by Tim Lees
Riff started barking then. Little explosions of noise, unstoppable as hiccups. He rose onto his hind legs, straining with the leash, longing to be set free and race off in pursuit.
We stood there, and I looked at Angel, and the snow was gathering on our clothes, our hair, and Riff barked, and I had to see the deer again.
I told her, “Wait for me.”
Chapter 48
Paul Says Hi
“Wait for me.”
I held my hands out as if to part a curtain. Snow folded around me. I had hoped to catch a last glimpse of the deer, but I saw nothing. Even the buildings just across the street had steadily dissolved and disappeared. There was a distant, pearly kind of light, diffuse, with no clear point of origin, and it was darker than it had been. I stepped high over the snow, but I wore summer shoes, and quickly felt my toes freeze, the cold clutching my ankles. When I looked back, I could see the trail I’d made, just for a little way.
Three yards beyond, and I saw nothing.
I looked around, turning a full circle. I had to be in the middle of the crossroads here, otherwise I’d surely have seen something—if not a building, then a tree, a bus stop or a streetlight. A car at the roadside. But there was nothing. Only endless snowfall. I couldn’t believe that just a few hours back, I’d passed this very spot—and in sweltering summer heat!
I attempted to retrace my steps. It was easy at first, where I’d simply been pushing through the snow; but a little further back, I had been high-stepping. I found a couple of these pit-like footsteps, and then another, further off—surely too far away, beyond the length of my stride . . .
I could not be lost.
It was ridiculous. I thought of calling for Angel, but that would be absurd; I was ashamed to do it. She could be only a few yards away, if I could only work out which direction . . .
The snow seemed to muffle everything. I wasn’t sure she’d even hear me if I called. Once, I thought I heard an animal noise—a distant, coughing sort of sound—but it could just as easily have been a car trying to start, or the creaking of masonry in the sudden cold.
I remembered stories about people trapped in Arctic white-outs, helplessly wandering in circles till they died.
I had probably begun that process, moving in some small circumference—otherwise, I’d have come up against some landmark, or if nothing else, a parked car. I was badly chilled by now. My fingers hurt. I took a breath, tried to clear my head. If I walked in a straight line, checking my trail through the snow as I went . . .
And I tried, I tried—but after several minutes I had still found nothing besides snow, and more snow. That I could no longer trust my senses, or my judgment, was deeply worrying. Till then, I’d kept my panic down, but now I felt it rise in me, and realized just how near the surface it had been, all along.
I shouted.
“Angel!”
I turned, facing back the way I’d come.
“Angel! Angel!”
Behind me, someone said, “Angel.”
I spun around and almost lost my footing. There was someone standing there—a man, from the voice—but just beyond the limits of vision.
“Hello?” I said.
The figure stayed there. I began to wonder if it was a person at all; perhaps some object, a piece of street furniture I’d recognize immediately, once the snow cleared. It crossed my mind that it might be the deer again, and I wondered now about the wisdom of pursuing them: even a small deer could be dangerous if alarmed.
Then, suddenly, it vanished.
I shouted again. I stumbled forwards, slipped, and fell down on my knees. My hands were in the snowdrift. I was frightened. I couldn’t find my way back home. It was one of those stupid situations in which people manage to die despite the odds, like drowning in a few inches of bathwater. I struggled to stand up, straining my leg muscles, my feet sliding apart. I was shaky, tottering. Then I saw that there was someone right in front of me. Close enough, this time, that I could see him through the falling snow.
He was tall and thin. He wore a hoodie from which a pinched, blond face peered out at me; handsome in a ravaged sort of way, but with a look so mean that handsome and ugly became almost interchangeable. His nose was large and bony, the brows strong, his eyes narrow and suspicious. The hoodie he was wearing had a Blackhawks motif on the front, on which snow had settled like the glitter on a Christmas card. There was snow on his shoulders, snow on the hood. Snowflakes settled on his eyebrows.
Again, he said, mockingly, “Angel.”
It was Paul Gotowski. He looked at me, head to one side, weighing me up, as I struggled to maintain my balance.
I said, because I had to say something, “Awful weather, eh?”
He only looked at me. There was no escaping the threat implied.
“You think she’s gonna come for you?” he said at last. “Think if you just call, she comes a-running?” He looked about him, pantomiming. “Don’t look like you’re in luck so far,” he said. “Still . . . maybe she will. Maybe you’re special, huh? Maybe you got something . . .” He pouted, eyes on me, speculatively. “Can’t see it, though.”
I said, “You need to stay away from her.”
The snow came drifting down between us, slanting this way, then that, flakes tumbling, spiraling between us.
“You need to stay away from her,” he sneered.
I said, “I know about you. There’s a restraining order. I’ve got friends here who are cops. I’m just giving you a warning—”
“Oh! Just giving me a warning, huh? Oh, well, thanks. I’m much obliged.” He wobbled his head as he spoke. Then he stilled. His face thrust forward, pushing out of the hood. “Cops. Once that might’ve scared me. Might’ve made me think twice. Nowadays—ha. Not so much.”
