by Simon Morden
“Yeah. Figured. What with the Papal seal on your pushka and your complete lack of fear.” He gave up trying to sit, and attempted to roll over instead. The effort was too much for him, and he concluded that he might actually be dying.
“Is there anything I can do?”
He looked up into her big brown eyes properly, now that no one was trying to kill him. His heart stopped again, only for a moment, but he put it down to his arrhythmia. “If you haven’t got a scalpel, some bolt cutters and a set of rib spreaders, no. The defibrillator that’s part of my pacemaker seems to have crashed.”
“Crashed?”
“Normally I go to a hospital and they reprogram it. Five-minute job. Only I need it to work right now and I don’t think I have five minutes.
She slung her automatic into her holster and scooped him up in her arms. It was only then that he realized that she was huge. Tall, proportionately built; a giantess. She carried him out to the streetside and stood on the last wide step of a series that led up to the main doors.
The traffic had flooded back onto the road, as had the pedestrians to the pavement. Sister Madeleine spotted over everyone’s heads that, miracle of miracles, an ambulance was fighting its way through to the curb in a blizzard of red and blue.
“At least your little friend did that right.” She adjusted the weight in her arms, aimed his feet toward the mass of people that stood in her way, and barged through. From the way he kept feeling impacts on the soles of his boots, he realized that the sight of a two-meter-tall fully-robed novice nun cradling a semi-conscious man wasn’t strange enough for hardened Metrozone residents to take much notice. The sister was determined, however, and they met the ambulance as it shuddered to a halt.
The paramedics took him from her, and laid him efficiently on a stretcher inside the van. He watched as they attacked his shirt with scissors and pasted cold electrodes to his skinny chest. It was only when they tried to put a mask over his face that he rebelled and turned his face away.
“The nun. Where is she?”
She climbed up and crouched down. “What is it?”
If she’d been expecting a message for someone or a death-bed confession, she was going to be disappointed. “My bag.”
“Your what?”
“My bag. Courier bag.”
“It’s back in the church.” She pulled back the side of her veil so she could press her ear close to his mouth. “Is there something important in it?”
“Hardware. Cost me a small fortune and I’ve not even turned it on yet.”
She sat back. “A computer? Your heart’s about to fail and you’re worried about a shiny new computer?”
“Look after it for me.”
“Petrovitch,” she said, “you, you geek.”
“Sister,” said the paramedic who was wincing at the vital signs on his handheld screen. “In or out, but we’re moving.”
She made to leave, but ended up reaching out of the cabin and pulling the doors shut, trapping herself inside. “Just drive,” she muttered, and sat awkwardly in a fold-down seat that wasn’t anywhere near her size. She pulled her veil straight and reached for her rosary to compose herself.
Sister Madeleine watched Petrovitch flat-line three times in the ten minutes it took to get him to the hospital, and each time he came back to life again he searched the interior of the ambulance for her.
Some of the time, he was thinking about his beautiful piece of bespoke kit, lying untended on a pew in a city-center church where anyone could just walk in and take it.
But part of him wondered what she was thinking, and he couldn’t work that out at all.
It involved less surgery and more coding. No one cut him wide open, which he was grateful for. The chip that was supposed to control his errant heart was pulled bloodily out through a hole, and a new one slotted into place. He was kept conscious throughout.
The morphine and exhaustion made him drowsy though, and at some point when they were sewing up the access wound with short, blunt tugs of black thread, he allowed himself the luxury of falling asleep.
He dreamed: cold snow, cold wind, crystal-black nights and needle-bright stars. He dreamed of ribbons of auroral color above the blank skyline, of the Soviet murals that decorated the foyers of the underground. He dreamed of good vodka and good friends.
When he woke up, he found that he’d left all that behind and exchanged it for a pale cream room with hospital bed, polarizing filters on the window and an amazonian nun in the corner. Perhaps the nun was optional; then again, for one to come as standard made as much sense as anything in his life ever did.
“How long?” he asked.
