The Puppeteer King

by Chris Ward

  ‘I can handle it,’ he said. ‘Let me see you clearly. Please.’

  ‘It’s too soon,’ she said. ‘It’s hard for me to even be here. I’m not sure I could ever explain. There are things that would make it easier, though.’

  ‘Like what?’

  Akane put a hand on his wrist. He found her cool touch so soothing, he never wanted her to lift it. ‘I can’t ask you to help me, Jun. I can’t. There are things I have to do for myself.’

  He put his other hand over hers, his fingers running involuntarily over the place where the blemish had once been. ‘I’ll do anything to keep you here with me,’ he said.

  Akane sighed. ‘Jun, don’t….’

  ‘Just let me help you.’

  The girl pulled her hand away again, putting it over her other hand in her lap. She gave a deep sigh, and for a moment Jun thought she would start to cry.

  ‘There are one or two things I need,’ she said, ‘but I can’t ask you, Jun. I just can’t.’

  ‘Yes, you can.’

  She was crying now, sobbing into her hands. Jun put an arm around her shoulders and pulled her close, euphoric at how human she felt, how alive. His Akane, lost to him, returned.

  ‘Anything,’ he said. ‘Just let me help.’

  She pulled her hands away from her face and looked up at him. Her features were still blurry, and Jun felt a strange sense of nausea that he couldn’t quite understand, as though some bad food were repeating on him. The itch had come back again too, somewhere deep in his skull behind his left eye. He rubbed it with one hand while holding his stomach with the other, as if trying to stop himself from falling apart.

  ‘Jun,’ Akane said. ‘If you really want to help me, there’s something you can do….’

  17

  Kurou takes notes

  Kurou switched off the computer tablet and put it back in his bag. Things with his other little toy had gone far better than he could have hoped. He was feeling much better now after the little blip with the Franco earlier in the day. His assistants were working on repairing the machine now, but Kurou wasn’t overly concerned. At the time he had felt the frustration of a father seeing his child failing in its latest attempt to walk, but when others among his many cybernetic children were already taking to the skies, it was easy to brush it off as a little bump in the road.

  He crawled to the edge of the roof and looked down at the sweeping arc of Las Ramblas five storeys below as it cut a swathe through the city in an arc down towards the seafront. Lined by trees and tall buildings it was a beautiful sight, if anything made by man could be called beautiful, an architectural wonder at the heart of a city that was a wonder in itself.

  Kurou rather liked Barcelona. It was an interesting city, a mixture of the baroque, the gothic and the modern, a blend of human excesses and wastes that had created a giant dung heap far prettier than any other he had lived in. They said you couldn’t polish a turd, but with Barcelona they had done a pretty good job.

  Of course, he would have preferred to see the whole city burn, but that was the kind of wish even Santa couldn’t bring.

  When it came to revenge, like anything else that was difficult, you had to break it down into manageable amounts, slicing off a small piece at a time.

  Nozomi, his reluctant little ward, was off wandering around somewhere, probably in a huff. It wasn’t an unusual situation, particularly now that she was starting to hit puberty. While Kurou would rather cut off his misshapen dick than father a child of his own, he considered the girl as close to him as anyone had ever been, a surrogate daughter of sorts, although their tenuous relationship carried a reluctance from both sides. He didn’t much like the girl, and he knew that she despised him, but sometimes it was necessary to use a few human stepping stones to cross the rivers that lay in one’s path. After all, his own stepping stone, a super-rich British businessman with the morals of a drunken toad, had made all of Kurou’s subsequent artwork and experimentation possible. If his dear mother hadn’t sold him out to an adventure that would end on a snowy, bloodstained day long ago in the Japanese Alps, he might still be hiding in his room in the crumbling Chinese hovel in which he had been born.

  Now, with his old master’s fortune hidden away in dozens of untraceable bank accounts in more than a dozen countries all across the world, he was rich enough to enjoy a thousand lifetimes of excess, should he so wish.

  He probably even had enough to pay someone to feign tenderness as they caressed his monstrous face.

  Hurrah for circumstances, he thought sometimes.

  Through the trees below he caught sight of one of the human statues down on Las Ramblas, a guy dressed as a wizard, with a long staff and a white flowing robe. Kurou smiled. How he loved the street performers. There was nothing like a living, breathing doll to make one’s heart race. He felt an affinity with them the same as he did with his creations; they too spent their lives hiding away behind masks.

  They posed and danced and sang for coin like circus clowns set adrift, more eager to please than any whore. With hidden speakers and metal frames and wires they created mysterious illusions that teased whoops of delight from the crowds of tourists who pushed and shoved to toss handfuls of coins into the hats at the performers’ feet. They shocked and surprised and mystified, like living, breathing magicians.

  Kurou looked around him and found something that would do what he wanted a short distance away, a lump of masonry that had cracked and broken off the corner of a low wall. He hefted it in his hands, then crept towards the edge of the roof and flung it down at the street below, careful to toss it lengthways down Las Ramblas so that were it to hit anyone they would think it had been thrown from further up the street. There were cameras down there, but none of them were pointing upwards.

