Rooftoppers

by Katherine Rundell

  “No. Don’t scream.”

  “Why shouldn’t I?” It was too dark to see him properly. “I’m just about to.” He isn’t much older than I am, Sophie thought. He was long-legged, and his face was tight and wary, like an animal’s. He didn’t look like a murderer. Her breath came a little more easily.

  “Because I don’t like screaming.”

  “What do you want?”

  “I want to talk to you, Sophie.”

  “How do you know my name? And what are you doing here?”

  “I heard the man saying it in the street. The long one. The one you called Charles. My name is Matteo,” he added, as an afterthought.

  “You were watching us?”

  The boy picked his nose. “Yes. You’re not special. I watch everybody.”

  “And what if I scream for the police? What happens then?”

  The boy shrugged. “You won’t. But if you do, I can be gone in . . .” He glanced, calmly measuring, at the skylight. “Six seconds.”

  “Not if I stop you.”

  He shrugged again. “You could try.”

  “And what are you doing here?” Sophie sat up. She thought, Hold steady. It was lucky that her room was so small. If he tried to attack her, she could get out through the door in three steps.

  “I came in from the roof.”

  “Yes, I can see that!” The window was open wider than she had left it, and he had brought at least two dozen pigeons’ worth of droppings in with him. “But why? Why didn’t you come through the door?”

  “Don’t you lock it? That’s dangerous. You should lock your door.”

  “Yes, I do, actually—so that people can’t come in.”

  The boy shrugged again. It was difficult to see, in the dark, but he might have been laughing at her. It was not a friendly laugh.

  Sophie said, “And how did you get onto the roof in the first place? I thought the only way onto the roof was my skylight.”

  “You thought there was only one way onto the rooftop? Vraiment? You really thought that?”

  “Why are you laughing?”

  “There’s hundreds of ways onto any rooftop. I could have climbed the drainpipe.”

  “Did you? I would have heard you, wouldn’t I?”

  “Probably.”

  “Then how did you?”

  “I jumped. From the roof next door.”

  “You jumped?” Sophie tried to look casual. “Isn’t that dangerous?” Her casual face felt stiff.

  “No. I don’t know. Maybe. Most things are dangerous. Your eye is twitching.”

  “Is it?” Sophie abandoned her casual face. “Oh.”

  “Oui. Anyway.” He looked at her, and his eyes were black and hard. “I came to tell you to keep off my rooftop.”

  Sophie was speechless. She had half-expected him to ask for money, or to try to steal her cello. She was so startled that she forgot to be frightened. She said, “It’s not your rooftop! How can it be?”

  “All the rooftops between the river and the train station are mine. I did not give you permission to go up there.”

  “But . . . rooftops don’t belong to anybody. They’re like air, and water. They’re no-man’s-land.”

  “They’re not. They’re mine.”

  “How? How are they yours?”

  “They just are. I know them best.”

  Sophie’s face must have looked as unconvinced as she felt, because the boy scowled.

  “I do!” he said. “I know exactly which chimney pots are going to fall next autumn, and which gutter mushrooms you can eat. I bet you didn’t even know that you can eat those mushrooms that grow in the gutters?” Sophie hadn’t known that there were such mushrooms, so she said nothing.

  “And,” said the boy, “I know every single bird’s nest my side of the city.”

  “That doesn’t make the rooftops yours.”

  “They belong to me more than to anyone else. I live on them.”

  “No, you don’t. You can’t. Nobody lives on houses. You live in them.”

  “You don’t know what you’re talking about.” The boy glared at her. He thumped the wall, and his hand left a sooty mark. The forefinger on his right hand was missing its tip. “Look, this is stupid. I don’t want to hurt you, but you have to stay off the roofs, or I will—”

  “Will what?”

  “I will hurt you,” he said, as matter-of-fact as a man selling bread.

  “But why? What are you talking about?”

  “You won’t be careful enough. You’ll give me away. You have the streets. Use them.”

