Hard Light (8 page)

He held out his hand. I gave him Dagney's passport and stared at the floor, praying he wouldn't search me and find the U.S. passport in my boot.

“Where are you staying?” he demanded.

“With Krishna Morgenthal.”

Mallo stabbed a finger at me. “Not now you aren't. Let's go.”

He kicked my bag across the room, waited for me to retrieve it, and followed me out the door. “I won't mention this to Morven until later,” he said as we walked back to the living room. “You'd be better off dead if she knew you'd been in her bedroom.”

The flat was less crowded now, the air sweet with candle smoke and melted wax. People were holding plates with slivers of chocolate cake on them. In a corner Morven laughed as she drank champagne from a crystal flute, a bunch of red tulips cradled against her breast. Mallo smiled at her, and she blew him a kiss.

I looked away, afraid my face would betray me, and spotted Adrian Carlisle on a nearby couch, bookended by two women. One was Krishna, her eyes shut and Adrian's hat at a tipsy angle on her head. On his other side, a stocky redhead dug through a crocodile Birkin bag. I started toward the couch and Mallo grabbed my elbow.

“Don't leave,” he said. “If you do, you'll never get back home.”

He turned and headed toward his wife.

I hurried to join Adrian. He wore the same moth-eaten jacket he'd had on that morning, and his pointed leather shoes were stained with damp. His brow creased as he stared at me.

“You,” he said.

“Ha!” The redhead beside him held up a screwdriver. “I told you I had one.”

“That's lovely, Gretchen.” Adrian gave her a perfunctory smile. “Go on now, love, see if you can find someone to stick it in.”

She stumbled to her feet and lurched off. Adrian gently pushed Krishna aside so I could sit.

“Cassandra, is it?” he said. “Krish couldn't remember if you were here or not.”

I stared at Krishna, leaned down to touch her cheek. Her skin felt slick and clammy. I knew if she opened her eyes, they'd be pinned. I recalled what I'd seen earlier—Morven slipping something into Krishna's hand
.

“Doesn't look like she can remember her own name,” I said. “She's nodded out.”

“What's in a name? A nose by any other name would find blow as sweet. Here.”

He slid a hand inside his jacket to produce a vial with a tiny spoon attached and passed it to me. I did a couple of spoonfuls and handed it back.

“Better?” he asked.

“Define
better.
”

I drank a glass of champagne someone had left on the side table, and thought of Mallo's photo of me holding Dagney's stolen passport. Quinn was going to kill me, assuming I lived to find him. I set down the empty glass and buried my head in my hands.

“There there. The cake's very nice.” Adrian indicated a plate on the table. “Have a bite.”

“I don't want any fucking cake.”

“No need to be rude. Oh, look. Our host.”

He rose to greet Mallo, who cut him off with a black look.

“My office,” said Mallo. He pointed at me. “You too.”

He stalked from the living room. Adrian glanced at me in dismay. “How do you know Mallo?”

“We bumped into each other in the bathroom.”

Adrian said nothing, but his expression grew dire.

I followed him past the kitchen and down the hall to a small windowless office. Industrial shelving was filled with stacks of flattened cardboard cartons, FedEx envelopes, and packing materials. Rolls of candy-colored wrapping paper protruded from cubbyholes where loose coils of ribbon cascaded to the floor like a melted rainbow. Laptops and smartphones in charging stations covered another shelf. On a cheap Ikea desk, a framed photo of Mallo and Morven at the beach leaned against a glass paperweight shaped like a dachshund. It looked like a home office belonging to an eBay dealer, though with no indication as to what, exactly, was sold.

Mallo sat in a swivel chair by the desk. When he saw us, he turned to open a drawer, reached inside, and withdrew a silvery object. Light glinted off a wedge of steel blade as he spun his chair to face us. A cigar cutter. I heard the hiss of Adrian's breath.

“Cassandra.” Mallo beckoned me toward him. “Please. Come on in.”

 

11

I didn't move. Mallo watched me, then turned. He dropped the cigar cutter, opened another drawer, and removed something else. Without a word, he tossed it to me.

