"Who are these two? One of them ran an errand for you the other night."
Khan's eyes narrowed. That was fast, he had already figured that Maxwell had talked.
"Strange kid, first time I used him. Don't know him."
"And the other?"
"That's Jayce. Just Jayce, no other name that I know."
Behind Josh, Kolchek's men were fanning out.
"Where does he hang out, Khan? Give me something, quick."
"Shit, these kids are on the street, you know? He could be anywhere."
"Uh-huh. You know, I am kind of outnumbered here."
"There's a shelter at Zenith Place."
"Where you found him, is it?"
Khan shook his head.
"So where else?" Josh went on. "Other haunts? People he hangs around with?"
"Had friends. The Spidermen threw him out. Kid was a shit. Loner."
"You call him a shit? You're something, Khan. Gimme something more."
"That's it." Khan shrugged his shoulders. "What do you expect? Just a punk. Now get me out of here."
"Giving orders? Your world changed today, and you still haven't realised."
"Hey, we had a deal."
Josh holstered his Browning. Then he reached inside, hauled Khan out of the boot, and dropped him like a sack. He slammed the boot lid down.
"Too bad I'm a liar."
He nodded once to Vinnie Kolchek, climbed into his car, and put it in drive. There was no need to use his rear-view mirror as he left the dealership. Then he was out on the road, driving steadily, careful not to give in to adrenaline and boost the acceleration; because safety was everything. After all, he was a law-abiding citizen.
[FIFTEEN]
The pub was called the Golden Switchblade; Richard tried not to think about blades, the slitting of skin, the revealing of slick intestines. In the small yard out back – the sign read Beer Garden – Opal sat down at a wooden table, while he took a seat opposite. Brian was inside, fetching drinks.
"What did you do today?" Richard asked.
He imagined hours of gekrunning practice, or poring over educationware on screen, though she didn't appear to attend school.
Zajac, with a blade in hand "What's up, Richie?"
"Nothing." He should not have thought of school. "Sorry."
"Huh. Well I was helping Ciara in the market, unloading boxes of fruit, stuff like that."
Across the garden, movement made them both look up. Not Brian, but a wide-shouldered man with shaven head and rolled-up sleeves, carrying three pints of beer by their handles. A smaller man had just taken a backward step into his path, at the cost of his own beer sloshing.
"Hoy." He glared at the bigger man, not seeming to notice the guy's size. "What you think you're bleeding doing?"
"I'm really sorry, mate. I hope I didn't spill any of your drink."
"Well, you bleeding did, as it happens."
"Here, have this full one. Pint of best, was it?"
"Er… Yeah."
"There ya go then. Take it easy."
"Well. OK."
The bigger man walked on, deposited his remaining two pints at a table where his friends were waiting. The two looked at him and he shrugged.
"Looks like I lost my own," he told them. "Back in a mo."
"Be careful how you go, delicate bloke like you."
"Yeah, pay attention to where you're walking."
"Do my best."
Opal watched him go back inside, then looked at the smaller man, now laughing with his cronies as he finished off his old drink before commencing on the new one. She shook her head.
"I don't get it," she said. "How can anyone be such a twat? Can't he see?"
Brian arrived, carrying three Cokes, and put them down. Condensation glistened on the glasses.
"See what?"
"That little bloke bumped into Eddie McMullen. Gave Eddie an earful, too."
"Holy Christ."
"Look at him laughing, the twat. Got no idea how lucky he is."
"Mind your language."
Richard sipped from his Coke. It was good, cold and with a kick. No alcohol, because that was for losers – people trying to cheer themselves up with a depressant, where was the sense in that? Father might earn money but his face looked flabbier, blotchier by the week; and whenever he locked himself away in his office at home, he invariably appeared bloodshot next morning, breath stinking, at least until after breakfast, and forty minutes in the master bathroom.
Their home had six bathrooms, five en suite. The squat had one, shared by two dozen people, give or take, and the water that came out was tepid and brownish. Paying no bills, they were lucky to have that much.
"Why's he lucky?" He meant the small guy who'd mouthed off.
"Big Eddie" – Brian gestured with his glass – "trains in four fighting systems, works the doors at Zero Point where he will not" – looking at Opal – "let under-eighteens inside, and he competes in Blade in the Cage. That's like Knifefighter Challenge, a semi-pro circuit that-"
Richard's stomach convulsed, a tsunami of acid inside. He got up and stumbled back from the table.
"Sorry…"
"Bloody hell, Richie."
"I'm sorry."
Hands clutched against his stomach, he moved as if trying not to be sick – as if a blade had pierced – into the pub, but going straight through, holding it all in, staggering through the exit and back into light. No one came after him, so he continued alone, into the hot evening, nothing in mind except to keep going until his eyes stopped burning and the acid inside him died down.
• • •
Maybe an hour later, he was sitting slouched inside a bus shelter at the Elephant amp; Castle. The fear had seeped away; now his limbs felt soft with tiredness. He listened as two women talked.
"It isn't all bad. Look at this." One of them gestured around the aluminium-and-plastic shelter. "Ten years ago, there'd have been graffiti everywhere."
Some places were still covered in tags, usually where they sprayed the streetcams first.
"Maybe, but with this heat, it's all like falling apart."
"Damn scientists and their global warming. Ozone layer and God knows what else."
Ozone is an allotrope of oxygen, the atoms going around three to a molecule instead of in pairs – "Like a saucy menage-a-trois instead of a couple" some chemist had said in an online lecture. The live adult audience had laughed. Richard had looked up menage-a-trois at OEDOnLine; he already knew what an allotrope was.
"Excuse me?" he said.
"Hello, son. What is it?"
He wanted to ask them what sort of person would have been measuring ozone concentrations high over the Antarctic in the previous century, and exactly what kind of people had been warning the world for decades about climate transition. He wanted to say that without science there wouldn't be civilisation, and the average lifespan would be thirty-something or less. That if they didn't get the new reactors built in time, everything would fall apart. He wanted to say all that.
"Er… do you know how long till the bus comes?"
"Says right there, on the display. Seven minutes."
"Oh. Thank you."
Then they were deep in conversation again, this time about taxes and what the Benbow family were up to in SimEastEnders. They paid no attention as he slipped out of the bus shelter. How could they be so certain about things, and yet so ignorant? Why couldn't sensible people be in charge of the world?
He thought about Dr Duchesne. She'd been nice, so very calm. Perhaps he could be like her some day, far different from Father. Some day. Right now, an ache was returning to his stomach, this time from lack of food.
Later again, and still hungry, he stood at South Bank, watching from beneath a concrete overhang – out of view of cameras – while gekrunners spun through acrobatic manoeuvres, skating across paving stones, cartwheeling down stairwells, tumbling over obstacles. The interplay of movement was mesmerising, their ability to keep their nerve incredible. Several tourists looked up, and he risked peeking out from cover. On the rooftop, three gekrunners chasing each other in fun, with a series of jumps and rolls to reach the roof's edge, then somersaulting down the wall to ground level, with skilful use of gekkomere gauntlets, lethally dangerous.