by E. J. Swift
She made everything impossible. That had been the line for a long time now. Slowly, Adelaide crossed the room and picked up her handbag from the table. As she turned to leave there was a knock at the door.
“Yes?” barked Feodor.
She expected it to be Tyr, but someone else entered the room. A wide, bald man in a chocolate suit. He had dual toned eyes, one green and one brown. They slid towards Adelaide. On the back of his neck he had a third eye, a tattoo. Blue.
Goran was ex-Home Guard. Some of the Guard had been conscripted, in the early days, but Goran had volunteered. He was occasionally referred to as her father’s bodyguard, but it was unspoken knowledge that his job extended beyond protection. The twins had always been scared of him; she was not sure if it was the clothes that did not quite conceal his gun, or the way such a robust man managed to make himself into a shadow, appearing and disappearing seemingly as he chose.
Goran stood inside the door, his hands hidden behind his back.
“Good afternoon, Miss Rechnov,” he said. Some of the warmth seemed to leave the air.
“Hello,” she muttered. She glanced at her father. “Thanks for the drink.” Already her voice was retracting, back from the Rechnovs and their mire of lies, slowly back into what she had made herself. Another breath and she was there.
“Now don’t trouble yourself,” said Adelaide Mystik. “I’ll see myself out.”
Goran smiled. Whatever he had to say to Feodor was said after the door closed.
“Did you get what you wanted?” Tyr asked. Adelaide stopped.
“If I didn’t, would you get it for me, Tyr?”
He pretended to think about this. “Probably not,” he said, with a slow smile that took in more of her than was warranted.
“Then what use are you to me?” she said haughtily.
They were close again, inches, maybe centimetres between them. She ran her gaze over what was offered; the honeyed hair, the aquiline features. His face was highlighted by two days stubble and a darkness under the eyes, both of which were engineered-the one with a carefully applied razor, the other through his milaine habit. In the curve of his lips were tiny lines. Each containing a memory of all the places his mouth had grazed her body. Bruised her, sometimes. His hand drifted down to her hip, connected, pushed her hard against the door. Almost enough to knock it ajar.
“Some use,” he said. “Apparently.”
“No more than any other lover,” she said, and this time she thrust past him with a force that was intentionally violent.
6 VIKRAM
There were no delays on the return journey, but the waterbus paused before crossing the checkpoint, bobbing patiently in a swell. Vikram heard the music first, then the roar of the engine. A patrol boat streaked down the waterway towards them and he averted his eyes. The patrol boat bombed with music. Within its beat he heard the sound of laughter, present and past. He shut his ears against it. The boat flashed past. Its noise faded. The skadi would be joyriding up and down the border all night.
When the waterbus crossed the lane into the west, the squalor struck Vikram with something akin to surprise. Graffiti looked stark and lewd on structures that must once have shone. The clamour of traffic was phenomenal: Boat horns, collisions, gulls screeching, yells of abuse. Even the sea smelled saltier. For a few seconds his head swam with sensory overload and then it was normal once more.
In normalcy he saw, stretching out like the sea itself, the dreary march of the days ahead. Each washing over him as relentless as the currents. He saw how every day would be a new fight; to keep free of the gangs, the manta wars and the insurgent games; to find food enough to survive the winter and clothes to keep from freezing. He saw the riots that would come as surely as would the storms. He saw friends beaten by the skadi. The tank towed back to the border packed with swollen corpses. He saw the winter freeze ravaging the old, children hardened into crime until they wore unkindness as a resin on their skin. He saw the slow thick bleed of anger. He saw that it would take him apart, bit by bit, until he was an alien even to himself.
The outline of the invitation was sharp in his pocket. They were leaving the City behind. There was no sign of the woman who had been detained earlier.
The air seemed to quake. When he looked back, a twelve-year-old Mikkeli was perched on top of the border net. She weighed less than a tuft of pine and her voice was a fingertip brushing bark.
“Truth is, Vik, I come back here a lot,” she said. “All the time. Just like you used to, over and over and over again.”
