by Claire North
The phone rang, a fourth time, bouncing insistent on the seat beside me.
I put it on speaker and answered.
A sharp intake of breath at the end of the line.
Then silence.
I sat back, eyes half-closed against the orange light of the car park, and waited.
Somewhere, someone else quite possibly did the same.
And silence.
The great roaring silence of the open line. If I strained I thought I could hear the gentle in and out of expectant breathing, steady and deliberate.
Behind me Coyle stirred, waiting for the conversation to begin.
I said not a word.
Breath on the line, and it seemed to me that, as our silence stretched – thirty seconds, forty, a minute – the breathing grew faster, brighter, and the word that came to mind was excited.
A child, gasping with delight, playing hide and seek somewhere in the dark.
I waited.
I was fine with waiting.
No code words were called, no response requested.
And there it was – the rising breath broke, burst out into a single bubble of sound.
A giggle.
“Hello,” I said.
The sound stopped as suddenly as it had begun.
“I see you,” I murmured. “I see you. You’ve come too late – step back, stretch out, try again. But I’ll always see you, whoever you are.”
Silence on the line.
“You shouldn’t have ordered them to kill my host. I know why, I understand. But when the moment comes, that’s the thing I want you to remember.”
I hung up.
Pulled the battery out of the phone, tossed it under the seat.
Turned the engine back on, pulled out of the car park.
The wet swoosh of wheels over tarmac.
The slap-slap-slap of the windscreen wipers.
Then Coyle said, though perhaps he already knew, “Who was that?”
“I think you know.”
“Why didn’t he speak?” Coyle was levering himself up on his good arm, straining to see me in the driver’s mirror.
“Nothing to say.”
“Tell me who.”
“Who do you think?”
“I want you to say.”
I shrugged. “Galileo Galilei was a brilliant man. I find it offensive you’d use his name for that creature.”
“All that we have ever done is try to stop it.”
I tried to smile, though he couldn’t see the expression; tried to shape my voice into something halfway reassuring. “Tell me – do you feel like you’re losing time?”
He didn’t answer.
“Sure you do,” I sighed. “Everyone does. At two o’clock you sit down to read a book and then, what do you know, it’s five in the afternoon and you’re only two pages further in. Perhaps, as you walk home through familiar streets, you grow distracted, and when next you wrench your concentration back to where you’re going you find you’re already there but the hour is late – so much later than you think. A call logged on your phone you don’t remember making; perhaps your pocket dialled it as you leaned against the table. A waiting room where the magazines are three years old and you can’t be bothered but, oh my! The time has flown and you don’t quite know why. All we need are a few seconds. To give my wallet to a woman I do not know. To kiss a stranger, make a telephone call, spit in the face of the man I love, punch a policeman, push a traveller in front of a train. To give an order in a voice known for its authority – Nathan Coyle must die. I can change your life in less than ten seconds. And when it’s done, all you will be able to say as you stand before a jury of your peers is… you don’t know what came over you. So tell me, Mr Nathan Coyle. Have you been losing time?”
Silence on the phone, silence in the van.
“Thought as much.”
In the town of Cavaliere (LIVE THE PAST – tourist office open 10 a.m.–3 p.m. Monday–Thursday excluding siesta) a map pinned up by the beige-bricked church pointed to a small clinic, a door like any other tucked into a street of tight apartments whose only claim to fame was a tiny plastic sign stuck by the bell asking any would-be visitors to kindly refrain from smoking on the stairs.
I parked squarely in the middle of the street, left the engine running and crawled over the seat into the back. Coyle was still awake, still breathing, his eyes red and his fingers curled into claws. “Hanging on in there?” I asked.
“What do you think?”
“I wasn’t really asking. Remember that it wasn’t me who shot you. Remember that your own people ordered you dead.”
“Why?”
“Why remember, or why did they give the order?”
“Both.”
“I think you can guess,” I replied, shifting my weight forward, hands folded comfortably between my knees. “Leaving aside the fact that you’ve been compromised by the entity known as Kepler, you’re just a bit of a pain. You’re obsessed with Galileo; you failed in your mission, and now you’ve read files that you probably shouldn’t have. I imagine, despite my excellent advice, that you asked some questions. Questions like ‘Why did Josephine have to die?’ or ‘Has Galileo ever been to Frankfurt?’ or ‘When you say vaccination programme, what precisely are your parameters?’ or… whatever. Am I wrong?”
He didn’t answer, and I was not wrong.
“As for why your friends decided to kill you – that’s easier still. An order was given. A telephone rang or an email was sent, and whoever spoke knew the code words and had power and authority, and an order was given. And of course you have protocols, fail-safes against just this sort of situation, but then again a fail-safe is only as good as the person who created it. And who’s to say who really gives the orders now?”
“You think… it’s in Aquarius?”
“Yes.”
“At the top?”
“Yes.”
“How?”
“It’s had time.”
“Why?” Trying to fight more than pain now, trying to swallow more than morphine could numb. “Why?”
“Because you’re useful. Because if I wanted to study ghosts – really study them – if I wanted to learn what makes us tick, I’d probably create an organisation like Aquarius too. Keep your enemies close, as the old words say.”
