Osiris (21 page)

18 ¦ VIKRAM

T
he hallway outside the penthouse was silent. It was four minutes past three in the morning, and the lifts were still, poised on different levels of the skyscraper. Vikram crouched in front of the yellow-barred door, his eyes level with the second keyhole. He selected a slim metal pick from a set and inserted it into the lock. He liked to think of this as a skill rather than a profession, but there had been enough occasions where he’d helped Mikkeli on the break-ins of her later career.

Just busting a lock was enough to push the memories forward. The dripping green cell. The porthole. He felt too large for the door and its frame, as though he had grown and the corridor had shrunk. He closed his eyes, used his ears instead. Metal scraped on metal. Now he began to feel the personality of the lock, its strengths, its lines of weakness. Gently he manipulated the pick this way and that.

“Will you hurry up?” hissed a voice behind him. “We haven’t got all day.”

Vikram sucked in a breath and told himself, very sternly, not to respond. It had taken precisely forty-four seconds to break the first lock. That wasn’t quick enough for Adelaide, who had moaned and cursed and once, poked him with the plastic sheathed toe of her shoe. Anyone else pestering him like this would have received a black eye for their pains. Today, he had no choice but to be with Adelaide.

He had told her that if they got caught, he would take her down with him. Realistically, he knew there wasn’t a chance. If they got caught, Vikram was as easy a scapegoat as ever she could find. That was the only reason she had agreed to the deal.

He twisted the pick twelve degrees left.

“I mean, really, how long does it take?”

Her impatience was a physical scald on his back. He sensed her fidgeting behind him. He twisted around and scowled up at her. She was practically on top of him, arms folded across her chest and both eyebrows elevated. Her red hair was tucked under a woollen hat. He supposed this was her idea of a criminal outfit.

“It’s a science,” he said. He tapped the deactivated bar. “Your money might have got us the swipe card for this, but it won’t buy you a picklock. So shut up and give me some space.”

Adelaide’s eyes narrowed but she took half a step backward. Vikram returned his attention to the lock. Twenty seconds later he heard it—a whisper of a click. The door popped ajar. Vikram sat back on his heels. His satisfaction was tempered with a stab of fear; he’d done it now. Second offences sent you plummeting toward the seabed without a trial.

“Aren’t you the clever one?” Without waiting for him to move Adelaide ducked under the yellow bar and disappeared inside.

“You better hope that alarm doesn’t work,” he said.

Her voice floated back to him. “It’s disabled.”

“I hope you’re sure.”

“I told you. There was a code to change the code. Only me and Axel knew it.” Vikram heard the sound of a cupboard door opening all the same. Then Adelaide’s smug tones. “I was right.”

For about the fifth time that night, Vikram wanted to strangle her. He didn’t bother telling her that if she’d been wrong they would have known by now, just glanced back at the empty corridor behind him—the final curl of the stairway rail, the red carpet, dimly lit, and the security camera trained on Axel’s apartment. It was off. Adelaide’s bribe had given them fifty-nine minutes to get in and out. They had about fifty-four of those left. He’d assumed she’d got some minion to do the actual bribing, but she had reacted to this implication in amazement. I’m
hardly
going to trust anyone else, she said. It made sense. She had a cajoling voice; with the additional seduction of money it was no doubt irresistible.

He slid the set of picks back into his jeans pocket, feeling a rush of gratitude towards Drake, who had sourced the tools for him without asking any questions. He followed Adelaide inside and shut the door behind him.

He was in a rectangular hallway. A row of identical pot plants marched along the right hand wall. They were ordered in ascending height, with about an inch between each. Their withering leaves pointed in the same directions. Vikram counted: there were twenty-two. A watering can sat at the end of the row. He peered in. Any water had evaporated.

Stacked against the other wall were columns of shoeboxes. Each had the same label, neatly aligned in the bottom right hand corner. Vikram checked his gloves a final time and eased the first lid open. A pair of stout brown boots rested inside. He checked the soles. They were unworn. The next box contained the same shoes, also unworn. He prised out a box from the middle of the stack and raised the lid, knowing by now what he would find. He pushed the box back again.

