Half Moon Chambers (17 page)

* * *

If I'd given up on Maric, I began to think he
hadn
't given up on me. I was twitchy from my
transition
from morphine-based analgesics to plain
aspirin
, and at first I put my sense of being
shadowed
down to that. But it made sense that he
might
dog me, newly unloveable as I was. My
failure
to get anything from the junkie demi-monde
didn
't mean nothing had passed down the line to
him
about me, my brief foray into the shadows. I
couldn
't keep track of all the crackheads Phil had
dragged
home with him while we'd been growing
up
, and my undercover hadn't been brilliant.

Someone might not have been too stoned to
recognise
me.
Phil's brother, the plod.

Oh, yeah, I was irritable. I'd even snapped
at
Bill Hodges this week, and he'd frowned and told
me
to mind my bloody lip, but I could tell he
thought
my current mood more natural than the
subdued
and cooperative one of the past few
months
. I was glad someone was pleased. For
myself
, I was in the grip of a distaste at my own
body
and soul that made me want to throw bricks
through
windows, or better yet get into a stand-up,
knock
-down brawl with someone, the way I'd
sometimes
had to in performance of my duties, and
never
my least favourite part. We were meant to be
ever
so arm's-length these days, but I'd found a
good
thump went further than tazers or mace in
dealing
with most local villains. If they gave as
good
as they got, I could handle that, and I'd rather
take
a bruise or two than start laying about me with
chemicals
and electrical shocks.

When I realised that the prickle at my nape
was
more than paranoia
--
when I'd actually seen
the
same three faces follow me round three
consecutive
corners
--
I was almost overjoyed.

They'd chosen their time well. I'd gone down a
narrow
cobbled street across the Market from
Half
Moon Chambers, not looking up to see if there
were
lights in the top-floor turret rooms, or even to
glance
at the damn place. My friend Mario was
worried
about discrepancies in his pizza
-
restaurant
takings, and I'd promised him a low-key
call
. That was what I was doing at dusk in the
ancient
maze of the old town. Probably I'd never
see
Rowan again even by chance, and if I was
finding
work in the shadow of his eyrie, that was
my
own business.

It was a beautiful place to get mugged. I
passed
the doorway to Mario's and carried on. No
reason
to disrupt his happy hour with broken
chairs
and china. He'd have given me refuge, of
course
, but that wasn't what I wanted. Not at all.

I took a deliberate left into the tiny
passageway
that led round the back of
the
Chronicle offices. Nobody came down here. It
didn
't lead anywhere, didn't connect. It wasn't the
route
for a stroll. All of which meant that the
continuing
scrape of footsteps behind me promised
me
definite trouble
--
yes, trouble, fat as a
Bigg
Market lemon and packed full of bitter juice. I
heard
a coughing laugh as my pursuers dropped the
subtle
approach.
Stupid fookin' copper's taken a
dead
end.

I had indeed. I stopped at the deadest part of
it
, between a pair of long-abandoned metal bins,
and
I turned round. Just for the moment I was
happy
as a sand-flea, and I let it show on my face,
the
first broad and natural grin that had settled
there
in months. "Hello, ladies," I said. "I was
gonna
punch out the ugly one first. But now I take a
look
at you, I don't know where to start."

The three of them stopped. It was always a
nice
moment, that
--
the nonplussed second while
they
tried to figure out why I would flap my red rag
under
their noses. Maybe they thought I was armed.

I unzipped my jacket, opened it wide. "Look.
Nothing there. Even if there was, I wouldn't waste
a
bullet on a bunch of big pansies like you."

A hand closed on my belt. Before I could
jump
--
before I could even start to wonder how
anyone
had got that close to me
--
a grip like a
cable
tow dragged me backward, hauling me into
an
alley so tight I hadn't even known it was there. I
twisted
round, heart contracting painfully, braced
for
a knife to the gut. I found myself staring
into
Rowan's
wide brown eyes
.

"Vince,"
he whispered
, his face a mask of disbelief. "You
nutter
... Run!"

