Cordelia sat down, hard, in the chair opposite Malcolm’s corpse.
A copy of the Clarion sat beside the empty bottle, doubled over and creased flat to show a chunk of midlist news. The article was headlined Bumble Bee busted for ballast. Malcolm’s haunted mug shot stared out from between columns.
She could see him, almost, rubbing his thumb over the print, drinking himself down to the bottom of a handle of who knew what. Had he wondered where she was? Had he known? Ari might have told him, if he’d asked. What had finally put the revolver in his hand?
Her breath hitched, and the pain made her see stars. She couldn’t cry. It hurt too much, and it wouldn’t get her even with the Ospies.
She tried to think what would. And somewhere in between explosives and assassinations, she drifted off into a red haze of sleep.
* * *
When she woke up it was dark and the storm was going full-tilt outside the kitchen window, pelting the glass with wind-driven rain. Lightning seared the room flashbulb-white, making the whole gory scene like something out of a moving picture.
Cordelia straightened, stiffly, and cased herself. Her body hurt worse than ever, but sleep had done her head and heart some good.
While she’d dozed and dreamed about revenge, something in her broken chest had changed. Not her ribs, not a muscle or an organ, but something deeper and more vital. It had turned hard and crooked, like a fracture healed up wrong.
The Ospies had killed Tory. The Ospies had taken the Bee. The Ospies had driven Malcolm Sailer to swallow a bullet. Cordelia wished he’d saved the lead; she would’ve liked to put it square between Caleb Acherby’s eyes.
And who said she couldn’t? Maybe not right away, and maybe not on her own. But she had time, and she knew people. Running for Ari had put her in touch with all sorts—money launderers and gunrunners and folk in every seedy trade imaginable. Not just small-timers, either.
They’d be nervous, sure, and rightly so. Her own smashed face was reason enough. But they had no love for the Ospies, and Cordelia had talked punters around to some wild schemes. Maybe not so wild as this, but what did she have to lose?
Her life. But she’d given that up for gone sometime yesterday, under the thin man’s steel-toed boots.
CHAPTER
THIRTY-FOUR
Cyril didn’t have a lot of time to plan, and the options available were limited. What he did come up with was half plot, half prayer—inelegant and brutal.
Night came more quickly than it would have a month ago. Summer was waning. Outside the window, the sun sank behind the iron fences of Loendler Park, and the cherry trees on Talbert and Blossom. The flowers were long gone, and the leaves had lost their springtime vibrance. The season felt tired. Cyril felt tired. He was relieved, in a way, to be bringing the whole mess to a close.
Even after sunset, he waited. Best to let his watchers grow weary, lose their edge. Besides, if a call came through and no one was there to answer it, he’d have the hunt after him sooner than he wanted. They played another hand of cards. He was getting sick of cutthroat.
Around half past two, someone rang and said they were ready for Cyril at the Warehouse.
“Let’s have a toast,” suggested Cyril, as Moore and Massey got ready to go. Both of them wore heavy nine millimeters in shoulder holsters. The guns shifted against their chests as they thrust their arms into the sleeves of their coats. “To my last night of freedom. Possibly, of life.”
“A toast?” Moore laughed. “Why can’t they all be like you?”
“We’re on the job,” said Massey, nervous.
“Shut up, Mass. One shot won’t kill you.”
“Bend your knees a minute,” said Cyril, nodding to the sofa. “I’ll be right back.”
In his office, he poured three glasses of whiskey. Two of them got a spoonful of potassium cyanide, which Moore hadn’t found in the liquor cabinet because Cyril disguised it in a sugar bowl. He always drank his liquor neat.
Back in the parlor, he offered the glasses around. Cyril said something inane about dying cleanly, and then they drank.
