The Pearl King

by Sarah Painter

  ‘I’ll see what I can do.’

  ‘Thanks.’ Lydia was still distracted, rehearsing the conversation with Charlie, wondering if there was any way she could keep this bit of information from him, for Malc’s safety. It wasn’t like Charlie was just going to drop the matter, decide not to bother to look into it. If Lydia didn’t get results, he would get them another way.

  Fleet broke into her thoughts, echoing them exactly. ‘I guess you’re going to tell your uncle about Malc?’

  Lydia nodded. ‘No choice.’

  ‘I get that,’ Fleet said. ‘I will warn the prison to put him into protective custody. If they’ve got the resources.’

  Lydia couldn’t feel much sympathy for the man who had murdered a couple of old-age-pensioners, even knowing that Terrence and Richard Crow had undoubtedly been no angels. ‘You do what you have to do.’

  Chapter Twenty-Two

  Charlie texted Lydia, demanding an update. She drove to Grove Lane, trying not to think about what Charlie was going to arrange once she had given him Malc’s name. There was no way out of it, though. It wasn’t as if Charlie was just going to drop the matter. And if she didn’t tell him, somebody else would. Eventually. And then he might guess that she had held out on him.

  When Charlie opened the door, he looked drawn. His olive-toned skin was yellow-ish and the lines on his face were deeper than usual. He ushered Lydia inside. ‘Quickly,’ he said. ‘We’re not safe.’

  ‘Has something else happened?’ Lydia said, feeling sick.

  ‘No. No. Not yet. Only a matter of time. Getting you arrested was a warning shot. This is the real deal. If our alliance with Alejandro is over-’ He shook his head. ‘I don’t even want to think about it.’

  It had certainly occurred to Lydia that if JRB were intent on destabilising the Families into breaking the truce, then killing a couple of Crows would be an excellent way to do so. They would have to pin the murders on one of the other Families, though. ‘It’s not necessarily the Silvers.’ She told him about her visit to Azi and the person he named.

  Charlie went still. ‘That’s good work, Lyds.’

  ‘I’ll find the person who ordered the attack. That’s who we want.’

  Charlie nodded, his mind clearly working.

  ‘We shouldn’t do anything rash. Not until we’ve got all the information.’ Lydia was watching Charlie carefully. He had gone dangerously still.

  ‘Naturally,’ Charlie said. He clapped his hands together, the action loud and sudden after the quiet pause which had come before. He turned on a humourless smile. ‘You need to train.’

  ‘I was going to work my contacts, find out who ordered the hit.’

  ‘Training isn’t optional,’ Charlie said. ‘Especially now. You need to be strong. For your own safety.’

  Lydia could recognise when it wasn’t worth arguing with Charlie so she followed him upstairs to the training room.

  It was a grey day but what little light was available streamed through the large windows, illuminating the room. Charlie was in a strange mood. Intense and distracted and Lydia spent the next hour regulating herself, making sure that nothing unexpected happened. She spun her coin, held it in mid-air and produced multiple coins, just ephemeral copies but they looked real enough, and sent them clattering to the floor in a shower of flashing metal. It was tiring, but Lydia felt like the true exhaustion came from continually holding onto her self-control, trying to make sure that only a little happened. She could feel a larger power, hovering, just above her as she obeyed Charlie’s instructions. The thing was, it was drawn from somewhere. She was a battery, powering up other people, at least that was her working theory. But that powering-up had to be drawn from somewhere else. She didn’t understand it, which meant she didn’t like it.

  ‘Okay, that’ll do,’ Charlie said. ‘I can see you’re tired.’

  ‘Thanks,’ Lydia said, injecting exhaustion into her voice.

  ‘Unless,’ Charlie had been leaning against the far wall and he straightened up, now. ‘You’re putting it on.’

  ‘Sorry?’ Lydia tensed.

  Charlie was staring intently, his small eyes flat and unreadable and Lydia felt a prickle of fear. She pushed it down. He didn’t know. He couldn’t know.

  ‘I just wonder if you’re trying hard enough,’ Charlie said. He glanced away, though, his body seeming to relax.

  Lydia felt her own fear slip down a notch and she forced herself to walk near him, to pick up her water bottle and take a casual swig.

