by KJ Charles
“But—” Gil opened his hands. “Vik. I don’t know what to say. What are you doing here?”
“You’re surprised?” Vikram said. “You’re surprised? I thought you were dead!”
Gil’s mouth opened slightly, then broke into the grin Vikram had never forgotten. “What, me? Wouldn’t be seen dead in a coffin.”
That was it? That was the sum total of his apology for the way he’d vanished and left Vikram alone and bereft in that miserable hellhole of a school? Vikram found himself speechless, and as he searched for words to convey his outrage, Gil grabbed his hand.
“It’s damned good to see you. It really is.” His grip was warm and tight. It was a man’s hand, calloused at the bases of the fingers, large and strong-boned, but Vikram still felt that old, absurd reaction. As though Gil was going to tug him along to some adventure, some secret, some escape that he’d never find alone.
Gil was right here, alive, and as much as Vikram wanted to wring his neck, he couldn’t hold back a smile.
“You’re alive,” he said, pointlessly obvious.
“Never better. What are you up to? Do you have time for tea? Let me lock the front and come upstairs. I’ve a fire, and there’s no trade to speak of on a miserable day like this. Come on.”
He lifted the counter hatch and pushed Vikram through it, towards the stairs, just as though he were still the larger of the two of them, and Vikram found himself no more able to resist than he ever had been. Gil went to the door, bolted it, and turned the sign to show he was closed, then came past and led the way upstairs. Vikram followed him into a small room, which appeared to be at once living space and storehouse, piled as it was with books, bound and unbound, papers, piles of loose photographs, bundles of manuscript, and boxes. There was a blazing fire, which was welcome, and by it a pair of faded but comfortable-looking upholstered chairs, one covered in papers and topped with a black fur stole.
Gil slid a hand under the fur and tossed it up and sideways. It sprouted legs and a very bushy tail, hit the floor lightly, and stalked resentfully away. Gil ignored the cat’s annoyance, turfing the papers onto the floor with a casual disregard for their order that made Vikram’s teeth hurt.
“Here you go. I don’t often have people up here.” That was, it seemed, Gil’s entire apology for the chaos. “Tea?” He put the kettle on the fire without further consultation, as Vikram hung up his coat and hat on the stand in the corner, and took the chair.
“Well.” Gil sat back in his own chair, crossing his legs. “So. How’ve you been?”
Vikram steepled his fingertips to prevent himself clenching his fists. “How have I been? You mean, in the thirteen years since you vanished out of my life as though you’d never existed?”
“Well. Yes.”
“What do you mean, yes?” Vikram demanded. “I came back from double Latin and you were gone! Your clothes were gone, your chest, nobody would tell me anything, nobody answered my letters, you never got in touch once, and I didn’t have a word from you from that day to this! What the devil happened?”
There was a silence, long enough for Vikram to feel his anger undermined by a current of doubt as to whether he’d sounded quite as calm and unemotional as he’d have liked, then Gil let out a breathy whistle. “Right. You’re not taking life any more lightly, I see.”
“No, I am not!” Vikram shouted. “Of course I’m not! What do you expect me to—to—”
Quite suddenly, he felt dizzy and airless, as though this were a dream and he’d just become aware of the implausibility of it all. His face was cold and clammy, his hands tremulous. He decided that he could not possibly do anything so weak as to put his head between his knees, and then realised that the alternative might be passing out.
“Jesus,” Gil said. “Are you all right?”
“Very well,” Vikram said, muffled. “Just give me a moment.”
A light hand touched his shoulder. “Breathe, mate. Take your time. Here, I’ll make the tea.”
Vikram breathed, attempting to force the blood back to his brain by sheer willpower. He sat up after a few moments to see Gil sitting opposite, holding out a chipped, steaming mug.
“I put sugar in it. Feeling better?”
Vikram sipped the brew and grimaced. “I’m perfectly well. I was just taken dizzy, that’s all.”
“Yeah, I saw. So you didn’t come here looking for me?”
