Tales of Crow- The Complete series Box Set

by Chris Ward

  It wasn’t he who had been locked up in an institution, or buried six feet under the ground. Like the crows he so envied he had flown free all these years. With the considerable bank accounts of his old master Rutherford Forbes under his control, he had led quite the exotic lifestyle.

  With that silly little girl as his unwilling apprentice, he had travelled the world, seen things he might never have believed, experienced a way of life that society had reserved for those with faces that fit its ideals, lived like a king, understood like a pauper, given, taken, made, and destroyed. The world had been his plaything, and humanity the actors in his little charade.

  But now playtime was over. Now it was time to get down to work.

  He paused in a little alcove and switched on his computer tablet, pulling up the map of the sewers and rain drainage system he had found on the internet. By his reckoning, La Sagrada Familia was right above him.

  La Sacred Family.

  How would they welcome him, their long lost cousin, when he came knocking on their door in the dead of night?

  Of course there was a way up, there always was. A tunnel off to his left was missing from the map, probably to conceal its existence. He followed it a short way, then found himself in a small room with a set of stairs leading up. At the top he found a modern fire door that looked so out of place amongst these pseudo medieval tunnels that he almost laughed.

  Of course, it was probably alarmed. He squatted down and pulled a little square box out of his pocket, pressing it against the side of the door where a magnet held it. Then he pressed a button on the side and stood back, putting his hands in his ears.

  No audible sound came, but Kurou felt the tremble in his hands as the sonic frequency shook the door’s locking mechanisms open. A muffled click sounded, and the doors swung open to reveal a cavernous dark hall.

  ‘Honey, I’m home,’ he muttered, taking a deep breath of cold dry air.

  The Sagrada Familia had been finished just a couple of months before. Gaudi’s vision had finally been realised more than a century after his death. The 170m tower of Christ hung above the smaller one of Mary and the twelve ornate towers of the Apostles. The construction vehicles had long gone, the scaffolding taken away, and the great church was ready for its congregation.

  It would officially open on Christmas Eve.

  The perfect time for a little theatre.

  #

  Her master had gone out. Nozomi wandered among the machines and computer terminals, ignoring the rumbling in her stomach. A variety of test subjects she had helped to snare lay groaning on dull metal tables in various stages of reinvention, as her master like to call it.

  Of course, if she touched anything, her master would know. He always did. He might beat her, or lock her up, or worse—lecture her at considerable length about her attitude and lack of respect. She knew there were cameras set up somewhere, probably even security measures. He wasn’t worried about her, but about outsiders getting in. She knew the doors that were safe and ignored the others.

  Her master had begun to call himself an inventor again. For years it had been a philosopher, until the day when he had decided it was time to get back to work.

  She paused by a trolley upon which a man lay strapped down, his torso exposed, but his legs and arms secured by thick rubber straps. His face was covered by a mask and his chest rose and fell with gentle rhythmic breathing. His chest was solid, his stomach tight with muscles. Nozomi felt an unfamiliar stirring from somewhere inside, like a fist inside her gut kneading her insides like an old woman making bread dough. It wasn’t unpleasant, but it disturbed her nevertheless.

  She felt an overwhelming urge to reach out and touch the man’s chest. She lifted a hand, her fingers stretching out, and lowered them onto the hard muscles of the man’s stomach.

  She knew that over the last few months her body had begun to change, and she felt a little tingle of excitement as her fingers traced lines across the ridges and dips of his body. His muscles were hard beneath a soft layer of skin, and she felt an urge to see the face to which this body belonged.

  The mask was made of leather. It was tied down to the trolley, two thin lengths on either side tied into quaint double bows that were an obvious touch of her master. Nozomi pulled one tail and the bow came undone. Then the other. The mask fell loose across the man’s face, and Nozomi reached out to lift it up.

  She screamed and jumped back, letting go of the bottom of the mask. It flopped to the side instead of falling back over the man. Nozomi stared at the ruins of his face.

