The Colours of Death

by Patricia Marques

  ‘Did you talk to him about it?’ she asks.

  ‘No. I didn’t think it was my place. But I kept an eye. And one night, curiosity got the better of me. He left early. Didn’t go home though. Headed across the river, over to Alcochete. I still thought he was sleeping around at this point. Maybe paying someone for it, considering the area.’

  ‘He wasn’t.’

  ‘He wasn’t,’ he confirms. ‘He was being paid for information.’

  ‘Fuck.’

  ‘When you work in narcotics, you get to know a lot of names. How he got them to trust him, I don’t know. But he did.’

  ‘What did you do?’

  ‘I let him keep doing it. Collected evidence.’

  ‘And turned him in when you had enough.’

  He shrugs.

  ‘Did you ever try to talk him out of it?’

  His expression hardens. ‘No. He lied to me. He put our investigation in jeopardy. And the effect these drugs were having on the people taking them—’ His mouth thins and he takes another drink. ‘No. I wasn’t going to reason with him.’

  Isabel watches him as he goes back to peeling the label off the beer. ‘How did the rumour start?’

  ‘Others thought I should’ve tried a bit harder to bring him to his senses. That I shouldn’t have gone straight to Internal Investigations.’

  ‘Fuckers. That’s bullshit.’

  ‘Someone made a half-arsed comment about things going down differently if he had been a Regular.’

  ‘I doubt it,’ she says and she means it. She hasn’t known Voronov for long but from what she’s seen of him, she knows he’s as fair as you can be in this kind of environment. If you’ve fucked up, it doesn’t matter what someone is and what they’re not. Voronov will go for them.

  ‘No one likes a snitch,’ he says.

  ‘Fuck that. Hang on. I’m getting the other bottle.’

  He lets out a loud laugh at that, one of those ones that come straight from the chest. It makes her a little pleased. Voronov’s not humourless then, by any means.

  When she comes back she sets the wine on the coffee table, picks up her blanket and her box of pizza, and sits down next to him on the sofa.

  Then he looks at her, looks back at the bottle, then back at her again.

  ‘Liquid courage?’ he asks.

  Under different circumstances, she might’ve done. But considering that he’s seen her take pills and he’s not an idiot, she lets it slide.

  ‘Focus on eating your messed-up pineapple pizza, heathen.’

  He smirks around his bite but doesn’t say anything. ‘So. What does it do?’

  Isabel sighs and drops her head back onto the sofa. She swallows. Then turns to look at him.

  She’d agreed to be honest. But though she appreciates and respects his sense of justice, she wonders if this will tip his moral compass. The last thing she needs is to be reported and suspended.

  When she looks at him, she finds him staring down at her, face serious.

  ‘I won’t report you.’

  She smiles a little. ‘Hiding some telepathic powers, are we?’

  ‘I doubt you’re distributing whatever it is you’re taking. And whatever it is you take, it doesn’t look like it’s because it gives you a high.’

  Isabel stares at him. This is something she’s never talked about. She keeps her cards close to her chest. Always. The only reason why Michael had found out at all is because he’d been able to supply her with what she needed, something safe that she didn’t have to risk her career and health for by buying from a dealer on the street.

  Sebastião knows, but that hadn’t been by choice either.

  ‘All right.’ Isabel steels herself and prays that she’s not about to make a mistake. But he’s her partner and for once she wants to know that someone has her back, that they know what’s going on with her. Wants not to have to pretend to be fine. Because although she loves her brother, she can’t be honest with him about what the pill does to her. Oh, sure, he knows what it’s for, what effect it has on her power. But he doesn’t know what it costs her.

  As for Michael, she hates that he even knows about it at all. That she’s had to keep going to him for something she needs even after they parted ways. Especially knowing what she knows now about him and Rita.

  ‘Around the time I was taking the exams for Inspector, there were these trials going on, for suppressors. They pre-emptively rolled out the S3 pills. They were meant to be over-the-counter, small things to help people control their Gift. I was going through some things at the time. Started having some issues with control.’

  ‘You started taking them?’

