Tales of Crow- The Complete series Box Set

by Chris Ward

  He closed his eyes, trying to blank them all out, and when he opened them everything seemed so clear that the sharpness of the contrast hurt his eyes.

  ‘Crow, you twisted bastard….’

  A metal fence stake lay nearby. Jun grabbed it and swung it towards the Akane-thing—no, no, no, not Akane—but she shifted away and then was gone, rushing up the hill on her three remaining limbs, moving like a spider, the click-clack—scuttle scuttle—of her feet over the stones sending shivers down his back.

  The boy had climbed to his feet and started to run after her, but Jennie pulled him back. Jun looked at them both in turn, unable to think of anything sensible to say.

  ‘Thanks,’ he muttered at last. Then, as if someone had finally stuck a pin into him, deflating the air inside, his legs gave way and he slumped to the grass.

  Jennie squatted down in front of him, one hand on his shoulder like a passer-by who had stopped at a traffic accident. The little boy came back to stand beside him. One hand wiped blood out of a cut in his cheek, then he glanced up at the back of Jennie’s head as if overcome with jealousy.

  ‘What was that thing?’ Jennie said.

  Jun pointed at the broken piece of arm lying on the grass. ‘That’s Crow’s work.’

  ‘How did it do that to you?’

  Jun shook his head. ‘I can’t explain it. It’s like a spell or something.’

  ‘Hypnotist,’ the little boy said, holding one hand up in front of Jun’s face and waving it back and forth. ‘Tick, tock. Like on Ramblas.’

  ‘Don’t do that, Jorge,’ Jennie said. ‘Just in case.’

  ‘She was speaking to me,’ Jun said, pointing to his temple. ‘In here. Only she was telling me what I wanted to hear. Provoking memories, that kind of thing. When she got too specific she risked saying something that might not have been true.’

  ‘What do you mean?’

  ‘She asked me about our first kiss, but it was a lie.’

  ‘Jesus, Jun. How’s she talking to you?’

  He tapped the side of his head. ‘Her voice was in here. I don’t know how. I could hear it as clearly as you’re speaking now.’

  ‘Telepath,’ Jorge said, so solemnly that Jun shivered.

  Jennie helped him back to his feet, then introduced him to Jorge. The boy looked well dressed for a street kid, Jun thought, although he’d messed up his clothes quite a bit fighting off the thing posing as Akane.

  ‘Thanks for helping me out,’ Jun said, reaching out a hand. Jorge grinned and gave his hand a swift tug.

  ‘Welcome,’ he said. ‘Saw where come from. Friend there too.’

  ‘You saw where that thing came from?’

  ‘Yes.’

  Jun turned to Jennie. ‘That could be where Crow is. If Crow’s here he could have Nozomi.’

  Jorge shifted. ‘Nozomi? Friend name Nozomi. Look like you.’

  Jun felt like someone had slapped him. For a few seconds he fumbled for the English words. ‘Are you … are you sure?’

  ‘Sure. Nozomi. Say name mean “wish”. Nice name. Pretty.’

  Jun could barely believe what he was hearing. He squatted down in front of Jorge and took hold of the boy’s hands. He felt ridiculous, having been the useless one for so long to now be acting like the hero.

  ‘Nozomi is my friend’s daughter,’ he said. ‘She was kidnapped five years ago. We came to Barcelona to get her back. If you know where she is, please help us find her.’

  Jorge nodded. ‘Know something. But can’t go. Dangerous.’

  A sudden explosion boomed in the distance. A plume of smoke wafted up into the sky from somewhere near the port.

  ‘Where can we go, Jorge? Do you know somewhere?’

  The little boy nodded. ‘Go see friend. Friend help us.’ He glanced back towards the rising smoke and shrugged. ‘If friend there.’