  His eyes and nose were gone, replaced by a metal semi-circle into which was set a series of silver balls. They looked like marbles, but even from a few feet away Nozomi could see the intricacies in their design. She guessed they were computerized eyes, perhaps developed by her master himself or one of the many shadowy scientists that he had tentative links to through the internet. With her hands shaking at her sides, she counted them.

  Eight.

  Like a spider.

  #

  The man was waiting at the end of the street. Park, keeping to the shadows, paused a short distance away. He reached into the pocket of his overcoat and pulled out a cigarette. Without looking at the stranger, he lit it up and blew a plume of smoke up into the night.

  A few streets away, the sound of cars on some busy through-road were audible like the buzzing of angry bees, but here only the sound of water dripping through a broken pipe disturbed the uneasy calm.

  The man was wearing a long overcoat that made him look unnaturally tall. A woollen beanie hat was pulled over his head and his hands were stuffed deep into his pockets to ward off the cold. Park’s image of Seoul had been of a place stiflingly hot in summer but mild in winter. It was only late September yet there was already a chill in the air that made him wish he’d worn an extra layer under the casual bomber jacket he was wearing.

  ‘Welcome to the other side, Mr. Park,’ the stranger said suddenly, not turning around. ‘I’ll admit I never expected to see you again. You got off lightly, considering.’

  ‘Some fool’s mistake stole twelve years of my life,’ Park said, not bothering to take the bitterness out of his voice. ‘I can’t get them back, but I still want something in return.’

  The man gave a slow nod. ‘It’s to be expected. You have the money, of course?’

  ‘I made a lot of mistakes,’ Park said. ‘There were times I didn’t cover my tracks, and times when I made poor decisions. But I was always careful about that. I have more than enough.’

  ‘Good.’

  The man turned around. Park hadn’t seen that thin, pale face for more than fifteen years. Jin-nan Song had once held a high secret intelligence post, but had vanished after a government purge.

  ‘What happened to you, Song?

  The tall man shrugged. ‘I was in charge of secrets, but they turned out to be too secret. I ran before I ended up in my own work camp hell, or worse. It was people like me whose escapes you were ordered to prevent.’

  ‘And you work for the government here?’

  Song shrugged. ‘On the surface. I have other lines of work that are more lucrative. What is it they say? Once a man learns how to sell shoes, it becomes difficult to stop selling them.’

  ‘Do you have a client who can help me?’

  Song held out a hand. ‘Do you have a cigarette?’

  ‘Of course.’

  Park waited while Song lit up a cigarette and took a few slow draws. He gave off the air of a man who was about to reveal some bad news.

  ‘I do,’ he said at last. ‘If you need to catch this elusive man that you seek, I think my client has the means to do so.’

  ‘He has a name? Not that I need it, of course.’

  Song nodded. ‘He calls himself the Grey Man. If you’re ever unlucky enough to see him face to face you’ll understand why.’

  ‘And he’s reliable?’

  ‘Yes.’

  Park nodded. He lit another cigarette of his ow
n and for a few minutes they smoked in silence, both nervous about something that was difficult to define. The way Song had said his client’s name made Park wonder if he was making a mistake.

  The Grey Man. It had an ominous ring to it, like the sight of a laden thundercloud set to burst. Yet at the same time it was almost comic book, the kind of name a super-villain might choose in a burst of alcohol-fueled mirth.

  ‘He’s worked for you before?’

  Song’s eyes narrowed. ‘You ask too many questions, Park. You’ve not come so far that a way back couldn’t be found for you. You would do well to trust me. And trust me when I say this: the less you know about the Grey Man the better. He’s not a man you would wish to meet, believe me.’

  A hint of fear, like a whisper in a dark room, had slipped into Song’s voice. Park remembered how they had once been, Song a high ranking official in the intelligence service, himself a brutally efficient military general. They had both had the power to control death; to order an execution or stay one with a single word. Park had exercised his power on more occasions than he could count, condemning whole families to slow, degrading deaths in the work camps. They had both wielded great power until it had been pulled out from under them, and now here they were, just two old men with contacts and money.

