No one should have to carry the ends of time or that quantity of dark dead space inside them. Without thinking, he hugged the child close and felt her hesitate, then snuggle closer to his shoulder.
“Finish your toast,” said Kit.
She chewed in silence.
“Thing is,” said Neku, when her mouth was empty. “You only see this many stars because we’re in your light cone. Even then, about a fifth of those are already dead. Nico says stars shift with time, until distance begins to look like absence.”
Kit nodded.
“And I’m not really sure why earth was chosen.”
“For what?”
“To house all the fugees. Because it was empty, I guess. A planet without a people for a people without a planet.” Neku sighed. “It probably seemed like a good idea at the time.”
Together Kit and Neku watched the sky beyond his window get lighter and the stars, already faded by the city’s sodium glare, fade further, until they vanished into the perfect upturned bowl of an early summer morning.
Kit thought Neku was dozing until she suddenly spoke again. “Okay,” she said. “What are we doing today?”
“I’m seeing Patrick Robbe-Duras,” said Kit. “To show him Mary’s key. Pat says he doesn’t remember Mary owning a trunk but I can take a look anyway.”
“Can Charlie come too?”
Kit was about to say, But I’m going alone…and then decided to save himself the argument.
Quite why Pat expected Kit and Charlie to mow the lawn while Neku sorted buttons from a button box was never explained. Although by the end of the afternoon the grass was trimmed, raked, and mowed and all of the buttons collected by Mary as a small child had been sorted by size and type.
As a reward, Pat gave them tea on the freshly cut lawn. Charlie set up a wooden picnic table and Neku carried the china. She would have made the sandwiches, but Pat insisted on making those himself, somewhat crossly.
“He’s tired,” said Kit.
“No,” said Neku. “He’s dying.”
When Pat returned he found Neku and Charlie crouched by the river. Charlie was feeding digestive biscuits to the ducks, though every now and then he’d dip a finger into the water to take a bit of weed that Neku indicated. Just as Neku would discard a pebble from her mouth to taste another, when she found one she liked better.
Neither looked up when Pat got back.
“I’ve upset them,” said Pat, putting a plate of cucumber sandwiches on the rickety picnic table. “I’m sorry.”
“It’s okay,” said Kit. “You’re tired. Neku understands that.”
“Talked about me, did you?”
At Kit’s nod, Pat sighed. “People have been talking about me my entire life. Well, about Katie really. Speaking of which, she called yesterday to say you’d be in contact about some bloody key. So I told her you’d been in contact already.” He shrugged. “Not sure if Katie was angry about my already knowing or glad you were pushing on with finding Mary.”
Pat held out his hand. “I suppose you’d better show me.”
Taking the key Kit offered, Pat turned it over in his hands and pulled a pair of reading glasses from his jacket pocket to take a closer look.
“Recognise it?” asked Kit.
“No,” said Pat, handing the key back. “Anyway, it’s not like Mary went to that kind of school. You know why?”
Kit shook his head.
“Because the first private school we tried refused to take her. Oh, she passed their exam all right. Except someone told them about Katie, and we had a very embarrassed letter from the headmaster saying he’d made a mistake with class sizes and he was really sorry, but there wasn’t a place after all.”
“What happened?”
“Half the school burned down.”
Kit looked at him.
“Before term began,” said Pat tiredly. “No one got hurt.”
“Were you upset?”
“About Mary losing her place? Of course not. I was delighted. It was Katie who…” He stopped as Charlie escorted Neku up the bank, her fingers closed tight around a dripping mass of leaves, petals, and water weed.
“What’s that?”
Neku smiled. “You’ll see,” she said.
When Neku and Charlie reappeared it was with a glass full of cloudy water and a tiny box made from neatly folded paper. “Drink this,” said Neku, putting the glass on the picnic table. And the fact Pat did showed either extreme faith or an unusual level of tact.
“God,” he said. “That tastes vile.”
“Maybe,” said Neku. “But it will help. My grandmother taught me about plants.”
“About plants?”
“Well, poisons…they’re close enough. It’s what you do at the molecular level that matters.” Holding out her paper box, Neku showed how it opened to reveal one pebble. Kanji characters on each side of the box had bled into soft focus as ink seeped into paper.
“The box is meant to look like that,” Neku insisted.
“I’m sure it is,” said Pat. “What does this charm do?”
“It summons the kami,” promised Neku.
Pat smiled.
CHAPTER 42 — Friday, 29 June
It was Pat’s suggestion that Charlie and Neku travel back in Charlie’s old Mini and Kit stay for coffee. “It’ll only take five minutes,” Pat told Neku. “I just want a quick talk and Charlie needs to get home.”
“But I don’t have front door keys,” said Neku, sounding put out.
“It’s all right,” promised Pat. “Kit will catch up with you.” When Neku looked doubtful, Pat smiled. “Charlie can drive slowly,” he said.
Charlie nodded.
“She’s a good kid,” said Pat, once the gravel was empty and the Mini a memory of noisy horn bursts from the road beyond. “And she’s obviously worried about you.”
“Worried?”
“She told me you were in trouble. Something about Yakuza bosses and fire bombing. Katie mentioned you had problems, but didn’t tell me what…Katie always tried to keep that stuff from me.” Pat took a deep breath, then lost a whole minute to the coughing fit this induced.
“Shit,” said Kit, when he’d finished helping Pat inside.
Spitting into a tissue, Pat nodded. “I’ll live, for a while anyway…What I kept you back to say was that I’m grateful for the help you’re giving Katie, but if you’re really in trouble then tell her. Katie has contacts. Call it payment.”
“Kate hates me,” said Kit. “And the debt is mine.”
“You were kids,” Pat said crossly. “It’s time you forgave yourself.” He sat in silence for a while after that, watching Kit sip luke-warm coffee from a battered mug, while staring out of the window at the river beyond. “I never liked how Katie lived,” said Pat. “It was always a problem between us.”
He was talking about the Firm, Kit realised, the web of criminal connections that Kate O’Mally inherited, built into something altogether grander, and eventually passed to her nephew Michael, the man Kit had half-blinded beside a hedge in Wintersprint.
“She told me once,” said Pat, “that it was just a job.”
“What did you say?”
“That it was a job in which people died. She told me mortality was the human condition.” Pat sighed. “I blame her priest. When I told Katie that wasn’t good enough, she said at least it was the right people who died, and it was the only answer she had.”
“I should go,” said Kit, “if I’m going to catch up to them.”
“What I’m trying to say,” said Pat, sighing, “is that Katie has connections. Global connections. The Yakuza, the Camorra, the ’Ndranghala, the Mafia…Katie’s mob might not have a fancy name but they still command respect. If you have problems talk to her.”
Kit shook his head.
“At least pretend to think about it,” Pat said.
Peeling off his gauntlets, Kit kicked the Kawasaki onto its stand and unbuckled his helmet. Charlie was already negotiating his battered Mini into the spot where the Porsche usually parked, so Kit guessed he was planning to see Neku inside.