She stuck her ankles through the mesh and hung upside-down, pulling faces.
About fifty metres away, the brown curve of a human arm broke the water. As the waterbus grew closer, the hump of the body was discernible under the wash of the waves. It had long been stripped of clothes. Not far from the body, a seagull rested, wings furled. It eyed the corpse speculatively. Each time the sea brought the bird closer, it uttered a squawk, as though fearful the dead thing might suddenly spring to life; a cheap trick for a hungry gull.
Just over a week ago, whilst the gas dispersed through the western crowd, the skadi had drained the execution tank. They dragged out Eirik’s body by his feet and stuffed it into a plastic sack. Then they took the body away.
Vikram watched the seagull coasting on the waves. As though sensing his surveillance, the bird cocked its head and seemed to look directly at him. He would have ignored the look, except that many gulls were the carriers of dead souls, the souls of sailors and sea folk. They were all sea people in this city, and he felt in that moment the shiver of a connection across the gulf. Were the dead reprimanding him now?
He thought of Linus’s feathered coat, wondered how it felt to keep the birds so close, and if they minded. The gull’s head swivelled. Its beak dipped, pecking at its own feathers. It was still a bird, and it had to eat. A wave moved it within a metre of the corpse. The beak snapped up. Vikram turned away, unwilling to see the moment where it conquered its fear.
7 ADELAIDE
Adelaide chose a secluded spot off the main pathway. She sat on the end of a stone bench, careful not to disturb a dozing Admiral. As she settled in, the butterflies swarmed about her, their minute feet brushing against her arm. Light poured from the glass dome of the roof and filtered through the tropical foliage.
Her contact was due on the hour. She waited, moisture collecting on her skin from the hot, damp air. The farm was quiet today, but there were always a few wandering visitors. A man in lightly tinted glasses was walking down the path towards her. Adelaide checked her watch. A minute before eleven and no one else was nearby.
The man was Patagonian, his hair substantially flecked with grey. Dressed in a casual shirt and well-tailored trousers, he looked like a family man, respectable, with a professional occupation-perhaps a doctor or an engineer, out for a stroll on his day off. It was possible, Adelaide mused, that he really did have a wife and children-then she put the idea aside. The line of work must be too obscure.
The investigator sat at the other end of the bench without exchanging a glance. He took out a Surfboard. For a minute or so, she heard only the sounds of his fingertips manipulating the screen. Palm leaves rustled; a little way away, a stream trickled over veined pebbles.
“Ms Mystik, I presume.” His gaze was fixed on the Surfboard. His lips barely moved.
“Yes.”
“You can refer to me as Lao.” He took off his glasses and polished them on a square silk cloth. “A favourite place of yours, this?”
“My grandmother used to bring us here as children.”
“Did Axel come here often also?”
“Not lately.”
Lao focused on his screen.
“Your brother is not in the hospitals.”
She followed Lao’s lead, pretending to examine the butterfly that had alighted on her wrist. Its underside was tricoloured, a striking pattern of red, white and black. Red Pierrot. Adelaide loved them because Second Grandmother had loved
them, and for their own ethereal beauty. Perhaps, too, it was their immaculate symmetry that she loved, two sides of the same, like Adelaide and Axel.
“Did you speak to the staff?”
“I have checked admissions records and spoken to all of the receptionist staff in the accident and emergency units. None of them recognises the image that you sent.”
“I suppose that’s good news.”
“I also checked the morgues. I should ask you, at this stage, Ms Rechnov-”
“Mystik.”
“As you wish. Ms Mystik. I should ask you exactly what your suspicions are regarding your brother’s disappearance?”
“At this stage, I should say that I’m not sure.”
A small girl in a polka dot frock ran past, followed by the mother at a more sedate pace. Lao waited for them to disappear down the pathway. He gave a little cough.