“Of course I didn’t. I thought you were dead.”
“I can see why it came as a shock to say good afternoon.” Gil made a face. “Sorry about that.”
Sorry. Vikram shook his head and concentrated on the syrupy tea. Gil must have put half the sugar bowl into it.
“You look like you’re doing well,” Gil said after a moment. “Very smart. What is it, the law? Barrister?”
“Solicitor. I didn’t choose to take silk.”
“As long as it suits. What else? Married?”
“No.”
“How are the old folk?”
“At the same address,” Vikram said. “If you were interested in their well-being, a letter would have found them, or me.”
“Right. Any use to say I was busy?”
“For thirteen years?”
Gil’s face stilled. It wouldn’t have stood out to most people, but Vikram had known him better than anyone once upon a time, and he recognised a man taking a second to gather himself when he saw one.
It was only a second, then Gil smiled again, this time somewhat sardonically. “About two minutes before you walked in I had a boy come from number ten to warn me there was some swell wandering around, asking awkward questions about goods that could get a fellow a spell in chokey. I assume that was you, Mr. Solicitor?”
Vikram swallowed a mouthful of tea. “Yes.”
“Yes. This is my shop. My name on the sign, right here in the middle of Holywell Street.” Gil’s smile had entirely faded now. “Do you want to think again about whether you’d have liked me writing to your mother?”
“You didn’t always do this,” Vikram said. “You didn’t have to do this.”
“Oh, I did. I really did.”
“What—” Vikram wasn’t sure he wanted to ask. He didn’t want to think of Gil in this grimy, illicit business. “What do you do?”
“What happens if I tell you? Do I get the peelers round? Society for the Suppression of Vice?”
“Oh, come on. That’s not fair.”
“Let’s not be sentimental. You went your way and I went mine, and you wouldn’t have thanked me for turning up at your door any time in the last few years, so don’t give me a hard time that I kept my troubles to myself, all right?”
“No!” Vikram said furiously. “It is not all right. Whatever you’ve been doing, you were sixteen, and you vanished, and I was afraid, damn you. I don’t know what you did to be expelled—”
“But you think I did something.” Gil leaned back. “Right.”
“I wasn’t even allowed to ask! I was put in detention for demanding answers. That was what they did when fellows were sacked for stealing, or—unmentionable things.” The old slang tasted oddly on his tongue.
Gil smiled tightly. “Of course they did. Hang a dog and then give him a bad name.”
“Isn’t it the other way around?”
“Hardly matters now. What are you doing asking awkward questions in Holywell Street?”
He’d clean forgotten. Vikram drained the tea, looked around for any reasonable surface on which to place the mug, and gave up, putting it carefully on the floor. As he sat back, the cat took the opportunity to leap into his lap, anchoring itself with claws. He yelped.
“Satan, you arse,” Gil said. “Shove him off.”
“Your cat is called Satan?”
“He’s not my cat. He just lives here.”
Vikram pushed cautiously and ineffectually at the mass of fur. The cat gave him a malevolent look, kneaded his thigh in a threatening manner, and wrapped itself up to sleep as though Vikram had noth
ing else to do but supply a lap. “Oh, for— Do something with it, will you?”
Gil grinned. “Don’t look at me. Not my responsibility, are you, Satan?”
“That is an appalling name for a cat.”
“Accurate, though. You were going to tell me what you’re up to.”
“As you said, asking awkward questions.” Vikram took a deep breath. “I’m trying to find a boy.”
Gil’s brows slanted. “Any particular boy?”
Vikram tried to stand. The cat, without opening its eyes, extended its claws in a way that suggested it would not be removed without violence. “Damn this creature. Will you pass me my briefcase?”
Gil handed it over. Vikram extracted the framed photograph but held it facing him. “This is a little difficult. I should explain, I offer legal advice to Indians and others at the Shad Thames Eastern Association House.”
“You lawyer in Shad Thames?” Gil said. “You’re looking better than I’d think on that.”
