Touch

by Claire North

  “I like skating, I find it invigorating. I also went shopping, had a bite to eat, a pleasant walk…”

  “What are you —”

  “I should explain,” I cut in. “Alice isn’t in right now.”

  Silence.

  “Who are you?” he breathed at last.

  “Your file calls me Kepler,” I replied. “Your file is full of lies. In fifteen minutes’ time, if you are not on this ice rink with a copy of Frankfurter Allgemeine under your left arm, Alice Mair is going to slit her wrists.”

  “I’m half an hour away.”

  “See you in fifteen,” I replied and hung up.

  I skated for a few more minutes and realised I was smiling.

  Chapter 48

  Ten minutes after the body of Alice Mair answered the phone, I stumbled forward, my fingers brushed the back of the neck of the woman in front of me, and I switched.

  Within fifteen seconds I was four bodies away and skating towards the exit.

  Alice Mair stood where I’d left her, in the middle of the crowd, phone in her pocket, a stranger asking if she was OK. She did not move. She was locked, a piece snapped into place that could only be unbent by breaking, a woman frozen colder than the ice beneath her feet. Her eyes stared at nothing, and as the stranger asked again, are you OK, are you all right, her head turned to the woman who held her elbow, and she did not speak.

  I sat down on a bench to peel off my boots, discovering that I had thick socks with reindeer faces on them and the beginning of blisters, and when I looked up again Alice’s shoulders were shaking, tears threatening to puncture her features.

  Watch her: a thought strikes, and her hands move to her face, then hesitate, unsure whether to touch.

  Watch her.

  No one seems disgusted by her; she’s in no pain, perhaps her body has not been sullied and here it comes, the one question she wants to ask.

  Exactly how much have I violated her flesh?

  There’s another.

  Exactly who has violated her flesh?

  She dare not ask while the world turns around her, alone in the middle of the ice.

  Alice Mair.

  She will not cry.

  And here – the next thought, see how it strikes into the blackness of her eye – I must be nearby.

  Who held her arm when she opened her eyes?

  Who is looking?

  Who went away?

  She turns now, ankles wobbling in her boots, and she’s looking for me. And I am sitting here, undoing my laces, knocking my blades together in a shower of shaven snow. I am happy for her to look, and in a moment she’ll reach into her pocket for her mobile phone, and then stop and think and…

  there we go. She thinks and does not touch her phone. Clever, for the nasty creature that has been wearing her flesh like so many old clothes may have done things, she knows not what.

  Now she is recovering her wits, she checks one last thing – the time – for how many hours has it been, how many days, since her body was acquired, and how many minutes have passed since she was freed? Will she have a sense of me? Will there be some residual instinct which tells her where I am and…

  No.

  There will not.

  There is no one more humiliated, wretched or alone than the woman who waddles to the edge of the rink, knees knocking in her borrowed boots. She lowers herself gingerly on to the edge of a bench, then puts her head in her hands to hide the growing tears.

  I feel…

  … almost nothing at all.

  I have seen this all before.

  I jump from my reindeer-socked girl to a man in a checked shirt; from him to a woman composing amorous text messages, to the green-sweatshirted man scrubbing the sodden floor around the edge of the ice rink. He’ll do. Part of the furniture.

  I scrub, and when I look up, a man is standing behind Alice, a copy of Frankfurter Allgemeine under his left arm. He studies her. His trousers are tucked into his socks, his socks secured with yellow bicycle clips. His shirt is tucked into his trousers; he wears his belt tight. Somewhere beneath the outer layers I suspect skin-tight Lycra covers his flesh. He wears several layers of glove, tucked inside the sleeves of his jacket. The only part of his skin that is exposed is his face, and even that is rimmed with hat and scarf.

  I think he must be very hot under all those protective layers.

  I think it unlikely that he came alone.