“Let me be blunt, Ms Mystik. A full-scale search operation has already been mounted. I understand that it cost a substantial proportion of the Council’s security budget. The sea has been searched. There have been raids on suspected gang members in the west. The public operation, in short, has been intensive. This leaves us with three possibilities. One, your brother is hiding. Two, he is hidden. Or three, he is dead and it has been engineered that his body will never be found. Do you suspect murder?”
“Murder is a dangerous accusation, Mr Lao.” Her voice, surprising her, came out as calm as his.
“A large part of my job is to find lies. My experience of working with high profile cases is that the perpetrators do not like to dirty their hands. If certain acts have been committed, someone-somewhere-will have seen something. They will have been paid, or intimidated, to keep quiet. You need to find out if your family are lying.”
“They are lying. At least, my father is lying. I asked him for the keys to Axel’s penthouse. He told me they have all been handed over to Hanif.”
“And you have proof that this is untrue?”
“I know my family, Mr Lao. We have more sets of keys than we own greenhouse shares. My father would never have relinquished access so easily, which means he is lying.”
Lao nodded. “Tell me about your brother. His state of mind.”
Adelaide stared at a flower with large, velvety petals, twined about the trunk of a lemon tree.
“I’m sure you’ve read more than you need to know.”
“I prefer to hear from the client directly. Please try to be as objective as possible.”
“Very well. My brother-Axel-he’s not himself. That is-he’s ill, but the doctors can’t agree on a diagnosis. Some days he’s perfectly lucid, they say. Other days…” She watched an insect crawl inside the flower head. “He can be paranoid. Delusional.”
“He is unpredictable?”
“Yes.”
“Is he violent?”
She hesitated. “No.”
Lao had finished polishing his glasses. He put them back on. “You don’t have to be defensive, Ms Mystik. I am not here to judge character. I just need the facts. If your brother is the type to become embroiled in an argument, for example, that might have a bearing on the case.”
Adelaide let out a shaky breath.
“He’s never intentionally violent,” she said. “Not to people. But he sees things. He thinks he sees horses. And-hears them.”
“He hears them talking?”
“I don’t know.” She didn’t want to discuss the horses. She wished she hadn’t mentioned them.
Lao tapped his Surfboard. He was waiting.
“Sometimes his behaviour is compulsive,” she allowed.
“Such as?”
“He does things-like-I don’t know. Once he told me to come to his boat and he had this basket full of white cloths. He said we had to fix them to the towers. We went all through the quarter, tacking up these stupid white cloths. It started raining but he wouldn’t let us stop. He said it had to be done that day. He was adamant.”
She remembered the glitter in Axel’s eyes, the puzzled expressions of those they passed.
“He’s not well,” she repeated.
“What about habits? Routines?”
She shook her head.
“Superstitions? Does he visit Tellers?”
“Not any more. He’s always been dismissive of them.”
“What about his regular contacts?”
“Very few. In the last few months he’s hardly left the penthouse. There’s myself, the cleaner, and a girl that does his shopping. But he has been known to wander, you see. Sometimes he appears in my flat-he has my key. But he might have visited anyone.”
“And the last time you saw him?”
She thought of that quiet figure waiting in her apartment.
“Nothing remarkable.”
Behind their glasses Lao’s eyes flicked about, scanning the leafy pathways where the butterflies spun in the artificial light.
“Are there any other conflicts within the family? Tensions? Grudges?”
“There are conflicts in every family,” she said, although she did not know that this was true, having had little enough exposure to other families. Her own set, the Haze, was mostly composed of those who had spurned their families, like herself. Lao gave her a sharp glance, as though he knew this, though he couldn’t, of course. She collected her thoughts.
“Feodor-my father-and Linus-they’ve had their differences. But only over political agendas. They’re all in league when it comes to family status and loyalty. Myself and Axel are estranged from the rest-not that it makes a difference to Axel these days.”
“But your family continue to bankroll you.” The investigator’s tone was bland. She mirrored it.
“Yes. Under the condition that I attend public functions like the one last week. Call me frivolous, Mr Lao. I daresay I am. But I like my lifestyle and I know when to compromise.”