  The bottle fell from her hand as Charlie looped an arm around her neck, pulling her back so that she was off balance. His forearm was hard against her neck, compressing her windpipe and making it impossible to breathe, and she scrambled for her footing, feeling Charlie behind her like a solid wall. She grabbed his arm, trying to pull it away, dragged her foot down and stamped on his instep as hard as she could, but he was too big and too strong.

  Her mind was white with panic. A man had grabbed her like this on the street, tried to bundle her into a van, seconds before the Fox brothers had shown up. She had been strangled by Maddie, too, and Jason had saved her life. Jason wasn’t here, though. And the chances of the Fox brothers arriving to save the day and then beat her to a pulp, were slim. Little black speckles were all over the whiteness, now, and Lydia knew she was going to pass out very soon. She had done self-defence training back in Aberdeen and knew that she should have stepped back and to the side, ducking and twisting out of the lock but she had missed the moment in her shock and Charlie had her up against his body, with no room to manoeuvre.

  ‘Come on,’ she heard Charlie’s voice. ‘Fight back.’

  Lydia couldn’t feel her body anymore. She had retreated to the place on the knife edge of consciousness. Any second and she would be gone. Killed by her own uncle. She supposed it would be handy for him. He had always said he wanted her in the Family, proper, but she had proved a disappointment. And she was a loose cannon, fraternising with Foxes, baiting the Silvers, not showing him the deference he felt he deserved.

  A wave of tiredness washed over Lydia and she thought about going to sleep. She was exhausted by it all. ‘Oh, for fuck’s sake.’ It was a woman’s voice. Familiar. Not overly welcome. It took Lydia what felt like a long time, but must have been a split second, to realise who had spoken. It was Maddie. Maddie wasn’t here, so it had to be a delusion. She had a lot of those. And she was passing out. Or passed out and on her way to being dead.

  That did it. She didn’t want to be dead. Especially not at the hands of Uncle Charlie. Her mother had warned her to watch out for him and she didn’t want her to say ‘I told you so’. Teenage petulance wasn’t the most noble reason for fighting, but it was better than nothing. Lydia pulled the power which had been waiting in the wings onto centre stage. It felt difficult, like every thought was slow, but she pictured her coin and that helped. She couldn’t feel it, couldn’t see anything except flashes and speckles and was pretty sure her eyes were rolled up back in her head, but picturing it helped her to focus.

  She pulled the power around her, like a cloak. It was warm and comforting and with that comfort came a little more mental clarity. Her coin was in her mind’s eye, clear and bright. She saw the room she was in, Charlie behind her, the grey winter light casting pale shapes on the wooden floor, her water bottle rolling away. Her coin in front of her was more real than reality. In that moment, Lydia knew it came from somewhere else. Or it belonged in a slice of reality that was different to the water bottle and the floor and her own body. All she had to do was to join it. At once, she was outside of her body, looking down. She could see her own face, pale and desperate, Charlie’s meaty arm across her neck, his tattoos moving. His tattoos had a touch of the hyperreal, too, but they were nowhere near as crisp as her coin. This vantage point should have been scary, the last moments of hallucination before death, but Lydia no longer felt afraid. She took her time, looking around the room, ignoring her own struggling form below, and seein
g the vaguest outline of a second Lydia suspended in mid-air reflected in the multiple mirrors. She looked a bit like Jason when he was at his most insubstantial, a thought which made her smile. She reached out a ghostly hand and passed it over Charlie’s arm, feeling a tingling in physical body as she did so.

  Instantly the pressure on her neck disappeared and she sucked in lungfuls of painful air. She was back in her body, doubled over and dragging in ragged breaths while every part of her screamed with sensation. She had forgotten, even in those small moments of being incorporeal just how much activity a body experienced. She could feel blood moving in veins, muscles stretching and contracting, air moving over tiny hairs in her middle ear, the squeezing of peristalsis in her guts, and the electric crackle of her neurons firing. As her oxygen levels improved with several more breaths, the intense awareness faded and she was able to think about other things. Like the slumped form of her uncle, who was leaning against the wall, hands on his knees. His breathing was coming in gasps, too, like he had been sprinting.