He didn’t answer, couldn’t meet my eyes. His breathing was fast, struggling, skin shining with sweat.
“You’re losing blood.”
No answer.
“I can help you, but you’ll need to do something for me.”
“Do what?”
“I need you to tie me to the passenger seat and point a gun at me.” His mouth widened first in question, then wider in comprehension. “You still want to kill me?”
Without hesitation, his mouth twisting in a smile that wasn’t a smile: “Yes.”
“You think it’s a good idea?”
“Yes.”
“You want to live?”
He didn’t seem to have an answer to that one. I nodded at nothing in particular, held out my bare cold hands for his attention. He didn’t move, one hand still cradling the bloody mess of his arm, head turned to one side. “Galileo ordered you dead,” I murmured, “and Aquarius did it. Now I’m about as excited by this as you are, but unless you want to bleed out right here, right now, this is what it’s going to have to be.”
He levered himself up on one elbow. “Cable ties,” he said, and “Give me your gun.”
I hesitated.
Gave him my gun.
His finger tapped against the trigger, light as a conductor testing his baton, feeling the weight of it, considering his options. He sighted down it, then let it drop to his side. I strapped my hands to the hook that hung above the passenger’s seat, tightening the cable ties with my teeth until they bit deep, and then a little bit more, for spite. The height of the van was awkward – I could neither stand straight nor sit down, but balanced, knees bent, arms raised, suspended like an old coat.
“OK,” I said as Coyle watched me from the floor. “If you wouldn’t mind?”
He crawled on to his knees, cradling the gun to his chest. Made it on to one foot, and for a moment I thought he’d fall, but then the other foot came in and with a half-step, half-stagger, he came towards me, eyes locked on mine.
A moment.
Just a moment, and I didn’t know.
A mistake, perhaps?
His finger tap-tap-tapped against the trigger of the gun.
Too little time to plan, too little time to come up with anything better.
A mistake ever to let this man live?
Perhaps.
Perhaps this will be a very short learning curve.
Then he reached down and picked something black and grubby from the floor. A balaclava, long since discarded. A twist at the end of his lips that might have been a smile, he staggered towards me, waved it before my face, a command in gesture, not words. Open wide.
I licked my lips. “You in much pain, Nathan Coyle?” I asked.
“Find out,” he replied. I tried not to gag as he pushed the damp black fabric into my mouth. It tickled the back of my throat, made me want to vomit. I swallowed and tasted wool, mud, cigarette smoke. Tap-tap went Coyle’s trigger finger against the gun. The barrel brushed against my chest as he inspected his handiwork.
A moment.
He thought about it as the blood seeped through the whiteness of the bandage, dried brown on his fingers, around his throat.
He looked at me, and I looked at him.
His hand shook as he reached out for me, hovered an inch away from my hands, the whole arm rocking with more than just cold. I don’t know if he intended the movement, or if the weight of his own fingertips became too much to bear. Skin brushed my skin,
and I jumped, giddy with the relief of it, and as the bleary-eyed would-be killer flopped against the ties that bound him to the roof of the van, I staggered back, clutching my arm, the pain now not so much a universal shrieking as a specific throbbing, the hot fire of it pulsing in time to the rhythm of my heart. I gasped, swayed against the side of the van, felt thin blood bubble through my skull, blinked tears from my eyes. My captive flopped against his bonds, then kicked out, tried to stagger upright and flopped again, shouting unheard words through the balaclava in his mouth. I waggled the gun at him and hissed, “Try me.”
He fell silent, grew still.
I smiled my giddiest smile and slid, one shaking foot at a time, out of the van.
The night nurse took a long time to answer the door.
When she did, she saw first my face, grey and smeared with blood, and her features opened in shock and sympathy. Then she saw the bandages around my shoulder and chest, and I think understood what it was, what it might be, but by then I’d caught her by the index finger and,
as Coyle fell, I grabbed him round the middle and held him up. “OK,” I whispered in my new, gentler voice. “You’re OK.”
I eased him down on to the steps, and as his eyes regained their focus he looked up into mine. “Kepler?”
“I’m going to get you blood,” I replied. “And painkillers. What’s your type?”
“You’re really doing this?”
“Blood type. Now would be a good time to declare allergies too.”
“A positive. I’m A positive.”
“OK. Stay there. If your friend in the truck starts shouting, shoot him.”
“Kepler?” he called as I skipped back up the stairs, light-limbed in my nurse’s shoes. “He is my friend, you know that?”
“Sure. I guess how you handle that one is up to you.”
The clinic was fluorescent white. I wore a uniform of unwashed blue, sensible shoes, too much lipstick, not enough coffee. I’d been watching the TV until the knock at my door. The screen showed poker, a camera pointing straight down at a green table, hands moving in and out as cards were flipped, chances lost. I let it play. A small reception area stood empty. The light of a vending machine glowed in a shadowed corner; the shutter was down across the desk. Little rooms led off either side of a corridor, within them plastic beds draped with white. I checked doors until I found the most secure, patted down my pockets, found a bunch of keys. Lady Luck smiled on me that day – the door was all bolts and levers, not a combination to be found. Three of my eleven keys fitted the locks; the door opened.