“Your mother? I’ve heard it said she’s an intelligent woman.”
“She is. And completely allied with my father.”
“And your oldest brother-Dmitri?”
“Similarly. His fiancee is proof enough of that.”
“What are the Rechnovs’ relationships with the other venerated families-the Dumays and the Ngozis?”
“We didn’t all play together as children at midsummer, if that’s what you mean. The families are politically aligned but there are no strong personal ties. The Dumays keep themselves to themselves since the assassinations. My grandfather was very close to the other elders, Celine Dumay and Emeke Ngozi, but since they died the links have been purely strategic. Forgive me, Mr Lao, but surely this is information you can acquire equally well elsewhere? I try to spend as little time as possible thinking about my family.”
“As I said, I prefer to speak to the source. And if we are to succeed, Ms Mystik, you may have to devote a little more time than you are accustomed to thinking about your relations.” Lao put his Surfboard away. “I suggest that we proceed as follows. As the hospitals have yielded no leads, I will commence with further enquiries into those who last saw your brother.”
“Sanjay Hanif has done the same.”
“Hanif will not be paying them. I don’t doubt his ability as a detective, Ms Mystik, but results are always better with a little financial encouragement.”
She gave a half smile. “That is why I employed you. You will, naturally, receive a bonus payment in the event of a successful conclusion.”
“And what do you class as a successful conclusion?”
“Finding my brother. Alive.”
“Then I hope I shall locate him speedily.” He rose. “I’ll be in touch.”
The bath rose out of the black tiles like an island, round and white. Adelaide dipped her fingers into the searing water, then plunged both feet in and stood, gasping. Tropical scents rose with the steam. Breathing in slowly, she lowered herself into the bath until she was submerged to her neck.
She loved her monochrome bathroom. Like her bedroom, it faced east. Her apa
rtment was on the very edge of the city and in daylight, the view from the bathroom was the wilderness beyond Osiris; endless sea merging into endless sky. It was evening now. The window-wall was darkened and held only the room’s reflection.
After a few minutes she leaned over and flicked the jacuzzi setting. She shifted to rest directly over a stream. The bubbles rippled up around her thighs and between her legs. She let her head fall back, sinking into daydreams. The water sloshed gently. She might not need company, but everyone needed physicality. Denying that urge was as foolish as believing there was life outside Osiris: it demonstrated only a basic disregard for fact.
Her hand drifted down, lazily, absently, and her breath snagged. It was not really her touch, it was Tyr’s. Their liaison had spanned some five years, but the forbidden meetings, restricted by time and place, still had an airless excitement. Sometimes she felt as though he was stitched into the fabric of her body, her responses a preordained thing. But nothing more than sex would ever lie between them. They both took other lovers; that way they averted suspicion.
The last time it had been at the theatre. With only a red curtain and the distraction of the play to cover them, he had kissed her mouth, her neck, the border of her backless dress. Her fingers lingered on the same spots. She felt every place his tongue had touched tingling again, as though the hot, scented jacuzzi tide had the potency of renewal.
In public, they used the studied banter of two rivals. Tyr worked for her father, and Adelaide hated him, so it was not a hard script for either of them to enact. She enjoyed their coded battles. But she was wary too, of the power folded into the layered phrases, the potential each of them held as a wrecker of the other’s life. Tyr would be in attendance at the Rose Night, which Adelaide traditionally held on the second Thursday of February. Her mind straddled the various possibilities of a rendezvous. Which stage in the evening might she slip away. Where they could fuck.
She slid down into the bath, out of the bubble stream. With the loss of sensation she felt her mind pulling back. She closed her eyes and remembered the theatre; the audience hushed, the sumptuous velvet of the curtain, the frisson when they kissed. She wanted the moment back. It was too late; her mind was roving now, tomorrow morning already panning out. A series of tasks. She needed to order the rose stock. In the afternoon she had a tasting session with the owner of Narwhal, who was devising the cocktail recipes.
