City of Halves

by Lucy Inglis

  They walked down to the St Paul’s cab rank. Regan looked up and down it before walking to a cab halfway down the line. It was the oldest of the lot, an ancient Fairway, belching black diesel fumes from the back. The driver was enormous, crammed into his seat. He wore a shirt, a narrow tie and a broken old brown jacket, the sleeves pushed up over his massive tattooed forearms, which rested on the wheel. The tattoos were bleary, but Lily could vaguely make out they were matching West Ham football shields. The man was hideous, with a fat nose and thick, wet lips, and a tweed flat cap rammed on to his gigantic, patchily-shaved head. Regan bent to the half-open window.

  ‘Evening, Stanley.’

  The driver looked at him sourly. ‘What do you want?’

  Regan handed over the address. The man took it in his sausage-like fingers. ‘Get in, then.’

  Regan held the door for Lily and they climbed inside. Regan folded himself into the corner. Lily sat down abruptly as the cab moved off. Great moves, Lily. Very cool.

  ‘Camberwell. Figures, with the Northern Line and everything.’

  Regan said nothing, staring out at the lights of the City. His wrists rested on his thighs, his hands hanging. His legs were too long for the space, making his knees higher than his hips, but he still sat with a strange grace. Lily looked away.

  ‘You’ll never guess,’ said Stanley, his gargantuan form hunched over the wheel, cap crammed against an oily patch on the cab’s roof.

  Regan dug a thumb and forefinger into either side of the bridge of his nose and suppressed a sigh. ‘Never guess what?’

  ‘Who I’ad in the back of this cab.’

  ‘Tell me.’

  ‘Guess.’

  ‘Stanley, just tell me.’

  ‘No, guess.’

  ‘For the love of—’

  ‘All right, all right, keep yer ’air on! Cor blimey, ain’t you touchy today?’

  Regan put a hand to his forehead in mock grief. Lily hid a smile.

  ‘Colonel Amanvir. Flew in half an hour ago, wanting to see Gupta.’

  A soft whistle escaped Regan. ‘They’ve obviously got watchers here, then.’

  ‘Who?’ asked Lily.

  ‘The Serpent King’s bodyguard. Amanvir is its leader. He’s the oldest of the living children. Sort of like a statesman. And an assassin.’

  ‘’Zackly,’ Stanley said emphatically from the front seat.

  ‘Poor Gupta,’ Lily said.

  Regan nodded. ‘Yep. Poor Gupta.’

  ‘They won’t really cut his balls off, will they?’ Lily whispered to him.

  He shrugged. ‘If that’s all they did, he’d probably think he got away lightly. A visit from Amanvir only usually has one outcome.’

  ‘Can’t you stop them?’

  ‘Well, I probably could, but that’s not part of the contract Gupta made. It’s an honour thing, he’ll accept what’s coming to him. But it won’t be pretty. The bodyguard are the sort that like to play with their food, if you get what I mean.’

  They were silent. Lily stared out of the window, worried.

  ‘Anyway, as I was sayin’, did you see them football scores?’

  ‘No.’

  ‘Two nil against Millwall at ’ome.’ Stanley shook a huge clenched fist at his absent opponents.

  Regan said nothing.

  Stanley’s sharp eyes were framed in the rear-view mirror. ‘I can tip you out ’ere, y’know.’

  Lily swallowed a giggle. Regan glanced at her, then looked away, laughing. ‘Camberwell will be just fine.’

  Stanley smirked, gesturing at Lily. ‘What’s this one anyway? Ain’t nivver seen it before.’

  ‘This is Lily.’

  Stanley sniggered. ‘Awright, Lils?’

  ‘Yes thanks,’ Lily called from the back.

  ‘Proper little flower, ain’t it?’ His eyes flicked back to Regan. ‘I seen bigger scraps on a butcher’s apron.’

  Lily sat further into the corner, folding her arms and looking down.

  ‘Looks ’ooman to me.’

  ‘Yes,’ Regan said.

  Stanley shook his head in an exaggerated fashion as he ran yet another red light. ‘’Ooman women ain’t nivver nuffink but trouble, mark my words. Even the pretty ones. Nivver touched an ’ooman woman. Wouldn’t know where to start!’

