Century Rain

by Alastair Reynolds

  Auger shook her head once. “It doesn’t matter. Just drive.”

  “It was the boy with the yo-yo,” Floyd said. “Wasn’t it?”

  “Don’t be ridiculous.”

  He turned to Greta. “You kept a good watch on the hotel since I left?”

  “No, Floyd. I painted my fingernails and browsed fashion magazines. What do you think I was doing?”

  “Did you see the boy?”

  “Yes,” Greta said, after a moment’s consideration. “I did. And I didn’t like the look of him either.”

  From the back seat of the car, Auger watched Floyd check the mirrors as he turned the car into rue du Dragon. It was now late afternoon and the street had already taken on something of the gloom of evening. Auger found it difficult to believe that only seven hours had passed since she had paid a visit to the detective’s office. It might as well have been weeks ago, for all she had in common with the determined and confident version of herself who had walked out of the building, prize in hand. She had thought that the mission was all but finished, barring the trivial business of returning to the portal. You poor, pitiable fool, Auger thought. Had she stood face to face with her former self, she would have slapped her cheek and laughed in spite.

  “I don’t see any nasty-looking children,” Floyd said.

  “What about the tail from the Quai?” asked the woman in the front passenger seat, whose accent was distinctly German. Floyd had told Auger her name, but she had forgotten it as soon as she saw the boy waiting outside the hotel.

  “I don’t see anyone,” Floyd said. “But you can bet someone’s still got their eye on me.”

  Auger leaned forward. “Someone’s following you as well?”

  “I’m a popular guy.” Floyd parked the car outside the horsemeat butcher Auger remembered from her visit that morning. The shop front was covered in a mosaic of red, white and black tiles, with the figure of a red prancing horse picked out in a Romanesque style beneath the words “Achat de Chevaux.”

  “Floyd,” said the German woman, “this is all happening a little too quickly for me.”

  “It’s happening a little too quickly for me as well, if that’s any consolation,” Floyd replied. “That’s why we’re all going up to my office to have a nice little chat, and maybe we can sort some of this out.”

  The German woman looked at Auger with a sneer of disapproval. “Is she seriously going to walk along the street looking like that?”

  “We’ll take her upstairs, let her get clean and dry,” Floyd said. “Then I’m sure you won’t mind if she borrows some of the clothes you left behind.”

  “She’s welcome to any that will fit her,” the woman replied, looking Auger up and down with a less than complimentary eye.

  “Thank you,” Auger said, with an exaggerated smile.

  “Ladies, if you’re going to start scratching each other’s eyes out, could you at least wait until I’ve had a shot of whiskey? I can’t stand violence on an empty stomach.”

  “Shut up, Floyd,” the German woman said.

  Floyd got out of the car and went around to the passenger side to open the door for Greta. Auger was already out of the car, looking around for anything she didn’t like, or that seemed out of place. But the street was as quiet and sleepy as she remembered it, and even a loitering child would have stood out.

  “He wants to talk to you,” the German woman said, tapping Floyd’s arm and pointing to the shop with the horse sign. Behind the glass, the proprietor was gesturing at Floyd, waving him inside.

  “Monsieur Gosset will have to wait,” Floyd said. “He only ever grumbles about the rent, or the noise from his upstairs neighbours.”

  The three of them entered Floyd’s building. The elevator that had stalled Auger’s exit earlier was waiting for them like an iron trap. They all got in and Floyd pushed one of the brass buttons. With a buzz and a lurch, the car began its climb to the detective’s floor.

  “I’m still waiting for an explanation, Floyd,” the German woman said.

  “Maybe I should begin by introducing the two of you properly,” Floyd said, putting on a veneer of civility. “Verity Auger, Greta Auerbach. I’m sure the two of you will get along like a house on fire.”

  “Or something,” Auger muttered.

  The elevator came to a stop. Floyd opened the gate and led them on to the landing. Gesturing for them to hang back, he walked to the pebbled-glass door that led into his office and examined the gap between the door and the frame, just above the lock. He turned back to them with a finger pressed against his lips.