“My office is in Lincoln’s Inn. I work pro bono in Shad Thames. It’s a damned disgrace, the way poor Indian workers are treated. Paid a pittance and discarded without compunction.” Gil wore the very familiar expression of a man who didn’t see that this was his concern. Vikram pushed the irritation down. “The result is that I have all sorts of problems brought to my door.”
“And what sort of problem brings you to Holywell Street?”
Vikram needed help; Gil was in a position to help him, appalling though that was to consider. The question was whether his obviously flexible morality was sufficiently flexible for this. Vikram had seen too many criminals outraged over other people’s transgressions to take that on trust.
But he couldn’t really believe Gil would play the righteous man, and in truth he had little choice.
“A boy aged sixteen has vanished,” he said. “It seems that he was keeping company with older men.”
“Ah.”
“He disappeared three weeks ago. Perhaps just an accident, but...”
“Got you.”
“And he had had this picture taken,” Vikram said. “Obviously expensive, no studio name, and his parents told me that he had been working as a photographer’s model.”
“I see why you came to Holywell Street.”
“Nobody else did,” Vikram muttered.
Gil snorted. “Nobody’s going to start telling the truth to a passing swell. Are you trying to find the photographer or the gentleman friends?”
“Either, or both. Whatever I can.”
“And why are you doing this?”
“His parents have no means to find him, and they can’t go to the police under the circumstances.”
“No, but what I mean is, why do you care what happens to some lad gone mollying?”
Vikram shook his head. It was almost funny. Almost. “If you understood what it is to have someone for whom you care disappear, if you had any idea how it feels not to know, you would not ask me that.”
Gil’s smile died on his lips. His eyes were on Vikram, intent, and there was something at once achingly familiar and very different in their look. All of him was familiar and different, and it occurred to Vikram, irrelevantly but forcibly, that his old friend had grown up a very handsome man.
“Vik,” Gil said. “Mate...”
He leaned forward. Without conscious volition, Vikram did the same. The cat’s weight shifted with his movement, and a set of claws dug savagely into his thigh. “Ow! Damn it!”
“Chuck him off,” Gil recommended, sitting back. “Ah, hell. All right, let’s see your picture.”
Vikram held out the photograph as best he could without incurring further attack. “Here. His name’s Sunil Gupta.”
“Indian. Right,” Gil said, frowning at it. “That should...help... I’ve seen him. I swear I’ve seen him.”
“You know him?”
“Know? No. Look, Vik, joking aside, you understand what I sell here?”
Vikram wanted to say yes, of course he did. Gil had always been the worldly one, initiating his naive friend into the mysteries of life. Vikram had no desire to resume that relationship. He was an experienced professional man, and his work had left him well acquainted with sordor, crime, and degradation.
But, undeniably, this was a form of sordor, crime, and degradation that up till now, he had managed to avoid.
“Not entirely,” he said. “That is, I’m well aware of this street’s reputation but not familiar with the, uh, goods themselves.”
“Goods.” Gil grinned briefly. “Yes, well. What you get round here, under the counter as it were, is literature tending to deprave or corrupt. Obscene publications. Books mostly, but also photographs. Anything that’s unfit to print.”
“Why?” Vikram demanded. “You had brains, you were better than this.” He saw Gil’s face close over, but he couldn’t or didn’t stop himself. He dealt with exploitation every day in its many and varied forms—men exploiting women, white exploiting brown and black, rich exploiting poor, anyone above treading on whoever was below. The sale of poor bodies for the entertainment of the rich was enraging; the idea of Gil involved in it was sickening. He needed it not to be true. “Why would you take up this filthy business?”
“Money,” Gil said. “And why not? People must be amused, like the man said, and this is how they like to amuse themselves. The law says people shouldn’t fuck and mustn’t fuck and oughtn’t think about fucking. Well, you tell them that. If they didn’t want it, they wouldn’t come and buy it.”
“People want a number of things that aren’t good for them.”
“That’s their problem.”
