‘I told myself this was for Fahad,’ Chloe said. ‘That I can help him negotiate the best price for whatever it is that’s infected him and his little sister. Make sure that they’ll be given a chance to live a normal life afterwards. And I do want to help him, but I have to admit that I’m also scared that when this is over, when I’ve persuaded him to come in, that’ll be that as far as I’m concerned. So long and thanks for all the fish.’
‘Which wouldn’t be good, for the story.’
‘Anything you find out, I can use it to stay in the game. Also I want Fahad’s friends to know that it’s safe to get in contact with me again, if things go wrong.’
‘Do you expect this to go wrong?’
Gail Ann’s gaze was serious under the bill of her cap.
‘My friend does,’ Chloe said. ‘The police are looking for Fahad, and his father’s employers have an interest too, it turns out.’
‘If it helps, I brought Noah’s car. He thinks I’m helping a friend move. So if you need to get out of here in a hurry…’
‘Like in the films?’
‘It would make a great scene, wouldn’t it?’
‘If anything does happen, the police or whatever turn up, get out as quickly and quietly as possible. Walk away and don’t look back. My friend will take care of me.’
‘And if I happen to give one of Fahad’s friends a lift?’
‘Don’t even think about it. If they have any sense, they’ll have an escape route. Probably more than one.’
‘How are you holding up?’
‘I’m a bag of nerves, frankly.’
‘You don’t look nervous,’ Gail Ann said. ‘You look…eager.’
‘I really want this to work out.’
Gail Ann smiled. ‘He put a hook in you, didn’t he? Cute Pakistani boy, those soulful eyes they have, eyelashes to die for.’
‘Something put a hook in me all right,’ Chloe said.
She circled the free market, sat at the counter of a stall that sold churros and paper cones of muscular café au lait, Cuban style. She perched sideways on her stool, watching passers-by, trying and failing to spot Sandra’s operatives. Henry’s voice buzzed in the earpiece of her spex. She couldn’t see him, either, but she knew he was close by because he was commenting on people walking past her.
Saying, ‘How does that guy eat, with those fangs?’ Or, ‘That’s barely human.’ Or, ‘Is that supposed to be a!Cha tank she’s trundling along there? Because she clearly hasn’t ever seen a real one.’
Chloe raised the cone of coffee to her lips. ‘And you have.’
‘The Prof has one as a house guest,’ Henry said. ‘Damn thing calls itself Unlikely Worlds. It claims to be interested in the Prof. Says that she is a potential catalyst. You can imagine how much she loves that.’
‘I met it,’ Chloe said. ‘Him. All!Cha, the ones on Earth, are male. Ada Morange held a party after she bought a majority share in Disruption Theory.’
Henry said, ‘I was there.’
‘I don’t remember you.’
‘I was walking perimeter security. The idea being that you and the other guests didn’t see me.’
‘Is this your way of telling me that you aren’t really a freelance investigator?’
‘I do all kinds of work,’ Henry said.
‘That old Range Rover. Is that even yours?’
‘I like to use it for surveillance work. What would you have done if you were met by a couple of beefcakes in black suits, mirrorshades and curly-wire earpieces? No, I figured the down-at-heel junkyard look was the way to go.’
‘You played me.’
‘I tailored my look to your expectations.’
‘You profiled me and you played me.’
‘The Prof likes you, as much as she likes anyone. She’s interested in you, in a good way. I’m an expression of that interest.’
It was half past four.
‘They’re late,’ Chloe said.
‘They’re always late. They like to check the venue one last time, have to psych themselves up…Know what this reminds me of? Camden Market, back in the day.’
‘That’s for daytrippers and poseurs who like the alienist look but don’t want to live the life,’ Chloe said. ‘This is where people who live the life live the life.’
‘You have it too,’ Henry said. ‘The obsession with the alien and the weird. But you don’t have the look. No mods. Not even a tattoo that I can see.’
‘It affects different people in different ways,’ Chloe said.
She thought of Fahad and his little sister, Rana. Both of them responding to something. Both touched, infiltrated, possessed.
Henry said, ‘I used to hang out in Camden Market just about every weekend. Me and my mates. Like this, watching the world go by, the different tribes.’
‘Which tribe did you belong to?’
‘Indie rock, mostly. My little gang wore Fred Perry shirts and skinny jeans and Converse hi-tops, and Camden was our home, our turf. Everyone else in the market, no matter how hip they liked to think they were, they were just passing through. They were, like you said, daytrippers. So we have that in common at least. We’re both observers. We like to watch. We see things from the outside…Look sharp. I think we’re on.’
A young man ordered a coffee to go and pushed a sheet of paper across the counter to Chloe. One of Mr Archer’s flyers.
‘He sees only you,’ the young man said, looking straight ahead. He was eighteen or nineteen, tall and thin and jittery, dark skin and high cheekbones, dressed in an oversized T-shirt screen-printed with the Max Predator poster, black ribbed leggings. Turning now, slouching away with his paper cone of coffee.
‘Stay cool. Remember that I have your back,’ Henry said, and Chloe followed the kid around the pool and down one of the narrow passages between storefronts.
She felt an airy sense of excitement. Closing in on her prize, hyper-aware of passers-by, a woman working at a sewing machine in a narrow plate-glass window, a couple of men gossiping in a storefront that sold Jackaroo masks and Jackaroo sunglasses and Jackaroo bobbleheads, rows of them staring blankly as she went past. Remembering, with a shiver in her blood, the Jackaroo avatar wading out of the sea. Remembering its warning.
The young man stopped at a shop window where alien stones and minerals glittered on a ladder of transparent shelves, and told Chloe, ‘Wait here. If it’s all clear he’ll be with you.’
And then he was gone, leaving Chloe to study the stones. Lumps of red sandstone, chunks of marble, pebbles, a big geode like a broken egg with purplish crystals inside. Test tubes half-filled with sand, different colours. Sheets of slate each with a fossil or fragment of a fossil, like pages from some strange and deeply ancient book…She felt a sudden ache, like the nostalgia from looking at old family photographs, people and places in times before she was born, before the aliens came, before the Spasm. A yearning for a place she’d never seen.
‘There he is,’ Henry’s voice said in her ear, and Fahad was standing beside her, his reflection beside hers in the gleaming glass. Rana clutched his hand, peeking around him at Chloe, who smiled and asked how she was.
The little girl ducked her head away, looked back. Chloe had a sense, suddenly, of the watchful presence that had followed her out of the displaced-persons camp. It was right there, at her back. She had to fight the urge to look around.
‘You caused us a lot of trouble,’ Fahad said.
‘I know. And I’m sorry for it. But I came here because I want to help you. You and Rana.’
Rana tugged at her brother’s hand. ‘Tell her what Ugly Chicken says.’
Fahad said, ‘Not now, Rana.’
Rana said to Chloe, ‘He likes you.’
Chloe said, ‘Is he your special friend?’
The little girl nodded.
‘I think I can feel him watching me.’
‘He won’t hurt you.’