When Moore and Massey lay on the carpet, white vomit leaking from their mouths, Cyril went about his business. He changed into one of his winter suits—the charcoal gray would blend better with the shadows. It was too warm, but it wasn’t permanent. His old service pistol and matching suppressor were in the spare bedroom with the rest of the weapons Moore had gathered in his security sweep. Cyril took Moore’s shoulder holster and fit his own gun into it, then pocketed the suppressor. The false ID papers he put inside his waistcoat, pressed against his ribs. The letter he folded crisply into a small square and tucked into his ticket pocket. From beneath the washroom sink, he snatched a bottle of peroxide, and stuck it in a paper sack.
The city was quiet as an abandoned film set—curfew, he realized. There would be a curfew, after yesterday’s riots. Well, good: no one to see him in the streets.
* * *
Finn lived in a row house off of Clifftown Road, north of the boring end of Princes Street—near the terminus of the Ionidous line. He’d looked it up earlier in the telephone directory. The neighborhood was shabby but clean, and mostly free of riot damage. Nothing up here to loot or deface. But lots of windows, and no black cars. Finn’s tail would be indoors somewhere, with a good view of the street. Fine. Let them see Cyril walk in. They wouldn’t get a good look at his face, even with binoculars. Not at this time of night, with his hat pulled low. He was just some sculler coming home late.
With the sack of bleach under one arm, he walked up to the door and reached for fictitious keys. Feigned surprise. Patted his lapels, as if looking in the pockets of his waistcoat. Finally, he pressed the buzzer for Finn’s flat. Pressed it again. On the third, extra-long buzz, he got a sleepy answer.
“Sorry about this,” said Cyril. “I, uh … I seem to have forgotten my keys.”
The lock on the door clicked open, and Cyril let himself in and up the twisting staircase. The list of names on the buzzer panel had given Finn as the third floor. On the tiny landing, Cyril dodged a bicycle and an empty coal scuttle to knock softly on the door.
After a second, slightly louder knock, the door cracked and Finn blinked out from behind the chain lock. “Cyril?”
“Shh. Let me in.”
The door closed, then reopened to admit him. Finn’s dressing gown was hastily tied over rumpled pyjamas. “What are you—wait a minute. That was you, wasn’t it? Who rang the bell?”
“Of course it was.” He made sure of the lock, then ushered Finn into the kitchen and turned on the light. There were linen creases in the accountant’s cheeks. “Listen, there’s not a lot of time to get everything straight.”
“What? Wait, how did you get here?” The sleepy squint dropped from Finn’s face. “Pesteration, you weren’t followed, were you? Did anyone see you come in?”
“Oh, now you care who sees us?” Cyril rolled his eyes. “No, I wasn’t followed. Give me a little credit.”
“Why are you here?”
Cyril flipped his jacket open and started unbuttoning his waistcoat. Finn looked doubtful, until Cyril produced the folder full of papers.
“For you,” he said, slapping them onto the counter. “Cross passed them on. From an anonymous benefactor. I think we both know who.”
“When was this?”
“After our … meeting the other day. You were right. I was wrong. Don’t let it go to your head.” He glanced at the clock on the kitchen wall.
Finn picked up the folder and flipped it open, examining the documents. “Why didn’t she just give them to me?”
“For a number of reasons,” said Cyril, “none of which we have time to discuss.”
Finn’s eyes raked him with suspicion, like jagged bits of stone. Cyril made himself give a little shrug. Finn dropped his gaze. When he turned the first page, a wrinkle seamed his forehead.
“This … um…” He tapped the paper with his forefinger. “This doesn’t mat
ch my description.”
“Don’t blame me,” said Cyril. His fingers itched for a straight, but he hadn’t brought any. “This is what Cross gave me. Anyway, you’re about the right height, if you don’t slouch.”
Finn put his shoulders back and lifted his chin. It brought his eyes nearly level with Cyril’s, where they lingered for a moment before flicking up and down. He tilted his head and pursed his lips, and Cyril knew he’d been caught out. But before he’d even had a chance to breathe—to apologize, explain—a worse realization struck him.
There was one crucial detail he had missed. One thing that ruined his entire rotten plan.
He had seen the name on those false papers.
He wanted to be sick. Horror and bile crept up the back of his throat, threatening to choke him. He’d been so careful with Aristide’s instructions, not to read them, not to let Finn tell him where Aristide had gone. He’d meant to save Finn, and doing so, save Aristide.
