Richard knew all this because Opal had explained it several times over. He even remembered some of the nicknames.
"That's Mjolnir, right? Aka the Hammer?"
"Not bad, Richie."
People were swirling all around them. Brian had gone off somewhere with some older guys his own age.
"What are the towers for? They're too smooth to climb up."
"Only for the freerunners. No gloves, no skates, see? This is the freerunning; the gekrunners come afterwards."
"And old Hammer up there is a freerunner."
"He does both, actually, unlike most of them. In competition, leastways."
Brand names and mottos of clothing and equipment companies scrolled down the ramps and slides and towers. Opal and the other squatters, gekrunners or not, despised the System, meaning banks and ordinary jobs and all the rest; but they accepted companies promoting their gek-gear, because otherwise there would be no events like this, no money to pay for people to come from abroad, or to hire in the massive stands, and whatever else it took.
Of them all, it seemed only Brian saw the contradictions in their views.
And me.
At least Brian had a place among them.
What can I do?
Athleticism was alien to him. If he were at home now, he'd be up his bedroom, reading a book on his widescreen, drinking a Diet Coke or milk, pretending not to hear Father downstairs swearing as he got deeper into the whisky, or the rows with the in-house staff, the screech of wheels if Father set off for a drunken, too-fast drive in his ElectroBentley X.
"Richie, did you see that?"
"Uh, what?"
"He went from like a Lache into… Never mind."
"Sorry."
"You all right?"
"Sure. Yeah."
There were smells of roasting food, nuts and cicadas and chicken, and the sweetness of candy floss; but the pain in his stomach was familiar now, a constant hard pressure. His lack of money was a reality. But Opal was with him.
She was focused on the freerunners cartwheeling and leaping around the competition stage: absorbed, lips apart and eyes alight, perhaps seeing herself up there one day, feeling how it would be to flip through the air like that, enjoy the attention of the crowd. At least, that was what he thought was happening in her head.
The music was a piece he knew, Everyone Runs From Something, and he would normally remember the name of the band but tonight it wasn't there in his mind. Despite the crowd all around and Opal beside him, he felt more lost than he had ever imagined he could be. People jostled and cheered the freerunners' performance, which to him was a montage of senseless movement and confusion.
None of this was right.
Josh followed the stream of people. At intervals, he checked his phone, then, after finding no search hits, he randomly accessed the footage his software agents were analysing. Around the Embankment and further east at South Bank and Waterloo, the flow of faces and bodies along the streets formed an organic river, so hard to dive inside for individuals, especially when they were kids, shorter than the throng of adults. If they were here at all.
More people passing meant a wealth of video data, more possibilities – counterbalanced by the difficulty of seeing someone clearly enough for recognition. All around was a press of individuals caught up in the tidal motion of the crowd, though each of those thousands was a self-aware individual, a human being with success and failures, loves and disappointments, a family past and an unknown future; while he himself could drift with his thoughts or come back to reality: a fourteen year-old boy needed to be found, for his own sake and Suzanne's.
Josh bought a pink candyfloss, so he looked like someone here for pure enjoyment, and held it in his right hand, keeping his fingers away from the wispy, sticky sugar-cloud.
On the grass area by the Eye, gekrunners were warming up. He moved closer, protective of his candyfloss, finding a place to stand. Ignoring the competition spectacle, he looked around the crowd, trying to spot a girl or lad matching the images in his mind. Meanwhile, his phone was in his sealed shirt pocket, ready to vibrate if one of his querybots found a hit.
Around him, some wore their phones velcroed to sleeves or on bands around wrist or biceps. Though the fabric would make a noise if pulled, this place was crowded and the music was loud – wearing phones that way invited theft. That was why Josh's was in his pocket.
A strange hand took hold of his knife hilt.
He reacted as trained, slapping his hand against the attacker's, pinning his grip and knife, dropping his weight as he spun, free hand hammering down, still with the candyfloss – impale the eyeball – but the attacker was small – pull back – eight or nine years old – Jesus Christ – and he diverted the strike in time. He twisted the trapped hand, and the kid went to his knees.
"I should snap every bone in your arm. If I sneeze it'll happen anyway."
"S-sorry."
"Get up." He unpinned the hand. "Come on."
"All right. You didn't have to hurt me."
"Sod off."
This was a child with a story as intricate and emotive as Richard Broomhall's; but no one could solve every problem in the world, and dragging the kid to the police would do nothing to achieve what he was here for. After a moment, the kid started to slide off through the crowd.
"No. Stop," said Josh.
The kid froze.
"Take this." Josh thrust the candyfloss at him. "Take it."
A shaking hand closed on the stick.
"Now sod off, and think how different things might have been."
The kid went.
Shit. Suzanne would've handled that better.
Maybe it was because he worked best with a single focus, a clear mission objective that "I saw you manhandling that boy."
"What?"
A tubby man, his convex belly straining his polo shirt, pointed a short finger and said: "You're a bully and a bad parent, and I've half a mind to report you to-"
Josh's hand whipped out, thumb hooked, the web of skin striking the idiot's throat.
"Chh-" The guy rocked in place, panicked and frozen.
Fuck it.
Josh walked away, knowing the idiot could not follow, would not be able to speak for a time. Swallowing food was going to be a bitch as well. Call it the Cumberland diet.
He didn't deserve that.
The voice inside his head was Maria's.
On the periphery of the crowd, freerunners were tumbling in a loose, lighthearted fashion. None of the competitors were up on the competition stand: some kind of break between events. They all looked to be in their teens. Josh wondered if he could match them, then realised he had no chance.
Good discipline.
It looked impromptu, and free format was obviously the name of the game, but they all had techniques in common and knew how to perform them. Josh might not be trained in what they did, but he understood how the body moved, and these guys simply flowed.
"Very nice," he said, as one of them jumped from the riverside railing, performed a vertical spinning crescent kick – at least that was how Josh thought of the move – and dropped to the ground, into a shoulder roll, and came up with a hands-free cartwheel to land in a crouch.
"Cheers, man," said the freerunner.
One of the others, a white guy with dreadlocks tied in a topknot, nodded.
"I hear you guys are doing a night run," said Josh.
"Yeah, we're part of that, all right."
"It's a bit crowded here."
"Not after dark," said Dreadlocks, "but we're not starting from here. Down at South Bank, outside the old theatre, then down the underpass ramps and up around the station."