by Ian Whates
The side trip to Paul’s hadn’t taken them far out of their way and they were soon on the train home. Claire nodded off before they reached their stop, her head sinking down to rest on his shoulder as the day’s events caught up with her. He didn’t attempt to move her until it was time to get off; in fact, he quite enjoyed the experience—a reaction he shied away from analysing. Claire had been running on adrenaline ever since the shooting and, by her own admission, hadn’t really eaten anything. So Chris insisted they stop off at the local Chinese takeaway, where he was known. He was determined to ensure that she at least ate something before hitting the sack, but in the event she did little more than pick at the food, making her excuses and heading for bed not long after they got home.
Claire’s crashing out early suited him just fine. It meant that he could get to work without any distraction. The photos of friend Brown Coat proved to be as mundane as he’d feared. Yes, the man’s complexion was a little pale—grey, even—but that didn’t really come across in the pictures and offered nothing distinctive enough to base a search on. The gun, on the other hand, seemed more promising. Accessing a custom-designed search engine, he selected and uploaded the best picture and then let the programme do its thing. He wasn’t especially surprised, however, when the closest matches it returned were a couple of plastic collectable ray gun toys from the 1960s, a prop from an old sci-fi B-movie, and a weapon brandished by a chisel-jawed spaceman on the cover of a pulp SF magazine from the 1950s.
Strike one.
He casually took a prawn ball—lightly battered, succulent, and really good—from where it sat cooling in the carton, dipped it into the accompanying sweet-and-sour sauce and popped it into his mouth before commencing with stage two.
This entailed logging into a private forum—somewhere he checked regularly but rarely posted. The membership was small but eclectic, and many of his fellow members weren’t around all that much. Some interesting things cropped up here from time to time, though, which justified his keeping tabs. He uploaded the picture of the gun and then, having thought long and hard about what to say—how much or how little to reveal—posted a simple query: Has anyone encountered something like this before?
Minimalistic as messages go, certainly, but hopefully enough to garner a response.
Chris knew full well there was little chance of a prompt reply, but he kept the window open just in case, minimising it while catching up on emails and responding to those that merited attention. He next ran a series of searches regarding brown-coated figures, disruption weapons, and various other related things, using ever less likely parameters. God only knew what sort of a profile any parties interested enough to be monitoring might draw up based on that evening’s activities…
While he went through the motions, his thoughts strayed to the first time he had met Claire. He was working on a case, trailing a trio of visitors from another London, one of them the daughter of a diplomat whose unauthorised trans-reality jaunts were seen as a security risk. The three had stopped off for a drink at a place in trendy Hoxton Square, and had then joined a queue for the back room. Naturally Chris followed, buying a ticket and entering what proved to be a small live music venue. The support act was a solo artist perched behind a keyboard whose set struck Chris as four decades out of time, harking back to the halcyon days of prog rock. As the walking anachronism played his final chords, Chris became aware of someone standing at his shoulder. Turning, he saw Claire for the first time.
“You see them too, don’t you?” She looked towards the three youths he was tailing. “They come to the gigs, drawn by the music. I’ve no idea why.”
Nor did Chris, until he saw the night’s headliners perform: the Quiet Catastrophe, a five-piece whose music drew on the well-spring of decades past to create something different, recalling the trippyness of the sixties—he couldn’t help thinking of the Doors at times—the progressive ambitions of the seventies, the ambience of the eighties, seasoning the result with a hint of nineties grunge and even utilising the programming and syncopation of more recent styles. Fronting all this was Claire. Her voice soared above the foundations created by the four earnest musicians to form a dome, her vocal supporting and completing the aural structures they created.
The case proved to be a damp squib. He was able to ensure his employers that nothing nefarious was going on, just three kids finding fun where they could. He didn’t stay in touch with anyone involved, but he did with Claire.
Which brought his thoughts back to the present. The results of the various searches he set in motion were as unhelpful as anticipated. For want of anything better to do, he also checked the feeds from the two minicams at the youth hostel, but neither yielded anything of interest. Reckoning there was little more he could achieve that night, he followed Claire’s example and headed for bed.
Morning brought an unexpected bonus. Chris was a habitual early-riser and so was up well before Claire. While the kettle boiled he logged onto the private forum, not really expecting to find anything. Other members could only access it when in this reality, after all, so it could be days or weeks before anyone else even read his post. No harm in checking, though, which proved a wise decision. Somebody had replied, even if the response was more intriguing than enlightening.
If you’ve seen someone carrying one of these, my advice is don’t get involved and keep your head down, the reply read.
The message had been posted less than an hour after Chris had called it a night and gone to bed. Typical. It was from Jad—a friend, or at least a close approximation of one. Quite apart from the instant knee-jerk reaction of What the hell is he doing here in my London without telling me? Chris was delighted that somebody at least appeared to know something. At the same time it didn’t escape him that Jad had chosen to be guarded even within the privacy of the forum, which was ominous. After a moment’s thought, Chris typed: Not getting involved isn’t an option. It would be good to talk.
Now all he could do was wait.