  Lily looked out of the window at the darkened city flashing by. She pulled out her phone and opened the notes app.

  What is he?

  She passed the phone to Regan. He stared at it for a moment, then his long fingers picked out the letters for a reply, the screen lighting up his face.

  Troll

  Lily giggled, then clapped her hand across her mouth and scrunched her eyes shut to hold it in. They were all silent for a moment. When she opened her eyes again, she saw Stanley staring at her in the rear-view mirror. She ducked her head.

  They hadn’t spoken another word when they arrived outside a Victorian house in Camberwell five minutes later. Regan jumped out.

  ‘Can you wait?’

  Stanley narrowed his already hooded eyes, then pulled up the cab on the side of the road and turned off the lights.

  Lily stood on the pavement in front of the house. There were two bins outside, marked 49A and 49B.

  ‘Which one did he live in?’

  He looked at the name tags on the door. ‘B.’

  ‘Which one is that? The door just says both.’

  He pulled a small leather wallet from the inside of his coat and extracted two metal tools from it. ‘Keep watch,’ he said, and began to pick the lock.

  Lily glanced around but the street was empty. Lights were on in various houses, but the curtains were closed. A man approached with his dog. The dog paused to sniff at the base of a tree. It bought them just enough time for Regan to deal with the lock. They slipped inside. To their left was a door marked ‘Flat A’. The noise of a television blared through the wall. Regan pointed to the stairs. They climbed to the first floor and he started work on the second lock.

  A moment later, they were inside a neat, if shabby, flat. The street light outside gave them just enough light to see by.

  ‘You check the computer, I’ll check the flat.’

  As Regan walked into the bedroom, Lily flicked on the desktop. No password. Excellent.

  Jack’s computer had few icons on the home screen. One folder was marked ‘bills’, another ‘work’. Lily clicked on the work one. Inside the folder was a series of spreadsheets that covered various dates. Lily opened the latest. It was a detailed report of the patients Jack treated during working hours. Their names and a description. What was wrong with them, where they were, the outcome . . . and a column for whether they showed any signs of being Eldritche. At the end were the dates and times when he had filed a report, if they did.

  Lily turned on the printer beneath the desk. The only sound was it churning away.

  ‘Lily?’ Regan said quietly.

  ‘Yes?’

  ‘We’ve got company.’

  Lily joined him at the window. A van had pulled up in the street, Crystal Cleaning written in huge letters down the side. It was the same make and model as the van that had been torn to pieces in the alley near Lothbury only a few hours earlier, just painted differently. Two men got out, wearing white paper suits and white dust masks. They went to open the side doors. Lily ran back to the computer, opened a browser window, signed into her email account, attached the whole folder and sent it to her secondary email.

  ‘What are you doing?’

  ‘Emailing documents to myself via the internet. We’ve got hard copies, but it’s harder for anyone to see we’ve been here this way. Not much harder, but it might just slip through.’ The computer churned away, sending the email. Lily swore, tapping the desk, watching.

  ‘Right,’ Regan said, looking mystified. ‘Email. I’ve read about it. You’ll have to show me how that works sometime.’ He disappeared, looking for a way out.

  The mail sent. Lily purged the printer history, cl
eared the cookies and the browser, and then found a particularly dubious file-sharing site. It took another five seconds to find and download a very nasty piece of malware she’d read about, one that wiped hard drives. Almost instantly, pop-up windows began to cascade and the computer became unresponsive. Lily turned off the monitor just as the front door clicked downstairs: the men had gained access. Lily found Regan in the bedroom, unlocking a window that let out on to the flat roof of the kitchen extension downstairs.

  ‘Go, go,’ he whispered urgently.

  Lily ducked through, landing as quietly as she could on the gravelly surface of the roof. Regan slid through after her and let the window drop. The lights came on inside the flat and he ducked, looking down from the roof into a narrow path between the houses. Then he jumped, landing silently some fifteen feet below. He turned and looked up at her. ‘Come on!’ he hissed.

  ‘I can’t jump that,’ she hissed back. ‘I’ll break my legs.’

  There was a pause. ‘I’ll catch you. Just jump.’

  Lily hesitated. She saw a figure move past the bedroom door. She jumped.