“Hour, maybe,” she said. She stood by his bed and looked around. “This must cost a fortune.”
“More than my modest insurance could afford.” Petrovitch pushed himself up with his hands and accepted the automatic movement of his pillows. Sister Madeleine looked down to see what her hands were doing—shaping and plumping—and she consciously stopped herself.
“So?”
Petrovitch leaned back. He could feel the tightness in his chest, but no pain. That was good. “Miss Sonja wanted to know who I was. The only way she could do that was to pick up the tab on my hospital bill. It’ll be no more than small change for someone like her, and she’ll consider herself clever because she’s found out who I am.”
Sister Madeleine shrugged. “You got something out of it too.”
“Yeah. Why do you think I didn’t tell her my name?”
She saw his sly smile. “You were dying, and you saw the opportunity to get a room upgrade?”
“And a private ambulance. I didn’t need her gratitude, I needed her influence. And look: I’m still alive.”
Her eyes grew large. “That’s, that’s…”
“What?” Petrovitch was nonplussed by her reaction. “Just because you didn’t work it out.”
“Why? Why would someone like you want to help someone like her?” She put her hands on her hips and waited for Petrovitch to answer. When he didn’t, she said: “You know what? I don’t care. I haven’t got the energy to waste on it. You know where to find me if you want your little box of tricks back.”
She strode to the door, the second time that day a pretty woman had turned her back on him and walked away.
“I don’t,” he said. “I don’t know where to find you. I wasn’t aware of where I was for the last five minutes or so of the chase.”
She faced the closed door. “So you want me to tell you? What if I don’t? What then?”
“I’ll work it out. It can’t be that difficult. Five minutes, maybe. Ten, then—tops. All I want is my bag back. Really.” He had no idea why he was having this conversation. “Sister?”
“Saint Joseph of Arimathea, Edgware Road.” She twisted the doorknob, and the door swung aside.
“Sister?”
“What?”
He thought about mentioning that she had nearly suffocated him with that stupid head-dress of hers, and for once found that sarcasm died on his tongue. “Thank you. I’m grateful.”
She shrugged again. “Doing good things is in the job description, Petrovitch.” She looked down at the patient, crumpled man sitting across the corridor from her. “Police are here.”
She left, robes billowing out behind her. Neither man, the one in the bed, the one in the chair, had the authority to stop her.
4
Eventually, having watched the sister stamp angrily down to the first corner and disappear, the policeman got up wearily from his chair and wandered in. He ignored Petrovitch at first, and walked around, touching the furnishings, playing with the window controls, pouring himself a glass of water from the jug on the bedside table.
Petrovitch looked over the top of his glasses at the man as he drank, one gulp, two gulps, three.
“Do you mind if I sit down?” the man asked, wiping his mouth on his jacket sleeve, then sat down anyway without waiting for an answer. “There’s always too much s
tanding up in this job.”
He patted his pockets for his warrant card, and passed it over to Petrovitch with an air of distraction: he was already looking for something else in a different place.
Petrovitch inspected the card: Chain, Henry—Detective Inspector, Metropolitan Police. The hologram looked twenty years out of date, because the Chain in front of him had far more wrinkles and much less hair. His head was flaring under the lights, the thin strands dotted haphazardly over his scalp illuminated from below as well as above.
Petrovitch passed the card back, and Chain opened the cover of his police handheld. The detective chewed the stylus for a moment, then pecked at an icon.
“Right then,” said Chain, and interrupted himself with a volley of wet coughing. “Sorry. It’s the air. I’ll start again: Petrovitch, Samuil. Twenty-two, citizen of the Russian Federation, here on a university scholarship. Address, three-four-one-five, Clapham Transit A. You will stop me if I mess up here? I know these things are supposed to be accurate, but you know what it’s like.” He paused. “You do know what it’s like, don’t you?”
Petrovitch cleared his throat. “I know.”
“Your English good? Don’t need a translator or a dictionary?”
“I’m fluent.”
