Europe in Winter

by Dave Hutchinson

  Rudi wondered where the decision had come from. The prediction engine in Dresden-Neustadt? It was hard to be certain who was running the world any more, although obviously it wasn’t the people who thought they were. “Has there been any word,” he asked, “from Crispin?”

  Dariusz smiled. “I have no idea who that is.”

  “Of course not.” The initial shock and awe of the Heathrow Event – the authorities hadn’t even bothered to try to suppress or conceal it, there was just no point – had settled, as Rudi had suspected, into a prolonged bickering between England and the Community about what to do with the transposed territories and people. A surprising number of people who had been at Heathrow wanted to remain in the Community. The Community didn’t want them, they didn’t want to leave, there had been a riot. There was talk, according to the media, of the transplanted Heathrow declaring itself an independent nation within the Community. It was problematic.

  Even more problematic, but just as hard to suppress, was what had happened to the Line, most of its rolling stock, and all its citizens. Nobody seemed certain whether or not to claim its territory, which was considerable. No one wanted to take up the Line’s track, with its peculiarly unhelpful gauge. The consensus seemed to be wait and see. There was no percentage in purposely antagonising an organisation which was capable of rewriting worlds. If it was an apocalypse, it was a discreet one. The world went on pretty much as it always had. More than anything, Rudi found himself disappointed. One always wants the great events of one’s life to mean something. Certainly something more than very wealthy people doing what very wealthy people always do, which is protect their own interests.

  “I would like to see what he’s doing over there, though,” Rudi added. “One day.”

  Dariusz drained his glass. “The only thing we can be certain of is that there are trains there.” He held out his hand, and after a moment Rudi shook it. “What will you do with the restaurant?”

  “I don’t know. The news is still... new.”

  “I’ll come round in a week or so, see if you’re still here, and we can discuss your subscription.”

  The subscription prevented Wesoły Ptak from torching the restaurant. “Who’s paying it at the moment?”

  Dariusz made a dismissive gesture. “Call it a payment holiday.”

  Rudi looked at him, remembering when the little mafioso had seemed powerful and quite scary. “Out of interest,” he said, “who told you to recruit me, back then?”

  Dariusz smiled. He clapped Rudi on the arm. “We’ll talk about the subscription.” And he turned and walked away into the crowd of mourners.

  After Dariusz had gone, Rupert eased his way over to the table and looked down at the arrayed food. “This is... disappointing,” he said.

  Rudi sighed. “I know.”

  “Problems?”

  Rudi looked in the direction Dariusz had disappeared in. “Business as usual.”

  “Problems, then.”

  Rudi chuckled. “I think we’ve been parked, for the moment. Eventually someone will decide we’re of some use; then they’ll be in touch.” He picked up a chicken drumstick and bit into it. He scowled and put it back on the serving platter. “This is a disgrace,” he muttered.

  “The Directorate already want to know what Crispin’s up to,” Rupert said.

  “Of course they do.”

  Rupert seemed about to try some of the food, then decided against it. Life in Europe had spoiled him; there was a time when he would have made a spirited attempt to clear the table, all on his own. “I was checking my drops in Prague yesterday,” he said. “There was a note from Michael. Sorry to bother you, but we were wondering... blah blah blah.”

  So far, all Rudi – all anyone, as far as he was aware – knew was a name. It was still a shadow, a possibility, floating somewhere below the surface of the great lake of rumour and supposition and straight-out bullshit that sloshed back and forth across Europe. The name of a fabled land beyond the sunrise. It was not a name, he knew with some certainty, beyond the capabilities of the Community’s intelligence officers to discover.

  “Did you reply to their request?” he asked.

  “Not yet,” Rupert said. “Fuck ’em.”

  Rudi nodded and sipped his drink. “Fajnie,” he murmured. There was a sense he had gained, travelling around Europe for the past few months, of a pause, a break while everyone got their breath back and took stock and tried to work out what to do next. As far as he was concerned, that could last as long as it wanted.

  “I don’t want to add to your problems,” Rupert told him, “but that man over there is talking about having you killed.”

  They both looked over to where Max’s cousin was becoming more and more animated, to the point where the people he was ranting at were trying to get him to calm down.

  “How do you know what he’s saying?” Rudi asked. “You don’t speak Polish.”

  “They’re speaking German. I understand enough German to know ‘I want that fucker dead’ when I hear it.”

  Rudi sighed. Hindenbergers. “It’s okay. He’ll be fine when he sobers up.”

  “If you say so.”

  “I’m in more danger from the food.” He looked around the restaurant again. It looked like the setting for a particularly complicated joke. People of many nationalities walk into a bar... There were Poles here, Silesians, Kosovars, Italian and French chefs, a Spanish restaurateur, the senior staff from Max’s Berlin restaurant, two English people, an Estonian, and the last citizen of the Campus. Michał, the restaurant’s former maitre d’, had suffered a stroke some years previously, but there he was, supported by a powered exoskeleton and communicating with other mourners by typing his side of the conversation with his one good hand on a pad which spoke out loud for him. His support worker was slumped in a corner, sleeping off the three bottles of Wyborowa on the table in front of him. The wake was a patchwork of poor, dead Europe, all come to mourn poor, dead Max, who had simply dropped in his tracks one day while following his monstrous, manipulative, controlling bully of a wife around the supermarket with a shopping trolley.

