Corvus

  'Leave it, I'll do it.' Her mother handed her a brown envelope the size of a paperback book.

  'What's this?'

  'Open it.'

  While her mother tidied the tabletop, wiping it with spasmodic strokes of a J-cloth, missing some spots and almost scouring others, Laura opened the flap and extracted a sheaf of folded newspaper cuttings and internet printouts. After skimming the topmost item, she pulled out a chair, sat down, and spread the sheets out in front of her. They all were yellowing and brittle. They all dated from the same period eight years ago. They all concerned her uncle's death and the subsequent police investigation. Her mother went to the sink, rinsed the cloth and draped it over the spout, then stood watching Laura with an intent look, her hands propped on the worktop behind her as if for support.

  'I don't get it. Why should this old stuff interest me?'

  'How serious are you about this simu?'

  'He's got a name, you know.'

  Her mother didn't take her eyes from Laura's face, a momentary knitting of her brow the only indication of her irritation. Laura picked up the clipping which, in addition to a picture of the wrecked car being winched from the water, showed a 'before' shot of her uncle carrying Toby on a summer outing. They were at the zoo, a pair of giraffes in the background, and Laura supposed that Aunt Elizabeth had taken the photo. Toby was wearing a floppy hat, his nose was smeared with zinc paste, and he clutched a dripping ice cream cone in one chubby fist.

  'From the family album, I daresay. How sweet.'

  'Sometimes no father is better than the wrong sort.'

  To cover her surprise at such an incongruous—even for her mother, such an unfeeling—remark, Laura returned the cutting to the table and picked up another, this one about the autopsy.

  'A drunkard,' Laura said in disgust.

  'Very convenient, if I may say so.'

  At this Laura gave up all pretence of disinterest. She pushed back her chair, rose, and went to stand directly in front of her mother.

  'When did you manage to get so tall?' her mother asked.

  'I haven't been a little girl for a long time now.'

  'Then don't make a child's mistake.'

  'If you mean Zach—'

  Her mother interrupted. 'I mean that you mustn't chose someone for all the wrong reasons. Unnecessary reasons. Like protest. Like revenge. Like self-punishment.'

  'Is this a new way of trying to get me to stay together with Owen?' Laura took a step backwards. 'Because if it is, you'd better forget it. It's over, and it's none of your business anyway.'

  Her mother brushed back her hair wearily, then gestured towards the tabletop. 'I've kept them for you. I was waiting for you to be old enough to understand, but maybe I've left it too late.'

  'Too late for what? I still don't get it.'

  'I never gave him the chance to get near you again.' A light came into her mum's eyes that Laura had never seen before. 'But do you think I wouldn't make sure he was punished for what he did?' How even her teeth were, how white. 'It took a while for the right opportunity, that's all. The viola has taught me a great deal about patience, and timing, and careful preparation. Something I imagine your Zach would understand.'

  *****

  Laura was frowning at the list of unsolved differential equations on her screen when she heard the door to the flat open. With a small sigh of relief she pushed back the chair from Zach's desk and went to meet him. The wintry light was fading, and with it her desire to attend his meeting. Still, he was late, which wasn't like him, and he hadn't responded to her text.

  'There's a lasagne in the oven,' she said as he hung up his jacket. Over dinner she'd tell him about her uncle. Or maybe after the meeting.

  He was very tired; she could see it in the line of his shoulders, the pallor of his face. He smiled at her, but it was an effort. And his kiss was perfunctory—like an old married couple, she thought with some amusement before remembering her mother's 'play housekeeping'.

  'OK, I'll just wash my hands.'

  He was silent at the meal. It was surprising, and a bit hurtful, that he didn't ask about her morning at school. After a first, then a second attempt to start a conversation, she was half relieved by his withdrawal and kept her eyes on her plate till, unable to resist, she looked up to find he'd cast his fork aside and was staring at his glass, most of his food still untouched.

  'Don't you like it?' she asked.

  'I'm sorry,' he said, 'it's really good but I can't manage it right now.'

  'What's wrong?'

