Century Rain

by Alastair Reynolds

  “You know why we’re here,” Floyd said, eventually.

  Michel stopped polishing and made a big show of putting aside his towel. “You take the easy route getting here?”

  “No one followed us,” Floyd assured him.

  “You sure of that?”

  “As sure as I can be.”

  “That’s not much of a guarantee.”

  “It’s the best I can give you. You know where he is, don’t you?”

  Michel took their empty glasses. “Follow me.”

  He raised the folding section of counter at the end of the bar and led them into a back room full of casks and empty wine bottles. Another door led into a meandering brick corridor lined with wooden beer crates. Halfway down this corridor, Michel stopped at an unmarked white door and fished out a set of keys. He opened the door and stepped into another storage room, also piled high with crates. They appeared to fill the room to the back wall, but when Floyd looked closely he saw that the crates had been arranged to conceal another door.

  “Through there,” Michel said. “Keep it quick, and keep it quiet. No offence, Floyd, but I’m taking a serious risk here.”

  “And it’s appreciated,” Floyd assured him.

  The concealed door admitted them to a tiny room not much larger than a broom cupboard. The walls were covered with flaking plaster, which was coming off in scabs to reveal damp, cracked brickwork. A single electric light bulb provided illumination. A mattress on the floor was the only item of furniture. Half-lying on this mattress, his back propped against the wall with only a few thin pillows for comfort, was Custine. A bag of provisions sat by his side. He wore the same clothes he’d had on that morning, but now they were crumpled, sweat-stained and dishevelled, as if he’d had them on for a week.

  Custine placed aside a scrap of newspaper he’d been reading. “Don’t mistake this for ingratitude,” he said, “but how did you find me?”

  “Lucky guess,” Floyd replied.

  “Or rather, a process of deduction,” Greta said. “How many friends do we have left in this city?”

  “Not many,” Custine admitted.

  “So it wasn’t that difficult to draw up a short list. Michel was pretty near the top.”

  “It’s good of him to keep me here,” Custine said, “but I can’t stay for long. It’s too dangerous for him, and too dangerous for me. I take it you weren’t—”

  “Followed? No,” Floyd said.

  “I’m in a lot of trouble.”

  “Then it’s up to us to do what we can to get you out of it,” Greta said.

  “But first we have to know what happened,” Floyd added. “All of it, André, from the moment I dropped you off at rue des Peupliers this morning.”

  “Did you get my note?”

  “Of course.”

  “Then you know about the typewriter.”

  “The enciphering machine? Yes. What I don’t quite understand is—”

  “We used them at the Quai,” Custine said, “for secure communications between different establishments when we were trying to crack major organised-crime operations. The kind of people who tap our telephone lines. When Blanchard showed us the typewriter case—at least, what he thought was a typewriter case—I knew I’d seen one like it before. It was just a question of remembering when and where.”

  “I’m glad you did,” Floyd said. “It cleared up a few things.”

  “She was a spy.”

  “I agree.”

  “And she wasn’t acting alone, either, not if someone else is still sending those coded transmissions. She almost certainly has associates in the area.”

  “As a matter of fact,” Floyd said, “one of them’s due to walk into the office at nine tomorrow morning.”

  Custine’s eye widened. “The sister?”

  “She showed up, just like Blanchard said she would.”

  “Be very, very careful how you play this,” Custine warned.

  “I’ve got the matter in hand. Now I’d like to hear your side of the story. What the hell happened today?”

  Custine rearranged himself on the mattress. “I began my investigations on the second floor, with the tenant you didn’t manage to speak to yesterday. He still wasn’t in, so I proceeded to Mademoiselle White’s room and once again set about trying to record those radio transmissions.”

  “Did you get anything?”