  It made sense, Park thought, to get out of the country, to assume a new identity as had been offered, and take enough money to allow himself a comfortable existence somewhere far away from the horrors he had both controlled and faced. Britain, maybe, or the USA. He had heard Mexico was nice, or perhaps Australia. If he could let go, he could be safe, but he had to let go of the personality that had taken him through the quagmire of suspicion, backstabbing and fear to reach the top of the military food chain. He had got there through ruthlessness, through a merciless approach to dealing with those who had wronged him, and it wasn’t something that could easily be let go.

  ‘I want a man killed,’ he said quietly, not bothering to hide the word behind some silly code. ‘I want him slaughtered in cold blood, and his head returned to me in a box.’

  Song smiled. ‘You haven’t changed, Park.’

  ‘I cannot change until I’ve cauterised the last loose ends of my old life,’ Park said. ‘Those that I can.’

  ‘You have details?’

  ‘Some.’

  ‘He will need them. Whatever you have. Who is the target?’

  Park rolled the name over his tongue before he said it, tasting the bitterness it brought for what he hoped would be the last time.

  ‘He is a scientist,’ he said. ‘His name is Professor Kurou.’

  11

  Depressions in the bedclothes

  Jun looked peaceful the way his head was leaning against the window of the train, his eyes on the advertising boards strung from the ceiling. At least Jennie thought so, although she couldn’t imagine what was running through his head. He had been giddy all day, revealing another thread to his personality that Jennie did not recognise, making her wonder just how many Juns existed inside his fragile mind. Not for the first time she wondered if this had all been a stupid mistake, that she should have got him straight back on a plane to Japan before the fraying string holding him together gave way.

  The day he had shown up at her little shop he had seemed so confident, and memories of the old Jun had surfaced, blocking her view of the rest of his personality that was only just holding on. They’d been in Barcelona less than a day, and the determined young man who had so captivated her was nowhere to be found, replaced by a chameleon who veered from depression to euphoria in a single instant.

  As she watched his eyes flicker and an occasional brief smile crease his lips, Jennie knew he was thinking about her. Jun was a hopeless case, a lost boy caught on tracks that were rushing him towards an eventual violent collision, but she couldn’t change her feelings, no matter how she tried. Even in the years he had been lost to her, Jennie had harboured her secret love, and it had hung like a thundercloud over every relationship she had tried to have, dousing her suitors before they’d had a fair chance.

  And yet it didn’t matter how she felt, because she would forever be competing with a ghost.

  Akane Yamaguchi.

  Twelve years dead and gone, but alive and well in Jun’s dreams.

  And also—if Jun was to be believed—alive and well right here in Barcelona.

  Jennie didn’t remember much about the previous night. She had also been drunk, letting her frustrations get the better of her the way they once had in her abusive marriage to Brian, and all she remembered was leaving Jun in the mess he had made of the hotel room and stumbling around the dark, empty streets that surrounded the airport. She remembered sirens, the screech of tyres, the low roar of planes landing and taking off.

  And she had woken up in Jun’s bed listening to him blathering about his dead ex-girlfriend.

  ‘Here,’ she said, as the speaker system announced the next stop. ‘We get off here, Jun.’

  She had to shake him to get him to stand up, even though his eyes were open. He followed after her, stumbling like a drunk, holding on to the sleeve of her shirt like a blind man in her charge. She led him up the steps through a throng of people and pushed him through the ticket gates.

  They stepped out of the Diagonal subway station on to the huge, six-laned highway of the same name that cut a line across Barcelona’s organized grid of streets. On maps it looked bizarre, like a disgruntled artist had taken offense at the city’s organised chessboard of city blocks, slicing the city in two.