  She nods. ‘Yeah. I was, what, about twenty-five at the time? Gift levels can fluctuate for a time but then settle. Sometimes they settle late. At the latest they settle by age nineteen, twenty at a push. There’s no documented case of anything higher than that.’ She looks at the pizza but her appetite is gone. ‘I used it for about a month. Maybe a little more, until I was a bit more settled. Then it was recalled.’

  ‘If it was recalled . . . doesn’t that mean there’s something wrong with it?’

  She snorts. ‘They weren’t too concerned with that. They’d been heavily trialled. It was the government’s wonder drug. It would lower Gift levels and the Regular public would feel safer. The drugs were being regulated, people were taking suppressors or being recommended they go on it, which meant a lot less power wielded by Gifted.’

  ‘So . . .’

  ‘The government took it back, but it wasn’t made illegal or anything. That would’ve caused an uproar in the Gifted community. Made it seem like the government and the pharmaceutical company hadn’t cared enough about Gifted lives and had put them at risk unnecessarily by rolling out a drug that shouldn’t have been out. They were careful about how they framed their reasons for recall.’

  ‘Why do you think they recalled them?’

  Isabel looks at him. It feels like she has a tight hand squeezing around her throat. But she manages to work past it. Clears her throat.

  ‘Because of Gifted like me. Remember the Colombo incident?’

  ‘The girl?’

  ‘Yes. She slipped through the cracks. Really badly. But not because of S3. Her situation was different; she was misclassified.’ Isabel shakes her head, thinking about it. ‘Still don’t know how that happened but,’ she shrugs, ‘no system is fail-safe. In her case, it failed. Badly.’

  ‘How does it relate to you?’

  ‘Well, Aleks,’ she turns to look at him, ‘I wasn’t misdiagnosed. But my Gift was going a little crazy because I was emotionally distraught for a while.’

  Voronov’s eyes narrow on her. ‘Your classification is a level five.’

  She smiles, the edges of it bittersweet. ‘It was. When I tested. And I stayed that way for a long time. Then when that changed S3 helped me keep it that way. It dumbs down our Gift, so to speak. And what sucks for the government is that after taking it, it’s untraceable on the system.’

  Understanding dawns. ‘So it could be used to cheat the system.’

  ‘Bingo.’

  ‘But they have the Monitoring system.’

  Isabel laughs, grim. ‘Yeah. They do. But the last time I checked there’s no level nine or ten under Monitoring. The highest Monitoring covers is an eight.’ She gives him a pointed look. ‘Where do you think those level nines and tens go?’

  Voronov glances away from her. ‘How do you still have the pills?’

  Isabel keeps watching him, trying to make out what he’s thinking and not bothering to hide it either. What she’s telling him – she needs to know that he really meant what he said. And Voronov is a man of his word. Isabel believes this. But it’s not every day she stakes so much on someone’s word alone. She’s not even sure why she’s doing it now and with him.

  ‘When I went off them . . .’ She searches for the words.

  How do you explain to someone who has never experienced it how much the
strength of her own Gift scared her?

  ‘It’s like my awareness, what I was able to reach and hear, had expanded. At times, I couldn’t even block it. I thought people would look at me and know. That I’d be hauled away to one of their therapy farms out in the countryside and no one would come looking for me.’

  It had been Sebastião’s face in her mind when she’d started panicking. The thought that she’d be taken away in the middle of the night and he would never even know what had really happened. He would just think she’d disappeared one day.

  ‘You’re so sure they would do that?’

  She wets her lips. Just talking about it has her stomach turning. ‘Yes. I know they would.’ She forges on. ‘I was seeing someone. A doctor. He helped me.’ She shrugs a shoulder. ‘Since then I’ve been getting them through him.’

  ‘And the headaches?’

  ‘It’s the suppression. It’s unnatural. The blockage causes the headaches. Except recently it escalated beyond what I can take,’ she admits. ‘I went to see Michael – my doctor – but I think . . . I’ve reached a point where S3 isn’t an option for me any longer.

  And it scares the shit out of her that she doesn’t know how the hell she’s going to cope without the safety barrier it provided.

  ‘Isabel.’

  ‘What?’