  “Yes—and this time I had the benefit of a Morse book. But as I transcribed the message it became clear that it was meaningless—just a random sequence of letters. I stared at them and stared at them until something about them began to seem oddly familiar. That was when I remembered the Enigma machine in the Quai. It hit me then: it was utterly pointless trying to extract any information from the message. Even if we managed to get our hands on an intact Enigma machine of the same kind that Susan White was using, we would still have no idea of the particular settings that would need to be applied to decipher the message.”

  Floyd scratched his head. “How long would it take us to work through all the possibilities?”

  Custine shook his head dismissively. “Years, Floyd. The encryption’s not meant to be easily broken. That’s the whole point.”

  “So this whole wireless business was a wild-goose chase?”

  “On the contrary. It told us rather a lot about Susan White, even if it didn’t tell us what was in those messages. We also know that someone made a point of smashing her Enigma machine. Whoever did that knew exactly how important it was.”

  “So she was killed by an enemy agent,” Floyd speculated.

  “I think we can assume so,” Custine replied. “And whoever did that must have destroyed the rotor settings for the machine as well. Nothing in the tin she entrusted to Blanchard resembles a list of such settings. They may have been written down elsewhere. She may even have committed them to memory.”

  “Talking of Blanchard,” Floyd prompted.

  “When the futility of intercepting those signals dawned on me, I put the wireless back as I’d found it the day before, complete with broken connections. I packed away my tools and set off down to Blanchard’s rooms, where I intended to bring up the delicate matter we discussed yesterday.”

  “And did you?”

  “I never got a chance,” Custine said. “When I knocked on the door to his rooms, I found it ajar. I pushed it open and called out to him. No one answered, but I heard… sounds.”

  “What sort of sounds?”

  “Scuffling, grunting. Furniture being shoved around. Naturally, I entered. That was when I saw the child: a little girl, perhaps the one we saw outside the apartment yesterday, perhaps another one.”

  “What was the child doing?” asked Floyd, a sick feeling beginning to churn in his stomach.

  “It was killing Monsieur Blanchard.” Custine said this with a perfect, detached calm, as if he had gone over the events in his head too many times to be shocked by them any more. “Blanchard was on the floor, with his head pressed against the leg of a chair. The child was squatting over him, holding one hand over his mouth while it grasped a clawed fire iron in the other. It was smashing the fire iron against his skull.”

  “How could a child overpower a man like that?” Floyd asked. “He was elderly, but he wasn’t particularly frail.”

  “All I can report is what I saw,” Custine said. “The child seemed to have enormous animal strength. It had stick-thin arms and legs, but was still hammering that fire iron down on him as if it had the strength of a blacksmith.”

  “You keep calling the child ‘it,’ ” Floyd observed.

  “It looked at me,” Custine said. “That was when I knew it wasn’t any kind of child.”

  Greta looked at Floyd, concern filling her eyes. Floyd reached out and touched her arm reassuringly. “Go on,” he said to Custine.

  “It was dressed like a little girl, but when it looked at me, I knew it was something else—something more like a demon than a child. Its face reminded me of a piece of shrivelled fru
it. When it opened its mouth, I saw a dry, black tongue and a few rotten stubs of teeth. I smelled it.”

  “He’s frightening me,” Greta said, shuddering with revulsion under Floyd’s hand. “Is this supposed to be one of those children you say keep turning up?”

  “Whatever they are, they aren’t children,” Custine repeated. “They’re things that resemble children unless you look closely. That’s all.”

  “This isn’t possible,” Greta insisted.

  “We’ve both seen them,” Floyd said. “So did some of the tenants in Blanchard’s building.”

  “But… children?”

  “Somehow they fit into this,” Floyd said. “One of them probably killed Susan White.”

  “What happened next?” Greta asked, fascination gradually overcoming apprehension.

  “The child looked at me,” Custine said. He reached into the little bag of provisions next to his mattress and took out a bottle of whiskey, helping himself to a nip. “It looked at me and made a sound I will never forget. It opened its mouth—that was when I saw the tongue and teeth—and it… sang.” He said the word with distaste, washing it from his mouth with another slug of whiskey.