“This is just an interview, you know. You haven’t done anything wrong. I’m just asking a few questions. If you think you might need a lawyer, do say.” Chain coughed again, an episode that left him breathless. He twisted round in his chair and poured himself some more water. “Nice room.”
Petrovitch nodded slowly. Either the man was brilliant or a buffoon. Only time would tell which.
“You are Okay to answer a few questions, aren’t you? Doctors told me you’d died several times on the way here. I can come back later.” Chain touched the video icon on his handheld and hunted for the right clip.
“Yobany stos! Get on with it.”
Chain glanced up. “I know that one. Just so you know, yeban’ko maloletnee.”
Petrovitch chuckled, then grimaced at the discomfort. “Ask your questions, Detective.”
“This,” said Chain, “this is you, early this morning.” He passed Petrovitch the handheld.
Petrovitch watched himself, identified with a floating yellow tag, crawl along the pavement at Green Park. A red tag moved into view, and the two crossed briefly. The screen went blank.
“Where’s the rest?” he asked.
“The cameras over the whole block went down.” Chain took the handheld back. “Very professional. But we know what happened. We know where you went, and we know how it ended.”
He opened up another file, and showed Petrovitch a picture of two bullet-ridden gangsters lying in a mutual pool of thick red blood.
Petrovitch looked, then looked away. “If you know what happened, why do you need me?”
“We—I—was hoping you could tell me why. Why would Samuil Petrovitch risk his scrawny neck intervening in a kidnapping that has nothing to do with him? Or at least, seems to have nothing to do with him. You weren’t some sort of Plan B, were you?”
“Why don’t you ask them?” Petrovitch nodded at the screen. “They look like the sort of guys who could come up with a really good Plan B.”
“Point taken.” Chain reamed an eye with his finger until it squelched. “Do you know who it was you saved?”
“No. Never seen her before in my life.”
Chain pressed his lips together and ruminated. “If I had a euro for every time someone said that to me. “Oh, Detective, I have no idea whose body this is in the boot of my car. Never seen her before in my life.” You genuinely don’t know?”
“No.”
“Don’t keep up with the celebrity news?”
“Do I look like someone who uses celeb porn?” Petrovitch grunted. “I study high-energy physics.”
The detective sighed. “She’s Sonja Oshicora. Ring any bells now?”
“No.”
“Oshicora Corporation?”
“No.”
“You heard what happened to Japan, right? The whole falling-into-the-sea thing?”
“I heard. It wasn’t my fault, though.”
“Very droll, Petrovitch. So, let’s just recap.” He dropped the handheld in his lap and held out his sausage-like fingers. “One, you were minding your own business, proceeding in a westerly direction on Green Park. Two, you witnessed the attempted kidnapping of some woman you don’t know or recognize. Three, you drop one of the kidnappers—good work, by the way—and run for it, keeping this woman with you despite the fact you’re now being shot at.”
“How many?”
“Six dead. Twelve wounded, five of them critically. They’re in a different hospital somewhere, in wards a lot less posh than this one.” Chain waggled his little finger. “Four, after a tour of central London, you pitch up in a Catholic church. The kidnappers enter, then leave without their intended target. They die on the steps—how, I can guess, but the CCTV goes mysteriously blank again. Five, I get there. Oshicora’s gone, you’ve gone, the Joan’s gone. Have I got it about right?”
“More or less,” admitted Petrovitch.
“So I’ll ask you again: why?” The detective leaned back in his chair, and closed his eyes. A little while later, he murmured, “I’m still here.”
Petrovitch stroked the end of his nose, and eventually pushed his glasses back up his face. “I don’t know why,” he said.
“You don’t sound so certain of that.”
“I genuinely don’t.” His tone of voice earned him a glance from one heavy-lidded eye.
“Altruism? Chivalry? Civic duty? Random act of kindness? Perhaps you’re a secret crime fighter, and you didn’t have time to put your underpants on the outside of your trousers.”