  29

  Riots and black magic

  Peter felt equal parts stupid and foolhardy as he made his way through the streets towards the Spider’s designated pick-up point. The crowds grew thicker and more vibrant as he got closer to Las Ramblas, but they weren’t good crowds of tourists, they were groups of angry men and women carrying crude weapons and oozing a latent threat of violence. The best thing to do was to get on the next train out of Barcelona, but here he was, walking right into the centre of all the trouble that was about to kick off, in the vain hope of finding a lottery ticket for twenty underpaid street performers.

  He tried to keep the thoughts of danger out of his head. He kept moving forward until the stone litter bin that the Spider had described appeared through the crowd. Sitting on the corner of an intersection outside a department store with its shutters down, it was lazily adorned in a low-budget attempt to fit it in with its more illustrious surroundings. Peter glanced up the street in the direction the garbage trucks would come from, but from the way the traffic had ground to a virtual halt—a few stubborn cars still tried to jerk and twist their way through the flow of people, but most had given up—he doubted that the Spider’s deadline for collection would be so strict.

  He reached it and paused for breath, stepping aside as people pushed past him, wondering if this was how pickpockets felt on a productive day. He would have preferred to conduct his heist under the cover of darkness with no one around, but few people were paying him any attention. Their collective gaze was on some indefinable spot far up ahead, as if the word “revolution” had been drawn in the sky by a plane’s vapour trail.

  The litter bin was an upturned cone made from moulded concrete. The top was a heavy concrete lid adorned with faux-Gaudi swirls and lumps that could be lifted off for emptying. Peter leaned forward and slipped a hand inside, feeling around for the box the Spider had promised. The first false alarm was a KFC box which left his hand greasy and smelling of day-old chicken, followed by something soft that could have been a disposable nappy. Then his fingers brushed the corner of something hard, pushed into the trash at the bottom. He scrabbled at it, shifting it around until he could get a decent grip and pull it out.

  It was an old shoebox, dirty and half-crushed, tied around the middle with a piece of red string in a neat bow. The brand was one Peter didn’t recognise, but it gave him the chills. Crow-Sports. Turning it over so he couldn’t see the ugly bird logo staring up at him, Peter gave it little shake, feeling something heavy moving around inside. Convinced, he tucked it under his arm and turned to leave.

  ‘What you got there?’ someone shouted, pushing him back against the litter bin. A knob of concrete jammed into his back, winding him. He doubled over, gasping for breath, the box falling out of his hands.

  ‘Nothing,’ he wheezed, trying to reach for it.

  A heavy hiking boot kicked it away, knocking it spinning through the air. It struck another man in the chest, the string popping off and the lid coming loose. A plume of used banknotes fluttered up into the air like hundreds of escaping butterflies.

  Peter saw enough to know the Spider had told the truth, but could do nothing about it. The money now belonged to the mob. Already people were pushing and shoving each other around, snatching notes out of each other’s hands as their former unity slipped away like coins ground into the earth.

  As the money found new homes, drawing blood and screams along the way, Peter melted back into the crowd, feeling a mixture of frustration and relief.

  The nearest Metro stations had pulled their shutters down, so Peter ended up walking most of the way back towards his apartment. Away from Las Ramblas many of the streets were eerily silent, while others were scenes of pitched battles between groups of rioters, framed by burning, ransacked buildings.

  He passed several groups of riot police running in seemingly random directions, as if receiving multiple instructions at once. Helicopters buzzed through the sky above him, and around one corner a deployment of military were setting up a roadblock. He ended up climbing over the locked gate of a thin alleyway between two buildings in order to get out of one street, sprinting
down the dark, dusty crevasse, then hauling himself up over a steel fence at the other end.

  The temptation to just bail on the city and the other street performers grew stronger as the minutes ticked past. Forget his apartment and his meagre possessions, continue on southwards towards the city limits and keep walking until he found somewhere safe. The whole country could end up being dragged into this escalating conflict, and it seemed ridiculous that it could all have stemmed from the death of Dave Balls and that of an anonymous tourist. No, the murders were just the oily surface of a much deeper pit of outrage waiting to fire up.