He should have known running wasn't an
option
for me, not for long. But his warm hand
clamped
tight round my wrist, and when he took
off
I followed. There were things I didn't know
about
my city, gaps in my back-of-the-hand map of
its
dark twists and turns. All kinds of shit I
couldn
't have predicted were going down. My
weary
worldly knowledge fell off from my
shoulders
like dried-out clay as I ran
--
down
passageways
and steps, up through someone's
private
yard and back onto the Bigg Market, my
hand
clenched tight in Rowan Clyde's. Even on the
main
street he didn't let go of me. Taxis and buses
were
roaring down the narrow rat-run road: he
chose
a gap between them with so little to spare
that
I braced for impact, but he yanked me through
and
up the kerb on the far side. I slipped on the
pavement
and he righted me, planted a hand in my
back
and shoved me into the alley that ran around
the
back of Half Moon Chambers.

There was a fire escape, the type whose
bottom
flight was a ladder you had to pull down.

Rowan deposited me against a wall. "Stay there,"
he
ordered me. I had no choice
--
I was about done
for
, thunderbolts of pain ripping down my spine
and
legs. I watched in hazy envy while he leapt
like
a cat for the rungs. The ladder clattered down.

"Right. Go up ahead of me."

"I can't."

"Sorry, mate. You have to."

"Chill out. We've lost them. They probably
went
under that bus we missed by half an inch."

He held out a hand to me. It was imperious
--
a
demand, not an invitation. "I'm not about to take
that
chance."

I went up the ladder with all the grace of an
arthritic
cow. I wished I'd made him go first, not
have
to witness my struggle from behind and
beneath
. I wasn't too far gone to be bloody
embarrassed
by situations like this, and I was
astounded
, nearing the top, to feel the brief caress
of
his warm palm on my butt. "Come on, DS Carr.
Shift that bonny arse."

Despite myself I was grinning when I reached
the
top. As soon as we'd made it to the landing
,
Rowan pulled the ladder up after us, grabbed a
tarpaulin
folded up over the rail and shook it out
over
the hinges. You'd have to look closely now to
find
a way up. "Nice," I rasped, then leaned on the
rail
till the next spasm passed. "Done this before,
have
you?"

"Once or twice. Now we can go in the back."

"I thought you said you didn't have a fire
door
."

"I don't. You have to climb onto my
neighbour
's balcony, then there's a window. Come
on
."

"Jesus, Rowan."

"I know. You're ready to faint or puke your
guts
out. You can do it once we're home."

Home
. The word bladed into me, common as
mud
, scalpel-sharp. Distracted me so much that I
followed
him over the low balustrade without a
word
, accepting his outstretched grasp. He took
out
a small wedge from behind his neighbour's
long
-dead potted geraniums, jammed it under the
sash
frame and levered the window open.

I'd never made it as far as his kitchen.

Entering it this way was disorienting, the glowing
colours
of the rooms beyond like visions from
another
world. Clambering over the window
ledge
, aided by his grip on my belt and my armpit
,
I had time to note a plain, practical space, nice
wooden
cupboards, slate tiles, and then there was
a
long slow grey-blizzard slide, and suddenly
nothing
at all.

"Vince. Vincent!"

Vincent
. Yeah, that was my wake-up call.

Time to get up for school
--
to come round from a
coma
, any return to the land of the living I'd rather
not
have to make. Nobody called me Vincent to
offer
me coffee and croissants in bed.

"Vincent, for fuck's sake!"

Not my ma, then. Not the surgeon at
the
Freeman either, unless he'd forgotten his manners. I
groaned
and lifted my head. I was lying
on
Rowan's kitchen floor. He was on his knees beside
me
, urgently shaking my shoulder. I forced my
tongue
to move in my dry mouth. "You said I could
do
this... once we were home."

He released an explosive breath. "Yeah.
What next? Do I get you a bucket?"

"Not this time, I don't think." I pushed myself
up
far enough to sit propped against the wall.

"Bloody hell. Next time can we just come in the
front
door?"

"When we're not being pursued by three times
our
weight in skinhead gorillas, sure."

"They weren't..." I broke off, coughing. "They
weren
't that bad. I had it covered. Where did you
spring
from?"

He didn't answer for a moment. I heard
running
water, then a cool glass was pressed
against
my lips. "Drink this. I've been keeping an
eye
on you, that's all. What were you playing at,
taunting
those bastards like that?"