  Outside, the clouds moved away from the moonlight, and the room filled briefly with night-glow. The boy’s face was darkly tanned (Or dirt, perhaps? she thought), and seemed to be made up of sharp angles and eyes.

  “I can’t stay off the roofs,” said Sophie. “I need them.”

  “Why?”

  “I . . . ,” said Sophie. “It’s too hard to explain. They feel safe.” Sophie blushed as she said it. The boy snorted. “I mean, they feel important.”

  The boy said, “So? Et alors?”

  “I feel like I’ve been here before,” she said. “I think they might be a clue.” She expected that he would relent. It was what you did—you gave in. Giving in was good manners.

  But the boy only stared at her, unsmiling. “Non. Rooftops are not a clue; they’re mine. You’d give me away. You’d be slow. If you’re slow, people see you.”

  “I’m not slow!”

  He looked at her hands, her feet. “You’d bleed too easily. You look soft.”

  “I am not soft. Look! No, don’t go—look.” Sophie held out her left hand, palm up. The fingertips were calloused from her cello strings. “Do they look soft to you?”

  “Yes. They do.”

  Sophie could have screamed.

  The boy said, “And you’d be noisy.”

  “How do you know? You don’t know me.” It seemed too much for this boy to break into her room in the moonlight and start insulting her volume control.

  “All pavement-people are noisy. You’d give me away. Or you’d fall, and people would come searching around and find us all. I mean, find me. No. You’re not coming up here again.”

  “You can’t stop me.”

  The boy sighed. He spoke like someone holding on to his temper by a thread. “Fine! Just stay on your own rooftop, then. Don’t go near the edge. Stay low. Don’t stay out after sunrise, or people will see you. Don’t make a noise, or I’ll hear and I’ll come and burn off all your hair while you’re sleeping.”

  “But I can’t!” said Sophie. “Really, I can’t. I need to look around. I need to find out more. Couldn’t—” She hesitated. “Could I come with you?”

  The look he gave her was as cold as ice. It burned. “Fine! If you can catch me.”

  The boy hadn’t been lying when he’d said he could be gone in six seconds. He gripped hold of the window frame, and had twisted himself up and out before Sophie had counted to five. He seemed made of springs and leather.

  Sophie followed, with only a little scrabbling, a little blood. Her legs were long, and she was quick; but the boy, as she clambered onto the slate, was already four rooftops down the road. His run was lilting, and peculiar. At least, she thought it was him; she could see only a black shadow, mixing with the shadows cast by the clouds scudding across the moon.

  Sophie set after him. The night had turned damp, and the slate was slippery in unexpected places. Sophie didn’t dare follow fast; she jogged, as quickly as she dared, across her own rooftop, and across the next.

  Rooftop running was not like other running. Sophie tried to keep her head low, and her back half-down. A bottom cropping up over the balustrades and chimney pots would be impossible to explain. Her arms and fingers seemed longer than usual, and got in the way.

  Sophie halted, panting. The wind blew harder, and she gripped a chimney pot. Clocks below her began to strike four, and Paris was waking. Its sound was like the hum of a hundred sec
rets, she thought. It was the mutter of a dozen soothsayers.

  But the boy was nowhere. The boy had disappeared.

  13

  THE NEXT NIGHT Sophie Began Training.

  She worked harder than she had ever worked in her life. She did sit-ups, and pull-ups on the doorframe. She practiced balancing on one leg with her eyes closed, again and again. Her first effort was seven seconds. Her hundredth was one minute and forty-two seconds. She ran barefoot back and forth across the rooftop, and sang under her breath to keep away the pain.

  At about one in the morning, she realized quite suddenly what had made Matteo’s run look different: it was toe first rather than heel first, which shifted your center of gravity, she found, to somewhere near the knees. The realization was like hot water, like a math problem solved.

  At two in the morning, the boy appeared. He was two rooftops down, crouched behind the chimney pot. She saw him, but she didn’t think he realized he had been spotted.

  She shouted, “I can see you! I’m not going to give in!” She turned a cartwheel. It was the most defiant cartwheel ever to have been turned on a Paris rooftop.