But he’d read through those papers—thrilled like some giddy schoolboy to see his own description, to see the silly wordplay work name: Paul Darling. DePaul, darling. He could almost hear Ari purring it out.
He’d been so worried about Finn breaking under torture, so keen to send him out of the city. He’d never thought about the possibility he himself might break—he hadn’t thought he had anything to sing about. But if he gave them that name, they could trace every move Finn made on his journey north, and it would be as good as if Cyril had led them to Aristide himself.
Once, he would have been confident he could keep the secret, no matter what they did to him. Before Tatié, when this was all a game. But he no longer held those illusions.
“Cyril?”
He blinked. Finn was staring at him, still holding the damned papers. “What?”
“I said, these were meant for you, weren’t they?”
“I’m … I’m sorry?” He marshaled his thoughts around a single, unpleasant certainty. He knew how to solve this problem.
“Ari meant these papers for you. So you could come to him. I—I knew you’d been lovers but I never thought … Why are you giving them to me?”
“Because you need them,” said Cyril, knowing very shortly, Finn would not. “I know about the memos. And someone’s going to figure it out, sooner or later. You know where Aristide is, and if they question you, you’ll give him up.” Finn opened his mouth to protest, but Cyril cut him off. “No, it’s true. Whatever novels you’ve read, or whatever the pictures have you thinking, people don’t hold up under torture.”
“Not even Central’s foxes?”
“Sometimes not even them.”
“So you’re taking the fall for me?”
Cyril didn’t say yes, didn’t nod, but Finn seemed to have answered his own question.
“Holy stones, Cyril, I don’t … I don’t know what to say.”
“Don’t say anything.” He set the paper sack on the counter. “Peroxide. It’s not perfect, but it’ll get you on a train.”
“To where?”
“You know where.” He handed Finn the bottle of bleach and didn’t look him in the eye. “Get started.”
* * *
He waited until Finn was bent over the bathtub, rinsing the peroxide from his brassy blond hair. There was no need for him to see it coming.
The noise of the shot against the cast iron made Cyril’s ears ring. He felt a tug at his jacket, and turned to see the bullet buried in the washroom door. It had ricocheted and cut clean through the outer layer of his clothes, leaving his waistcoat intact. He let out a small breath, like a sigh but not quite, and stepped toward Finn’s limp corpse.
Water from the tap made his viscous blood curl like worms. Gray pieces of brain moved with the current, jostling bone fragments and bits of chipped porcelain. Finn’s head drooped below the rush of water. Cyril didn’t fish him out—his face would be a mess.
He let his hand linger, for just a moment, between Finn’s shoulder blades. The accountant had removed his pyjama top to rinse his hair. The skin of his back was still warm. Cyril’s fingers covered scattered freckles, tracing them like points on a map. Poor idiot.
No. Not an idiot. Obviously clever, to have come up with the memo scheme, to have run messages for Ari all this time right under the Ospies’ noses. So not an idiot. But a tool. A tool, for people he’d trusted and loved.
“Some people just aren’t cut out for it,” said Cyril, taking his hand away. He wondered who he was talking to. More importantly, who he was talking about.
* * *
The thing was, he could leave now. He wanted to kick himself. He’d planned this all wrong, expecting to end up in custody when he should have been expecting to run. What had Cordelia said? You’ve always gotta be the one pulling other people off the tracks. He had always thought of himself as selfish. Maybe he’d had the wrong idea.
Irrelevant now. He could take the papers and go … North, someplace. Damnation, he didn’t need to find Ari, not right away. He just needed to get out of Amberlough and go to ground.
There was a chance. If he could make it to Bythesea Station before the Ospies realized Moore and Massey had failed to report … He didn’t want to let himself hope. It had ended so bitterly the last time, and seemed so heartless now, with Finn hanging dead over the lip of his own bathtub.
And yet.
He stole the bicycle from Finn’s landing, careful not to let it rattle against the bannister or the steps as he carried it down. A little scouting revealed there was a back way out of Finn’s building.
