Havoc (20 page)

Round the back we found an open door and this huge guy lugging out armfuls of empty
bottles and dropping them with a crash into a bin.

The Stag is a place where the ambiance rears up and grabs you by the throat as soon
as you walk in. The stink of old beer and cigarette smoke has soaked into every surface:
the stained lino, the brown walls, the yellow-brown lampshades, the faded black-and-white
photos of old horseraces and even older ball games. The glory days of the Stag and
Poacher are long, long gone.

Inside, we found a solitary person at a corner table with half a bottle of whisky
at his elbow and some papers in front of him. He folded them away fast when he saw
us. He had pale skin and greasy grey hair pulled back in a tight ponytail.

He turned a narrow stare on us. ‘We're not open yet! Scram!'

I pulled up a chair and sat down opposite him. ‘We're looking for George Macey. Has
he been about?'

He sat back, still with the stare. ‘Who?'

‘George Macey. You know. Security guard. Used to work at Tornmoor.'

‘Who's asking?'

‘Nik Stais,' I said.

His face was unreadable. ‘That so?'

‘Have you seen him? Recently?'

‘Nope.'

‘When did you see him last?'

‘Couldn't say.'

‘C'mon. Really?'

‘Really. Scoot, kid. You're not old enough to be in here.'

‘I'm not moving till you tell me where he is. I know he used come here and I know
you know him. I just want to find him. Look.' I opened my jacket and arms wide. ‘I'm
harmless. I want to talk to him, that's all.'

‘That's too bad. Can't help you.' He raised his voice, ‘Salvatore!'

The guy who'd been clearing the bottles lumbered into the room. ‘These kids are done
here.'

Salvatore was gigantic, and he did not look open to persuasion.

I said, ‘Wait a second! Listen—'

But we were out of there with our feet hardly touching the floor before I could finish
that sentence. The giant slammed the door behind us and we heard the locks
turn.
We stood in the rubbish-strewn backyard of the Stag, emptyhanded.

So, doors would open for me! That's what Frieda had said. Like hell they would. After
the Inkwell, the Stag had been my lead. My best, last, only lead. This wasn't how
it was meant to go. I picked up an empty bottle and hurled it at the brick wall opposite.
Someone inside shouted, ‘Hey! Watch it!' I picked up another bottle and turned towards
the door.

‘No!' said Raffael. He pulled on my arm. ‘We go.'

He dragged me down Mercers Lane and around the corner out of sight of the Stag.

‘Stop,' he said. ‘Be calm. Think.'

I leaned on a wall, closed my eyes and tried to make my brain work.

Raffael stood beside me, not talking. After a while he said, ‘Tell me. This matters
very much to you. Why?'

‘Because,' I said, ‘A good friend will die soon—as good as die—by Friday night, if
I do not find Macey and if Macey does not help me.'

He nodded. ‘So, now what do you do? We. What do we do?'

‘Now, I don't know.' My voice was hardly working.

‘You can work it out. How to find him.'

‘Yeah.'

That's supposed to be what I'm good at, working
things out, but I couldn't think
straight. Friday midnight was thirty-nine hours away. Thirty-nine measly, pathetic,
short little hours.

Raffael said, ‘Give me your watch.'

I frowned. ‘Why?'

He held out his hand. I took it off and gave it to him and he put it in his pocket.

‘Hey!' I said. ‘I need that!'

He shook his head. ‘You look at it every minute. How can you think when you look
at your watch every minute? You give yourself no time for thought. Now. Questions.
Where does the man live?'

‘I don't know. I thought he was here. His family's in Gilgate somewhere.'

‘Over the river?'

‘Yeah.'

‘Then we go over the river.'

I looked at him. ‘You can't just walk over a bridge.'

‘Because of the guards?'

‘Armed guards. That's right.'

‘I have this.' He held out his VIP ID card.

I shook my head. ‘Not enough.'

‘What would be enough?'

Nothing, I thought. Nothing is ever enough over here. I remembered saying something
like that to Lanya: the city wants and wants and wants. Its soldiers, badly paid
and in the line of fire, wouldn't be any different. My
brain started to clear at
last. ‘I have money,' I said. ‘A lot of money.'

