Restoration (33 page)

  Martin pressed himself closer, wishing he could touch. His head buzzed with a sleepy eroticism. He pressed his cheeks against the cabinet, his mouth huffing condensation on the glass as Madame Arcana flicked her long fingers and produced a thick card from within her palm.

  Martin was quite sure he was asleep now. The waking world didn't offer such pleasures. Not for him. His body felt light, the only blood that seemed to flow was in his groin as he unselfconsciously stared at his wooden beauty through half-closed eyes.

  "What's my fortune?" he whispered.

  Madame Arcana pressed the card against the glass so that he could see the words written on it: "Frankly? Not good…"

  Her arms and legs shot through the glass grabbing at Martin and pulling him close. Squealing in a state of sudden wakefulness, Martin felt a heat growing between her wooden thighs, a heat that drew him within her like a bird sucking up a worm. His bones popped as he was forced inside her wooden cavity, a labial slit parting along her torso, the better to eat him whole. She leaned her head back as if in orgasm and the last glimpse of light Martin was afforded was from between her painted, crimson lips as she snapped close around him.

  She began to digest, leaving a handful of pocket change, scattered on the floor tiles, as Martin's only legacy.

 
 
 

 
 

 

Ashe was used to the heat. When you spent long enough in warm climates you developed a tolerance, a state of mind as much as anything else, that allowed you to get on with your business whatever the damn thermometer chose to say. You thought cool thoughts and let the body do its sweating.

  When he had worked as a history professor – a life that now seemed to belong to someone else, he was a man of multiple identities these days – the summers had got to him. But that was as much his weight as the sun. When you carried an extra sixty pounds of cinnamon pastry on your waistline you were going to struggle when the air got warm. Now, slimmer, older and much more focused, it wasn't a problem. Honestly. He could deal with it.

  Christ but it was hot.

  And then there were the flies. Persistent bastards, seemingly convinced that there was nothing tastier in the world than his face. They bashed against his eyes and lips as if they were coated in honey. Every time he brushed them away they returned, mindlessly. It was all he could do not to pull out his gun and start shooting. They were driving him crazy.

  He had spent a slow few days in Indonesia, recovering from his experience on the water and the savage crack he'd received to his head. A young boy had found him shouting at the sky amongst the dead fish and driftwood. "The seagulls will not hurt you," the boy had insisted in response to his raving. Not speaking a word of the language, Ashe didn't understand.

  The kid had called his parents, the parents had called the local doctor and within a couple of hours Ashe was being looked after by the best that Kupang could offer. By modern standards this wasn't much. No cool hospital sheets, saline drip or candy-stripers fussing around, but it had been enough. Ashe had got back on his feet. On his last day he had even had time to make preparations. He had dried his money out, given some to the boy's family as a measure of thanks and spent a few hours on the beach, awaiting his train, reading his notebook and planning the journey of the box.

  He imagined its route, not as dry ink on a page but rather as a visual journey, fleshing out the details he didn't know with best guesses or just plain imagination. From its last sighting on the ocean it had appeared next in the Australian town of Darwin. He would have to hope it could make its own way there, he suspected it would. A subconscious impression rather than anything concrete but he had good reason to trust his gut in this instance. He pictured the box washed up on the beach, nestled amongst the seaweed and shell just as he had been a few days ago. There it was found by an American entrepreneur called Terrance Arthur, in Darwin to enquire about factory space and trade potential. Ashe tried to imagine Arthur's face but all he could see was his own, not surprising given that the man was his father. A father he could no more remember than anything else about his formative life. Was Terrance Arthur a good man? Ashe suspected not. Given what Penelope had told him it would seem that Chester had lived in fear of his parents. A tyrannical pair who ruled their son in all things. No, thought Ashe, picturing young Chester pulling the trigger of a gun, or punching a naked Penelope to the side of the head, not
all
things… he kept some parts to himself.