The frustrating thing was the not knowing: whether Jad would see this immediately or in a day or so, or whether he had already moved on without any intention of coming back this way for a while, which would mean he’d remain oblivious to Chris’s message until long after it mattered.
Chris resolved to forget about Jad. If he got in touch, all well and good, but there was no point in sitting around and hoping.
Claire surfaced as Chris was in the middle of cooking breakfast. Heavy-eyed and with her hair an uncharacteristic mess, she looked unkempt but endearing.
“Mmm…that bacon smells good,” she said, coming across to hug him good morning.
“That smell is the best alarm clock in the world. Cup of tea?”
“Coffee, please. And, Chris?”
“Yeah?”
“Thank you. I don’t know what I’d have done if you hadn’t been there for me.”
He didn’t say anything, just leant across and, on impulse, kissed her on the top of her head.
They discussed their options over bacon, eggs, toast, and lightly fried mushrooms.
“The way I see it,” he said, “either they’ve achieved what brought them here by killing Bartosz, and you’re incidental to all this—just happened to be in the wrong place at the wrong time…If so, you can probably return to your normal life without fear of anything else happening…” Unless they’re determined to tidy up loose ends, but there seemed little point in voicing that thought.
“Do you really believe that?”
“No, can’t say that I do. Sorry, but if that were the case, I don’t understand why they kept chasing you after you gave them the slip at London Bridge. Why not simply vanish back to whichever London they call home, job done, with little chance of anyone tracing them? So…”
“So they haven’t yet got what they came here for.”
“That’d be my guess. Bartosz must have had something they want, or at least they’ve good reason to believe that he did, and now they reckon you’re their best
means of finding it.”
“Wonderful.”
“Any ideas what it could be?”
She shook her head. “Haven’t got a clue, sorry; but if Bartosz didn’t have it on him when they confronted him, the only place it can be is back at my place. He moved all his stuff in a couple of months back.”
Chris was afraid she was going to say something like that. Chances were that if Claire had figured that much out, so had the brown coats.
“How much do you actually know about Bartosz?” he asked. “His background, I mean.”
She shrugged. “About as much as I’d expect to. Don’t get me wrong; he wasn’t secretive about things, it just didn’t matter. I know his family are from Lubskie in the west of Poland, his parents and a younger sister still live there, and he’s got an older brother, Atrur, who’s in Spain as far as he knows—they haven’t spoken in a while.”
“Any enemies?”
“No, of course not; he’s just an ordinary bloke.”
There had to be something unusual about him, whatever she might think. “Did you meet any of his friends at all?”
“A few. The Polish community over here tend to stick together, same as any other ethnic group. Look, Chris, you can ask me all the questions you want, but if I knew anything useful I’d have told you by now. Don’t you think I’ve been racking my brains about all this? There’s been nothing different—no change in Bartosz’s behaviour, no strange visitors, no threats, no mysterious goings on…No fucking indication that any of this was going to happen, okay?”
“Okay.”
Much as he hated to admit it, the only place they were likely to find any answers was at Claire’s. When he said as much, she agreed, quipping, “I could do with a change of clothes anyway.”
The previous day Chris had gone in blind when facing the brown coats, without any idea what to expect. This time he intended to be a little better prepared. Over the years he had acquired all manner of oddities from a wide variety of different cultures. Anyone sorting through this stuff would probably conclude he was part mad scientist and part deluded sorcerer. Actually, that was a better description than most he had heard.
He chose with care, spreading an assortment of gadgets and charms out on the bed and slipping the ones that struck him as most appropriate into the pockets of a coat. The collection didn’t include any guns as such—guns weren’t his thing—but there were plenty of other items that could serve as weapons. There’s more than one way to stop a person. He included a few charms in the hope that these hi-tech adversaries might be caught off-guard by a lo-tech surprise or two.
Claire stood in the doorway as he sifted through the oddments, watching the process with evident fascination. She gave a bemused shake of her head. “You look like a kid who can’t decide which toys to play with.”
“I can see where you’re coming from with that,” he admitted.
Then, in an apparent change of mood, she said, “God, watching you doing this, it feels as if we’re getting ready to go to war.”
“Maybe it’s a little of both those things—a war of trinkets.” He stopped what he was doing and studied her thoughtfully for a moment.
“What?”
“I was just wondering, do you ever wear your hair up?”
She frowned. “I sometimes tie it back—like I had it yesterday… Why?”
“But can you put it into a bun, you know, really up?”
“I suppose, if I have to.”
“Good.” He tossed over something that he’d dug out of the wardrobe. She caught it and stared.
“A beret? You seriously want me to put this on? I’ve never worn a beret in my life.”
“Precisely.”
“If cunning disguise is what you’re going for, it’ll take a bit more than a hat.”
“I realise that, so I’m not. You’re right; we don’t have the means to do this properly. So, if masking you from detailed examination isn’t a realistic option, let’s settle for a little misdirection. Your hair is one of your defining features, so we’ll hide it. Makeup comes next. We might not be able to render you wholly unrecognisable, but perhaps we can tweak your appearance enough to give someone pause, and that might be all the edge we need. And then, of course, there are these.” He held out a small plastic container.