  He gave her a wan smile. 'Just tired. I think I'll lie down for a short while.'

  She followed him into the bedroom, where she drew back the bedding as he shed his jeans. Wordlessly she picked them up from the floor, the first time she'd seen him do that, and draped them over a chair while he slid into bed without bothering to remove his jumper or socks.

  'Will you wake me in an hour?' he asked.

  'Zach, you don't have to go tonight. There are other speakers.'

  He shook his head.

  'What if I . . . I mean, I suppose I could say a few words in your stead.'

  'No.' He held out a hand, which she took as she sat down on the edge of the bed. 'It's important for me to be there.'

  'Why are you so knackered?'

  His eyes were already half shut, and he opened them again with a struggle. 'Some new prelims. I'll tell you later, OK?'

  'Then I'd best go back to my stupid maths. There's a test tomorrow.'

  His hand tightened on hers. 'Please stay for a minute or two.' And when he was nearly asleep, so that she couldn't be certain she heard him right, 'He killed them.'

  Chapter 42

  Pani has cleared overhanging snow from a section of the crevasse, shaved away its lip, and tamped down his harpoon as reinforcement, across the shaft of which he lowers a line that reaches Zach's brow but looks too fragile to support his weight. To loop it round his chest is all but impossible. Zach tests its hold with stiff fingers. He dare not wait till his hands are frozen into useless claws to decide between slackening grip or loose, unwieldy mitts. It will have to be the mitts.

  'Ready?' Pani says. 'I'm going to back away from the edge, I can anchor the line better that way, but I'm not strong enough to haul you up on my own. You've got to climb.'

  'Where are the others?'

  Silence as Pani retreats from view.

  'Pani?'

  'There are no others.' Though muffled, his voice quivers for an instant. 'I'm doing the best I can. Now come on.'

  A quick oath under his breath, directed at shapeshifting gatekeepers who desert their posts when most needed, then Zach grasps the strip of triple-ply hide with outstretched arms, pulls himself up till he can wrap one leg round the line—tricky to secure with heavy boots—and slowly begins to ascend. The first third is straightforward, but his arms are soon aching, and he feels the leather stretching, hears it creaking under his weight. It'll hold a seal, won't it? a walrus? At what he hopes is the halfway mark he stops to catch his breath and ease the strain one arm at a time by bracing himself against the wall. You can do this, he tells himself. You have to do this. When Pani calls out, a note of impatience—or is it nervousness?—in his voice, Zach prises himself loose from the ice. 'Just resting for a second.' Lift knees, anchor feet, stand, reach; again. How many more times?

  Don't look, he warns himself, and there's a second when it seems he won't, and another second when it seems it won't matter, and one more when he says 'oh fuck' as, sickeningly, he plummets and thuds and rebounds and cries out and then then then the line jerks—jerks and holds.

  He's too shaken to gasp a question.

  'Zach! ZACH!'

  'I'm here. Are you OK?'

  'Hang on.' Very slightly, the line gives. 'The harpoon tip's broken loose, but I'm sitting on the line. Try to hurry.' Desperately, 'Please.'

  Zach wipes his face with the back of a mitt, cautiously, before the drops of sweat freeze and, cautiously, glances upwards. It's
not as bad as might be: he's lost maybe two metres. Pani is alone up there; Zach can imagine only one circumstance in which Uakuak, or any of the camp for that matter, wouldn't have rushed to help. From a distance the ice appears solid, but it shifts as all things in his life shift, precipitously and without the least regard for consequence. The sounds it makes, the deep groans and crangs of a living creature, the way it rises up to gobble the unwary: what Fulgur swallows, it never releases whole.

  Ben had no fucking chance, had he?

  The sudden flare of memory is intense, as jolting as an ember flicked into his inner eye: 'Leave me alone, Ben, I'm practising.' Not that there were ever any reprimands, any accusations of wasting Sean's time when Zach came badly prepared to a lesson: just those quizzical brown eyes and a lift to his eyebrows, then with a patient smile, the piece played as it ought on Sean's battered clarinet. Zach remembers how discomfited he'd been that his own instrument was so spang—so much newer and more valuable—his boyish indignation at life's unfairness tainted, however, by a scarcely acknowledged smugness that his family could afford top quality. Had Sean realised? It would have been like him not to let on. Yet another injury for which he, Zach, won't get to make amends.