  She moved toward the door, keeping her eyes on Charlie in case he made a miraculous recovery and sprang for her. Out of the corner of her eye, she thought she saw a black shape moving. She whipped her head around to see, but the corner of the room was empty. For a second, she thought she saw a black winged shape reflected in the mirrors, but she blinked and it disappeared. It was probably the after-effects of the oxygen deprivation or the adrenaline that was still coursing through her body, making time move differently and colours appear saturated. She couldn’t trust her own eyes or her senses. She needed to get away and rest somewhere dark and safe.

  ‘What the feathers was that?’ Charlie managed, bringing his head up to look at Lydia.

  She felt a spurt of confused anger. ‘You tried to kill me.’

  ‘No!’ Charlie’s voice was different, but Lydia couldn’t work out how.

  She backed up a few more steps, getting closer to the door while keeping her eyes on Charlie.

  ‘I was,’ he paused to suck in some more air. ‘Training.’

  It didn’t bloody feel like it, Lydia thought. Charlie was still bent over and was showing no signs of moving, but Lydia didn’t want to wait for him to recover his strength. She was at the door and ready to turn and open it, to flee down the stairs and out of the house. She didn’t know what to do after that point and realised that she had to make sure Charlie wasn’t coming for her. Otherwise she would have to leave London altogether. She hesitated. ‘And did I pass your little test?’

  Charlie’s shark eyes were moist, like he was actually going to cry. ‘What did you do?’

  ‘I don’t…’ Lydia stopped. Tried again. ‘You shouldn’t have done that. You really scared me.’

  ‘I got that,’ Charlie said, a spark of his old self igniting.

  Lydia took another step back, her hand on the door. And that’s when she saw what was different about Charlie. His tattoos weren’t moving.

  Chapter Twenty-Three

  Lydia knew she couldn’t go back to The Fork, not at that moment. She would have to eventually, she had to collect Jason or see him to make sure he didn’t start fading, but right at that moment she had to get away. Somewhere safe. Somewhere Charlie wouldn’t think to look. She drove while she thought, putting distance between her and Charlie. He had attacked her. That had just happened.

  Lydia arrived at her destination without fully acknowledging to herself that she had decided to go there. She dialled the number before she could lose her will. ‘Are you home?’

  Fleet had answered the phone after the second ring. ‘What’s wrong?’

  ‘I’m fine,’ Lydia said, aware that the last time she had called about his flat, she had just taken a beating. ‘I can’t go home right now, though.’

  ‘I’m on my way there. I’ll meet you outside.’

  Lydia stayed in the car on the quiet street, counting breaths in and out. She saw Fleet’s car in her rear-view mirror and watched him park. He unfolded himself from the driving seat and she felt herself sag with relief.

  Inside the flat looked exactly the same. Extremely neat, warm and comfortable. ‘Tea?’

  ‘Thanks,’ Lydia said. She sat on the sofa and stared at the wall, trying to gather her wits. She had tried in the car on the way over, but the panic had still been keeping them on a loop. Now that she was off the street and hidden, she made more progress. Charlie didn’t know this place. He didn’t think she was with Fleet and if he decided to check, he would have to find Fleet’s home address which wasn’t easy. Not impossible, though. Not for a man like Charlie Crow. The fear gripped her, again, and she was on her feet.

  ‘I need to go,’ she called. ‘Sorry.’ This had been a mistake. She should keep moving.

  ‘Wait,’ Fleet came out of the kitchen and crossed the room. He put his hands onto Lydia’s shoulders and dipped his head to look into her eyes. ‘What’s happened. Talk to me.’

  ‘Can’t,’ Lydia said. ‘I need to hide out.’ Her mind flashed to Maddie, hiding on the narrow boat courtesy of Paul Fox. She had thought Maddie was the bad one, the wild card, but now she had a glimpse as to why she had wanted to run away. Had Charlie trained her in the same way? Maybe Maddie hadn’t started out as sociopathic. Maybe Charlie had created that particular monster.

  ‘Lyds, you’re shaking. I’ve never seen you like this. And when I first met you, someone had just tried to kill you.’ He tried a small smile. ‘You’re alarming me.’