“I’ve set the window-walls to one-way,” called Adelaide. “So we can turn on the lights.”

“Great,” he mumbled. The
we
was anything but reassuring.

He expected to find more neurotic ordering in the next room, but instead walked into a scene resembling traders’ day at Market Circle. The room was crammed with cabinets. There were open shelf units, cabinets with glass doors, trunks with metal bolts, sets of drawers and a wardrobe with the doors thrown open. The wardrobe bulged with bolts of material, stacked in alternate reds and yellows. Adelaide was on her hands and knees, peering underneath it, her trousers stretched over the seat of her pants. Vikram allowed himself to enjoy the spectacle, and the silence, for a moment. He had no idea what she expected to find.

“What’s all the material for?” he asked.

“How should I know?”

“Well, what are we looking for? We haven’t got much time.”

“I told you. I don’t know yet.”

Vikram tried a few drawers. Their contents varied. One was entirely full of cans, the same fizzy Coralade, crushed to flat silver disks. Another contained thermometers. He found a third brimming with model horses; wooden, plastic, stone, even cardboard. He showed it to Adelaide. She picked up one of the horses and turned it over between gloved finger and thumb, frowning slightly. Then she put it back and shut the drawer. Vikram’s curiosity was piqued. He wanted to ask what was special about horses, but did not expect to be graced with an answer.

“When were you last here?” he said instead.

Adelaide prised open a drinks cabinet and cursed as a landslide of rubber bands poured out. Vikram went to help her pick them up. She didn’t thank him but after a minute she said, “It was a while ago.”

“So you won’t know if anything’s changed. Since Axel’s been gone, I mean.”

“I’m not assuming anything has.”

Vikram gathered up the last of the rubber bands. Between them they eased the cabinet shut.

“Then why are you here?” he asked.

“Because I can read what they can’t,” Adelaide said. She uncurled her hand. A miniature plastic horse was in her palm, legs gathered up as if it was galloping.

“Horses,” she said.

The penthouse was similarly structured to Adelaide’s apartment, with room collapsing into room like a pack of dominoes. Vikram walked into a room containing only a table, exactly centred. There was something about its solitary positioning that reminded him of the table he had seen in Adelaide’s dining room, beautifully laid but unused.

He didn’t switch on the light but went over to the window-wall, checking out the view. Despite the hour and the haziness, Osiris was a network of light on black. A shuttle streaked through its glowing shell, reminding him of the traces left by sparklers on midsummer night. The ocean was invisible and the city felt rootless. Vikram rapped the bufferglass with his knuckle, taking some comfort in its tensile strength.

He found the kitchen, and then the bathroom, which were both cleaner than everywhere else. The bathroom cupboard was full of medication. The bottles were organized in order of label colour. He took one out, tossed it in the air and caught it. The bottle rattled. It was unopened. So were the rest.

“Your brother had a lot of doctors,” he called to Adelaide, who was in the next room. She appeared sharply. She ran her index finger along the rows of prescriptions.

“Well, that has no effect… haven’t tried that. Interesting, nothing from Radir…”

Vikram had already learned that the best time to interrogate Adelaide was when she was distracted, and was therefore more likely to volunteer information. It meant pretending you weren’t really there, but since Adelaide was so self-obsessed this was remarkably easy.

“Who’s Radir?”

“His last shrink.”

“How many did he see?”

“Just about everyone in Osiris, I think… I never knew they gave him
that
… My father insisted.”

He didn’t push the issue any further. Whatever illness Axel had suffered from, two things seemed clear. The doctors did not agree on it, as none of the prescriptions matched, and nor did Axel, who had not been taking any of them. He left Adelaide peering at labels, mouthing their formulas to herself.

In the next room there was a broken clock on the wall. He stood looking at it, trying to decide why anyone would keep a broken clock. He checked his own watch. They still had over half an hour. If he listened, he could hear the watch ticking.