  ‘What level are you now?’

  Her heart leaps in her throat and when she looks at him, she knows she looks wobbly. ‘I’m not sure I want to know.’

  After a moment Voronov nods. He holds out his hand to her.

  She looks from his hand up to his face.

  ‘You said physical contact helps the connection.’

  ‘Yes.’ She doesn’t have it in her to tell him that it doesn’t seem to matter any more.

  He doesn’t say anything else but instead leaves his hand there.

  After a small hesitation, Isabel takes his hand, nervous when it practically swallows hers.

  But within seconds she knows what he’s doing.

  She would’ve heard it even without the touch, as long as she’d tried. But she wouldn’t have felt the truth behind it.

  This stays between us.

  The voice is undeniably Voronov’s. And the truth behind them is there plain as day, set in stone; she feels it without a doubt.

  For a moment, Isabel thinks she might tear up. But then she sucks it up and just lets her head fall back in relief.

  He’s not going to tell anyone. He has her back.

  She doesn’t even notice that she doesn’t let go of his hand, and he doesn’t let go of hers.

  Chapter 50

  Isabel’s eyes hurt and her entire right side and shoulder throb with discomfort. It’d be nice to not wake up to pain at some point. The clock reads 4.31 a.m.

  When she forces her eyes open past a squint, she finds that she’s on her living room floor. By the feel of it, she hasn’t even changed out of her clothes. Her teeth feel grainy when she runs her tongue over them and her mouth feels like it’s been stuffed with cotton balls. She needs water. And a shower.

  Groaning, she pushes herself up. The pizza boxes are scattered around the living room along with the empty wine bottles. On her sofa, feet sticking out over the edge because the man is just ridiculously tall, is Voronov. His head is tilted back against the armrest and he’s sleeping.

  Isabel groans again, hanging her head. A look out of the window shows her that it’s still dark out, but the sky is lightening. Outside, she can hear the birds already awake.

  They’d fallen asleep with all the windows open.

  Isabel stands, meaning to shake Voronov awake and tell him to go and sleep on the bed, but then she hears the rustle outside. It’s followed by a low whine.

  She can feel the alcohol still swimming around in her system as she drags herself over to peer out of the window.

  It’s the two strays, cuddled together on the ground. Something isn’t right though.

  ‘Hey,’ she says softly. A pair of eyes open in the dark and stare right up at her, ears twitching. He or she is curled around the other one, which doesn’t so much as blink. Isabel frowns. ‘What’s wrong? Is something wrong with your little friend?’

  Isabel squints to see if she can see what’s wrong with them but she can’t.

  Maybe it’s the alcohol. That’s what she will blame it on later on that day. Right now, she’s focused on what she needs to do right at this moment. She goes back into her bedroom and grabs the first two T-shirts she finds. Both come out of the laundry basket she hasn’t looked at in a long time.

  When she goes back into the living room Voronov is sitting up, frowning. His hair is sticking up at the back and there’s a crease on his cheek from the imprint of the sofa cushions. There’s a deeper shadow on his jaw from stubble that’s grown in during the night.

  ‘What are you doing?’ he asks. He sounds stumped and watches, confused, as Isabel swings one leg over the windowsill.

  ‘Get up,’ she says. ‘I’m probably going to need your help. And don’t make too much noise. You’ll scare them.’

  He frowns. ‘What?’ He pushes himself up off the sofa and walks over to the window. He looks a lot steadier than she feels.

  She’s going to break her neck.

  ‘Shut up. I’ll be fine.’

  Did I say that ou—

  ‘Obviously, you’re being loud as fuck,’ she mutters, and swings her other leg over, T-shirts around her neck. The slope means that even though she’s on the ground floor, there’s still a decent gap between her feet and touch-down. Her arms tremble from the effort of lowering herself slowly. Dried grass crunches under her feet and the brindle dog tenses. The other one, the white one, just opens its eyes. In the dark they glow eerily, looking as if they’re swallowing the light flooding out of Isabel’s window. The one on top starts growling, a low rumble that makes her cautious.