Gil’s voice was flat. Vikram reminded himself that he needed help. “We will have to disagree, but in any case, I interrupted you. Go on.”
“Well. Some of the things people want, the law doesn’t allow ’em to have, or do. So if you’re going to take a high moral tone, or call the Society for Suppression of Vice down on me as an act of Christian charity—”
“I’m not a Christian.”
“Figure of speech.”
“No, it isn’t. I am not a Christian,” Vikram repeated. “Had you forgotten that?”
“You aren’t, are you. And that makes a difference, being Hindu?”
“By being an entirely different philosophy?” Vikram suggested, not restraining the sarcasm. “My religion holds that mutual affection and pleasure are a good thing, an aim of human life.”
“You want to get some missionaries out round here, mate. I can see that catching on.”
“I don’t mean at the expense of decency. And this is a digression. I intended only to say that I am not nearly so concerned by the...the acts committed, as the fact that people are forced to them. I do not care whether Sunil sold himself to a man or a woman; I care that he had to sell himself at all, and that he may have died for it. That is what I am here for, and nothing more, and you know very well I will not report you to the authorities for anything you tell me.”
“Do I?”
Vikram’s breath caught in his throat with outrage and hurt. He inhaled sharply in order to embark on a furious response, but the rueful look on Gil’s face stopped him before he started. “Yes, I do. Sorry, Vik. That was uncalled for.”
“Yes, it was,” Vikram snapped. “But if you want my word of honour, you have it.”
Gil nodded acknowledgement, his lips already curving into a smile again. “Good to know. Though you can’t blame a man for thinking you aren’t a natural lawbreaker. All right, let me see if I can find this picture, and I’m not making promises it’s the same boy. I could be wrong.” He hauled himself out of the chair, went to the desk, and picked up a small sheaf of photographs through which he began to sort. Vikram looked into the fire, waiting, unsettled. After a few moments, he became aware that he was stroking the cat. It would doubtless leave hair all over his trouser legs. He didn’t even like cats.
Gil returned to the fireside, holding out a photograph. “Here it is. Don
’t say I didn’t warn you.”
Vikram looked at the image, and couldn’t hold back the flinch.
It showed a young Indian man, naked but for socks and suspenders. He was adolescent, with a swagger in his stance despite his exposure, and he looked very like the framed picture of Sunil.
“Yes. I think this is him. And again there’s no studio mark on the back. Would you say the photograph looks recent?”
Gil leaned on the edge of Vikram’s chair. He smelled of paper and ink and dust, the scent of books, with a lower note of...not quite musk. Maleness. “Well, the print’s in good condition. And he looks about the same in both, and boys change fairly quick at his age. How old’s your picture?”
“He gave it to his parents a month ago.”
“Right.” Gil chewed his lip. “So here’s your lad who’s had a gentleman friend, or several, for a while?”
“At least a year.”
“But also—or instead of?—he’s doing poses plastiques, quite recently.”
“Maybe he fell out with his gentleman friend, and he needed a new way to bring the money in,” Vikram suggested. “Maybe he posed for the photographs and the gentleman wasn’t happy when he found out.”
Gil shrugged. “Maybe the gentleman was the one who arranged the pictures and was pleased as Punch to see them.”
“Is that likely?”
“Why not? There’s plenty of people who like looking at pictures.”
“Do you know who takes these things?”
“Any fool with a camera. Well, and a dark-room and some willing lads or ladies, but those aren’t hard to come by.”
Vikram nodded. “Where did you get this one?”
“Believe it or not, my half-brother.”
“Your— Matthew?”
Vikram had never met Matthew Lawes. He’d never met Gil’s father either, or been to Wealdstone House, since the old man’s acknowledgement of his bastard hadn’t extended to having his friends come to visit.
“Oh, yes,” Gil said. “Turns out he had a taste for literature tending to deprave or corrupt. Apparently it runs in the family. Most of what’s in here was his, the books and such.”
Vikram looked around at the heaps. “Are you serious?”