  He blinks at the hot sting of tears. 'You're doing a great job, Pani. I'm nearly there.' He takes a deep breath and begins to climb.

  Chapter 43

  As it turned out, Zach didn't get his hour of sleep, not then, and not later that night either. Laura rushed back after about twenty minutes, her mobile clutched in her hand. It was hateful to rob him of the rest he obviously needed, and under other circumstances she'd have been alarmed at how long it took to rouse him, how drugged he seemed. He muttered a few incomprehensible phrases before opening his eyes, then groaned and squinted as she switched on the bedside lamp. He was still so groggy that for a moment she wondered if someone had slipped him a drink. Urgency overrode her qualms. She shook him, no doubt too roughly, but it worked.

  As soon as she told him about Max, he threw back the covers, made it to his feet, and stumbled into the bathroom to pee and dash cold water into his face.

  'Don't worry, I'm not going to bother shaving,' he said when he saw her hovering in the doorway. Not that she ever minded his stubble.

  After tying back his hair, he yanked on his jeans while she went to brew some strong coffee, which he then gulped fast enough to scald his mouth. Though at first he grimaced at the suggestion of food, she pointed out, quite reasonably, that he'd need the energy. He ate some lasagne straight from the pan, standing at the hob and spooning it in like medicine.

  'What are you going to do?' she asked while he poured a second mug of coffee.

  'First try to contact Max.'

  'That signalling he's taught you? What's the point, if you can't hear him?'

  'To reassure him.'

  In order to concentrate, Zach, mug in hand, went into the living room, leaving Laura to drink the last of the coffee despite her jitteriness; leaving her to regret her promise to her dad; leaving her to remember the fire, and the other kids he'd tried to protect.

  There's a rash-like persistence to the memories you'd rather forget—often quiescent, mostly in fact, yet itchier than hell, and uglier too, when you need them least. One year her dad had bought her mum a hand-carved mahogany music stand for her birthday, a 100-year-old antique which no one else was allowed to touch. Max must have been four or five at the time, Laura couldn't remember precisely. On the afternoon Dad had brought it home, her mum was out—shopping, or a rehearsal, maybe. They'd seen her dad carry it in from the car and take it upstairs to hide in the loft. 'Don't tell your mum,' he'd said, 'it's a surprise.' When the babysitter left, Laura persuaded Max to spring the secret at supper. 'I told him not to say anything,' she pronounced over her chicken leg with just the right note of innocent dismay. She'd been a good liar, even then. Her mum had never bothered to disguise her preference for Max, but his wails of protest were too loud to be convincing (aided by a judicious pinch under the table). He knew better than to provoke Laura's wrath, whereas there'd be no punishment from their dad; he didn't do punishment, except the punishment of disappointment. And better yet, he'd blamed himself for mismanaging the whole business.

  Her dad must have already begun drugging Max. How else could her brother have missed the nasty pus oozing from her brain cells? Laura pushed back a sleeve and scratched her forearm, and scratched. Severe itching is close to pain. Her dad would have explained that they share some neurophysiological pathways.

  Not ten minutes later Zach came back into the kitchen. He stared at the red welts she'd raised, then took her arm and ran a hand over her skin, smoothing it as only he was able, smoothing and easing the ache.

  'We'll find him,' he said. 'I promise.'

  'I'm terrified that Fulgur's got him.'

  He shook his head, then regarded her intently. 'Why Fulgur?'

  Though it had never disturbed her before, concealment felt a good deal like subterfuge, like deceit. Keep something back, Olivia liked to say. Secrets are sexy. Olivia liked to say a lot. Another talker like Laura's uncle.

