All the back-slapping he gets should make him feel like flavour of the month but doesn’t. Ignoring calls for them to join various groups, Krista makes her way over to a corner table and crooks her finger for him to follow.
He buys them beers with vodka chasers. They have to lean in to hear each other above the din. Up close, she’s even more beautiful than he remembered. His eyes are repeatedly drawn to the tiny v-shaped peak of hair at her hairline; he’s heard it called a widow’s peak. She certainly likes to play with her long hair as she talks, sometimes flicking it back, sometimes grabbing hold of the ends with both hands like a rope she’s climbing. When he looks into her eyes, he sees her pupils are enlarged – which is meant to be a sign of sexual attraction. On the other hand, it could just be down to the low lighting.
The drink helps to loosen his tongue. After a few awkward silences, the conversation improves. They talk about nothing and everything. He can’t remember being this happy in a long while; the girl even laughs at his better jokes.
Too soon the barman rings a bell to announce it’s close to the curfew hour. ‘This was fun,’ she says, standing up. They’d been so busy chatting he hadn’t noticed how the place had already emptied out around them. As she walks towards the door, Krista wraps her long scarf around her neck until it looks like a giant donut resting on her shoulders.
Outside, the freezing air hits their overheated faces and steams their breath. She turns to him; between the hat and the scarf only her features are visible. ‘I’m a dragon,’ she says breathing and then roaring at him before she reels back a little off-balance.
‘I should see you safely home,’ he says.
She shakes her head. ‘Not a good idea unless you enjoy being beaten to a pulp.’
He pulls a face. ‘I might deserve it.’
‘Listen, Sir Galahad, no one is going to leap out at me with all these patrols circling like flies around a corpse.’
‘Interesting choice of analogy,’ he says. He can’t stop smiling at her.
Krista’s face becomes serious. For one long minute they simply look at each other and then she leans in and their lips touch and he’s overwhelmed by the connection.
Bruno finds himself humming as he walks back to his accommodation block. He can’t recall the name of the tune that’s repeating in his head; it could be one of Krista’s favourites.
The open ground is heavily frosted and the air beginning to fill with tiny, wind-driven ice particles – the annoying sort that sting your face like grit without actually wetting it. For once he doesn’t give a damn; his mind is entirely occupied by Krista. That kiss seems to exist outside of space and time. The whole connection had been the most extraordinary of his whole life to date. He’d learnt almost everything there was to know about the girl in a few seconds; unlike other girls he’s dated, this time none of it had turned him off – quite the opposite. He can’t seem to stop grinning. How crazy would he be after so short a time to think of himself as in love?
Approaching the campus, he gives a mock salute to the guards stationed either side of the main entrance. Their matching stares are long and, like the British Queen Victoria, decidedly unamused. With a silly smile on his face, he passes through the gates only a few minutes before the start of curfew.
It surprises him that the university buildings are mostly in darkness with only the odd light shining out here and there. No longer humming, he becomes aware of his own footsteps ringing out against the hard path. His skin tingles with the sensation that he’s being watched. Certainty grows with every step. The walkway ahead of him narrows as it passes between two blocks. He stops dead; listening for anyone who might be approaching from in front or, worse still, behind.
His head spins round at the rustle of foliage but there’s only a slight movement amongst the dead leaves clinging to one of the stunted shrubs lining the path. Nothing more.
Shrugging away his concerns, he carries on walking.
‘Bruno.’ A whisper so low it could almost have been the wind. For a second he wonders if Krista might have followed him home. No, it wasn’t her voice.
‘Bruno.’ Looking in the direction of the voice, he sees no one. Then something grabs his upper arm; he can feel the pressure of real fingers digging into his flesh. ‘It’s me, Freyja.’
Fokk! She’s wearing one of the suits. ‘We can’t talk here,’ is said louder, her voice emboldened.
He rotates his arm to free it from her grasp. ‘What d’you want from me?’
‘Like I said, we need to talk. I’ll follow you up to your room.’
‘No way is that going to happen. I don’t trust you for a second, not after you went back on your word.’