  One lane for bicycles and motorbikes was followed by a grass verge and then six lanes for cars, another grass verge and then another lane for the two wheelers. As Jun stepped forward, a car pulled into the bicycle lane and sped past them, an angry shout coming from an open window that probably wasn’t ‘Welcome to Barcelona.’ Jennie’s hand on Jun’s arm steered him back on to the pavement beneath six storeys of neo-Gothic architecture, and they headed up the street, following a map that promised their hotel a few streets further on.

  By area Barcelona was relatively small, but it was one of the most densely populated cities in the world, row upon row of six- to eight-storey apartment blocks interspersed with churches, museums, shops and banks. Despite the constant noise from the traffic and the smell of exhaust fumes, it was a beautiful city, one Jennie had often swooned over in holiday brochures. The city’s centrepiece, the recently completed La Sagrada Familia church, was just a couple of blocks away, yet completely hidden from view. While she understood the purpose of their visit, she secretly hoped they would find a spare hour sometime to take a look around.

  Their hotel was down a narrow alley leading off Avenida Diagonal, just wide enough for cars to traverse. They had to duck into a doorway while one squeezed past, its rear bumper catching and scraping on the wall of a nearby building, causing a woman to lean out of a window and shout at Jennie and Jun as if they were somehow responsible. As the car sped off and the woman disappeared back inside, they moved on down the alley. Jennie could only marvel at the sights and sounds of Barcelona. It was like being in the centre of a chaotic, urban circus.

  She only realised she’d turned back to follow the car’s onward journey when she bumped into Jun, who’d stopped dead in the middle of the street and was staring at someone coming towards them. Jennie glanced past his shoulder and her jaw dropped.

  A girl dressed as Snow White was walking down the street towards them, a basket of apples hooked over her arm. In Japan it wasn’t unusual for kids in the Tokyo suburbs to dress up in crazy outfits and head for Harajuku on a Sunday afternoon, to parade and preen for tourists with cameras. Cosplay, it was called, the costume players. The person approaching them wasn’t just some teenager playing dress-up though, the Snow White attire was so perfect it was as if she had stepped out of a Disney movie not five minutes before.

  As the girl passed them, she looked at Jennie and Jun, plucked an apple out of her basket, and gave them an exaggerated wink. Jenn
ie actually heard the sharp ding of a bell, as though the girl had one hidden under her dress.

  ‘What was that about?’ Jun said, making Jennie smile. For the first time that morning he actually sounded like the old Jun.

  Jennie turned to stare after the girl as she turned left onto Avenida Diagonal and went out of sight. ‘I think we just saw our first human statue,’ she said. ‘They’re famous in Barcelona, you know.’

  ‘That was crazy,’ Jun said. ‘Like seeing a ghost.’

  And he was gone again, his head dropping, his eyes glazing over. Jennie took him by the hand and led him towards the dirty HOTEL sign poking at a slight angle out of the wall above a nondescript brown-grey door.

  She hadn’t picked quite the cheapest hotel available, but it had been on the first page of the search-by-scabbiness results. Hotel New Barcelona was a cheap-n-cheerful hotel—with an emphasis on cheap—that was probably a hundred years old.

  They entered into a dingy reception area, a cockroach scurrying out of the way of Jennie’s shoes. An olive-skinned man of about forty with a thick handlebar moustache eyed them with a level of disdain that seemed to be daring them to ask for a room.

  ‘I have a reservation,’ Jennie said in English.

  The man raised an eyebrow, but his brows were so thick only the creases on his forehead seemed to move. ‘That was you, was it?’ he said, the hint of a smile visible beneath the bushy moustache. ‘Welcome to paradise. I’d give you a prize if I had any left.’

  ‘Um, thank you.’

  ‘A twin room, wasn’t it? Sorry, but I’m afraid we only have doubles.’

  ‘I booked a twin….’

  ‘Only doubles. But they’re big. In case you and your boyfriend have a little tiff.’

  Jennie couldn’t resist playing him at his own game. ‘He’s not my boyfriend, he’s my brother.’