  At some point Chester –
you
, his own voice insisted in his head – got the box. Perhaps his father had given it to him as a cheap gift, a washed-up opportunity. Perhaps Chester had simply taken a shine to it and helped himself. He had obviously conducted some research. From what Penelope had said, Chester had known the box's potential, known it was a gateway to some other place. He would eventually make that journey and see for himself. Then Chester's days would be numbered. For Ashe did think of him as another person, whatever his subconscious had to say on the matter. Chester was the man Ashe had the misfortune of inheriting his body from, nothing more. Once inside the House, Chester would play his final part in the prisoner's game. Then have his memory wiped by those library worms until there was nothing left. A hollow man waiting to be filled with something better. Ashe remembered the urge he had felt to shoot Walsingham, the willingness to kill Yoosuf's accomplice… perhaps that man had not been quite as hollow as he hoped.
No
. No point in thinking that way.

  He continued imagining the passage of the box. He pictured it tumbling from Penelope's hands in the narrow drainage gulley that ran alongside Terrance Arthur's New York meat-packing plant, bobbing in the gushing, foul water before dropping into the darkness of the Hudson. From there it floated along the current,
en route
to its next pair of hands: Alvarado Gomez, a young sailor stood on the dock, cigarette in his mouth and impatience for the ocean in his heart. Perhaps Gomez caught a flash of that dirty New York moon as it bounced off the brass hinges of the box? Whatever had drawn his eye, Gomez fished it out of the water – in Ashe's mind he could see the man clearly, stretching out over the river, boathook in his hand as he dragged the box within reach – and fancied he'd found an unusual gift for his young wife back home. Certainly the box was attractive (to some it was irresistible).

  At what point Gomez decided that it wasn't such a lovely gift after all Ashe couldn't decide. Though he imagined the sailor lying in the dark of his bunk, turning the box over in his hands and wondering what precisely he had found. It wouldn't open but perhaps Gomez had been grateful of that, worried what he might see should it ever do so. Perhaps the box had played its trick of ticking when observed, the essence of its maker bristling inside the wood, eager to meet the air. Whatever it was that had unnerved Gomez – for certainly something had – he couldn't wait to pass the box on to someone else once the ship made port. Why he hadn't simply thrown it overboard Ashe couldn't begin to guess, certainly he had almost given it away at the first opportunity. According to the torn page his younger self had procured from the sales ledger of Luis Cortez, dealer in antiques, art and opium – though he wasn't as fastidious in keeping sales paperwork for the latter – Gomez had sold the box for the sort of spare change a sailor can dispose of in one vigorous hour of shore leave.

  And there the box had rested for a while. Cortez could see no great value in a box that couldn't be opened, having given up on the trick of it after half an hour of probing and shaking. It gathered dust rather than victims. It was neither the first nor the last time the box would share shelf space with unconventional treasure. Antique shops – or stalls like Yoosuf's – were regular resting points along its journey.

  It was Jesus Garcia that would finally liberate the box, catching a glimpse of it while searching for something ostentatious to hang on his wall. Garcia smuggled weaponry for the Republican government, underhand deals from countries and organisations that didn't want to be seen to support the old regime during the Civil War. Politics in gun sales never changed, they sold you bullets on a Monday then denounced you to the press on Friday just after your cheque had cleared.

  The very thing that Cortez had thought made the box unattractive – the fact that nobody could open it – was what had appealed to Garcia. He was arrogant enough to think that he would succeed where others had failed. Nothing ever refused his advances for long.

  He was to be disappointed. He gave the box hours of his time, tracing every single line of the burned lettering. Nothing would open it. Several times he had come close to shooting the thing (for sure a .45 round would see it open, he thought) but that smacked too much of failure and so he left it alone.
One day
, he thought, whenever he caught sight of it,
one day I'll have you open
.

 

 

The train had deposited Ashe in an alleyway behind a bar. He had stumbled into a mess of discarded beer bottles and the aroma of cat piss, a family of strays having made a home by the bins. It was not the best introduction to Valencia.