  “What do you mean, it ‘sang?’ ” Floyd asked.

  “Or wailed, or shrieked—I really can’t describe it adequately. It was not a sound a child was ever meant to make, like a kind of monstrous yodel. Don’t ask me how, but I knew what it was doing: it was calling out to others like itself. Summoning them.” Custine screwed the top back on the bottle and returned it to the bag. “That was when I fled.”

  “You knew that would look bad.”

  “Nothing would have been as bad as staying in that room. I looked around for a weapon, but the child-thing already had the one item in the room capable of doing any damage. I just wanted to get as far away from there as possible.”

  “You hailed a taxi?”

  “Yes,” Custine said. “I took it straight to rue du Dragon, where I left you the note. Then I came here.”

  “The men from the Big House think you killed Blanchard,” Floyd said.

  “Of course they do. It’s what they want to believe. Have they spoken to you?”

  “I had a real nice chat with an Inspector Belliard shortly after you fled the scene.”

  “Belliard is poison. Protect yourself, Floyd. Have nothing more to do with the case. Have nothing more to do with me.”

  “Bit late for that.”

  “It’s never too late for common sense.”

  “Well, maybe this time it is. I spoke to our old friend Maillol. He was sceptical, but deep down I’m pretty sure he thinks you’re innocent.”

  Custine shook his head resignedly. “One good man can’t help any of us.”

  “I told him I’d clear your name. He said he’d look at any evidence I was able to turn up.”

  “I’m warning you, as a friend: leave this whole business alone. Do what I intend to do, which is to get out of Paris at the earliest opportunity.”

  “There’s nowhere for you to run,” Floyd said. “I can hop on the flying boat and be in America two days later. You can’t. Wherever you go in France, the men from the Quai will find you eventually. Our only hope is to clear your name.”

  “Then you have set yourself an impossible task.”

  “If I give Maillol one of those children, things might look a bit different.”

  “No one will believe that a child was capable of those murders.”

  “But if enough witnesses come forward—enough people who’ve seen one of these demons hanging around—that might change things.”

  “Floyd,” Custine said, with sudden urgency, “please use your head. Those things are out there, even as we speak. They are in the city. They move without attracting suspicion. Furthermore, they seem to be doing their utmost to kill anyone who had the slightest connection with Susan White—which now includes the three of us.”

  “Then I guess that makes it personal,” Floyd said.

  “Drop the case, my friend. Drop the case and go with Greta to America.”

  “Not yet. Like I said, I’ve already got an interview lined up with the sister.”

  “You are playing with fire.”

  “No,” Floyd said, “I’m playing with the only lead left in this whole case. And the only thing that’s going to lead me to those children, and get you off the hook.”

  Custine slumped back against the wall. “I can’t argue with you, can I?”

  “It’s no more than you’d do for me.”

  “Which only goes to show that we both lack common sense.”

  “It’s overrated anyway,” Floyd replied, smiling.

  “Be careful,” Custine said. “Those children may be demons, but there’s no guarantee that the sister isn’t just as dangerous.”

  At nine the next morning, Floyd watched Verity Auger walk into his office. The slatted light shining through the blinds caught her from one side, electric silver highlights dancing on every curve and curl. She wore a dark pinstriped business suit with low-heeled shoes, and if she had arrived with a hat she must have hung it up outside. Her neatly parted light hair fell in a straight line down to her shoulders and then flounced back up at the ends, as if it had changed its mind at the last moment. Her hair made Floyd think of the flukes of whales in old Dutch lithographs. She had very fine eyebrows, and her face seemed to shift from severe to serene and back again between heartbeats.

  She had already helped herself to a seat before it occurred to Floyd that she really did not look very much like her sister.

  “I’m sorry about the state of my office,” Floyd said, indicating the piles of barely sorted paperwork. “Someone decided it needed rearranging.”