  Europe didn’t need another crisis, not with the United Kingdom breaking away from the European Confederation and threatening to take other states with it. Peter was beginning to wonder whether anywhere was still safe, when he rounded a corner and found himself back in his own street, facing his own building.

  Up in his apartment, the computer had switched itself on. A single line on the screen was flashing:

  ‘I was right, wasn’t I?’

  Peter stared at it for a few moments until his eyes began to water and the screen to blur. Instead of replying, he opened up a group message to the other street performers and started to type a short note:

  ‘He was lying. There was no money. There was nothing. You mustn’t—’

  As Peter stared the cursor began to move back down the line, deleting the text

  ‘He was lying. There was no money. There was—’

  ‘He was lying there was—’

  ‘He was—’

  The cursor stopped, blinking at him. Peter hardly dared to breathe. Sweat trickled down his back. He started to type again, hoping to fire off a message before it could be deleted.

  ‘He was lying. He—’

  The screen changed, and Peter gasped, jerking his head away, before realising that this time he was seeing a street scene taken from a long-distance camera. It took a moment to spot himself in the crowd of people, but there he was, quite clearly holding up a box like a child who has just picked a present out of Santa’s sack.

  Words appeared across the top and bottom of the screen like a humourless meme being created in front of him.

  ‘DON’T LIE TO THEM.

  I KNOW YOU FOUND IT.’

  Then, in a private message box that appeared over the top of the picture: ‘Tell them the truth or the Crow comes out to play.’

  Peter stared at the screen, unsure what he could do. The picture disappeared and the old message box appeared. Peter stared in horror as it began to type for him.

  ‘He was telling the truth. I got the money. Head to the theatre as he asked, but hurry. There’s trouble on the streets. I’ll meet you there. Peter. Good luck, friends!’

  Peter reached for the keyboard as the arrow cursor flew across to “Send”. The message disappeared.

  ‘You fucking bastard.’

  Peter tried to open another message box, but the screen had frozen. There was nothing he could do but try to head them off. If he could get to the theatre in time he could tell them about the Spider’s lies and they could all leave Barcelona together. Nothing good would come from following the Spider, he could sense it.

  He went into his bedroom and collected a few hundred Euros he had hidden in an envelope taped to the back of a drawer. Like most of the street performers, Peter had plenty of ways to avoid paying tax on what he earned, so while it wasn’t strictly rainy day money, it served the same purpose. He stuffed it into his wallet and went to pack some clothes.

  He was rummaging through a drawer of t-shirts and boxer shorts when he heard a sharp rap on the door.

  His first thought was that the Spider had sent the Crow for him, if indeed they weren’t one and the same. He looked around for some kind of weapon, but his apartment was sparsely furnished with few trinkets or other ornaments. He hurried into the kitchen and grabbed a frying pan, feeling like an idiot in a comedy movie as he crept towards the door.

  ‘Open up! Police!’

  The voice was different to those of the other police officers who had visited him. The words were Spanish, but the accent wasn’t. Perhaps this was someone from the European police force, the murder having become of international concern.

  Peter unlocked the door and a short man wearing a trench coat over black trousers stepped into the room. His narrow, foxy face was strangely ageless. Thinning hair was tied back in a ponytail, and a wispy beard hung from his chin. The eyes were sharp blue, almost radioactively bright, and they took in the whole apartment in a couple of glances.

  ‘Did I interrupt your dinner preparations?’ he asked, nodding towards the frying pan, a tiny smirk on his lips.

  Peter stared at it as if it was glued to his arm, then put it down on a nearby table and shook his head. ‘No, sir. Just, you know, with the riots outside … what can I do for you?’

  ‘I know all about you, Mr. Salvadore. I need some information on the murder of your friend. Off the record. I am not with the Barcelona police force.’

  The man didn’t offer an explanation as to which force he was with, but the authoritarian tone of his voice put Peter at ease. This man would listen. This man would help.

  ‘Do you want to sit down?’ Peter said, glancing back towards the computer, worried that the Spider might still be watching.