  After a silent apology to her dad, she told Zach about the fire. 'Max doesn't know exactly what's happened, Dad didn't want it. But someone knew about the twins, what if they also found out about Max? What if word has got back to Randall?' Zach's face grew stony but he didn't reproach her, not that he wasn't prepared to be secretive himself when it suited him. And inconsistent. In a lot of ways he was like every other lad she'd met—those sapiens lads he was so quick to despise.

  'Fulgur would have no reason to kidnap him, the law's on their side,' he said. 'It's got to be someone else.'

  'Who then?' She hesitated, then forced herself to ask, 'Have you told Fabio?'

  'Fabio would never, but never, jeopardise Max.'

  'How can you be so sure?'

  'Family means everything to Fabio. I was going to tell you about it, it's something I've just learned. You see, his brother Mateus was another like Max, maybe the first.'

  The wars over oil reserves are nothing compared to what we're likely to see in the near future. The mind—the cognoscens mind, especially—is our most valuable natural resource. Fulgur has just been quicker to recognise it.

  Goosebumps, and a sense of déjà vu. Without a word she plunged from the room. The photograph on Zach's bedroom wall looked even eerier in the half-light of biography. Zach appeared in the doorway and switched on the overhead, but the dead need no séance, and no darkness, to speak.

  'The fire was a hate crime,' Zach said. 'But kidnapping is different. More business-like. It gives us a much better chance.'

  'So what now? Dad will go to the police only as a last resort, unless my mum changes his mind. She's convinced that the police are capable and trustworthy, equipped for this sort of thing, our only real hope.'

  Zach looked away. When she reached for his hand, the tensing of his muscles gave off a buzz like static and a sharp electric smell which she knew could only be her imagination. For a terrible moment it seemed that he might reject her gesture of solace, but then he brought her hand to his lips.

  'I'm going to ring Fabio,' he said.

  *****

  It had just gone midnight, with Laura's mum sound asleep under sedation. Zach was pacing back and forth in the kitchen while Laura and her dad sat at the table drinking coffee, a plate of untouched sandwiches testimony to her need to do something, anything. Upon their arrival h er dad had welcomed them with almost furtive relief, his eyes straying frequently to her mum, who accepted Zach's presence, if not warmly, at least without hostility. It could have gone either way. When distraught, her mum was as unstable as pure nitroglycerine, liable to detonate at the slightest shock. She'd been persuaded to lie down for a short while till the police arrived, Charles having promised to ring them, though from her snores he'd obviously given her a much stronger dosage than he let on. There was still no further word from the kidnappers. Again and again Zach tried to reach Fabio, the inte
rval between each attempt shorter than the last, Zach's messages terser. Laura was beginning to think her dad was right, that they had no choice but to notify the police. The longer Zach paced, the greyer her dad's face became, the deeper the lines of fatigue. Silent and withdrawn, he sipped his coffee, and sipped. She preferred Zach's pacing.

  'I'm going to ring them,' her dad said, breaking the silence. He reached for the phone, which had been centred between them like a piece in a bizarre game of feint and counterfeint—who would seize it first?

  Zach stopped his pacing. 'Don't be a fool.'

  'I haven't noticed that you've made any useful suggestions.'

  'Who else do you expect me to call? Randall? The head of the Purist Party? The Almighty Himself?'

  Laura thumped her mug onto the table, sloshing coffee. 'Stop it, both of you.'

  The phone rang.

  They all stared at it, and Laura was reminded of an old picture book of Max's in which some children find a board game whose playing pieces come ominously to life. She couldn't remember, however, if the story ended well.

  Her dad snatched up the handset and thumbed the talk key. 'Yes?' He listened for only a minute or two, then rung off with a curt 'All right, I understand.' Pushing back his chair, he beckoned for them to follow. 'We'd best switch on the pc.'

  *****

  It was impossible, and yet it was happening: Max gagged, bound, and blindfolded on a bed in a darkened room; after a few seconds, Fabio under harsh lights. Trussed to a chair with wide bands of duct tape, metres and metres of it, he stared into the webcam as though his eyes alone, green as serpentine, green as goldengrove, raw and blazing green, could bridge the strips sealing his mouth. Moments ahead of Laura, Zach understood why Fabio was allowed to see his captors.