“We ain’t dealing with that lot,” he said. “You think they’ll keep us safe? They won’t mess with us? You think she ain’t going to hand us right over?”
“But…”
“‘But’ fuckity shite, Billy. We stick to who I know.” Dane brought out maps of London felt-tipped with additions, sigils on parkland and routes traced through streets. A speargun, Billy saw to his surprise, like a scuba diver might carry.
“You’ve never shot, right?” Dane said. “Maybe we need to get you something. I didn’t… I didn’t have time to plan this a whole lot, you know? I’m thinking who might help. Who I’ve run with.” He counted off on his fingers, and scribbled names. “My man Jason. Wati. Oh, man, Wati. He’s going to be angry. If we want to get a talisman or anything we need to go to Butler.”
“Are these kraken people?”
“Hell no, the church is out,” Dane said. “That’s closed. We can’t go there. These are people I’ve run with. Wati’s a red, good guy. Butler, it’s all about what he saw: he can get you defences. Jason, Jason Smyle, he’s a good bet.”
“Hey, I know that name,” Billy said. “Did he work at… the museum?” Dane smiled and shook his head. No, thought Billy, the familiarity abruptly gone.
They ate from the bag of junk food Dane had bought. There were two beds, but like campers they dossed down on the living room floor. This was a landscape through which they were passing, a forest glade. They lay without speaking some time.
“How did it feel?” Dane said. “To work on the kraken.”
“… Like smelly rubber,” Billy said at last. Dane looked as if he would thunder disapproval, but then he laughed.
“Oh man,” said Dane. “You’re bad.” He shook his head. His grin was guilty. “Seriously. You telling me there was nothing? You’ve got something.” He clicked his fingers, made that spot of biophosphor, like a deep-sea squid. “You didn’t feel nothing?”
Billy lay back. “No,” he said. “Not then. It was earlier. I was rubbish at what I did, the first few months I was there. I didn’t even know if I’d stick it. But then all of a sudden I got much better. That was when it felt something special. Like I could preserve anything, any way I wanted.”
“What about in the alley?” Dane said. Billy looked at him across the dark room. Dane spoke carefully. “When Goss was coming for you. You did something, then. Did that feel like something?”
“I didn’t do anything.”
“If you say so, Billy,” Dane said. “My granddad was a holy man. He used to ask me who my favourite saint was. He said you could tell a lot about someone if you knew that. So I’d say Kraken, because I wanted to be a good boy, and that was the right answer to most… religious questions. And he’d say, No, that’s cheating. Which saint? I couldn’t decide for ages, but suddenly one day I did. I told him.
“Saint Argonaut, I said. Really? he says. He wasn’t angry or nothing, he was just, like, surprised. But I think he liked that. Really? he goes. Not Saint Blue-Ring? Not Saint Humboldt? They’re your fighting saints. He said that because I was big like him and everyone knew I was going to be a soldier. Why Saint Argonaut? he goes. Because of that pretty spiral it makes, I says.”
Dane smiled beautifully, and Billy smiled back. He pictured the intricately fanned fractal eggcase Dane was describing, which gave the argonaut its other name. “Paper nautilus,” he said.
“He was a tough man, but he loved that,” Dane said.
When Dane went to the bathroom again, Billy opened the little bottle and dripped several bitter drops of the squid ink onto his tongue. He lay back and waited in the dark. But even with all the adrenalin of that day, and the inadequate snack supper, he went quickly to blank sleep, and outraced any visions or dreams.
Chapter Twenty-Three
WHAT MARGINALIA WAS THINKING WAS, WHAT THE HELL IS going on?
When Leon still did not answer any messages, she tried Billy, who did not answer either. She managed to persuade a locksmith of her bona fides, and at last got into Leon’s flat. Nothing was out of place. There was no hint to his location. She did not know Billy’s friends or family to call them.
Marge had walked into the police station closest to her when Leon had gone and not come back, when neither he nor Billy would answer their phones. She had reported two missing persons. The officers treated her with brusque sympathy, but they told her the number of people who disappeared every year, every week, and they told her how many soon returned from drunken trips or absentminded weekends. They told her it was best if she didn’t worry too much, and they warned her not to expect too much.
To her own great surprise, Marge began to cry in the station. The police were embarrassed and cack-handedly sweet, offering her tea and tissues. When she calmed down she went home, expecting nothing and not knowing what to do. But within an hour and a half of getting back (certain keywords coming up in the report of her visit, correlating with other words, the names she had mentioned attracting attention, Leon’s imperfectly recollected but telling last text, red-flagged on computer systems not nearly so hopeless as ostentatiously cynical commentators would claim) there was a knock at her door. A middle-aged man in a suit and a very young blonde woman offhandedly in police uniform. The woman carried a leash, but was not followed by any dog.
“Hello,” the man said. He had a thin voice. “It’s Miss Tilley, isn’t it? My name’s Baron. DCI Baron. This is my colleague WPC Collingswood. We need a word. I wonder if we might come in?”
Inside, Collingswood turned slowly, a full circle, taking in the dark walls, the posters for video events and basement electronica parties. Baron and Collingswood did not sit, though Marge gestured them at the sofa. She got a breath of some earthy, porky smell, and blinked.
“I gather you’ve mislaid some friends, Miss Tilley,” Baron said. Marge considered correcting him, Ms. did not bother.
“I wasn’t expecting to see you,” she said. “At your office they told me you couldn’t really do anything.”
“Ah, well, they don’t know what we know. What relation are you to Billy Harrow?”
“Billy? None at all. It’s Leon I’m with.”
“With?”
“I told you.”
“You haven’t told me anything, Miss Tilley.”
“I told them at the station. He’s my lover.”
Collingswood rolled her eyes and wobbled her head, La di fucking da. She click-clicked, as if at an animal, gestured with her chin toward the other rooms.
“And you haven’t heard anything from Leon since he went to meet Billy?” Baron said.
“I didn’t even know for sure that’s where he’d gone. How come you came so fast? I mean they said not to expect…” She opened her mouth in a sudden zero of terror. “Oh God, have you found him…?”
“No no,” said Baron. “Nothing like that. What it is is this is one of those dovetailing situations. Collingswood and I, we’re not generally Missing Persons, you see. We’re from a different squad. But we got a heads-up about your problem, because it may have bearing on our case.”
Marge stared at him. “… The squid thing? Is that what you’re investigating?”
“Fu-u-u-ck!” said Collingswood. “I knew it. That little bastard.”
“Ah.” Baron raised his eyebrows mildly. “Yes. We sort of wondered if Billy’d been able to resist a natter.”
“Got to give it to him, boss, for someone who don’t know what he’s doing, he’s got some clout. Come on, you.” She said the last to no one, so far as Marge could tell.
“We’d much rather you kept whatever he mentioned to yourself, if you don’t mind, Miss Tilley.”
“You think this has something to do with Leon going missing?” Marge said, incredulous. “And Billy? Where do you think they are?”