  “Something’s wrong,” he whispered. “I put a hair across this gap before I left this morning. It’s not there any more.”

  “You think someone’s been in there?” Auger asked. Involuntarily, she touched her hip, feeling for the reassuring presence of the automatic. As tempted as she was to draw the gun now, she didn’t want the hole she was in to get any deeper.

  “Wait,” Floyd said. Very gently, he tried to turn the doorknob. Auger heard it click against resistance. The door was still locked.

  “Maybe the hair blew away,” Greta suggested.

  “Or maybe someone found their way inside with a skeleton key,” Floyd replied.

  A door a little further down the landing opened a crack, a bar of watery daylight cutting across the carpet. An elderly woman pushed her powdered face into the hall and said, in French, “Monsieur Floyd? You had better come inside, I think.”

  “Not now, Madame Parmentiere,” Floyd replied.

  “I really think you better had,” she said. Then she stepped back, the door creaking open another few inches. Looming behind her, a fire iron in his hand, was a large man dressed in a vest and braces.

  “Custine!” Floyd said.

  “You’d better listen to the lady,” the man said, lowering the fire iron. “I don’t think it’s safe for us to go into the office. The boys from the Big House have this building under heavy surveillance, and every once in a while they send someone inside to see if you’re home.”

  “Come in, please,” Madame Parmentiere insisted.

  Floyd shrugged and led the way into the woman’s apartment.

  The layout of the rooms was completely different from the offices occupied by the detective, and even to Auger the décor and ambience suggested that they had stepped back fifty or sixty years, into a Paris at the turn of the century. There were no concessions to the modern era: not a wireless set or telephone to be seen, and certainly no television. Even the clockwork phonograph that sat beneath the window looked as if it would have suffered a fit rather than play anything more modern than Debussy. The furniture was upholstered with a maroon velvet plush, the sweeping wooden legs and armrests covered in gold leaf. The interior doorways were framed by pairs of peacock’s feathers, tilted like ceremonial scimitars. A brass bird’s cage was suspended from the ceiling, but there was no evidence that a bird had ever occupied it. Stationed around the room were at least a dozen antique oil lamps, their tinted glasses throwing shades of blue, green and turquoise on to the immaculate white walls even though none of them were lit. The room faced south and was drinking in what little remained of the day’s light.

  Madame Parmentiere closed the door behind them. “You cannot stay here long,” she said.

  “I know,” said the man Floyd had referred to as Custine, “and we won’t inconvenience you for a moment longer than is necessary. But may we sit down for the time being?”

  “Very well,” the old lady said. “I suppose I had better make some tea, in that case.”

  They all found seats, while Madame Parmentiere pushed her way through a curtain of gleaming glass beads into what Auger presumed was an adjoining kitchen.

  “So who wants to start?” Floyd asked, sticking with French. “Right now I don’t know where to begin.”

  “Who’s she?” Custine asked, nodding in Auger’s direction.

  “The sister,” Floyd replied.

  “Not much of a redhead, i
s she?”

  “We were half-sisters,” Auger said.

  Floyd spread his hands in a gesture of defeat. “What can I say? She’s got an answer for everything, André. Every damn question you can throw at her, she’s worked it all out. She even had me half-believing that a well-bred girl might take to snooping around the tunnels of the Paris Métro.”

  “I told you…” Auger began, but abruptly changed tack, addressing Custine. “Anyway, who are you? I’ve got as much of a right to ask that question of you, as you have of me.”

  “This is André Custine,” Floyd said. “My associate and friend.”

  “And equally hopeless case,” Greta added.

  Auger looked around at them. “I can’t tell whether you like each other, or hate each other.”

  “We’ve been having a trying few days,” Floyd replied, before suddenly lowering his voice. “Is it me or is there a bad smell in this place?” he whispered.