  Lydia focused on Fleet’s eyes. Warm, steady, and full of genuine concern. Hell Hawk, she was not going to cry. She refused. She dug her finger nails into her palms and straightened her spine. ‘Charlie. He attacked me.’

  Fleet frowned. ‘What do you mean?’

  ‘Just that,’ Lydia broke from his grasp, it was too intense to look into his face for a second longer. She sat back on the sofa and let her head fall back. The tiredness was lapping at the edges, threatening to pull her under.

  ‘Are you hurt?’

  Lydia shook her head. ‘A few bruises, that’s all. He scared me though.’

  ‘I’ll kill him,’ Fleet’s jaw was clenched. ‘Say the word.’

  ‘It was training,’ she said. ‘It wasn’t… He said it was for my own good. Well, not my own good specifically, the good of the Family.’

  ‘Training?’

  Lydia let her eyes drift closed. ‘You know what I am. Crows can do certain things. Apparently those abilities can be trained to make them stronger, more effective. It’s Charlie’s obsession. He says we need to be strong, that a war is coming. He doesn’t think the treaty is going to hold for much longer. Not now somebody is having Crows killed in prison.’

  ‘Is that why Alejandro has left?’

  Lydia’s eyes opened and she straightened to look at Fleet. ‘What do you know about the Silvers?’

  ‘Just that Maria is the new head of the Family.’

  ‘Is that official intelligence or copper gossip?’

  Fleet shrugged. ‘You know how it is. Half the people don’t believe in the Families and the other half tell tall tales just to make themselves sound interesting. My great aunt was married to a Fox and we all had to give teeth as a wedding present, that kind of thing.’

  ‘Well, it’s not wrong. Alejandro is following his political ambitions.’

  ‘That’s ominous,’ Fleet said.

  ‘I’m not sure it’s relevant, though. Charlie is fixated on the Families because he knows them, but JRB are the Silvers’ clients and they seem to have connections to the Pearls, too.’

  ‘The prison killings could be more random than you think. We can’t jump to conclusions. A list of people pissed off with your family would be handy, though.’

  Lydia tilted her head. ‘How long have you got?’

  Fleet smiled sadly. ‘And now Charlie has lost his mind. You want to press charges?’

  Lydia almost laughed. ‘No, thank you.’

  ‘This is serious.’

  The urge to laugh disappeare
d. ‘I know. He’s freaking out about the murders. It’s a warning. No, more than a warning, it’s an act of war. And I’m not strong. He wants me to be strong.’ As Lydia spoke, she could feel her thoughts swirling and looping, circling to find an order that made sense.

  ‘You’re not defending him?’ Fleet said.

  ‘I don’t know. I need to think.’ Lydia pulled out her phone and texted Paul. She told him she had gone to Fleet’s flat and asked if he needed the address.

  No need. On my way.

  ‘Paul Fox is coming here. He won’t be long. I just need to speak to him and I don’t want to do it on the phone.’

  ‘I don’t understand, why him? Why now?’

  ‘I can meet him outside if you want.’

  ‘No, that’s not what I’m saying.’

  ‘I need to see him. I need all the help I can get.’ Lydia was acting on instinct. Something had ignited when Charlie had grabbed her. She had never trusted her uncle and she had been proved right. Maybe the old lines of Family weren’t set in stone, maybe there was a better way of deciding who was a friend and who was a foe. Maybe it didn’t have to start and end with blood.

  Fleet went out to the kitchen to finish making tea and Lydia paced the room, looking out of the window every few minutes.

  Paul Fox must have broken the speed limit, unless he had been fortuitously close to Camberwell. He also managed to park and get to the flats without Lydia seeing him from the window. She buzzed him upstairs and opened the door.

  ‘What’s happened, Little Bird?’ Paul’s look of concern was genuine and Lydia realised something as Paul walked into Fleet’s flat. The tang of Fox was no longer a warning.

  ‘Trouble at home,’ Lydia said shortly. ‘I might need to hide.’

  Paul nodded. ‘Easy.’

  ‘Come to the station,’ Fleet said, walking into the room. ‘We can protect you.’

  ‘No,’ Lydia said. ‘I will not willingly set foot in that place as long as I draw breath in this city.’