I hurry back into the kitchen and refill the caff, then add a generous shot of cooking whisky to her mug. When I get back to the living room she’s still on the sofa, her violin case sitting on the pile of magazines on the coffee table. She seems to be shaking at first, in silent laughter: then I realize she’s crying.
I put the coffee mugs on the table and sit down next to her. After a moment she shuffles round and I pull her against my shoulder, so that her tears trickle down the base of my neck.
Mo cries helplessly, almost silently, pausing every few seconds to take a little hiccuping gasp of air. She’s so quiet—almost as if she’s afraid to make a sound. I hold her gently, and murmur inanities over the top of her head, stroking her shoulders. I’m angry at my own helplessness: I’ve seen her upset before, but never anything like this—
“What happened?” I ask, eventually, after the shudders give way to an occasional twitch.
“You don’t need to know.” She sniffles. “God, I’m a mess. Fetch the tissues?” We disentangle and I go in search of something for her to wipe her nose on. When I get back she’s sitting up, clutching her coffee mug and staring at the brick-surround fireplace we’ve been meaning to get rid of ever since we moved in, with eyes like wrecking balls.
I put the tissues in front of her on the table. She ignores them. “Was it wet?” I ask.
“You have no need to—” She shudders slightly, puts the mug down, and grabs a tissue. I notice her hands are a mess, reddish-brown grime ingrained around her nail beds: Jonathan Hoag territory. Holding the kleenex to her face she blows her nose once, twice: a peal of bloody trumpets. “It was ghastly. They made me—I think I can say this—Bob, remember the Plumbers?”
I nod. Deep in the pit of my stomach, I feel dread. “The job in Amsterdam. They shut you up with a geas afterwards, didn’t they? Was it that bad? No, don’t try to tell me. You just stay right there.”
She nods convulsively. “I can’t talk about it.” Emphasis on the can’t. I stand up. “I’m going to make a call.” I go through to the kitchen and speed-dial Andy.
“Hello?” Andy sounds distracted.
I take a deep breath. “Pay attention now, I will ask this only once: Who should I blame for this? You? Or that motherfucker Tom in Conflict Resolution? Or someone else? Because I’ve got a situation here.”
“What—” Andy pauses. “Bob? Is that you?”
“Mo is home from Amsterdam,” I say carefully. “She’s in a state, and she can’t unload on me because some cretin in Plumbing has drawn the magic circle too tight. I don’t know what happened out there, but she’s about two millimeters away from a nervous breakdown. I can’t help her if she’s blocked from talking to me, so let me explain the situation in words of one syllable: you are going to get the geas relaxed so she can vent about whatever happened yesterday, or the Laundry is going to have to replace a valued employee. No, make that two—no, three new employees they’ll be needing, by the time I’m through with whoever’s responsible. Capisce?”
“It wasn’t me!” Andy sounds shocked. “Stay on the line. Where are you, exactly?”
“I’m in the kitchen at home, that’s on file as safe house Lima Three Six. Mo was in the living room, last time I looked. Is that exact enough for you?”
“Probably . . .” I hear keys clicking hastily, a keyboard on a desk near his phone. “Listen, you aren’t cleared for this, and I can’t do it over the phone. Normally you would be cleared but that enquiry that’s pending has screwed up your—look, I’m tied up right now, but I’ll send someone round immediately, as soon as I can find a warm body. Can you hold the fort for an hour?”
“Who are you going to send, exactly?”
“The office bloody intern if I have to, as long as they’ve got an Oyster card and can carry a Letter of Release, will that do you?”
I sigh. “It’ll have to. Better hurry, though, or you’re going to be short-staffed next week.”
I go back to the living room. Mo is sitting on the sofa, immobile, in exactly the position she was in when I left. I shove the coffee table aside and kneel in front of her. “Mo? Talk to me?”
She’s staring right through me at the fireplace, vague and unfocused. “Can’t,” she says.
“I called Andy. The reason it won’t let you talk to me is the pending enquiry on my record.” It being the simpleminded geas someone in Plumbing dropped on everyone who witnessed the scene in Amsterdam. “I threatened to kick his arse and he’s sending a courier with a Letter of Release just for you.” A physical token that will release her from the geas. “He said it’ll take about an hour, maybe a bit longer. Can you wait that long?”
Abruptly, she makes eye contact. “Oh thank God,” she says. Then she slowly slumps forward, like a puppet whose strings have just been cut.
THIRTY MINUTES LATER, THE DOORBELL RINGS. I’m upstairs in the bedroom, sitting up with Mo, when I hear the chimes. It took a while to get her up there and into bed, propped up on pillows with the duvet pulled up to her chin—still wearing most of her street clothes—and a mug of coffee to hand. She’s shivery and a bit shocky but the color has begun to return to her cheeks, and ten minutes ago she asked me to bring her violin. She doesn’t like to leave it unattended, and she’s right—fuck knows what would happen if one of the local lowlifes put a brick through the window and snatched it, the thing’s about as safe as a loaded machine gun with no safety catch. So it’s sitting on the bed, and she’s got one hand on it, just to maintain contact.
We’re talking inconsequentialities, waiting for the letter to arrive. “A weekend would be good,” she agrees.
“If I can find a bed and breakfast—”
“In Harrogate? It won’t be cheap but it’ll be quiet and there are places to walk, and it’s not far off the East Coast Main Line.”
“Maybe York, instead?”
“York, in summer? It’ll be sunny, but the river smells—”
Ding-dong.
“That’ll be the letter,” I say, rising. “Back in a minute.” I’m through the door and taking the stairs two at a time. That was fast, I think, eagerly reaching for the door handle.
My head hurts. Then the next thing I think is, That’s funny. Why am I on the floor?
I’m looking up and my vision is blurred, like a migraine. Uncle Fester leans over me, pointing a gun with a fat barrel at my face.
“Где же она?” he says.
“Uh?”
Actually, my face feels like it’s split open. The bastard shoved the door in my face, hard.
Uncle Fester pokes my forehead with the gun, provoking a bright metallic flash of pain. “Скажи мне сейчас, или я буду убивать вас.”
He looks like Niko Bellic’s mad uncle, the bad one with the child abuse convictions and the questionable personal hygiene, not to mention a bright red-glowing zit in the middle of his forehead. And I am utterly fucked, because I don’t understand a word he’s saying: but I’ll swear I saw him or his twin brother at the bus stop yesterday—
He’s pulling back the gun. I can see its barrel looking huge and dark, and if I knew where my hands were there’s this neat trick you can do when some idiot points an automatic at you at short range, you grab the slide by laying your hand on top of the barrel and pushing back to stop the breech closing, which is a great secret agent stunt if you’re not lying on the floor of your own front hall with one arm trapped under you and blood trickling down your face.