  “It’s me,” Custine said cheerfully. “Or rather the shirt I just removed. How else do you think I got into the building without being picked up?”

  “Monsieur Gosset,” Greta said, her face lighting up with understanding. “You smell like horsemeat!”

  Floyd buried his head in his hands. “It just gets better and better.”

  Of the four of them, Custine was the only one who seemed completely calm and unfazed, as if this was exactly the kind of thing that happened most afternoons. “I’d had enough of Michel’s hospitality at Le Perroquet. He means well, but there’s only so long a person can stay sane in that kind of room. Thankfully, he was able to use his contacts to find me temporary lodgings elsewhere, but I needed to return here first, having been in something of a hurry when I dropped by yesterday. But how to enter the building unobserved?” He smiled, clearly enjoying the chance to be the centre of attention. “That was when it hit me: I could kill two birds with one stone. I knew that Gosset received a daily consignment of horsemeat from somewhere north of the city. I remembered the name of the delivery firm and that Gosset owed the agency a favour. A couple of telephone calls later and I’d secured myself a snug little hideaway in the back of the delivery lorry.”

  “You won’t be able to pull tricks like that for much longer,” Floyd observed. “Sooner or later they’ll be searching every truck in Paris, head to toe.”

  “By then, I hope such subterfuge won’t be necessary.” Custine reached up and took a cup and saucer from the tray that Madame Parmentiere had just brought into the room. In his huge hands, the delicate chinaware looked like fragile props from a doll’s house. “Anyway, here I am, although I don’t intend to stick around for more than a few hours.”

  “Given any thought as to how you’ll get out of the building?” Floyd asked.

  “I’ll cross that bridge when it becomes a necessity,” Custine said, sipping at the very weak tea. “Chances are they’ll be expecting me to arrive, not leave, so they may be off their guard.”

  “I like a man who thinks ahead.”

  Custine aimed one little finger towards Auger. “I only got half the story. You claim to be Susan White’s sister, or half-sister, or whatever?”

  “There’s no ‘claim’ about it,” Auger said. “I am who I said I am. If you and Monsieur Floyd don’t like it, that’s entirely your problem.”

  “This, incidentally,” Floyd said, “is what passes for gratitude in Mademoiselle Auger’s scheme of things. I was treated to it when I got her out of trouble in the Métro station and again when we were near the hotel.”

  Custine studied Auger. “What happened near the hotel?”

  “Auger saw something she didn’t like,” Floyd said. “Now she’s refusing to talk about it.”

  Auger sipped at her own tea. The whole setting, with the four of them—not to mention their host—sitting down in these very genteel surroundings, felt ludicrously inappropriate. Less than an hour ago, she had been managing the controlled contraction of a wormhole throat, after dispatching a ship back to the real Mars in another part of the galaxy. Now she was balancing chinaware on her knee while sitting primly upright on an old-fashioned upholstered armchair, in a room where even the thought of violence seemed incongruous.

  “I panicked,” she said. “That’s all.”

  “Only when you saw that strange child,” Floyd said.

  Custine made a low growling sound before speaking. “What kind of child?”

  “A nasty-looking little boy,” Floyd replied. “Like something from a Bosch painting. Ring any bells, André?”

  “Funnily enough—”

  “Nasty little children have been popping up all over this case,” Floyd elaborated. “A girl here… a boy there… maybe more than one of each. We’ve been trying to discount their significance, but Mademoiselle Auger was spooked by the boy she spotted long before she’d had a good look at him.”

  “Meaning what?” Custine asked.

  “Meaning she was looking out for a child, or something like one,” Floyd replied, fixing Auger with a determined gaze.

  “I told you,” Auger said, “I simply panicked—”

  “Who are those children?” Floyd demanded. “What do they have to do with the killings? Who are they working for? More to the point, who are you working for?”

  “Excuse me.” Auger put down her cup and saucer and stood up from the armchair. “This is all very nice, but…” She fumbled for the automatic, sliding it from her waistband. There was a collective intake of breath, even from Custine, as her hand reappeared with the gun. “Just for the record,” she said, working off the safety catch, “I know how to use this. In fact, I’ve already killed with it today.”