There’s movement up ahead. Peering into the darkness, he makes out a floating patch of white. As it comes closer, it materialises into the solid form of a fox. The animal’s muzzle comes up, scenting him. More vixens emerge from the shadows behind.
‘We can’t stay here all night,’ she says. He won’t move, won’t be coerced in this way.
‘Face it, Bruno,’ she says, ‘you’re totally outnumbered and outmanoeuvred. It’s not like you have a choice.’
Twenty-Two
The message on Nero’s stud reminds him curfew will begin in less than five minutes and he must officially log any journeys he intends to make before 6:30 a.m. tomorrow. Laskaris must have instigated this prompt. Fokking typical. He pours himself another glass of red wine hoping it will take the edge off the despondency threatening to overtake him.
A loud buzz brings him up sharp. Getting to his feet, he peers into the monitor and is shocked to see Chan outside in the street. ‘I really need to speak with you,’ she says by way of explanation. She keeps glancing around her like a person might if they suspected they’re being followed.
His finger hovers.
‘You’d better invite me up unless you want me to be arrested right here outside your apartment,’ she says. It sounds like the ultimatum it is.
Opening the door, he’s not sure how he should greet her. Before he can decide, he’s forced to take a step back as Chan strides on through into his living space. Her perfume catches in his throat, a sharp note of citrus and something else. She turns abruptly, her beautiful eyes narrowing on him. ‘Surprised to see me.’ It’s more of a statement than a question
Shutting the door, he feels too confined in the narrow hallway. He rubs at the scar on his forehead. ‘Why didn’t you tell me you were coming over?’
‘Bit of a spur of the moment decision.’ She takes off her coat and hat and hands them to him. He could be a cloakroom attendant.
Nero’s struck by how slight a figure she is in her closefitting trousers and navy sweater. The coat in his hands is a lighter shade of blue and heavily padded; not the same one he’d fixed the tracker to. ‘I heard you’d been discharged,’ he says as he hangs it up.
‘You make it sound like I was under arrest,’ she snaps back. When he doesn’t respond, she says, ‘According to all the professionals, I’m now fully recovered. They’ve signed me off. No need for meds; no more physical or psychological therapy necessary – everything back to normal.’
Nero clears his throat. ‘That’s good to hear.’ The orchestra swells as the aria climbs towards the familiar crescendo.
‘Except that we both know I can’t possibly be normal.’ Her smile is ice cold.
Chan’s long hair falls across her face as she peers down at the table. She seems to study the remains of his meal before turning back to him with an expectant look on her face. Finding no words, he kills the music instead.
‘Cat got your tongue again, Inspector?’ she says, her voice a touch too bright. ‘You know I’ve always found that such an interesting idiom. Do you Italians have an equivalent expression?’
‘More or less.’ He shrugs. ‘We say, Il gatto ti ha mangiato la lingua? – has the cat eaten your tongue?’
‘Mmm; I’d say that’s a touch more graphic.’ She gives him a long, unblinking look. ‘Did
you know, back when most people still believed in witchcraft, it was said that if you encountered a witch, her crafty cat would steal your tongue so that once you’d been rendered speechless, you wouldn’t be able to divulge her dark secrets.’
Chan pulls a scary face; then her expression drops. With a nod to his full wineglass, she asks, ‘Aren’t you going to offer me a drink?’
‘Of course.’ He goes into the kitchen, holds a glass up for her inspection. ‘Red okay?’
‘Wine not?’ She gives another twitch of a smile. ‘That was meant to be a joke, Inspector. You don’t seem amused.’
He fills the bowl only halfway before crossing the room to hand her the wine. ‘Salute!’ he says. The clink of their glasses has a hollow ring.
‘Ganbei!’ Instead of taking a sip or two, Chan knocks the whole thing back in one. ‘Excuse my Chinese manners; can’t imagine where I got them from.’
He gestures toward the couch.
She sits down, adjusting the cushion before she leans back as if making herself more comfortable.
‘Are you hungry?’ he asks. ‘Can I get you something?’