  I finish scrubbing my patch of floor, twist the mop into the bucket, then turn and begin to wheel my work towards the door. I catch sight of one of Alice’s colleagues by the exit without even trying; there are only so many people who come dressed in full-body suits to an ice rink. He has a colleague nearby. They work in teams, one to monitor the other, a sensible precaution. I shuffle past the front desk, smiling at the receptionist, who grunts in reply.

  In the heaving halls beyond I spot two more of Alice’s comrades. I walk past them without a glance to the rubbish bin smelling of vinegar into which I had tucked a plastic bag containing Alice’s wallet, her gun and my spare phone. Someone has thrown coleslaw on top of it. I scowl, wipe the bag clean and, as a security guard walks by, say, “Excuse me?” and grab his wrist.

  I catch the plastic bag before it can drop, smile nicely at the befuddled boy, his hand still on my wrist, and walk away.

  I had bought two mobile phones.

  The other one was in Alice’s pocket.

  I thumbed on the phone from the bag and called a number.

  Somewhere in the spinning mass of the ice rink a phone rang.

  Perhaps it was still in Alice’s pocket.

  It rang a very long time, until…

  A man’s voice, the same voice which had answered before: “Yes?”

  “Hi there,” I said, sticking to German. “You’ve found her then?”

  “I thought you wanted to talk.”

  “I did. I do. We shall. You seem to have brought some friends.”

  “What do you want, Kepler?”

  I sucked air in between my teeth. “As of seven days ago, nothing. Nothing at all. Peace and quiet, to live my life, whatever life that happened to be. You refocused my interests. I have Coyle.”

  “Prove it.”

  “Scar on his stomach, claims twenty-twenty vision, is clearly mistaken, doesn’t like marmalade, four passports and a murder kit in the boot of his car, shot my host on the stairs of Taksim station and didn’t look back. Would you like his collar size too?”

  A silence, a pause, a breath, the sound of the ice rink, cheap pop and easy screams, in the background. “Tell me what you want.”

  “I want to know why Josephine Cebula died.”

  “You know that already; you were there.”

  “I read your file. I was hoping, however, that you were senior enough to know why it lied.”

  “It doesn’t.”

  “I will kill Coyle,” I said, “if that’s what it takes to get your attention. Who is Galileo?”

  A slight intake of breath, a little drawing back. “Why Galileo?”

  “As with everything to do with my kind, it’s personal.”

  Someone tapped me on the shoulder. A woman’s voice, excuse me, do you know where I can find a toilet?

  “Very well,” said the voice on the end of the phone. “You have made your interests clear.”

  A tap again on my shoulder, the toilet, please, do you know where the toilet is?

  I have already forgotten that I am a security guard, but then who asks security the way to the bathroom?

  Something hot bit into my skin above my right shoulder blade. For a moment I considered ignoring it, an irritation, nothing more. Then my left knee buckled, and as I staggered forward, I felt something sharp sticking out between flesh and bone.

  Damn.

  I looked for skin and all I found was darkness.

  Chapter 49

  Drugs wearing off from my system.

  The security guard I am wearing is a big man, a tough man; he can t
ake being knocked out. The fact that he is strapped to a chair inside a glass box at a location unknown he’d be less happy about, if he were aware of the situation. Thankfully, he is not.

  I underestimated Coyle’s friends.

  Did they spot the switch or did they follow the amnesia?

  Should have been more careful; should have jumped into someone old, or a child, or a stranger with frail knees. No one ever looks for a ghost in a body with arthritis.

  I consider my cage, and my options. My cage is made of clear glass panels that run floor to ceiling. A clear glass door is set in a panel directly ahead of me. Around the glass walls, another room, larger, concrete, encases my transparent cage. A red metal door leads from this place, to location unknown. There is a fluorescent light above my head – too high to be any use. The man with the pistol by the door wears a hazmat suit. Rubber gloves, rubber suit, rubber boots, plastic visor: he’s dressed for disaster. Not an inch of bare skin anywhere, and the joins sealed up with tape. It would almost be funny in another life.