I tried again. I was freezing now; my toes hurt, I had my fists in my pockets, pressing them against my groin. I said, “Move on. Go somewhere else. Do something.” He looked at me, as if I were some insect, buzzing at the far edge of his thoughts. I told him, “Get a fucking life, why don’t you?”
He just looked at me. Then he said, “Move . . . on. Like this?”
He was gone. I couldn’t piece together what had happened. He’d stepped back, and then—
He was across from me, over to the side. He waved, a silly, cheery wave, as if waving to a child.
“You tell her Paul says hi. Tell her I’ll see her soon.”
I stepped towards him through the snow. My fists were up. I was ready for him. But once again, he seemed to step behind the snowstorm and disappear. I kept on moving, huge, high steps, half running, half falling. Something big came rearing up in front of me. I staggered, slipped, launched myself towards it—
It was a car. I fell straight into it, felt the door handle as it gouged against my hip.
“Angel!” I called.
Ahead of me now, I heard Riff bark. I leaned against the car roof, using it to negotiate the thick drifts by the pavement’s edge, climbing and sinking into waist-high banks. A streetlight lit the falling flakes. How had I missed all this? How had I been lost? There was a wall, the door of Angel’s building. She was there, behind the glass, and as I stumbled up, she pushed the door open, and I almost fell into her. Riff barked, like gunshots in the enclosed space.
She held me. She looked into my face, and from the way she frowned, I knew that what she saw was far from good.
“Where on Earth,” she said, “have you been?”
Chapter 49
A Body in the Springtime Ice
Woollard called. “I want you to see this.”
But I didn’t want to see it, I didn’t want to see it at all.
The sky was bright and blue. The snow lay piled along the roadside. A bus had stalled slantwise at the corner of our street, and the driver was making calls to try and get it m
oved. Eventually she jumped down from the cab, stood in front of it, and lit a cigarette.
People were clearing paths along the sidewalk. It was like cutting through cheese—square-sided, narrow little walkways. Guys with shovels shaking their heads at one another. “This is fucked up, man.” Already, though, you could see the little beads of dew upon the surface. The temperature was up again. The snow was going to melt.
Not fast enough. There were no paths cleared, back behind the museum. It took me half an hour, picking my way through snowdrifts, till I saw him waiting for me in the park beside the bridge. His spring shirt was gone, replaced with a large, dark overcoat and heavy shoes.
I trudged through snow to get to him.
“Well now, Mr. English. How d’ya like Chicago weather?”
The air sparkled with light. The wind whipped up the tiny flecks of ice, and the sun turned them to diamonds for a second. Then they fell.
All around, the fields were bright, glaring. I wore shades. I’d planned on sunny days, but not like this.
“She’s in the water,” he said, very matter-of-fact. “It’s not pretty. We’re having trouble, trying to get her out.”
He led me through the drifts, retracing his own footsteps, which cut back over the hill, between the trees.
“So why am I here?”
“Why? I thought, hey: why not?”
We moved slowly. He kept talking.
“Guy came by to check out his boat, y’know? Saw her there, and like any good, upstanding citizen, he called it in.”
“Again. Why am I here?”
“Ah. You’re here, Mr. English, for a good reason. Remember what I said, ’bout things being unusual? When you get two or more of ’em together?”
“Yeah.”
“I want your project closed.”
“Good luck with that.”
“I know. I’ve got the mayor, the city and the federal government to go through first. Yeah. I’m saying what I want, not what I’m going for. This is unofficial, you remember? All our conversation. Unofficial. Right?”
“That’s right.”
We were coming up on the cop cars now. There was a nasty sense of déjà vu about the whole thing. He stopped, and looked at me.
“All right,” he said. “So—unofficially—it’s your turn.”
I shrugged.
“Not giving? ’Cause I know you got something. I know you do. And I was hoping you’d play fair.” He gave me a long, hard look. He didn’t blink. “What do you guys say? Cricket, or something?”
“If a thing’s not fair, we might say it’s not cricket, yeah.”
“Not cricket.” His English accent was terrible, but no worse than my American.
I said, “You get deer in Chicago?”
“What?”
“Deer.”
“Huh. Well, we got the Chicago Bulls. Chicago Bears. We got the Cubs. No, no deer. Is this a joke?”
I shook my head.
He said, “Might get ’em in the suburbs. Not the city.”
“Big?”
“What’s this about?”
“Big deer? I mean, moose-size?”
“White-tailed deer. It’s the state animal. Not big. Though there’s hunters tell you different. Why?”
“Your watch work?”
“I stopped wearing it. Wife says she’ll get me a new one, next birthday. You ask some wild kind of questions, English. What are you getting at?”
“I don’t know. Wish I did.”
“Then what are you suspecting?”
“The new—new vic.” The police slang felt wrong in my mouth the moment I said it, but Woollard didn’t comment. “Same as the others? Torture?”
“Looks like it. Far as we can ascertain.”
“I know a guy. Dayling. He was . . . involved in the retrieval of the god we have here.”