  A few seconds later he heard a commotion, but the activity was hidden by a screen of tree branches. He heard someone shouting, but raised voices were common on Las Ramblas. It might just be a market trader calling for customers.

  He crawled back from the side of the roof and sat down on the edge of a raised skylight. The building beneath him was abandoned like so many in the city, the high rents forcing tenants out and keeping prospective customers away. There was a black stain at the city’s heart that was beginning to spread. Outwardly there seemed to be nothing wrong, but like an apple with a rotten core it would be discovered too late to be reversed.

  There were days when he felt what some might call guilt for how he acted towards the street performers down on Las Ramblas, but they were frauds, every last one. He was a true puppeteer, a creator of art so beautiful that it was an insult for them to share the same stage. He would drive them out or destroy them, and when their livelihoods were ruined and their bodies destroyed they would dance like trashed puppets to his own unique tune. He had made people dance before, and he would do it again.

  And it would all be part of the great artistic statement of his life.

  Nozomi didn’t understand. And if she didn’t, no one else would. Were he given the chance to talk with some of the great artists from history they might share his view, but even that was unlikely. Unlike most of his predecessors, humanity was his paint and the world his canvas. Yet, like all great artists before him, he was merely trying to make a statement.

  Everything that had come before had been just practice for this, his greatest performance of all. An extravaganza of art and drama set to music that the city would remember for decades.

  The players were beginning to line up, and the venue was almost ready. All he needed now was to draw his audience.

  He opened up his computer tablet again and logged in to his dozens of social media accounts, hunting for information on his little sabotage mission. Sometimes news travelled so fast it was as if it was announced before it happened, and sure enough, someone had already posted a picture online of a rock thrown down Las Ramblas. More than forty people had shared it, and while it seemed no one had been hurt, bloggers and other social commentators were start
ing up on yet another tirade about how Barcelona was becoming dangerous. There were better places to visit, they said. Best to start looking elsewhere.

  Kurou, being the good citizen that he was, shared the picture of the little lump of masonry and then hurriedly wrote up a blog condemning it on one of his more popular blog sites, where he posed as an international traveller called Mandy, an American girl who loved nothing better than posting selfies of herself on various beaches across the world, all of which were carefully manipulated and adjusted by Crow’s skilful fingers so that not even an expert would be able to flag them as fake. Mandy, who also catered for the female travelling crowd by posting equally fake pictures of hot, semi-naked guys she met on her adventures, had a blog following of almost fifty thousand.

  After posting the blog, Kurou hacked into his service provider and pulled up statistics to estimate how many people might have seen evidence of the thrown rock and the vitriol towards travelling in Barcelona that it had created. The numbers were astounding. Less than ten minutes after heaving the rock down into the street, an estimated half a million people were complaining about it. It frightened even Kurou sometimes just how powerful social media had become.

  Sometimes the idea of blacking it all out was very tempting indeed.

  With Mandy’s blog posted and collecting hits, Kurou took his good Samaritanism one step further, and sent an email to the Barcelona city council, complaining that he had seen one of the human statues on Las Ramblas throwing what looked like a rock into a busy area of the street. Weren’t they concerned about such things, he wondered. Wouldn’t such a display of immorality leave a bad impression on the younger crowd who looked on such people with awe? If people wanted to shit on Barcelona, couldn’t they act like a good caganer and wait for Christmas?

  A sense of smugness had settled over him as he casually browsed through Barcelona’s news websites, looking for more sedately announced items of interest. There was the usual suffocating press of political wrangling, particularly concerning the continuing problems in Britain and its proposed exit from the European Confederation. Kurou had occasionally considered Britain as a possible future refuge, as he had other more unstable states. Money made every border traversable, but a little unrest made it harder for his pursuers to follow. After five years of moving through the world’s tunnels though, he was as near hidden as he could be. Only Jun Matsumoto had managed to find him, and the poor unstable fool probably thought it had been through his own means.

  Matsumoto had been summoned. Kurou had let Nozomi plant the seeds, and now his little flower had poked its head out of the soil, grown wings, and flapped its way across the wide world all the way to Barcelona, where it had jumped straight into the Crow’s cage.

  What a silly, misguided fool.

  Seeds, that was all it was. Like the little concrete seed he had planted via air halfway down Las Ramblas that was now growing into a mighty tree of unrest and resentment.

  He knew about the murdered tourist, of course. That had been unexpected, but fitted in quite well with his plans. Apparently the man had been strangled rather violently, and he would be happy for one of his special street performers to take the blame.

  Seeds.

  He clicked on a couple of links to see if there had been any further developments. One website was reporting that paint had been found nearby, kind of like that which was worn by the street performers, who had attracted attention recently for a number of violent outbursts towards other tourists.

  Perfect. It all fitted neatly with his plans.

  Another had run with the theory and was suggesting that all street performers be removed pending an investigation.

  Again, nice.

  A third website, run by a group of social commentators, was speculating about something allegedly sent to the police department on the day following the murder. A police report had supposedly been leaked, containing a photograph of the object. There was no link on the site itself, so Kurou had to dig a little further, hacking into the Guardia Urbana de Barcelona’s databases in order to a take a look for himself.