  My consciousness must have been reported, for the one metal door, a grille secured over its window, opens from the outside and lets in two more hazmat-suited captors. I can give both the false names they like to lie by: Eugene, Alice.

  “Can I have a glass of water?” I asked.

  No one seemed in a hurry to provide. No one entered through the clear door of my clear cage, but Eugene turned left to circle, and Alice turned right.

  “Kepler, isn’t it?”

  Eugene’s voice. I strained my neck in time to see him leave my field of vision, circling in the passage defined by concrete walls on the left, glass walls on the right. A cheap trick. It implied a mind not entirely confident of its ability to intimidate without the added antics. That seemed unfortunate; insecurity is often the mother of aggression.

  “It’s a name as good as any other.”

  “Where’s Coyle?”

  “No.”

  “No?”

  “You want Coyle; I want out. Our situation hasn’t really changed.”

  “You underestimate your importance to us, Kepler,” and there he was, back in view, a wasp circling its prey. “The welfare of Nathan is of great concern – naturally – great concern, and we will do whatever it takes to protect him. But you – you are of even greater concern still, as I’m sure he would have explained, had you bothered to talk to him.”

  “We talked,” I replied, shrugging against my bonds. “We talked about life, love, guns and Galileo.” The chair I sat on wasn’t secured to the floor – it creaked as I pushed against it.

  “What is your interest in Galileo?”

  “If I tell you, do I get a drink of water?”

  He hesitated. Every good negotiator needs to understand that no matter how many cards they hold, still they must play to stay in the game. “We have no desire to see your host suffer needlessly.”

  “I’m imagining that your definition of ‘needlessly’ is not like mine?”

  A little sigh. Poor Eugene, the hard-pressed senior manager. I wondered what his blood pressure was like, if his shoulders ached. “Where is Nathan?”

  “Handcuffed to a radiator with a gag in his mouth,” I replied. “Why did Josephine die?”

  “Where is Nathan?”

  “The gag is made of sock and packing tape. Josephine.”

  “You seem to care a great deal for a former host.”

  “She and I had a deal.”

  “Yet you would permit harm to come to the body you currently wear?”

  “I permit nothing,” I replied. “You make your decisions and act on them; I cannot influence that. To live I must have a host; I die when my host dies. Let’s not put the moral burden on biology.”

  “Where is Nathan?”

  “We could help each other, you and I.”

  Eugene stopped in his circling, turned to face me. He held up the penguin-shaped USB stick I’d slipped into Alice’s pocket. “What’s this?”

  “An autobiography.”

  “A virus, perhaps? Something more… complicated? You program it yourself, or did you ask a friend?”

  “I’m a ghost. Everyone knows we’re pig ignorant.”

  “So you do have friends.”

  “Or friends of friends; these things grow grey.”

  “You seem to like society.”

  “I do. People are easier to collect than things. Did you get yourself checked out with a rape kit?” I asked Alice, who was hovering on the edge of the cage. Her lips thinned; her face did not change. “Of course you did. My restraint wasn’t a reflection on your body. Simply that sex, in this context, would have been a monumental waste of time.”

  “Kepler.” Eugene’s voice snapped my attention back to him. He held the USB stick up for me to see, then laid it on the floor and, with the heel of his boot, ground it into silicon and rubber. “You will tell me where Nathan is. That is your only purpose.”

  I put my head on one side as he lifted his foot from the crushed electronics that had almost – but not quite – been Spunkmaster’s finest piece of work. “I could tell you about the time I met Kennedy,” I suggested. Eugene resumed his march round my cage. “Or the thirty seconds I spent as Churchill? Let me regale you with stories of the rich, the glamorous and the dead; or maybe you want to know how it felt, how it really felt being black, young and free beneath the podium of Martin Luther King. I heard him speak and I knew, I absolutely knew, that the suffering of my people was not a stigma, but a badge of noblest pride, and that those who had fallen were not crushed, but were Newton’s giants, bearing us steadily up. Or maybe not,” I concluded sadly. “Maybe you’re not that interested in other people’s point of view. So go on. Do whatever it is you’re going to do to… Who am I?” I tried to get a better look at my own body. A few too many beers had settled on my belly, showing as a bulge of muscle and fat competing for which was going to get the final metabolic say. “Was I carrying ID?”