The room beyond was a paradise of nasty drugs for nasty diseases. French pharmacies; nowhere in the world can you find as many potentially toxic formulas so readily available. The painkillers weren’t hard to find – the most secure box in the room once again yielded to a heavy-duty key. The clinic’s blood supplies were a bare minimum; the packs already had their intended destinations written on, for this old gentleman who can’t make it to the hospital for his transfusion; for that young lady whose DNA turned against her before she was born. I stole a couple of pints, stuffed a plastic bag with saline, needles, sterile wipes, fresh bandages, sedatives and the long-hooked edge of a suture needle.
On the TV a player had folded, his last few chips taken by a rival. The crowd cheered, the presenter whooped as the broken contestant walked away to the swirl of golden lights. I let myself out, leaving all as I had found it.
Coyle sat where I had left him, and I was surprised.
The gun was in his lap, his head against the side of the staircase, his breathing long and ragged. He half-turned his head as I approached. “Find… what you need?” Words came hard and slow. I helped him to his feet, supporting him gingerly, my hands either side of his chest.
“Yes. Put the gun away.”
“Thought you wanted… me to shoot someone.”
“I’ve been this nurse for less than five minutes. People lose five minutes all the time. It’s late, the dead of night. She can imagine that we came, imagine that we went, imagine that she imagined it. It’s better that way.”
“You do this a lot?” he asked, tucking the gun beneath the jacket draped loosely across his shoulders.
“Not habitually. Hold this.”
He took the plastic bag I offered, out of instinct rather than choice. Offer a hand to shake, a bag to hold; do it fast enough, people don’t think. As his fingers closed about the handle, my fingers closed about his and with a deep breath I
looked up into the nurse’s eyes as she staggered and swayed.
Felt the pain pound through my body, nearly knocking me down.
Gripped the plastic bag tighter in my hand, turned and walked away.
In the clinic upstairs the TV played, the clock ticked, the lights burned, and nothing had changed between this minute and the last.
Back in the van.
I cut the man down who I’d suspended by his hands from a coat hook, and as his fingers came free, I jumped, faster than he could swing.
Coyle slumped to the floor as I spluttered dirty wool and pulled the balaclava from between my lips. My arms ached, my wrists were stung from a silent fight I’d had against my restraints. I eased Coyle on to his back, pulled the blanket over him once again, breathed, I have sedatives. I have painkillers.
Fuck your drugs, he replied, though I didn’t think he felt the bravery in his words.
I drove a few miles, parked in an empty car park behind a shuttered warehouse where the CCTV cameras would not roam, settled down to work. I slung the first bag of blood from the same hook on the ceiling to which I had been tied. Peeled back the dressing from his wound, shone a torch into the bloody mess. Entry wound only, low calibre, I could still see the crunched-up end of the bullet gleaming near the surface of the skin. In the dark Coyle’s hand grabbed my arm by the sleeve, then remembered its repulsion and slowly let go. “You… know anything about medicine?” he asked.
“Sure. Somewhere there’s someone with most of a degree I earned.”
“That doesn’t comfort me.”
I swapped the bandages, left the bullet there. “Morphine?”
“No.”
“It’s
your body.”
I felt his glare at the back of my neck as I climbed into the driver’s seat.
Chapter 74
A service station on a winding motorway through the mountains.
Coyle didn’t sleep, but neither did he speak, wrapped in blankets in the back of the van.
My body didn’t carry money. Guns, knives – no cash.
I went into the service station anyway, ordered black coffee, two croque monsieurs. When I reached the bleary-eyed woman serving behind the counter, I put my coffee down, caught her by the hand. My former host swayed, dizzy and confused, and I opened the drawer of the till, grabbed a bundle of euros, pressed it into his fist.
His eyes had just about regained their focus, enough to look at me, to register my skin on his, before I jumped back.
I handed the cashier a twenty-euro note, and she seemed surprised to find her till already open, but looking into my smiling face she shook herself and asked no questions.
I perched on a cold metal bench beneath a red slate awning and let the coffee cool, untouched, by my side. A wet yellow sun was beginning to push up from the horizon, tiny and angry against a drained grey sky. It seemed a morning into which no colour could creep, try as it might. Low mist clung to the grass at the edge of the tarmac. Fat lorries grumbled away from the petrol pumps, engines roaring up to speed as they slipped on to the motorway.
I finished my sandwich and turned the mobile phone back on.
It took a while, settled down, showed a text message: Do you like what you see?
And then another, sent a few minutes later, its sender unable to resist: This one’s for you.
Smiley face.
A many-chinned driver, his padded red jacket flapping around his belly, passed me by. I asked him for the time, and as he made to answer caught his wrist, jumped, took the mobile phone from the proffered, unresisting hand, dropped it into my pocket, jumped back.
Less than five seconds.
Three, at a pinch.
I still felt my host’s dizziness from my last departure.
Six thirty a.m., the driver told me when he stopped swaying. Better get moving before the traffic thickens.