“Idi v’zhopu.”
“We get them, you know. Costumed vigilantes, and for good or ill, without the superpowers.” Chain shuffled himself more erect, and played with the computer in his lap. “They’re just about one step up from the death squads we used to have during Armageddon. Were you here for that?”
“Before my time, Inspector. Look, I don’t know what I can do for you. I’m the victim of a crime, but the two criminals who shot at me and murdered all those people are dead. This Sonja woman…”
“Girl. Seventeen.”
“I don’t know her. It was an accident.” Petrovitch scratched at his chest. “Would you rather I’d not done anything?”
Chain said nothing, just looked into the distance with narrowed eyes.
“Oh, you’re joking.” Throwing off the bed covers, Petrovitch swung his legs out over the side of the bed. “I’ve walked into someone’s private crusade. So what did they do to you? Kill your rookie partner, blow up your car, boil your pet rabbit?”
“No,” said Chain. “They just really piss me off.”
“I’m not playing your game, Inspector. You can take your questions and you can shove them up your zhopu.” He found his clothes in the bedside locker. Except his shirt, of course. “Despite the tendency my heart has to stop working at critical moments, I quite like the life I have.”
He sat on the edge of the mattress and pulled off the hospital’s green gown, dressing as quickly as he could. Chain made no effort to stop him, just watched him as he efficiently laced his boots.
“I know where to find you,” said Chain as Petrovitch stood warily, testing which way was up. “So, of course, do they.”
“I don’t care.”
“Perhaps you ought. Perhaps you’ll find it harder than you think to pretend all this never happened.” Chain tucked his handheld away, and gripped the arms of the chair. He pushed himself up.
“I don’t owe them. Quite the reverse.” Petrovitch decided he could make it outside without falling over, and tried his luck.
“My point precisely,” said Chain. He beat Petrovitch to the door handle, and held the door open. “They owe you. This—this lovely room, the ambulance, the private doctors, the best of care. That’s
just the start.”
Petrovitch hesitated, one hand on the wall. “What do you mean?”
“Honor, Petrovitch. You saved Hamano Oshicora’s only child from a fate worse than death. You saved both her and the family name. They owe you big time. Why,” he said, “you’re almost one of the family yourself now.”
“If I don’t have to play along with you, I don’t have to play along with them.”
Chain motioned Petrovitch through the door first. “You’ll find them a lot more persuasive than me.”
“I’m pretty good at saying no.” Petrovitch limped out into the corridor. “Now, if you’ll excuse me. I’m late for work.”
“You’re a student, you don’t get to use that excuse. But I’ll give you a lift if you want.” Chain smiled; it wasn’t pleasant. “You get to ride in a police car.”
“I’m not a little kid, Inspector.”
“No. You’re a poor immigrant who’s just had a run-in with two of the biggest crime syndicates in the Metrozone and ended up in a hospital because your heart is on its last legs. If hearts have legs, of course.”
Petrovitch walked away, dismissing the policeman with a wave of his hand. “Yeah. I’ll be fine.”
“It’s not what your doctor said.”
He came back. “What did he say?”
Chain shrugged his shoulders. “If you’re going to discharge yourself without telling anyone, you’ll never find out. Until it’s too late.”
Petrovitch stared him down.
Chain reached out and tapped Petrovitch’s sternum. “He said you’ve damaged that one beyond repair. You need a replacement.”
“Maybe.”
“You can always ask for a second opinion. But I wouldn’t take too long about it.”
Petrovitch considered matters. “Your bedside manner sucks. See you, Inspector.” He turned on his heel and buried his hands in his pockets.
“New hearts cost,” called Chain. “You could always ask the Oshicoras to cough up for a replacement, seeing how you wrecked the old one in their service.”
“Yeah. Perestan mne jabat mozgi svojimi voprosami.” Petrovitch walked to the end of the corridor, past the verdant pot-plants balanced on every window sill, through the doors that cut him off from the despondent figure of Detective Inspector Chain.