  Floyd sounded calmer than he looked. “So can we dispense with the cover story, at long last? Nice girls don’t carry guns. Especially not automatics.”

  “That’s fine, then, because I’m really not a very nice girl.” Auger pointed the gun at Floyd. “I don’t want to hurt you.”

  “That’s good to know.”

  “But understand this: I will if I have to.”

  “She sounds as if she means it,” Custine said. The low rumble of his voice reminded Auger of a passing train.

  Floyd stood slowly from his seat, putting down his own tea. “What do you want?”

  “A change of clothes. That’s all.”

  Floyd glanced at Greta. “Clothes won’t be a problem.”

  “Good. Open your office. One of you has a key.”

  Custine was the first to reach slowly into his pocket and tossed a key through the air. Auger grabbed it with her free hand and tossed it to Floyd. “The rest of you stay here,” she ordered. “If anyone moves, I’ll shoot Wendell. Got that?”

  “No one’s going anywhere,” Custine said.

  “Move very slowly,” Auger instructed Floyd as she started backing out of the apartment, keeping the gun trained on him. She risked a glance over her shoulder before entering the hallway, but everything was as they had left it, with the elevator still waiting. She backed herself against the wall next to the pebbled-glass door.

  “Go inside,” she said. “And if you’ve got a gun in there, don’t think of using it.”

  Floyd answered in English. When they were alone, it made more sense than French. “Detectives only have guns in the movies.”

  “You said Greta had left some clothes that would fit me. Find a suitcase and throw the clothes into it.”

  Floyd unlocked the pebbled-glass door. “What sort of clothes?”

  “Don’t get cute. Just throw in a selection and let me worry about it later.”

  “Give me a minute.”

  “You’ve got thirty seconds.”

  Floyd disappeared into the warren of rooms. Auger heard doors being opened and closed in haste, things being thrown around and rummaged through. His voice echoing, he called back, “Why don’t you tell me what all this is about, now that we’re on such excellent terms?”

  “The less you know the better.”

  “I’ve heard that too
many times in my life to find it satisfying.”

  “Get used to it. This is one time when it definitely applies. What’s holding you up?”

  “I’m looking for a suitcase.”

  “A bag will do. Anything. I’m getting impatient here, Wendell. Don’t make me impatient.”

  “What colour stockings do you like?”

  “Wendell…”

  “It doesn’t matter anyway. You’ll just have to make do with what you’re given.” More doors were opened and shut. She heard things scraping on wood. Floyd raised his voice again. “So what’s next, Auger? Back to the States, mission accomplished? Or are you not really from the States after all?”

  “All you need to know is that I’m on your side,” she said.

  “That’s something, I guess.”

  “And that I’m here to help you. Not just you, but you and everyone you know.”

  “And those children? And whoever killed Susan White and Blanchard?”

  “I’m not with them. Hurry up.”

  “You could at least tell me who you’re working for. Like it or not, I’ve helped you now. I didn’t have to bail you out in the station.”

  “And I said thanks. For what it’s worth, you did the right thing, and if you could see the big picture you’d agree with me.”

  “So describe the big picture to me.”

  She tapped the barrel of the automatic against the doorframe. “Don’t push your luck. Have you found a bag?”

  “Just filling it now.”

  Auger felt something in her relent. In some small, grudging way she couldn’t help but recognise a kindred spark of stubbornness in Wendell that she knew all too well.

  “Listen,” she said, “I’d tell you everything if I knew all of it myself. Well, maybe I wouldn’t tell you all of it, but I’d tell you enough to satisfy your curiosity, if that was what you wanted. But the fact is that I haven’t got it all figured out yet.”

  “How much did Susan White have figured out?”

  “Not everything, but more than I have, I think.”

  “Let’s hope that isn’t why she ended up dead.”