He found himself straining for noise. The twins’ reputation might have been wild, but the penthouse was not somewhere he could imagine holding a raucous party. It was easier to imagine his own friends here than it was Adelaide’s Haze. He wondered what Nils would say about it. Shake his head and laugh, Vikram decided, then remind Vikram that the penthouse’s owner was, after all, related to “that celebrity bitch.” Laughter was Nils’s reaction to most things: defusing agent and first line of defence. When Vikram finally told him about the deal he’d cut, Nils’s laugh was there. He’d had a warning, too. Watch out for her, he’d said. Don’t worry, Vikram had responded. I’ve not lost my head yet.

A laugh would sound strange in here.

The weirdness of being in a dead man’s home was steadily seeping into his consciousness. When people died, they were found and somebody mourned them and then their living space was recycled. What came with loss, unacknowledged and unspoken, but still there, was continuity. The penthouse held nothing of renewal, only endings. Death of the body. Worse than that, he thought. Death of the mind.

Adelaide strolled out of the bathroom with the sound of rushing water. She was doing up the buttons of her trousers.

“What?” she said. “I needed a piss.”

Vikram had a feeling the vulgarity was for his benefit.

Then she saw the clock. Her hands stilled at her waistband. He was going to ask its significance, but he saw her face, just for a second, succumb to something like fear.

She began her examination of the rest of the room. Her methods were erratic. She pressed her hands flat against the walls. She listened, with the shell of her ear close to the wallpaper, her face expectant. There was a white strip of skin between her glove and the sleeve of her shirt. She didn’t wear a watch. The foolishness of relying on one timepiece struck Vikram at the same time as he noticed how thin her wrists were.

When she twisted her head to look at him he thought of all the images in those paper magazines. A few strands of hair had escaped the confines of her hat and stuck to her face. He smiled to see the plastic sheaths over her feet, her long legs cut off so abruptly by the blue bags. Now he had to laugh.

“What’s funny?” demanded Adelaide.

He pointed. Adelaide frowned, then gave a reluctant smile. She raised her knee and extended her leg sideways in a slow motion kick. He imagined her muscles flexing beneath the loose black trousers.

“Sexy, aren’t they,” she said. She balanced for a moment, at once athletic and comic, before dropping her foot. For the first time he saw the charm of the girl. But he wasn’t going to tell her that.

“C’mon,” he said. “Let’s get going.”

They came to the last room. The lock was broken, presumably the key was with Axel. Adelaide turned the handle and stopped. Vikram peered over her shoulder.

The room smelled, not damp exactly, but chill, like old ice. It had been papered. Every inch of wall, floor and ceiling was covered in hot air balloons. Even the window-wall had been claimed. Repeated over and over again was the upturned pear shape, the coloured segments of the balloon envelope. There were prints, photographs, technical drawings, mathematical formulas. Here and there were swatches of yellow and red material. They were glued, taped, nailed or tacked, but they fluttered from their moorings as if stirred by an invisible breath. Vikram looked at the ragged edges of the cuttings. Axel’s handiwork was evident in illegible scrawls. He imagined the frenzied tearing, the hammering in the night. He felt cold.

He tapped Adelaide’s shoulder. She jumped.

“Do you want to go in?”

She shook her head and motioned to the floor. A minefield of nails stuck out of the dust.

“Looks like your brother was planning to skip town.”

“What kind of person thinks about making a hot air balloon?”

Vikram did not reply at once. He was thinking of an old western story, a legend about a balloon.

“Maybe the sort of person who thinks there’s something worth finding,” he said slowly. They were speaking in whispers. Vikram forced himself to raise his voice.

“We should go,” he said. “The hour’s almost up.”

All the same they stayed. Vikram could not dispel a niggling sense of premonition. By stepping into this man’s apartment he had crossed another border with it, one of obligations and no returns. He glanced at Adelaide. There was no doubt about it this time, she looked scared. Her hand bumped against his. She did not immediately move her arm away.

Noise startled both of them. First an erratic, then a regular drumming. Adelaide’s head snapped up. Vikram turned silently. Then he realized it was just the rain, rain breaking on windows covered in paper trails.

He looked at his watch.

“Shit, we’ve got three minutes, come on!”

Adelaide didn’t move.

“Come on!” he repeated. He took her arm but she thrust him off. He ran back through the penthouse. He thought she was right behind him but when he turned she was dawdling, opening a drawer, a cupboard door. They had two and a half minutes.