  Sophie spun on the spot. She felt on edge, and tough. It was unlikely, Sophie thought, that her muscles had grown stronger. She had a feeling that took months. It was more that she needed, now, to use them, and they had woken up for her. They felt as a cat’s muscles feel: more twitching, and more ready. Muscles, she thought, are a thing worth having. They make the world easier to reach.

  The wind up here was strong, and chimney dust blew in her eyes. She looped back her hair with a twig.

  The dark was darker up on the roof; it was thick and silent. Down on the street, the dark feels dull and matter-of-fact, like a blackboard. Up here, it felt full of unseen birds and city whispers. The smell, too, was different. From the street, she reckoned she could smell only a few meters’ worth of smells. From up here, all the bakers and all the pet shops of Paris mixed their scents. The result was something thick and peculiar and delicious.

  From the roof, the moon looks twice as large, three times as beautiful. The moon, seen from the rooftops, is a thing worth spending time on.

  Sophie imagined her mother, up here, amongst the stars. Mothers belong on rooftops.

  Sophie walked to the next rooftop, and then jumped the three-foot gap to the next, and ran another three rooftops. She shouted, “Matteo! I know you can hear me. I won’t give up! I’m going to keep exploring!” Then, tentatively, feeling foolish, Sophie called into the night, “Truce? Friends?”

  Somewhere below her, a horse whinnied. It sounded as though it were laughing.

  On the way back, she ran—ran, properly, not a jog. Her heart was beating so fast that it was nudging against her bones. The wind pulled at her clothes and hair, but she stayed steady. She thought, This is how heaven must feel. She felt as confident as a crow. Say what you will against crows, Sophie thought, they do look like they know what they’re doing.

  14

  SOPHIE PREPARED FOR The meeting with the chief commissioner the way other people prepare for war. She washed with cold water, and smoothed her eyebrows with spit. She rubbed lavender against her wrists and neck. She practiced an innocent expression in the mirror. She polished her shoes with spit, and washed the oil and bird droppings out of her stockings.

  “You look,” said Charles, when they met at the front door, “as though you’re about to sing the solo in the church choir.”

  “Do I?” She knotted the bottom of her braid and tucked it under her hat. “That’s what I was hoping.”

  “You do. You look as though you own a minimum of one pony. You look nothing like yourself. Well done.”

  As they walked through the streets, Sophie felt she was looking at Paris with newly critical eyes. She kept her head tilted back, and almost without noticing, she judged the rooftops. That one would be too steep; and that one much too low; that one was perfect, except for the flimsy-looking drainpipe.

  The police headquarters, she thought as they came in view of it, would be wonderful to climb. Its roof was flat, and its drainpipe was thick iron. She tensed as they went in. She would much rather be out on the rooftop than inside.

  The meeting was held in a room with high ceilings and large furniture. It seemed designed to make Sophie feel small. A guard stood to attention outside the door.

  It became clear immediately that it was less of a meeting than an ambush.

  The commissioner did not stand up to greet them. He waved at two seats. “Bonjour. Good day.” His accent was thickly French; it sounded mustachey.

  “Please ’ave a seat, Mr. Maxim, Miss Maxim.”

  Sophie had sat before she realized what he had said. Then it hit her, and she leapt up and jumped toward the door. “Charles!” she cried. “Come on! Run!”

  Charles hadn’t moved. He stood in the center of the room, holding his umbrella. His face was rigid. He looked like a soldier. Sophie stood with the doorknob in her hand.

  The commissioner smiled. “I could say, ‘Welcome to Paris,’ but I wouldn’t mean it.”

  “What’s going on?” said Charles. “Are you planning to arrest me?”

  “Non. I am planning to give you a choice. Sit down.”

  “What choice is that?” said Charles. He remained standing.

  “Please sit down. You are wasting a good chair.”

  Sophie stayed where she was. Charles sat. “What choice was it you had in mind?”

