“I considered mutilating you,” I breathed, barely aware of the words as I spoke them, and had the satisfaction of seeing something twitch in Coyle’s face. “Obviously not while I was inhabiting, I have never had a taste for such things. But I still hope that your colleagues, whoever they may be, may hesitate to kill you, as you killed my Josephine, and that hesitation could yet save my life.”
Silence.
“In Edirne I asked two questions. Having spent some time in your body I now have a couple more, though the direction of the enquiry hasn’t changed. Who are you working for, and why did they lie about Josephine?”
He levered himself, just a tiny bit, further up, and for the first time his eyes met mine, and stayed.
“It’s lies,” I breathed. “Most of the file is fine, but then it gets to Josephine and it’s lies. Your employers wanted her to die as well as me. Why is that, do you think? Who are these people she’s meant to have killed? People have always tried to kill my kind, down the centuries. It is inevitable, given what we are. But you shot Josephine in the leg, and even though I fled, even though you knew I’d fled, you still put two bullets in her chest. And I don’t understand why. I want this to end well. You’re a murderer, but you didn’t act alone. You’re alive because you’re the only lead I have.”
I waited.
So did he.
“You’ll be wanting to think,” I concluded. “I understand.” My fingers crawled against the soft inside of my arms, tracing scars, wanting to scratch. I pulled my hand away, stood up, hoping that motion and speed would distract from the physiological urge. He watched me. I smiled. “This body–” I gestured head to foot at my skin “–she’s maybe seventeen? Self-harm, drug use, prostitution and schoolbooks under the bed. Not my problem, of course. This is just a rest stop, no business of mine. Tell me: do you like what you see?”
Did tough guys have opinions?
He didn’t seem to.
Perhaps the discipline in suppressing terror also suppressed thought.
“You think,” I said. “I’ll potter.”
And I did precisely that.
I swept the grubby pieces of foil into a plastic bag, scraped the crumbs off her desk, opened the window to let in cold night air. I straightened her books, folded her clothes where they’d fallen from the lopsided wardrobe, threw out two pairs of tights with irredeemable holes. I realigned the not-quite-art on the wall, and as I went through the drawers I pulled out a small packet of pot, another of cocaine, and added them both to the rubbish. The bottom drawer was locked. I forced it with a kitchen knife, and from within produced a collection of well kept medical scissors, bandages and a single silver scalpel. I hesitated, then threw the sharps away, left the bandages intact.
Coyle watched me from the bed, sharp as a cat, silent as a paw in the night.
His stare was a distraction. I have stood up before the US House of Representatives, and been witty and vibrant and in control, but then I wore a three-thousand-dollar suit, ate a two-hundred-dollar lunch, and I was fabulous because it was what I was meant to be.
This girl–whoever she was–was not fabulous. With her fraying tights and her welted arms, the temptation to hide behind her frailty, to curl up into my skinny bones, shoulder blades sticking out like chicken wings, chin down, neck tight, was as natural as night. Yet still Coyle watched me, and it wasn’t me he watched, but me, myself, and no shadowed eye or buried face could alter the object of his interest.
Unsettling. Unwelcome and unfamiliar. Exciting.
I concentrated hard, my every step measured, and went about imposing what should be upon the what was of the bedroom. Cleaning a room is an extension of cleaning a body; changing its furniture as well as its clothes. Everyone needs a hobby, and everyone was mine.
Then Coyle said, “You’re an arrogant son of a bitch.”
“My God!” I exclaimed. “He speaks.”
“You fuck with her life—”
“Do you mind if I interrupt you before this becomes emotive? I am here to talk to you. And as you cannot think when I am in residence, I need a host to let you mull the fruity depth of our conversation. I don’t deny that I bore easily, and naturally I regard the skins I wear as something of a project, as anyone would, as everyone does. Some people knit; others take up yoga. If this were a long-term habitation, I would absolutely consider the latter–I feel my knees would benefit from the regime. But it isn’t, so I do what little I can in passing, and you, before you hold forth on the theme of my monstrosity, should be relieved that rather than tidy and bin some junk, I didn’t pull your fucking eyes out with my fingernails.”
His lips sealed once more.
I hopped back on to the end of the bed, tucking my knees up to my chin, wrapping my scarred arms across the thin bony shins, staring into his grey, dark eyes.
“You tear people to pieces,” he said at last.
“Yes. Yes, I do. I don’t deny it. I walk through people’s lives and I steal what I find. Their bodies, their time, their money, their friends, their lovers, their wives–I’ll take it all, if I want to. And sometimes I put them back together, in some other shape. This skin,” I flicked a stray piece of hair behind my ear, “is going to wake up in a few minutes, frightened and confused because several hours of her life have vanished in a flash. She’s going to think I raped her, maybe drugged her, did something to her body, her belongings, which are the only symbol she has of achievement in her life–in most people’s lives. She’s going to be frightened not because of any pain to her flesh, but because someone walked in and violated the home where she lives. And perhaps she does what she does when she feels alone. Perhaps she cuts, perhaps she sniffs, perhaps she drinks and then finds a guy to pay for all of the above. I really don’t know. But you and I needed to talk.”
A slight intake of breath. “Did we?”
“It would have been as easy for me to walk you through Chinese customs with five kilos of heroin strapped to your belly as it is to have a conversation. If you talk to me, you might have a chance.”
“You steal life, you steal choices–her choices.”
“Not right now. In a few hours her body is her own again and we’ll be gone. A few minutes, a few seconds, everything changes. Or nothing at all. What you do when that moment comes is all that matters.”
“A thief is a thief.”
“And a killer a killer. That is the extension of your argument, is it not?”
He shifted, barely, against the bed. “What do you want?”
“You killed Josephine,” I answered, a mere breath in the chilly gloom. “You know how I feel about these things. Why did you try to kill me, Mr Coyle?”
“You tell me.”
“Sometimes it’s easier to fight than to have a conversation.”
“You’d talk to the smallpox virus?”
“If it had stories to tell me of plagues it had seen, of great men it had visited, of children who lived and mothers who died, of hot hospitals and cold freezers in guarded trucks, I’d buy it a three-course meal and a weekend in Monaco. Don’t compare me with a DNA strand in a protein shell, Mr Coyle; the argument is beneath us both. Your passports, your money, your weapons; you’re clearly organised, part of a wider operation. You keep yourself in excellent shape–I haven’t been following the diet or doing the press-ups, I’m afraid. And now you kill people like me.” I sighed. “For no better reason, I’d guess, than because we exist. Did you think you were the first? Sooner or later someone always tries. Yet here we are, as persistent as death itself. In two separate continents through two different paths, two entirely different yet functionally identical species of vulture evolved, nature filling a void. No matter how many of us you kill, we keep on recurring, nature’s hiccup. Here it is, then,” I murmured. “You killed my host, who I loved. You may find the concept hard to believe, but I loved Josephine Cebula, and you killed her. You killed her because there was a note in her file which said she wasn’t just a host, she was a murderer. This was a lie. Your masters lied to you. That, and only that, is something new.”