  ‘No. There’s no time. My skills are spread thin, Mr. Salvadore. Who killed that man? Why?’

  Peter felt his tongue loosening, almost as if he’d been drugged. He had a sudden urge to tell this man everything.

  ‘Someone is hunting us,’ he said. ‘Someone with their own agenda. He calls himself the Spider, or maybe the Crow.’

  At the mention of the Crow, the briefest of flickers of recognition flashed across the man’s face.

  ‘What does he want from you?’

  ‘I don’t know, but he’s dangerous. He built those things, the spider and the others, that have been terrorising tourists and killed my friend.’

  ‘A man of knowledge and talent enough to create something like that does nothing without an agenda. What could be his?’

  ‘I think he wanted control of Las Ramblas for his own street performers,’ Peter said, the words sounding clunky and childish, like they were two gangs arguing over the sandpit. ‘He wanted us out. That’s why he wants to pay us off.’

  ‘Pay you off?’

  ‘We were given a place that we should meet. He offered money.’

  A hint of overzealousness crept into the police officer’s eyes, his head jerking around. Then he composed himself, saying, ‘Please write down the address. I will see that it’s investigated.’

  ‘I can take you.’

  ‘That won’t be necessary. The address, please.’

  Peter scribbled the address down on a pad of paper he kept in a drawer and handed it over. The man looked at it for a moment then put it into a coat pocket.

  ‘Thank you, Mr. Salvadore. You’ve been most useful. Goodbye now.’

  Peter waited for the man to turn away, but he continued to stare at Peter with his hard, narrowed eyes, a calm smile on his thin lips. They were beyond grey, almost silver, beneath a nose that was almost too small for the man’s face, so thin that when he looked directly at you it seemed to disappear, like seeing a shark’s fin head on. It was….

  The air had thickened, heated. Peter shifted. He felt like he was sinking underwater, the pressure getting greater with each passing second. The man’s face became a blur. Peter tried to take a step back and realised he couldn’t move.

  ‘You’re not a police officer, are you?’ Peter said quietly, realising as he spoke that breathing had become difficult, as though there was less air in the world for him to draw into his lungs.

  The man shook his head, a barely perceptible motion that was almost lost in the blurring of his skin. ‘No, but I am an agent of justice. Be thankful that you had the chance to be part of that. It could be worse.’

  Peter tried to lift his hands as his throat began to constrict, invi
sible hands gripping and squeezing as the other man stood with his own hands loose by his side. Just one cry, one scream might bring help, but there wasn’t even air enough left for a croak.

  A veil of blackness descended like the curtain at the end of a stage performance, and Peter’s legs gave way as his own show came to an unexpected end.

  #

  Galo stood for a moment looking down at Peter Salvadore, who had twisted himself into a strange spiral as he died on the floor of his peaceful little apartment, his legs and arms twisted backwards as though to spin himself free of his killer’s grip.

  How easy it was, he thought. And how addictive. His master would scold him perhaps, punish him for leaving such a trail, but when the moment came to end a life it was always difficult to resist.

  And every coffin that he nailed shut chipped another little hole in his own.

  One day, perhaps, he would be able to break free.

  He pulled the piece of paper out of his pocket and read the address again, scrawled in slightly shaky handwriting. He had read about the place. It was an old theatre across town which had been shut down for a few decades, one of a number of places that would make a good hideout for this man Kurou. It would be easy now to find him and finish him, then Galo could get out of Spain and back to Russia before anyone had even started to hunt him. Easy.

  Another successful contract would increase their stock even more in the dark circles they inhabited. The Grey Man would demand an even higher settlement next time, and they would live well for a while longer. For some reason though, Galo felt a sense of insecurity about this one. This man Kurou was more than just another hit. Galo had hunted politicians and bankers and revolutionaries, scientists and businessmen and princes; it was rare that someone got so high on the food chain without angering someone else who had enough money to cause trouble. He had long ago overcome the horror of ending a life; if indeed it had ever been a bother. The method was no concern either. Sometimes he liked to get his hands dirty, other times not.