The bridge to Gilgate is at Torrens Hill, not far from the Stag. Two soldiers in
green fatigues and sunglasses paced in front of the bridge gate. They turned bored
faces towards us; I could see our reflections in their dark glasses. I held up my
fake ID and Raffael's VIP one, put on my best Ettyn Hills accent and said that my
friend, visiting from the Dry, would like to walk on the bridge to look at the river
because he'd never seen a river up close before. The guards laughed like I knew they
would and waved us away.

‘No,' I said. ‘You don't understand. We
really
want to.' I showed them a handful
of notes.

Eyebrows shot up above the glasses. One of them said, ‘I guess you really do. It's
going to cost you more than that though.'

I put the money away. ‘You know what? There are other bridges. We might take a walk
to them.'

They glanced at each other. ‘Okay, wait,' said one. ‘We can let you through. Don't
do anything stupid, right? Walk to halfway and come straight back.'

‘Sure,' I said. ‘Thanks.'

I handed over the notes. Easy as that. We walked through the gate and onto the bridge.
When we got to the middle we stopped and leaned over the side looking down
to the
grey water flowing around the bridge supports.

Raffael whistled. He shaded his eyes, looking upriver towards Westwall and down towards
Port then kicked the side rail with the toe of his boot. ‘This took a lot of making.
It would be hard to destroy.'

‘For sure,' I said. ‘You'd have to really want to.'

I was watching the guards. As soon as they stopped looking our way, I said, ‘Let's
go.' We took off fast for the other side. The bridge gate on Southside was locked
but unguarded. We climbed over it and dropped down into Gilgate.

Raffael grinned at me. ‘This far, so good!'

‘Yes,' I said. ‘This far, so good.'

We dived into the Gilgate market crowd. Finally my much reviled accent came into
its own—people took me for a local. I talked to stall owners, kids, streetsweepers,
vagrants, shoppers, anyone who would stop and talk to me. Macey, I asked, did anyone
know him? First name George, short guy, sturdy, kind, has—or had—a wife and two daughters.

By midday we had a lead and with the sun high overhead baking the streets and people
retreating to any place shady, we made it to the old part of Gilgate. This part of
town was built and long lived in before the division, before the bridges were controlled
and the river laced with mines, when the city was just a city with a river flowing
through it. We arrived in a road of tenement houses at
a house that looked like any
other. Windows above us reflected the sunlight; doors up and down the street were
closed against the heat. Raffael waited while I climbed the steps and knocked.

My heart was pounding. I knocked again, and this time the door opened. A young woman
stood there, all dark-eyed frowning suspicion, with a hand on the door about to close
it in my face. I racked my brain for the names of Mace's daughters.

‘Jenna?' I said. ‘Louisa? I'm Nik Stais. I'm looking for George Macey.'

She shook her head. ‘No. Not here.'

She started to close the door, but her eyes had flickered when I said her name.

‘Louisa,' I said. I put a hand on the door, not pushing but holding it. ‘Please?
It's important.'

‘No,' she said. ‘No strangers.'

‘I'm not a stranger,' I said. ‘Look,' I took the silver talisman from around my neck
and handed it to her.

‘Show him this. Tell him my name. Nik Stais.'

CHAPTER 27

Louisa took the talisman and closed the door. I turned to Raffael and he gave me
an encouraging smile. We waited. The sun beat down on us. I thought about why I was
there and then couldn't bear to think about why I was there. I stared at the door.
Hurry, I thought. Hurry so I don't have to think about what I'm doing.

The door opened. Same woman. She said, ‘This way.'

We went down a dark hallway, through a small, basic kitchen and out the back into
a tiny garden with carefully hoed rows of vegetables. Under a ragged awning a figure
sat in a cane chair. I had to look twice to see it was him, he was so bent and old.

He put both hands on the arms of the chair and tried to straighten up. The lines
in his face were etched deep, his brows were set in a grimace and his mouth was a
thin line.

