“I don’t know you,” he said. “I don’t owe you anything.”
Evie gave him her big lipstick smile.
“We bought your paper off Fedy Gash,” she explained. She studied the wreckage of the tank farm. “Looks as if she didn’t really want to sell.” She allowed herself another smile. “Still. A twink like you owes everyone else in the universe, Ed. That’s what a twink is, a speck of protoplasm in the ocean.” She shrugged. “What can we do, Ed? We’re all fish.”
Ed knew she was right. He wiped helplessly at himself again, then, seeing Vesicle behind his counter, approached him and said:
“You got any tissues back there, or like that?”
“Hey, Ed,” Vesicle said. “I got this.”
He pulled out the Hi-Lite Autoloader he had taken from the dead girl and fired it into the ceiling. “I’m so scared I could shit!” he yelled at the Cray sisters. They looked startled. “So, you know: fuck you!” He darted jerkily out from behind the counter, every nerve in his body firing off at random. He could barely control his limbs. “Hey, fuck, Ed. How’m I doing?” he screamed. Ed, who was as surprised as the Cray sisters, stared at him. Any minute now, Bella and Evie would wake up from their trance of surprise. They would brush the plaster dust off their shoulders and something serious would start to happen.
“Jesus, Tig,” Ed said.
Naked, stinking of embalming fluid and punctured for the tank at “neurotypical energy sites,” a wasted Earthman with a partly grown-out Mohican and a couple of snake tattoos, he ran out into the street. Pierpoint was deserted. After a moment explosions and flashes of light lit up the windows of the tank farm. Then Tig Vesicle staggered out backwards, the arms of his coat on fire with blowback from the reaction pistol, shouting, “Hey, the fuck,” and, “I’m so shit!” They stared at one another with expressions of terror and relief. Chianese beat out the fire with his hands. Arms around each other’s shoulders they blundered off into the night, drunk for the moment with body-chemicals and camaraderie.
10
Agents of Fortune
Three in the morning. Valentine Sprake was long gone. Michael Kearney stumbled along the north bank of the Thames, then hid among some trees until he thought he heard a voice. This frightened him again and he ran all the way to Twickenham in the dark and the wind before he got control of himself. There he tried to think, but all that came to him was the image of the Shrander. He decided to call Anna. Then he decided to call a cab. But his hands were trembling too hard to use the phone, so in the end he did neither but took the towpath back east instead. An hour later, Anna met him at her door, wearing a long cotton nightgown. She looked flushed and he could feel the heat of her body from two feet away.
“Tim’s with me,” she said nervously.
Kearney stared at her.
“Who’s Tim?” he said.
Anna looked back into the flat.
“It’s all right, it’s Michael,” she called. To Kearney she said, “Couldn’t you come back in the morning?”
“I just want some things,” Kearney said. “It won’t take long.”
“Michael—”
He pushed past her. The flat smelled strongly of incense and candle wax. To get to the room where he kept his stuff, he had to pass Anna’s bedroom, the door of which was partly open. Tim, whoever he was, sat propped up against the wall at the head end of the bed, his face three-quarter profile in the yellow glow of two or three nightlight candles. He was in his mid thirties, with good skin and a build light but athletic, features which would help give him a boyish appearance well into his forties. He had a glass of red wine in one hand, and he was staring thoughtfully at it.
Kearney looked him up and down.
“Who the hell is this?” he said.
“Michael, this is Tim. Tim, this is Michael.”
“Hi,” said Tim. He held out his hand. “I won’t get up.”
“Jesus Christ, Anna,” Kearney said.
He went through to the back room, where a brief search turned up some clean Levi’s and an old black leather jacket he had once liked too much to throw away. He put them on. There was also a cycle-courier bag with the Marin logo on the flap, into which he began emptying the contents of the little green chest of drawers. Looking up blankly from this task, he discovered that Anna had washed the chalked diagrams off the wall above it. He wondered why she would do that. He could hear her talking in the bedroom. Whenever she tried to explain anything, her voice took on childish, persuasive values. After a moment she seemed to give up and said sharply, “Of course I don’t! What do you mean?” Kearney remembered her trying to explain similar things to him. There was a noise outside the door and Tim poked his head round.
“Don’t do that,” Kearney said. “I’m nervous already.”
“I wondered if I could help?”
“No, thanks.”
“It’s just that it’s five o’clock in the morning, you see, and you come in here covered in mud.”
Kearney shrugged.
“I see that,” he said. “I see that.”
Anna stood angrily by the door to watch him out. “Take care,” he said to her, as warmly as he could. He was two flights down the stone stairs when he heard her footsteps behind him. “Michael,” she called. “Michael.” When he didn’t answer, she followed him out into the street and stood there shouting at him in her bare feet and white nightdress. “Did you come back for another fuck?” Her voice echoed up and down the empty suburban street. “Is that what you wanted?”
“Anna,” he said, “it’s five o’clock in the morning.”
“I don’t care. Please don’t come here again, Michael. Tim’s nice and he really loves me.”
Kearney smiled.
“I’m glad.”
“No, you’re not!” she shouted. “No, you’re not!”
Tim came out of the building behind her. He was dressed, and he had his car keys in his hand. He crossed the pavement without looking at Anna or Kearney, and got into his car. He wound the driver’s window down as if he thought about saying something to one of them, but in the end shook his head and drove off instead. Anna stared after him puzzledly then burst into tears. Kearney put his arm round her shoulders. She leaned in to him.
“Or did you come back to kill me,” she said quietly. “The way you killed all those others?”
Kearney walked off towards the Underground station at Gunnersbury. His phone chirped at him suddenly, but he ignored it.
Heathrow Terminal 3, hushed after the long night, maintained a slow dry warmth. Kearney bought underwear and toilet articles, sat in one of the concessions outside the departure lounge reading the Guardian and taking small sips of a double espresso.
The women behind the concession counter were arguing about something in the news. “I’d hate to live forever,” one of them said. She raised her voice. “There’s your change, love.” Kearney, who had been expecting to see his own name on page two of the paper, raised his head. She gave him a smile. “Don’t forget your change,” she said. He had found only the name of the woman he had killed in the Midlands; no one was looking for a Lancia Integrale. He folded the paper up and stared at a trickle of Asians making their way across the departure lounge for a flight to LAX. His phone chirped again. He took it out: voicemail.
“Hi,” said Brian Tate’s voice. “I’ve been trying to get you at home.” He sounded irritable. “I had an idea a couple of hours ago. Give me a ring if you get this.” There was a pause, and Kearney thought the message was over. Then Tate added, “I’m really a bit concerned. Gordon was here again after you left. So call.” Kearney switched the phone off and stared at it. Behind Tate’s voice he had heard the white cat mewing for attention.