  “You claim to care for your hosts but you would let harm befall the body you currently inhabit?”

  “Desperate times,” I replied. “You’ll hurt me regardless of who I am; perhaps the most equitable solution to this question would be if I jumped into one of you? Then you could beat, torment, torture – whatever – one of your own employees. That’s fairer, don’t you think? This… whoever I am… is just a bystander, whereas your team signed up for this job in full awareness —” I caught myself, smiled. “No, maybe not in full awareness. Maybe not that. But with some awareness at least that the precise circumstances we now find ourselves in might arise. So go on. Be the man. I’ll be right here.”

  Eugene was smiling behind his visor. It was an automatic smile, hiding truth. “Everyone else can leave.”

  He was the boss.

  They left.

  Eugene sank down on to his haunches before me, one hand pressed up against the transparency of my cage.

  I waited, testing the restraints on my wrists and feet, and wondered how much force the chair would take before it smashed.

  Then Eugene began to undress.

  He undid the tape that sealed his gloves to his sleeves, his boots to his trousers, his helmet to his neck. He pulled his head free with a shake of peppery hair, peeled back the zip on his suit, revealing a white vest beneath. He tugged his boots off, untangled his legs one limb at a time to reveal grey underpants and black socks. His legs showed more sign of age than his face, hollows settling around the inside of his calves, digging into the fat behind his thighs. Then he pulled his vest off, and his chest was bone and white scar tissue. I could not call it skin, as I had never seen skin which had been so scoured, burned and rearranged and yet claimed the title. He spread his arms so that I might see the dunes welt and weal, the electric burns across his back, down his spine, whose effect was to seem to shrink his vertebrae into a swollen chain of pinkish-grey disfigurement. Thin lumps stood out on his shoulders, golf balls of improperly healed muscle and bone.

  He turned,
and turned again so I might fully appreciate the spectacle, then this old man in his underpants faced me at last, pressing his palm against my cage, and said:

  “Do you like what you see, Kepler?”

  (Do you like what you see?)

  “You may have met the one who wore me when this was done. He called himself Kuanyin, the god of mercy. It was an operation that went wrong. There was a tear in my suit, he managed to get his little finger into the gap. I don’t recall the events that followed. I take three different kinds of medication, painkillers. I piss acid, I breathe fire. My body was violated in every manner there is, and still Kuanyin would not leave, would not speak, would not do anything but scream and weep and shit blood for three weeks, until at last his spirit broke along with my body, and he begged to die.

  “A former colleague of mine volunteered to save me. He was seventy-two years old, his wife was dead, he had no children, and thirty years of smoking had left his lungs in a poor state. He came to where they held me and took my hand, and I remember opening my eyes to see him smiling down at me, this friend, this man who had trained me, and then his smile faded, and he looked up, and he was not my friend at all, he was Kuanyin, who had the arrogance to call himself merciful. They put two bullets through his head right there and buried him in my friend’s grave with all the honours of a life well lived. It was a good ending. I hope you’ll agree to a similar arrangement when the moment comes. Because it will come. So, Kepler,” arms spread wide, hazmat suit at his feet, “do you like what you see?”

  (I love it, Janus replied. I love it I love it I love it!)

  “I knew Kuanyin,” I answered, taking my words slowly, familiar sounds on an unfamiliar tongue. “She was kind.”

  “The only kindness I saw Kuanyin perform was in the manner in which he died. I want you to understand this. I want you to understand what we are. Do you understand?”

  “Yes.”

  “Are you afraid?”

  “Yes.”

  “Then be merciful to yourself, if no one else. Where is Coyle?”

  I licked my lips. “One question…”

  “Where is Coyle?”