‘He has bad pain,' said Louisa behind me. She didn't need to tell me. I felt like
I was towering over him, so I crouched down.

‘Mace?'

He held out a hand and I gripped it. Tears filled his eyes.

‘It is you,' he said. ‘Nik, lad. Well, well.'

Louisa had brought out other chairs and a tray with a teapot, a fragile china thing
that looked ancient, and some little matching cups the colour of old cream. We sat
down and she sat beside Mace and held his hand while he told us what had happened
the night of the Tornmoor bombing.

‘They found me fast that night,' he said. ‘Couple of agents. Didn't waste time. Broke
my knees.'

‘Jesus,' I said. ‘Why?'

‘Southsider on campus. Easy target.'

‘Didn't they take you in? Question you?'

He shook his head. ‘In a hurry, weren't they? A truncheon's a quick way to do what
their drugs'll do slow. Besides, they were more interested in doing damage right
then, than in findin' out where the troubles were stemmin' from. Thing is, I had
nothing to tell 'em.'

‘Nothing? Really?'

He smiled faintly. ‘See? You don't believe me either.'

Louisa poured black tea into the cups, and Mace sipped from his and put it down.
‘Listen, I got a job there 'fore you was ever born. Wanted to earn enough to take
my family over there, away from this.' He nodded up to the high walls of the flats
looming over the little bit of garden that was his. ‘You could do that in those days.
So I'd been there a few years, earning my money, counting it up, saving it, and one
day this scrap of a kid turns up, and I've heard his name before, and I know about
his parents, and now I got two good reasons to be there.'

I bowed my head.

‘Well,' he said, ‘Who else was gonna look out for you? Scrawny, you were.' He peered
at me. ‘Still are. Anyways, I knew about that hidden backdoor in the gatehouse, sure
I did. And I knew some folk came and went through there over the years. But, y'know,
they played it down. They said you was just a bunch of kids and some retired agents.
They planted bugs but I never knew if those were any much use. So when they blew
the damn place to kingdom come it was a helluva surprise to me.'

‘You came looking for me,' I said. ‘That night. You should've got out soon as you
could.'

‘Ah well. I knew that, and I knew you didn't. So least I could do was find you and
send you on your way.'

I nodded.

He smiled at me, a crooked, weary smile. ‘Find out who you are yet?'

I nodded again and his smile widened. ‘Good. That's good. Used to watch you. Wanted
to tell you. All those years. Couldn't of course. Less you knew the better for
you.
Hope you know now how important they were, your mum and dad.'

He settled back like he was about to tell me just how important they were and I knew
I couldn't listen. With what I was about to ask, I couldn't bear to hear.

‘Mace, I need help.'

He patted his legs. ‘Not much I can do for you, lad. Not now.' He looked from Raffael
to me and saw something on our faces that made him pause.

‘What kind of help?'

‘I need to find the One City network on Cityside. I need to find it now. Today.'

He leaned forward, interested. ‘Why's that?' Not suspicious. Curious. Helpful.

I said, ‘It's a long story and I'll tell you one day but I can't now. Can you give
me a name or an address—anything that will get me in?'

‘Well,' he said. ‘Passwords change, of course. But I've heard one or two things since
I've been back over here. I can give you a trail to follow. Should get you somewhere
today.'

I nodded and heard myself say, ‘That would be great. Thanks.'

He gave me two names, a password and two places to go looking back on Cityside.

‘Now don't go writin' those down,' he said. ‘But you won't need to, smart lad like
you.'

He smiled and I felt sick. This is it, I thought. This is what you do: you want something
bad enough, you decide who and what you'll sacrifice to get it. I stood up. Truth
is, I couldn't bear to look at him anymore, sitting there with his smashed knees,
and me contemplating pointing Frieda towards more people like him.

‘Here,' he held out the talisman that I'd given to Louisa, the one Fyffe had given
me for luck.

I shook my head. I couldn't wear it now. ‘No,' I said. ‘You keep it. I'll come back
for it one day.'

He smiled. ‘I will, then. Take care of y'self now. Come and see me again soon.'

‘Yeah,' I said. ‘Sure.'