  He caught her easily, an arm around her back and the other beneath her knees.

  ‘Thanks,’ she said, breathless, realising she was holding on tightly to his neck. Lily Hilyard, get a life and get him to put you down.

  ‘No problem.’ He set her on her feet.

  They went out into the street. As soon as they did, Stanley’s cab crept forward, bulbous old headlamps flicking on. They jumped in and he eased out of the long, tree-lined south London street at a gentle pace.

  As soon as they were back on the brightly lit roads, he grumbled, ‘Dint like the look of that lot.’

  ‘No,’ Regan agreed.

  ‘You get what you wanted?’

  Regan looked at Lily.

  ‘I think so,’ she said, leaning forward slightly towards the glass hatch.

  ‘Good,’ Stanley grunted.

  Lily turned to Regan in the back of the cab. ‘He was reporting to someone every time he saw or discovered someone Eldritche. He reported Mona.’

  ‘Was there anything else on the computer?’

  She shrugged. ‘Whatever there was, it’ll be wiped by the virus I just downloaded. It’ll take them a while to get anything from it.’

  As they hit the road to Blackfriars Bridge, there was a light Stanley could not avoid stopping at. As they waited, three large mobile blood units pulled up next to them, heading into the City. Lily touched Regan’s arm and tapped the glass.

  ‘Remember, from the Tube station? Starts tomorrow.’

  He leant across and looked at the units.

  Lily chewed her lip. ‘What if . . .’

  ‘What?’

  ‘What if it’s not a blood-donation drive? What if it’s testing? On a large scale.’

  ‘Testing?’

  She nodded. ‘Blood – that seems to be the connection. The connection between you and me, and what the Agency want from me.’

  ‘Testing for what?’

  ‘I don’t know. Being Eldritche?’

  He shook his head, vaguely scornful. ‘You know if you’re Eldritche, Lily. You’re born with it.’

  ‘Then not that, but something else?’

  ‘Where to?’ asked Stanley, before Regan could reply.

  ‘East gate into Temple, please,’ Regan said.

  Stanley dropped them outside. The cab rattled off into the night.

  ‘I’ll see you in the morning, then, I guess?’ Lily said, suddenly shy.

  He smiled. ‘I guess you will.’

  She clutched the sheaf of papers. ‘I’ll look at these. If I find anything . . . well, bye, then.’ She raised her hand.

  ‘Bye,’ he said, tipping his head towards the gate.

  Lily headed through the covered passage to the church square. It was already dark and the place was deserted. She didn’t see the man in black slide open the side door of a van parked at the entrance. The man who had escaped from the back of the van in Lothbury. He jumped straight out into her path, momentum carrying them both to the floor, grazing Lily’s chin. Pulling her to her feet, arms clamping tight around her, he dragged her towards the van. She kicked and fought as he lifted her from the ground, his arms like a band around her waist, trapping her hands.

  ‘Should have taken the sedative, it would have been much easier on you,’ he hissed in her ear.

  The van began to creep forward. She struggled harder. He grunted, but held on to her, his grip tightening.

  Lily squirmed, hands locking over his. The man laughed in her ear. ‘A little fighter, are we?’ Then he swore as Lily elbowed him hard in the side and kicked her heel back into his knee. The man dropped her. The van sped forward and he hauled her towards the open side door, hand around her arm just above the wrist, banging her knee on the footboard as he made it inside and dragged her after him. He held her down with one hand and slid the door closed with a thud. The van reversed sharply, then crashed to a halt.

  The door opened as Regan’s fist punched straight through the metal panelling and was removed in one piece from its hinges. He sent the door crashing on to the cobbles, then reached in and hauled Lily out. The agent grabbed for her and she kicked out at him, hard, leaving him behind. The van shot into first gear, screaming for the gate, its rear doors dented, a huge gap in its side. The agent hung from the open doorway.

  ‘Next time,’ he shouted as the van roared through the gate, smashing the automatic barrier as it went.

  Regan dragged Lily behind him across the square, almost too fast for her to keep up, pulling her through the door into her building. He threw the lock and pushed her up the stairs in front of him. Her hands shook as she tried to get the key in the door. He took over and did it for her, pushing her inside and following.