  Across the room, the widow, Iwona, was talking to a group of people Rudi didn’t recognise. She was managing to look at once piously bereaved and carnally available, which he thought was quite a trick. They had never met before; he knew nothing about her apart from Florianska gossip he’d picked up in the few days he’d been back, but as they left the notary’s office she had given him a look of such raw animal anger that he missed a step. It was a look which said you have the thing I want and I will kill you for it some day.

  Well, it wasn’t as if people wanting to kill him was a new thing. Iwona was hardly the only person in Europe to have wanted him dead. She wasn’t even the only person in the room who wanted him dead. He’d been quite surprised by how one could get used to something like that, if one had to.

  He had no idea what had gone on in Max’s head in the autumn of his years, but life was like that. It never tied things up neatly; no one ever got to see the whole story, and anyway the stories never ended, just branched off into infinity. You got used to that too, as a Coureur. You jumped a Package from Point A to Point B and you never knew what happened after that. Most of the time you never even knew what you were carrying. It was a bit like being a chef, really. Guests came into the restaurant and you often knew nothing about them – if you didn’t actually go out into the restaurant you never even saw them. They ate their meals and they went away and maybe they never came back. What were their stories?

  Rudi shook his head and turned his back on Iwona.

  He was not, even after everything, immune to the irony of inheriting the restaurant, the way he seemed to have inherited the Coureurs and the money Roland Sarkisian had stolen from the EU. Life is often absurd; all you can do is keep putting one foot in front of the other, looking for the joke in things – because there is always a joke, even if it’s bitter and sour – hoping for the best and trying not to be too broke
n when it doesn’t happen.

  THE HUNGARIANS ARRIVED around nine in the evening, five huge men in exquisite suits. They were sober and respectful of demeanour, but the fifteen or so remaining mourners all moved as one out of their way and watched nervously as they sat down at one of the tables in the corner.

  Their leader, a man who sometimes called himself Kerenyi and sometimes László Viktor, came over to where Rudi was standing talking to Seth and Rupert and Michał.

  “Well,” he said as he shook hands. “This is jolly.”

  “I didn’t organise it,” Rudi told him.

  “One would hope not, obviously. Why is that very drunk man glowering at you?”

  Rudi didn’t need to look; for the past hour or so Max’s cousin had given up making threats in favour of sitting with a couple of his Hindenberger friends and applying himself to becoming insensible.

  “He’s not a problem,” he said.

  “You want I should do his knees, just to be sure, actually?” Kerenyi asked with avuncular sincerity.

  For just a moment, the thought did appeal, but Rudi shook his head. “I think just seeing you with me will be sufficient, thanks.”

  Kerenyi shrugged and pulled a sour face. “I remember when this place used to be fun.”

  “That was when Max was alive.”

  The Hungarian nodded. Then his face broke into a huge uncomplicated grin. “But hey,” he said, “you own this place now, yes?”

  Bad news is like entangled atoms; it manifests itself faster than the speed of light, over large distances. Somehow, though, it had needed someone to say it out loud to make it real, rather than using careful allusion. He had, he realised, been hoping he had misheard the notary.

  “Yes,” he said, with a genuine sense of surprise. “Yes, I do.”

  “So this place will be fun again?”

  Rudi thought about it. “I’m hungry,” he said. “Are you hungry?” And he took off his jacket and rolled up his sleeves and pushed through the swing door into the kitchen.

  THIS WAS A tough one to write, at a tough time. That it exists at all is due to Gem, Ross, Liza, Dorian, Leif, Robin, James, Susannah, Suze, Frania, Kath, Pip, all the Helens, Fred, and everyone who put up with my whining and bitching and sent me good wishes while I was working on it.

  Liza, Cary and Caroline beta-read the manuscript, and again any and all mistakes are mine, not theirs.

  Juhan Habicht not only translated Europe in Autumn into Estonian but fixed all the mistakes in the book while he was at it; translators don’t get nearly enough recognition and I owe Juhan a huge thank you.

  I’ve always been lucky with my covers, but Clint Langley has done a wonderful thing with the covers of these books, and I owe him my deepest thanks.

  I’d also like to thank Jon, Ben, Rob, Dave and Mike at Solaris, and Lydia, who is no longer there but has always been a friend to the books.

  Carey Tews, Sarah Smith, Grant Forsyth and Stephen Coltrane are all real people, and they donated money to John Underwood’s fund-raising effort for Anthony Nolan, in return for having characters named after them. I tried not to make the characters do anything too actionable. If you want to donate at John’s JustGiving page, you can do it here: www.justgiving.com/John-Underwood-Anthony-Nolan. Alternatively, donate to Delete Blood Cancer at www.deletebloodcancer.org.uk/en, or register as a stem-cell donor. I can’t promise to name a character after you, but you’ll be making a difference all the same.

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