She shakes her head emphatically. Playing for time, he picks up his plate and the empty food container and takes them over to the sink. ‘By the way,’ he says, ‘did you log your journey here with DSD?’
‘No need; I arrived just before the witching hour, remember.’ She looks up at him then pats the couch beside her like he might be a puppy to be trained. He tops up her glass though she seems not to notice. Nero’s tempted to take the chair opposite but that would be too obvious, too marked a gesture.
They sit side by side, a world apart. Her eventual sigh is long and heartfelt. ‘The last time I was here, you were a whole lot happier to see me.’
The truth of this hits him hard. ‘I suppose a lot of things have happened since then.’
Picking up her glass, she peers into the depths of the wine before taking a sip. ‘I keep trying to remember exactly what went on in that factory. It’s weird, like some jerky old footage. No – it’s like a series of disconnected images left over from a nightmare. I can’t seem to join any of them together.’
Her skin is so smooth, so unmarked. ‘Memory can be a fickle thing,’ he tells her. ‘It’s often hard to separate what’s imagined, or what others might suggest, from what you know to be true.’
She looks at him so expectantly. Bruno must have been wrong; how could this woman be anything but fully human?
‘After a severe shock or head injury, it’s common to experience dissociative tendencies,’ he says. ‘It can be difficult to integrate thoughts, memories and mental images of what occurred. People often say they feel unconnected from events, sort of spaced-out. And yet we’re all programmed to construct narratives.’
He takes a sip of wine though now it tastes harsh, acidic even. ‘As you well know, if we question witnesses when they’re in such a state, they can feel compelled to supply answers to our questions. That’s when their imagination can take over to help them fill in the gaps. In fact, there was a famous case in Reykjavik back in the 1970’s when– ’
‘I know all about that case,’ she says. ‘You don’t have to lecture me about the fallibility of recovered memories. If I didn’t know better, I’d say you seem to be trying to make me question the little I do remember. It doesn’t alter what I know I saw with my own eyes back in that factory.’
Beneath her superficial anger, he sees her vulnerability. Light is catching on the tears welling up in her extraordinary eyes; he has to fight the urge to reach out and brush them away. ‘You were there too, that night,’ she says, roughly wiping at her cheeks. ‘I know because I saw you just as clearly as I can see you now. And your head – it was floating around like it wasn’t attached to your body. There was a gun pressed into the side of my skull, right here.’ She touches her temple. ‘You know, the whole time I kept thinking: if Nero’s here, it will be okay – he won’t let anything bad happen to me.’
A single tear escapes to roll down her cheek. ‘And then I saw something else; right there on the floor at my feet, there was a dead woman staring up at me. And she had my face.’ Chan shakes her head. ‘It was my exact face. She didn’t just look like me – she was me.’
When he touches her arm she grabs hold of his hand. ‘Please Nero – this whole thing’s driving me insane. I’m on a merry-go-round with everything swirling around inside my head.’ Her fingers are digging in. ‘I have to know the truth.’
Instead of the usual jolt of a connection, Nero feels only the pressure of her fingertips. ‘Please believe me, Jie Ning, I’m not your enemy,’ he says. ‘I’d really like to help but first you have to promise me something.’
‘Anything.’
‘I need your word that you won’t tell anyone else what I’m about to tell you; not under any circumstances. I mean no one – not your doctors or anyone at DSD including Laskaris our new boss; in fact, especially Laskaris. You can’t say anything, even to your friend Maxwell. Many lives could depend on it.’
Sitting more upright, she continues to nod vigorously. ‘Cross my heart and all that.’
‘The dead woman you saw – the one who looked just like you – she was one of the decoys we’ve been searching for.’
‘Yes,’ she says. ‘You’re right. God – I remember now. It wasn’t just her; there were two decoys and all these fokking vixens prowling around me. We were inside these tunnels. So dark and smelly. I couldn’t really see them.’
‘Think back to before all that,’ he says. ‘You remember the evidence we found that someone had developed a suit made from a new kind of material; one that made the wearer invisible and also, by deflecting incoming fire, pretty near invincible?’