  In the flat he shut the door and threw the latch, going to the window and looking down.

  ‘Are they still there?’ Lily panted.

  He shook his head, coming back to her. ‘I don’t think so. They won’t hang around, not after that.’ He tipped up her chin, looking at the graze. ‘Does this hurt?’

  Lily blinked. Tears welled up in her eyes. She shook her head, pulling her chin from his fingers. Almost without meaning to, she slid her arms around his waist and pressed against him, hiding her face in his chest. He was still and awkward, then put his arms around her, holding her cautiously.

  ‘Lily—’

  She stood as tall as she could on her toes and caught the edge of his coat, tugging him down. ‘Thank you,’ she breathed.

  ‘Lily,’ he said again, almost a whisper, ‘we’re not—’

  The door to her father’s study opened.

  ‘Oh, excuse me,’ he said, surprised.

  Lily untangled herself as if she’d been burnt and stepped away. ‘Dad, this is Regan.’ She pushed her hair back selfconsciously.

  Her father came forward, mug in one hand, the other held out. ‘Ed’s fine,’ he said cheerfully, shaking hands, his eyes taking in Regan’s tattooed hands and neck.

  Lily cringed inside.

  ‘I’m about to make a cup of tea, if anyone would like one?’ Her father went to the kitchen counter and pushed the kettle on. ‘Did you hear that terrible crashing? Sounded like an accident down on the Embankment. I hope no one’s hurt.’

  Regan shook his head. ‘No, we didn’t see anything, did we? And thanks but I think I’d better get to work. See you, Lily.’ He started towards the door. ‘Don’t worry, I can see myself out.’

  The door clicked shut behind him. Silence fell.

  Okaaay, so this isn’t going to be awkward, at all.

  Her father busied himself making tea. ‘Remarkable tattoos,’ he said without looking at her.

  ‘Er . . . yes.’

  ‘Very distinctive,’ her father said with a brave but totally fake smile. ‘Must have cost quite a bit.’

  Lily shrugged.

  ‘And very good-looking, in as much as I understand that sort of thing. If i
t weren’t for the tattoos he could be one of those male models . . . but what do I know? They all have tattoos in the magazines these days! Looks about twenty, maybe?’

  ‘Nineteen.’

  ‘Known him long?’

  ‘Not that long, no.’ Lily ran her thumbnail along the edge of the counter. So, this is excruciating . . .

  ‘Where does he work?’

  Lily hesitated. ‘In the City.’

  ‘Doesn’t look like an investment banker.’

  ‘No. He’s in security.’

  ‘Ah. Right. Where did you meet?’

  She grabbed her bag. ‘Enough with the questions, okay, Dad?’

  He held up his hands. Lily went to her room.

  ‘Do you want something to eat?’ he shouted from the kitchen a moment later.

  Lily rolled her eyes. ‘No, I’m fine, thanks.’

  ‘Have you eaten?’

  ‘I did eat, at lunch,’ she shouted, then hesitated. ‘We had lunch,’ she amended, coming back to the kitchen. ‘At the Japanese place near Liverpool Street.’

  Her father took a breath and nodded. ‘Great. That’s good to hear. I have some work to finish. But I thought after that we might go out for dinner.’

  ‘That would be great,’ Lily said truthfully. ‘I’d really like to. Somewhere close, though. I’ve got some work to do too, before then.’

  He smiled. ‘A couple of hours? Can’t be much longer.’ He frowned. ‘What did you do to your chin?’

  Lily tutted in what she hoped was a convincing fashion. ‘I tripped and completely stacked it against the wall in the courtyard just now.’

  He winced. ‘Not like you to be clumsy.’

  ‘I know. I styled it out.’

  ‘Put some antiseptic on it.’

  ‘It’s not that bad.’ Lily lay on the sofa and pulled her computer towards her, then let it drop on to the cushions with a sigh. She leant her head on the arm of the sofa, her mind turning over all the events of the day, then groaned and pulled a cushion over her face.

  ‘Are you all right?’ He put a mug down next to her.

  She grabbed the cushion and sat up. ‘Yes thanks.’ Which may not be entirely true.

  ‘Look, I’m pretty much finished with the work—’

  ‘But you said a couple of hours.’