I caught it: a neatly wrapped box, roughly the size and weight of a brick. Foil wrapping paper imprinted with cobalt stars, a fizz of blue and silver ribbons.

“I'd like you to deliver that to a friend of mine,” Mallo said. “In the Barbican. He won't be expecting you. Just tell him it's a birthday present.”

I stared at the package. “What's the Barbican?”

“Adrian will show you; he's good at finding his way in the dark. Drop back by here when you're done. Shouldn't take more than, oh—”

He glanced at his mobile. “Let's say I'll see you at midnight. Adrian's evening will just be getting started. Right, Adrian?”

Adrian nodded. “Sounds about right.”

As Mallo glanced away to shut the drawer, Adrian looked at me with barely contained fury. I glared back, then turned to Mallo.

“What about my passport?”

“Your passport?” Mallo shrugged. “I wouldn't know about that. Swedish girl's probably reported hers missing by now. Not that much resemblance if you look closely.”

He held up the mobile so I could see my own stunned face staring back at me, Dagney's passport alongside it. “Actually, it doesn't look much like you at all,” he said. “Now, get the fuck out of here. Both of you.”

He stood and watched as Adrian and I walked down the hall. I shoved the gift-wrapped box into my bag.

“Midnight, Cinderella,” Mallo called after us. “I don't want to be carving any pumpkins.”

Everyone else appeared to have left. Morven stood by the door, seeing the last few guests off. Adrian made a detour to get his hat from the couch, where Krishna was still passed out. He bent over her—he really
was
checking her pulse—then returned and grabbed my wrist.

“You wait here,” he commanded.

He approached Morven Dunfries and kissed her cheek, retrieved his overcoat from a closet, and gestured for me to join him.

“Keep moving,” he ordered, steering me toward the door.

I avoided Morven's eyes but knew she watched me closely. When we were in the hall with the door closed behind us, I turned to Adrian. “What about Krishna?”

“She'll wake up. Morven's given her some cheese so she can play with her later.”

“Cheese?”

“Heroin and paracetamol. Starter junk.”

Outside the rain had stopped, but the wind was raw and relentless, blowing sheets of water from rooftops and awnings. Not many people were braving the weather. A young couple huddled beneath an umbrella on the corner, seemingly oblivious to anything except each other. An elderly woman pushed a stroller wrapped in plastic, talking to herself. A younger woman—black, with cropped platinum hair nearly hidden inside the hood of a stained military parka, and eerily pale topaz eyes—stood inside a doorway, smoking. As I passed I could sense her gaze following me. I glanced back, and she turned away.

“Keep your head down,” Adrian muttered.

The wind whipped his long coat around his scissor legs. With his top hat, black Chesterfield, and ferocious expression, he resembled a magician who'd pull a cobra out of that hat instead of a rabbit. When we reached an empty bus shelter, he darted beneath its metal awning and called a cab.

“Five minutes,” he said, replacing his mobile. He removed his hat, snapped it closed, and slipped it inside his overcoat. Then he shoved me against the bus shelter wall. “What the fuck did you do?”

I shoved him back. “Nothing!”

“What kind of nothing?”

“I wandered into the wrong bathroom.”

“I'd say so.”

“What does he use the cigar cutter for?”

“What do you think?” Adrian's face was pale, his pupils huge and black. “Cigars. And fingers. He sells them to an artist he knows in Brick Lane who makes jewelry out of the bones.”

“Who buys that kind of stuff?”

“Rich goths. Musicians. Can't keep up with the demand. Back in the eighties, a mate of mine was arrested with some students from Cambridge. They were breaking into graves and making flutes out of the bones. He got off, I don't know how. The others did some prison time. Body snatchers.”

I grimaced, and Adrian looked at me with contempt. “Oh, you're above that, are you? Never underestimate what folks will do to get by. The clock is moving backward—child slaves, plague, decapitations in the street. Soon they'll be burning women at the stake—wait, done that, too.

“You think London's like the books and movies? It is—only not the ones you'd want to live in. The golden city is dead.”