‘That’s it; of course. They were wearing those suits.’ She pulls her hand away from his. ‘In that factory, you must have been wearing one too and that’s why I couldn’t see your body.’
‘Yes, you’re absolutely right.’
‘So wait.’ She holds up a hand. ‘Before you tell me anything else, I need to know more about that dead woman.’
‘Well, first of all, she was one of the decoys who took you prisoner. Turns out she was also the one who killed all those men in the Double Red zone. Unwittingly or otherwise, she was giving a demonstration of the suit’s effectiveness in combat.’
‘Wait. Slow down,’ Chan tells him. ‘Why did those decoys take me there? Why didn’t they just kill me? What did they want from me?’
‘I’m not sure how, but one of the decoys found out about you and wanted to meet you.’
‘But why?’ Chan continues to shake her head. ‘I mean none of this is making any kind of sense.’
‘The decoy who looked like you – her name was Ása, Ása Sturludóttir – although, in truth, that was just her foster father’s name. She grew up in the Orange Zone and then later she was recruited by the decoy department.’
‘Okay, so how come she looked exactly like me?’ Chan is now holding her head with both hands hear-no-evil style. ‘Are you trying to tell me that woman was my long-lost twin or something?’
Nero takes a moment to consider. Chan’s eyes are fixed on him, shining with expectation. ‘Yes,’ he finally says. ‘Ása was your identical twin. Sadly, after you arrived in Eldísvík, the two of you were tragically separated and then later adopted by very different families.’
She frowns at him. ‘How come you know all this?’
‘Ása told me everything just before her own vixens attacked her.’
Chan stands up and begins to pace the floor in front of him. ‘So why would her foxes suddenly turn on her?’
‘I really can’t answer that,’ he says.
‘Okay, then tell me how I can have totally forgotten my own twin sister? If I can remember the massacre in China we escaped from, then surely I’d have some residual memory of her?’
‘You must have been very young at the time,’ he says. ‘You’d been through hell and back. Like I told you earli
er, memory is such a fickle thing.’
Twenty-Three
Like a condemned man, Bruno leads the way up the concrete stairway. With the lifts no longer operating, it’s a long walk. Though Freyja’s invisible, he hears her muffled footsteps right there behind him – like some big beast is stalking him.
Looking down to the level below, their two sets of wet footprints are on every tread. He’s pleased to see the vixens aren’t all trooping behind them in a long line.
The air inside his room is stale and stinks of yesterday’s fish curry and the lingering smell of his friends’ farts. As if Freyja was a date, he’s embarrassed by the state of the place and even clears away some of the beer cans scattered on the floor before he stops himself.
He goes to the window to let in air. Way down below, the campus grounds are softly lit. Nothing’s moving out there – the whole world could be fast asleep. On the far horizon, the white peaks of the mountain range seem to hover in the night sky as if they’re hardly tethered to the earth anymore. They could be massed spaceships ready for blast off; can’t say he’d blame them for wanting out of here.
He opens the grid set into the top of the window frame. He’d like to open the entire window but they’re sealed in case of suicide attempts or drunken pranks. In the dark glass, Freyja’s disembodied head appears behind his right shoulder. Under normal circumstances, he’d be delighted that such a good-looking woman had apparently just materialised in his bedroom.
‘So, what do you want?’ he says, spinning round to check there’s no weapon in her hand.
As if she’s read his mind, she takes off her gloves and holds both hands up to show they’re empty. Like it’s all some kind of joke, she even does jazz hands. ‘I just want to talk,’ she says, ‘that’s it.’
Though her pale skin has an almost translucent quality, her cheeks are really flushed. Bruno remembers just how hot it gets inside those suits. Freyja unzips it at the neck, letting in that cool draft of air from outside. Looking him in the eye, she slides it on down further until he can just see the swell of her breasts, the white lacey edges of her bra. She catches him staring and smiles. He has to remind himself this is exactly how she got to Rockingham. Even without a touch, he’s aware that she’d just contemplated sitting down on the bed but what with the cans and the torn-up nan breads, she decides to remain standing.
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