  ‘Come on,’ she says, tone soothing. She crouches down and removes the T-shirts from around her neck. The dog curled in on itself isn’t budging, so isn’t much of a threat right now. The brindle with the floppy ear growls at her, clearly protecting the other one, and Isabel knows to take care. Dogs can be vicious when they’re backed into a corner and she’s not her steadiest right now.

  This woman is crazy. ‘Isabel, what the hell are you doing?’

  ‘What does it look like I’m doing? One of them is hurt, okay?’

  ‘I’ll come down and—’

  ‘No!’ she hisses, daring to look up over her shoulder at him. The light from the kitchen is bright and throws him into darkness. She can’t make out his expression. ‘Just stay there, I’m going to have to hand them up to you and then I’ll need help getting back in. So just shush and stay calm.’ She takes a deep breath and turns back to the task at hand.

  She approaches slowly. The growling intensifies and she holds the T-shirt low so the dog doesn’t panic. The brindle doesn’t move though.

  ‘Shh, shh.’ Isabel tries to stay relaxed as she reaches out her hand, T-shirt wrapped around her palm and wrist to protect it from any serious damage if this takes a nasty turn. She holds her hand out slowly and waits, patient. It takes a while. Her breath rattles in her lungs and she can hear the dry trees around her, naked twigs shifting in the sweeps of the wind raking the slope. The growling stops. A wet nose glances off the backs of her fingers as it sniffs her hand. ‘Yes, you know me, don’t you?’ The other stays still, just watching blearily through slitted eyes, its white paw tucked under it.

  Isabel pulls her hand back and, still whispering soothingly, wraps the T-shirt around it, making sure to cover the dog’s muzzle in case it turns on her. It whines then, sharp and wounded, and she winces, feeling like an arsehole.

  When she finally picks the dog up she grunts under its weight. It’s an effort to hold it high enough that Voronov can pull it up but they manage. The second one is easier – it isn’t as responsive, which is even more worrying. She gets that one up safely to Voronov too.

  Is
abel waits for Voronov to return to the window to help her up. She wipes a hand over her face and is surprised when it comes away damp with sweat. She sighs, blinking into the darkness. Her eyes sweep down the line of the slope to the road.

  What the hell is she going to do with two dogs, she wonders.

  There’s a car parked close to the gate. It’s not one of the neighbours’. Locals don’t drive down or park on the main road because of the trams. Whoever’s parked there will have to move it before the trams start up in a couple of hours.

  The streetlight glances off the door when it moves and Isabel realises it’s been open all this time. She stares, trying to see whether there’s a person sitting on the seat, can just about make out their legs hanging outside the car. It looks like the person is twisting round to look at her apartment building.

  Isabel takes a few steps down, Voronov and dogs forgotten.

  There’s a sense of dread wrapping around her. Something is familiar here.

  The car. Isabel’s seen this car before.

  She freezes, hand pressed to the wall of the building, stands under its shadow. He shouldn’t be able to see her.

  ‘Isabel!’

  She startles at the hiss of her name and turns back to see Voronov hanging out of the window, scanning the darkness for her.

  ‘I’m here,’ she calls out, voice soft, ‘I’m coming.’

  Voronov is waiting and helps her climb back in.

  He’s muttering under his breath. ‘You’re fucking crazy, the dogs could’ve attacked you,’ he grunts as he drags her back up.

  ‘Aleks.’ She slumps down onto her ass, starting to shiver, her body chilled from being outside.

  She looks up at Voronov.

  ‘Gabriel Bernardo was watching my house.’

  Chapter 51

  It’s just a little after 9 a.m. and the vet’s is mostly empty. Luckily, Isabel’s problem isn’t anything they can’t handle. Floppy-ear is fine but the white dog has an ear infection they will have to treat with antibiotics. The thing that probably won’t recover as easily is Isabel’s wallet.

  After she’d climbed back in the night before and they’d tucked the dogs into blankets, she and Voronov had gone out to check the road, but all that had greeted them had been the sounds of the city waking up, the tram bells ringing as people had started arriving, sleepy and huddled in their warm clothes, not quite ready for the day to start. There had been no sign of Gabriel Bernardo.