We didn't speak again until the cab arrived. Once inside, I sat as far as possible from Adrian. The driver slid open the plexiglass window so Adrian could give him the address, then closed it again. Adrian slumped against his seat. I took out the gift-wrapped package and turned it over in my hands.

“Don't think of opening that,” said Adrian. “Not unless it's addressed to you.”

“It's not addressed to anyone.” I held it to my ear and shook it. “What do you think it is?”

“How would I know?” His eyes said he was lying. “Not my business. Or yours.”

“Drugs?”

“Did you hear what I just said?” he snarled. “Put it away, otherwise I'm off. I've spent my whole life getting along with Mallo. You've managed to fuck that up in an hour. You can get carved for a pumpkin on your own.”

I put the package in my bag. My head felt scraped raw from fatigue. I wondered what the odds were of Adrian offering me more of his blow. Probably not good.

“It won't be drugs,” he said after a minute.

“Then why does he need us to deliver this?”

“I'm not delivering it. You are. I'm just seeing you get there.”

“And back.”

“And back.” His tone suggested he was considering a way to avoid this.

“Why didn't he just give it to you?”

“He wants me for a watchdog. That's my punishment for being idiot enough to bring you to the party. You're on a chain now, too. Stolen passport? No fixed address? Don't make any long-term plans.”

“What's to keep me from just taking off?”

“Nothing, except that I won't let you. I
can't
let you. And you'd be dead by daybreak if you did, not that I give a fuck. But I don't fancy getting killed for someone stupid enough to go wandering around Mallo Dunfries's flat, doing whatever the fuck you were doing. What
were
you doing?”

“Trying to find the bathroom.”

“Yeah, right.”

Adrian had the cab stop a few blocks from our destination.

“You're paying,” he said, opening the door to step out. I counted out the fare, handed it to the driver, and joined Adrian on the sidewalk. The cab drove off, leaving us on a nearly empty street.

“This is the City,” Adrian said. “Bankers and day traders. Not much after dark.”

I had to run to keep up with him, past forests of construction cranes, an ancient fragment of the original London Wall dwarfed by the skyscrapers surrounding it. Shadows drenched a narrow street lined with far older buildings, like a gaslight movie set. Adrian compulsively checked his mobile for the time.

My heart pounded from coke, exhaustion, blunt fear. I flashed back to something I'd seen when I was fourteen: a slowly rotating whirlpool of cloud with a huge implacable eye at its center, staring down to where I stood in a field.

“Watch it!” Adrian pulled me from a curb as a bus roared past. “You're looking the wrong fucking way.”

We ran across the street and continued until we reached a vast complex of brutalist structures with pebbled concrete facades and rows of square windows.

“This is it,” Adrian said, stopping at a concrete stairway. “Do you remember the address? Was it five-one-seven?”

“I think so.”

Adrian started up the steps, two at a time. “I knew a bloke lived here twenty years, and he still gets lost.”

We reached the next level, walked quickly down a passage, then raced up a second stairway. A passing couple glanced at us curiously. Adrian yanked me to his side.

“I told you to keep your head down,” he warned.

An elevated walkway ran along the interior of the complex, overlooking a man-made lake. Security lights gave the water a sickly, irradiated glow. Another walkway ran parallel to ours, a long tube sheathed in plexiglass with barrel-vaulted crosswalks between its sections, like a human-sized gerbil habitat.

There were no people inside it. There were no people anywhere I could see. Plastic grocery bags blew along the concourse like tumbleweeds. The air smelled foul, like an abandoned swimming pool. Everything looked desolate in the way that once-trendy developments do, an aging club kid hanging on to a dead glowstick and cheap clothes that no longer fit.

“What is this place?” I asked. “They could shoot a zombie remake of
Logan's Run
here.”

“1970s utopian experiment. Remember those? This was Cripplegate, bombed out during the Blitz. The Barbican was supposed to be the future—one big complex with affordable flats, theaters, couple schools. Shops and cafes. All still here, except the affordable part. People bought into it forty years ago and never moved on. Supposed to be an artist's ideal, and I guess it was, if you had the tin. Costs a fortune now.”

We halted in front of a security gate. Adrian gave it a push, and it creaked open.