  He had booked himself a room at a local hotel, relieved to find they were willing to accept the dollars he had left over. He had worried that they would be too old but the gleam in the eyes of the rotund Spaniard behind the registration desk said it wasn't so. He had needed to eat. Taking his place at a table in the hotel bar, he stared at the limp chalk marks scrawled across a blackboard on the wall and wondered whether it translated into a menu. He wasn't inclined to point and hope for the best so he asked the owner to recommend something. The owner walked off, bringing him a large terracotta bowl of stew five minutes later. Ashe guessed that there was nothing else to recommend. The stew was fine, chorizo sausage and beans, bobbing in a chilli tomato sauce that Ashe just knew he'd be hearing from again after a few hours. He wiped the bowl clean with bread and killed the spicy heat on his tongue with a large glass of beer.

  He headed upstairs, his eyes drooping before he had even cleared the door of his room. The fact that his body knew a solid night's sleep on an actual bed lay ahead made it impatient. He was fast asleep the minute he lay down.

  The next morning he washed – oh to have had a hot shower, just to finish off the holy trinity of an evening meal and a night's rest – and put on his usual clothes. He was tempted to leave the overcoat behind, it's not as if the weather demanded it, but he had no idea how to inconspicuously carry his gun without it. Better to sweat than be shot at and not be able to shoot back. But then that was also a problem that needed solving: he was out of ammunition. First order of the day would be to find some shells.

  He asked at the hotel owner where you could buy hunting supplies and the fat man had grinned at him, showing teeth that alternated between black and white as often as a crossword. The man had given him a name and a street number and Ashe had headed out. There was something to be said for staying in suspect accommodation, he thought, you asked the concierge at the Waldorf where to buy weaponry and they took a dim view of you. Here it made you fit in.

  The house he had been directed to was nondescript, just another open doorway in a terrace of townhouses. Music called through the bead curtain that hung across the front door, letting in the cool but keeping out prying eyes. Crackly swing tunes, Glen Miller, Ashe thought, or maybe Benny Goodman, one of those old guys. Not so old right now, he reminded himself.

  "Hola?" he called, peering through the gaps in the beads to see if he could spy movement in the darkness beyond them. Having lived in Florida he had a fair bit of Spanish, it was a useful middle ground language between the Cubans and the Mexicans. He'd found it easy enough to pick up.
Perhaps you already knew it
… that annoying voice in his head said,
hollow man!
"I was told this was the place to come to if you wanted to buy…" he had no intention of shouting out his requirements, not without so much as a pair of eyes to look into, "specialist items."

  "I am nothing if not a specialist, senor," a voice replied, dark, nicotine-stained fingers parting the beads to reveal a craggy face crowned with an unruly mop of black hair.

  "Jimenez?" Ashe asked.

  "Nobody else here," the Spaniard replied, waving Ashe inside.

  It took a few moments for Ashe's eyes to adjust from the bright sunlight to the dark of Jimenez's house. Not that there was much to see, a couple of easy chairs, a large dining table. There was no ornamentation or pictures. The only decoration being the smell of cigarette smoke and old wine.

  "Sit down my friend," the Spaniard said, pointing to one of the easy chairs, "and tell me what 'specialist items' you have need of."

  Ashe considered remaining standing – certainly he had no urge to make himself comfortable here – but didn't want to irritate the man by refusing his hospitality.

  "I have most things," Jimenez continued, sitting down in the other chair, "I am a man who believes in free trade. Women? Drugs perhaps?"

  Ashe ignored the fact that Jimenez thought him the sort of man who would want either. He took his revolver out, careful to hold it in a suitably non-threatening manner. "Ammunition for this," he said.

  "Ah!" Jimenez smiled, "you are in the market for violence."

  "Protection," Ashe insisted.

  Jimenez shrugged. "The two are the same, it all comes down to timing, no?"