  When the image appeared on the screen he broke out in a cold sweat. He stared at the picture and read the accompanying description a couple more times, then closed his computer tablet, feeling genuinely uncomfortable for the first time in years.

  Was it possible that someone knew he was here? If so, how had they tracked him down?

  Kurou’s former master, Rutherford Forbes, had collected plenty of enemies over the years. After his death he had left a number of creditors, few of which had been paid. Kurou had been quick to liquidise Forbes’s physical assets and stow the money away, and it had always been possible that someone was after him.

  But if the information on the police website was correct, it meant that whoever was after him was right here in the city.

  18

  Jennie makes a new friend

  ‘Come here. I won’t hurt you.’

  The boy was about ten, perhaps a little older but small for his age, Jennie thought. If he’d been living on the streets—the impression that his tatty clothes and messy hair gave her—then it was likely he didn’t eat well. Now though, blood was streaming from his nose and one of his eyes was blackened and puffy.

  The little boy cocked his head at her and frowned, so Jennie tried again, repeating the phrase in her best Spanish.

  This time he nodded and took a few steps closer. Jennie took a handkerchief and a bottle of water out of her bag. She wet the handkerchief and held it out. At first the boy just stood watching her, then he tentatively reached out and snatched it away.

  Jennie studied him as he wiped the blood away from under his nose. He was a good-looking boy under all the grime, with bright, inquisitive eyes. His skin was so deeply tanned it was difficult to tell what its natural tone was, and hair that might once have been dark brown had blonde streaks caused by the sun.

  ‘What happened?’ she asked, wishing she’d made more effort to learn Spanish. In her tour guide days she had been able to hold basic conversations, but it had been several years since she had been in this part of the world.

  ‘Fell,’ the boy said.

  ‘Oh. That’s … bad. What’s your name?’

  ‘Jorge.’

  ‘I’m Jennie. Nice to meet you.’

  ‘Same.’

  ‘Where do you live?’

  The boy shrugged. Jennie, thinking he had misunderstood, asked the question again. This time Jorge shook his head. ‘Nowhere,’ he said. Then, flashing a welcome smile, he added, ‘Everywhere.’

  He held out the handkerchief, but Jennie shook her head. ‘Please keep it. Did you fall? Or … you had a fight?’

  The boy’s smile dropped. ‘Fell,’ he said again, this time his tone slightly harder, so as to end the discussion.

  Jennie started to feel a little uncomfortable as the boy continued to stare at her. The street was deserted apart from her and this dirty little boy. He was watching as if he’d never seen anyone from Japan before, which, for someone growing up in such a cosmopolitan place as Barcelona she found unlikely.

  ‘Where from?’ he said at last, surprising Jennie by speaking in English. Perhaps her Spanish pronunciation was so poor that he felt sorry for her.

  ‘I’m from Japan,’ she answered, also in English. ‘Do you know it? It’s near to China—’

  ‘I know,’ he said. Then he cocked his head again as if studying her. He opened his mouth to say something else, then closed it again.

  Jennie let a few seconds tick past. Then, when the awkwardness started to get to her, she gave a smile and stood up. ‘It was nice to meet you, Jorge. I’m sorry you fell. Please keep the handkerchief.’

  He smiled again. ‘Boyfriend?’

  ‘Um, no….’

  ‘Pretty.’

  ‘Um, thanks.’

  He gave her a thumps up. ‘Thanks for help me.’

  ‘No problem.’

  Feeling as though the conversation had reached its logical con
clusion, Jennie gave a brief wave and started heading back down the street. She felt the little boy’s eyes on the back of her head, and while she wanted to help him she wasn’t sure what she could do. And she had to find Jun before he got himself into any more trouble.

  ‘Screw you, Jun,’ she muttered aloud. While she didn’t like to admit it, the boyfriend question had riled her. Here she was in Barcelona with the one man she had ever really loved and he had run off to chase the ghost of his dead girlfriend.

  She turned back and gave a little gasp as she found Jorge standing just a few feet behind her. With dried blood still smeared under his nose and his eye swollen half closed, in his tatty clothes and shoes that had holes where his toes poked through, he looked straight out of a refugee camp.

  ‘Are you hungry, Jorge?’ she asked. ‘Because I am.’

  The little boy grinned and nodded. ‘Hungry,’ he said. ‘I hungry all time.’

  ‘Well, let’s go and eat. But you need new shoes first. No restaurant will serve you looking like that.’

  Jorge looked as though Christmas had come early. ‘Thanks,’ he said, even though Jennie wasn’t sure how much of her English he had understood.

  As she headed back down towards the plaza where she had seen the paella restaurants, Jennie was torn by indecision. It couldn’t hurt to treat the boy to some new clothes and a meal, could it? But since when was she Mother goddamn Theresa? She had one stray to deal with already, without getting caught up with another.

  Just a few clothes and lunch, she concluded, then forced the negative thoughts out of her mind as the first scents of cooking seafood reached her nostrils.

  Walking along beside her, Jorge had begun to hum a little tune.

  19

  Peter faces an inquisition

  Peter had just opened his second beer when the doorbell went. The clocked showed a little after seven, so they were late. He sighed and went to the door.