“Go on.”
“He had a thing about—it wasn’t clear. Pain. Shock. Thought he could use it to do things. Change things. He said the god helped him escape from where he was. He . . . yeah. He sort of said it took him back in time.”
“And does that sound likely?”
“No. No, it doesn’t.” I shrugged. “I make connections, but they don’t go anywhere.” I remembered what Angel had said, about the special gift of seeing links. Only it wasn’t special. If I couldn’t work it all out, follow the logic trail right to the end, then it was useless.
“Can we can talk to this friend of yours?”
“He’s in England.” I smiled. “He’s in a psychiatric hospital.”
“That figures.” He kicked at a heap of snow. “You know something, though, English? Every time we get another of these cases, there’s a little part of me gets up and does a jig. ’Cause one day, maybe today, the motherfucker’s gonna slip up and leave us something we can use. Then all we gotta do is find the son of a bitch. Know what I’m saying?”
The marina was frozen. Somehow, I’d not expected that. Frozen solid.
The ice had a pearly quality, silver-gray in the sunlight. The boats were frozen into it, a couple of them leaning at bizarre angles where the freeze had caught them. Seagulls whirled above, and their shrieking had an ugly, bullying quality, as if the men below should have worked harder, though it seemed to me that there was little more that they could do.
They clustered on a wooden jetty, staring at something down below them in the ice. Some had long, wooden poles which they thumped repeatedly onto the surface, hoping to break it. No one trusted the ice to take their weight, but at the same time, it was strong enough to resist their efforts to crack it. A dull, irregular drumming counterpointed the gulls’ cries.
“Hey. Take a look.”
So I leaned out, and I looked down.
Her hair was caught in the ice. It fanned out, fogged and dark. Her face was in the water. In the ice. Her bare back was exposed. It was puckered and ripped; the seagulls begged and threatened up above.
Like the others, she was naked. A light-skinned black woman, and they were trying to break her free and get a rope around her, pull her out.
I looked away.
Woollard wasn’t watching her, he was watching me.
“If you’re gonna ask me if she suffered, then the answer’s yes. If you’re gonna ask if there’ll be more like this . . . then that depends.”
“Jesus.”
“Yeah. Je-sus. We pray to him, but he don’t always take the time to help us out. Or maybe we’ve got other deities to deal with here, know what I’m saying? What you think?”
He said it, “day-itties,” like he’d never heard the word before. It was disingenuous, I knew; a smart cop who’s spent long parts of his career playing dumb.
He put his hand upon my shoulder.
“You’re looking kinda greenish there. Take a walk with me, OK? Let’s talk a while. See, there’s a strange thing about you, Mr. English, and it’s this: I trust you. You don’t say much. When you do, it’s never helpful. But I always think you wanna tell the truth. I don’t get much of that, y’know, in my line of work.”
“No. I don’t think I do, either.”
“OK. So, maybe, we do this thing together . . . what d’you say?”
We walked back, following our footprints again through the snow.
“Who gets to be Batman? I’m not being Robin, I should tell you that.”
Chapter 50
God in the Streets
Fredericks wrote:
You’re sounding a bit stressed there, mate. Pour yourself a stiff one, settle back and watch the footie. Or forget about it and come home. Remember the golden rule: nothing is worth losing a good night’s sleep over.
Or your marbles, come to that. Chin up!
Two minutes later, I got:
Besides�
��who made you Poet Lareate all of a sudden, anyway?
I wrote back:
The city is alive. I lie in bed some nights and I can feel it, every piece connected, everything linked up, the way it feels on a retrieval when it’s all going well and you can sense the contours of the thing, and you lay the wires out so and so and you’re mapping the energy even as you’re doing it, placing it into containable, controllable forms. Almost like that. Almost. Except it’s too big here. It spreads across the city and I feel like I can glimpse it but never understand its real shape. Things are going wrong. The lights, the warmth, the hum of the AC, the people in the streets all swirling back and forth . . . the calling of the devil in the wires. It’s not like there’s a plan. It’s not like there’s a consciousness behind it. It’s like the old science experiment we did in school. You scatter iron filings on a sheet of paper, then place a magnet underneath. The filings shuffle into patterns. Move the magnet and the patterns change. That’s how it is here. You drop the god Assur into the streets and tenements and office blocks of the city, and everything just shifts into new patterns, and an old god stamps its mark upon the modern world. New and old pull at each other, disrupt familiar patterns. Movements shift. Somehow I can’t help thinking Woollard’s right, there’s a link between the Beach House and the killings. Too much coincidence. The link may not be a precise thing, cause and effect, but it’s there, I’d swear it.
We had another one last night. A body left on the jetty near the Beach House. No freak weather this time, nothing like that. After the body in the ice, after the rest of it . . . then this. And something happened yesterday, something that brought it all much closer. This is no longer a thing that I can stay outside of, an observer, not for Woollard, Shailer or Seddon. Now there are people that I care about being threatened. That’s something that I can’t allow.
Chapter 51