  “A very simple one. If you do not abandon your childish search and leave this country, I will ’ave you thrown in jail.” His nostrils widened as if in pleasure at the thought.

  “I see. Well, that is admirably straightforward. May I ask, why haven’t you done so already?”

  “I think we want to avoid fuss, si possible. Non?”

  “No,” said Sophie. “No, I’d rather have fuss. I need to find her.”

  “Little girl.” He turned on her. All the wealth in the room seemed to mass itself behind him. “Écoutez-moi. Listen to me. The Queen Mary was a wreck. No women survived. The passenger lists, addresses, staff payrolls, insurance—it was all lost with the ship. I ’ave no wish to start an inquiry. You ’ave no wish to be in an orphanage. We are like twins, are we not?”

  “I hate you,” whispered Sophie. “I hate you.”

  “I am giving you a day to book your passage back to England. I recommend the port at Dieppe. It’s very fine this time of year.”

  Charles bowed. “You will notice that my young ward has not, as yet, spat on you. I admire her restraint.” For one mad moment Sophie thought Charles was going to spit on the man himself—he had his head thrown back, in spitting position—but he only took her hand and led her from the room.

  They walked down a hundred meters of corridor, until they were out of sight of the guard; then Charles swore, under his breath, and broke into a run. Sophie could only just keep pace with him. Her hat fell off, and she left it where it was. They burst through the grand doors, past the startled doorman, and out into the sunshine.

  “I couldn’t stand it in there a moment longer,” said Charles. “He was lying.”

  “Yes! His nostrils were flaring.”

  “You saw it too. Flaring wide enough to fit a canal boat.”

  “But I don’t understand.” She stopped, and leaned against a lamppost. “Why does he care? Do you think he had anything to do with it? With the ship?”

  “Not with the ship, perhaps. But I think he may be suppressing the records.”

  “Why? What do you mean? Why would they do that?”

  “Ten years ago there was a scandal in Europe, a series of sunken ships. It was an insurance con: An ancient ship would be certified safe, it would sink, the insurance would be claimed. The survivors were told conflicting stories; the truth got blurred. Smudged. And the records would be burnt or hidden, so that nobody could check who had certified the ship. There were eight cases in all before anyone was caught.”

  “But . . . did people di
e?”

  “Hundreds of people. It would have looked suspicious had they not.”

  “That’s disgusting! That’s not human!”

  “I know, my darling. Money can make people inhuman. It is best to stay away from people who care too much about money, my darling. They are people with shoddy, flimsy brains.”

  “And . . . if the Queen Mary was one of those ships?”

  “Yes?”

  “Does that mean they will have burnt the records?” They couldn’t have, she thought. They mustn’t have. She needed them.

  “Kept them, more likely. If more than one person was involved, it would be unwise to burn anything.”

  “Why? I don’t get that; I’d burn them, if it was me.”

  “If you are caught, it is better to have proof you were not acting alone. Criminals are only loyal to each other in books.” Charles polished his glasses. Behind them, his eyes were grim. “I’m not saying that’s what happened. But it’s possible.”

  “And never ignore a possible?”

  “Precisely.” He smiled a half smile. “I couldn’t have said it better myself.”

  “Where would they keep papers like that?”

  “It could be anywhere. In their homes, in their offices, under their floorboards. Or, there’s an archive room on the top floor of the building. Four million sheets of paper in one hundred filing cabinets, I am told.”

  “Who told you?”

  “The young woman at the reception desk. Somebody should promote her. She’s wasted on reception.”

  They crossed the road, avoiding a gaggle of American tourists.

  “Charles?”

  “Yes?”

  “Nothing, actually.” They walked on. Then, “Charles?”

  “I’m listening.”

  “Wouldn’t the best place to hide papers be with other papers?”

  “Very possibly.”

  “So—”

  “Yes, I see what you mean.”

  “And the archive’s on the top floor?”

  “Sophie—”

  “That’s what you said, wasn’t it?” The tingle and twitch that come with an idea were prickling at her skin. “What if—”