She stared. “Contact lenses.”
“Contact lenses,” he confirmed.
She took the container, still looking far from convinced. “You’re serious, aren’t you?”
“Oh yes.”
The Claire who eventually left the house beside him was almost unrecognisable from the grunge-styled rock chick Chris knew so well. She wore the much maligned beret, a long, patterned coat—essentially grey but with a pink and violet weave running through it to create a sort of tweed effect—and more makeup than he could ever recall seeing on her before. Not over-done, though; in fact, she looked quite striking.
“Hate wearing lipstick, it gums up your mouth,” she muttered. The comment was immediately followed by, “I feel ridiculous.”
“Relax, you look gorgeous,” he assured her. “Glamorous, like a film star.”
“Yeah, right. Besides, I thought the idea was not to draw attention to myself. Where did you get this stuff from, anyway?”
He shrugged. “They’re just things I’ve accumulated.” The coat had belonged to Lorna. She left it behind when she moved out more than a year ago, and as far as he knew, she hadn’t missed it yet. He never had got around to throwing it out—you never can tell when something might come in handy. As for giving it back to Lorna…Well, maybe. One day. If she asked.
Claire was renting a place on Bethnal Green Road—her home for as long as Chris had known her. She had the top two floors of an aging Victorian terraced townhouse. Ground floor was a shop—a general grocery store sandwiched between a newsagent and a small women’s clothing boutique. Why the freeholder hadn’t converted these two floors into separate flats long ago was anyone’s guess. Chris recalled Claire saying that the owner and his family had lived there for a while before moving out to somewhere larger—maybe that was the reason. Apparently the couple were friends of Claire’s parents, which was how she came to hear about it.
They parted company at Bethnal Green station, behaving like strangers from the moment they stepped off the train—even exiting the carriage by different doors. No telling who might be watching. Chris wore a different coat from the previous day—charcoal grey as opposed to yesterday’s black and with even deeper pockets—and sported a red rucksack. So far only one of the brown coats had clapped eyes on him and there seemed a good chance he wouldn’t be recognised. So he went first, hitching up the rucksack and striding down the road while Claire dawdled.
He paused briefly to study the offers in a seedy-looking travel agents and again to admire a stylishly embroidered purple abaya adorning one of the dummies in the clothes shop window, then walked on, past Claire’s front door to enter the newsagents beyond.
So far there was no sign of any brown coats or indeed of anybody acting suspiciously; and he had been looking, hence the window-shopping. While ostensibly studying the wall of racked magazines, he kept one eye on the world outside, noting Claire as she entered the café opposite. He took his mobile out in anticipation, and sure enough, a text message flashed up seconds later. Clear, it said. So, Claire hadn’t seen anyone either.
Even so, he couldn’t escape the conviction that this was all too easy and they were missing something. No point in delaying, though; it was decision time: follow through with the plan or abort and go home. Claire had agreed to trust his instincts on this one and abide by whatever he chose to do.
No decision to make, really. Despite knowing full well that they might be walking into a trap, he left the shop, fished the keys Claire had given him out of his pocket, and strode up to the front door.
Come into my parlour…ran through his head as he turned the lock and opened the door.
He took the stairs two at a time and
burst into the lounge. It proved to be empty; as did the kitchen, the cubbyhole study, both bedrooms, and the bathroom. Nor was there any indication that anyone uninvited had been here. He even checked in the wardrobe and got down on his knees to look under the beds. Only then did he text Claire, Ok.
Perhaps he was wrong after all; perhaps the brown coats really had got what they wanted and scarpered, which would render all their precautions pointless. Gut instinct still told him otherwise, though.
Claire slipped inside the moment he opened the door. She looked nervous as hell but spared him a wan smile before hurrying up the stairs.
Chris paused at the top of the first flight to take out an item from one of his pockets and place it on the floor by the top step, angled to rest against the wall: a palm-sized wooden triangle, intricately carved with runes and wrapped at one corner in a fine silken red-stained thread.
It never harmed to take precautions. If they really were in for a leisurely peruse of Bartosz’s belongings free of interruptions, he could simply collect this on the way out, no harm done.
They went through Bartosz’s clothes together, checking pockets etcetera, but found nothing beyond a couple of crumpled receipts, a forgotten cough sweet in a disintegrating wrapper, a few bits of loose change, and a pair of two-month-old cinema tickets. “Lousy film,” Claire commented as she tossed the latter onto the bed next to the receipts.
Having drawn a blank with his clothes, she then took Chris to where the rest of Bartosz’s stuff was stored, still in boxes—two of them, stacked one on top of the other in the cubbyhole study just off the lounge. She left him to examine the contents and went back upstairs to pack a case with clothes and toiletries ready to take back to his place. Chris sat on the floor and contemplated the two boxes, which represented fairly meagre testament to one young man’s life. He hoped fervently that there was more than this, that Bartosz had left some stuff with his parents back in Poland.
He felt uncomfortable, as if he were prying, when he lifted the lid of the first box; rifling through the possessions of someone so recently deceased seemed inherently wrong, but it had to be done.
