called De Vere?’ I asked.
‘How do you know that?’
‘Bracewell told me.’
‘Bracewell…’ He looked off down the cul-de-sac to where a cat crouched by a dustbin, its eyes lustrous and flat.
We didn’t say much after that — at least, not for a while. De Vere jerked his head and started walking. Over bridges we went, through a housing estate, across a park. Every now and then he would give me a rapid sideways glance. He still appeared to suspect me of some kind of trickery or subterfuge.