He took side streets in a roundabout route to the river, which he crossed. There were myriad ways into Bythesea from the south, through the train yards, but if one approached it from the direction of the central city, ingress was limited to the two sister bridges of Seagate and Station Way. If the Ospies were onto him they’d be watching both of those.
If the Ospies were onto him he’d be lucky to get out of the city at all.
He rode up to the high wrought iron gates of the station’s western entrance, casing the approach as he went past. No one lingering … wait. Black bowler pulled low, smoking a cigarette just outside the revolving doors. The man’s eyes were sharp under the brim of his hat. Some sculler taking a smoke break? Or was he waiting for someone of Cyril’s description?
Hopping off the bicycle, Cyril deposited it in the rank against the gates, not bothering to lock it—he didn’t have the key. He tried not to look at the man in the black bowler as he passed, but he did allow himself a deep, audible breath when those sharp eyes stayed on the street and didn’t follow him through the spinning panes of the door.
Approaching the ticket counter, he hooked his thumb into his ticket pocket, where it brushed Ari’s letter. He had the folder under one arm, and wished he had his briefcase instead. Traveling without luggage wasn’t exactly inconspicuous. Still, it couldn’t be helped, and he was already here.
This early, there was no queue at the ticket counter—wouldn’t be, not for a few more hours. He approached the glass wearing what he hoped was the weary but charming smile of a man resigned to early travel.
The teller yawned and looked up from a crossword. “Help you, sir?”
Suddenly, he was viscerally glad he’d seen what he had of Aristide’s instructions. “The five o’clock, northbound.”
“How far?”
He tried to disguise his hesitation, wondering where he was supposed to get off. “Farbourgh City,” he said. It was somewhere to start. “Second class.” All he had was the money in his wallet, but in this suit he would stick out in a third-class compartment.
She started to make up the ticket, but caught herself halfway through. “Damnation. I forgot. Do you have your papers?”
“Must be hard,” he said, handing over the folder, “with all these new regulations.”
She started scanning the first page. “Like you wouldn’t believe, Mr. Darling.” Obviously reading from a cue sheet tacked to the inside of the glass, she asked �
��What’s your reason for traveling to Farbourgh?”
“Business,” he said. “I’m invested in a friend’s venture and he wants to talk in person.”
She nodded, uninterested, and turned the page to the physical description. She read it through, looked him up and down, and passed the papers back. “All looks fine to me. Let me just finish with the ticket and you’ll be on your way.”
Adrenaline pumped through his veins, making his limbs weak. She slid the ticket under her little window. He reached for it, thrilling. He’d done it. He’d absolutely—
In the reflection of the ticket counter’s glass, movement caught his eye. Half turning his head, already knowing what he would see, Cyril looked over his shoulder.
The man in the black bowler came through the revolving doors, flanked by two other men, much bigger. There was a tense moment, stretched thin and sharp as wire across the gold-flecked expanse of marble floor.
Cyril dropped the folder. When he ran, loose papers flapped behind him like startled birds.
* * *
Coal smoke burning in his lungs, Cyril took the stairs down to the platform three at a time, leaping the final distance to the tile. Travelers were few and the rails were bare—the five o’clock wasn’t due for another fifteen minutes. That left the end of the soaring glass enclosure, open onto the train yards. He jumped from the edge of the platform. A fraction of a second later, a shot rang out, and he heard ceramic shatter. A woman screamed.
He landed badly, slipping on the oil-stained concrete around the rails, but caught himself and leapt into a sprint. He tried to keep under the lip of the platform. Bullets cracked into the ground at his heels. A chip of concrete struck his calf, and he felt a sting and a trickle of hot blood tracking down toward his shoe. They were aiming to stop him, not to kill.
As he ran, he drew his pistol and rammed the slide back. No time for the suppressor now, and no need. There was an obvious answer here. The Ospies had clearly caught him. He’d be dragged back to the Warehouse and questioned. He wouldn’t survive it. So why not just …
Amberlough Page 31