  “You needn’t apologise,” Auger said, resting a handbag on her lap. “I’m just grateful that you’ve agreed to see me at such short notice.” She looked him squarely in the eye. “I appreciate that this is all very unusual, Mister Floyd.”

  “There’s nothing ‘usual’ where a homicide’s concerned,” he said. “And I don’t imagine any of this has been easy on you.”

  “I won’t pretend it’s been easy,” she said. “On the other hand, I won’t pretend that Susan and I were the closest of sisters, either.”

  “Family trouble?”

  “Nothing so dramatic. We were just never very close when we were growing up. We were half-sisters, for a start. Susan’s father died before I was born. She was four years older than me, which might not sound much, but it’s a world of difference when you’re children. Susan may as well have been a grown-up for all that we had in common.”

  “And later, when you were both older?”

  “I suppose the age difference became less important, but by then Susan was spending less and less time at home. She was always running off with boys, bored out of her mind with our little town.”

  “Tanglewood, Dakota,” Floyd said, nodding.

  Her eyes widened in what was either mild surprise or mild disbelief. “You know it?”

  “I know of it, but only because of what I learned from the papers in your sister’s tin. Funny thing is, I looked it up in a gazetteer and it doesn’t seem to exist.”

  “You mean it wasn’t in the gazetteer. I assure you it exists, Mister Floyd. I would have a great deal of trouble explaining my childhood if it didn’t. Do you have an ashtray?”

  Floyd passed her one. “It must be a real one-horse town.”

  Auger shook her head as she lit a cigarette. “It has wild ambitions of becoming a one-horse town.”

  “Like that, is it? In which case, I understand why your sister felt she had to leave. A place like that can begin to feel like a prison.”

  “Where are you from, if you don’t mind my asking? I don’t even know your first name.”

  “I’m from Galveston, Texas.” Floyd said. “My father was a merchant marine. I was a trawlerman by the time I was sixteen.”

  “And you ended up in Paris?” Auger blew out a line of smoke. “I hop
e you weren’t the navigator.”

  “I was the navigator, wireless operator and a lot of other things until the day I decided I liked making music more than catching fish. I’d just turned nineteen and I’d heard that Paris was the place to be if you wanted to make it as a musician. Especially if you were American. Bechet was here, Baker, Gershwin. So I caught a boat to Marseille and decided to try to make my name. I landed in nineteen thirty-nine, a year before the tanks rolled into the Ardennes.”

  “And?”

  “I’m still trying to make my name.” Floyd puffed out his cheeks and smiled. “I gave up on my serious jazz ambitions after about six months. I still play as a hobby, and now and then I make more money out of it than I do from the detective business. But I’m afraid that’s more of a sad reflection on the business than my luck as a musician.”

  “How did you get into this line of work? It’s something of a jump from trawlerman to private detective.”

  “It didn’t happen overnight,” Floyd replied, “but I had an advantage before I even landed. My mother was French, and I had the paperwork to prove it. The French army was undermanned and unprepared for the German army lining up on the border. When they finally woke up and realised they were being invaded, they weren’t too fussy about who they let into the country.”

  “And did you man those guns?”

  “I told them I’d think about it.”

  “And?”

  “I thought about it and decided there were things I’d rather be doing than waiting around for German Seventy-Sevens to pound the hell out of me.”

  Auger abandoned her cigarette, barely smoked, stubbing it out in the ashtray. “Didn’t the authorities come after you?”

  “There were no authorities. The government had already cut and run, leaving a city run by mobsters. For a while back there, it really looked as if the German invasion was going to succeed. It was only luck that those armoured divisions got bogged down in the Ardennes—bad weather working for us, for once. That and the fact that we realised they were in trouble in time to put some bombers over them.”

  “A close thing, in other words. It almost makes you wonder what would have happened if that advance hadn’t stalled.”