Cannonbridge (15 page)

Cannonbridge seems neither pleased nor displeased by the remark.

“You are talented enough, sir—more than competent. Yet there is something fascinating, something dangerously beguiling about you.”

“Mr Poe, you are not the first to have said so.”

“Do not forget, sir—I have written often of ratiocination. I have one foot in the realm of science, another in that of dreams and nightmares.”

“Quite so. You think, I suppose, that this lends you some special insight?”

“I do, sir. I do.”

“Well then.”

Poe drains half his glass in a single, unslakeable gulp. “For many years I have worried away at the puzzle of you. Long have I waited to say these words to you.”

The mask of lordly jollity slips briefly from Cannonbridge’s manner. He hisses: “Then say them now.” Afterwards, he smiles soullessly once more, the façade in place again.

“You are an impossible thing, Mr Cannonbridge.”

The other writer does not reply.

“You simply should not be—no, sir, not, not as you are.”

The lips twitch back into a smile.

“So I ask you now, Mr Cannonbridge, to tell me the truth.” Another sip of liquor, for courage, then three words, spat tremblingly out: “What are you?”

Cannonbridge takes his time. He raises the glass to his lips and this time, Poe believes, he does drink, at least a little. When the Englishman speaks again, his tone is flat and noncommittal, as if he is speaking of someone other than himself. “For many years, Mr Poe, I would not have been able to answer that question. I was a weak and ineffectual man, a kind of itinerant philanthropist, a wandering mystery even to myself. I was a victim and not a killer, the prey and not the predator. I was, in short, useless, an object of charity fit only for uncommercial scribbling. And then, seven years ago... Tell me. Have you ever had an epiphany?”

Poe waves the question aside. “Oh, I believe that I have had several.”

“Then you will understand when I say that something was revealed to me—a profound truth which made sense of everything which had gone before. At the time I was afraid and I was sorely mistaken to be so. What was revealed to me gave me my essence, my origin, my
purpose
.”

Despite the warm insulation of drink, Poe is frightened once more, as he was when they first met, hours earlier, outside the Odd Fellows Hall.

“And now, you ask me what I am?”

A final scrabbling for liquor. “I do, sir.”

“It seems fitting to me, my little raven, my purveyor of terror, that you should be the first amongst your kind to know the truth. Allow me to share it with you now. Let me tell what I am and listen as I tell you of my plans for your people.”

At these words, Poe feels an urge, almost, he thinks, atavistic, to run from that place, to seek sanctuary and to flee from Cannonbridge’s truth. Too late—the author has a hand upon his shoulder. He squirms and wriggles but poor, sodden Poe is wholly unable to move, as Cannonbridge brings his face close to the American’s ears and whispers.

Elsewhere in the tavern, at that moment and so blotting out his words to us, there is bitter laughter, a shriek of desperation, the sound of breaking glass. When this cacophony is done, Cannonbridge has finished. He releases Poe, slides away from him, stands up. He says nothing more but, settling his hat upon his head once more, raises the fingers of his left hand to his temple in mocking salute. He turns and walks away, lost first to the drunken baboonery of the inn and then to the worst of the night.

Edgar Allan Poe does not move but sits rigid and upright, staring hopelessly ahead of him. He is sweating, pale and shaking, as if a great and terrible fever has all at once swept over him, as if he has woken in the grip of delirium from the most vile and vivid dream of his haunted life. He sits there like that for a very long while until, at last, feeling the furies upon his heels, the raven stumbles towards the bar, orders as much as he can afford and, in the quest for forgetting, initiates his own destruction.

NOW

O
UTSIDE, IT IS
first light—the unforgiving dawn—but inside a certain first-floor apartment in Leith, it is still murky and dim, choked with narcotic smoke. Toby has been talking for several hours while Gabriela, wisely and carefully, has listened. Kara and Sam doze gently upon the sofa, one leant up against the other, both snuffling rhythmically. Toby has only now stopped speaking. He has not taken a cigarette but the atmosphere remains so hazy he believes that he feels, all the same, just a little high.

“I think you’re right,” Gabriela says suddenly. “Dammit, but I think you’re right.” Her eyes are still more bloodshot than before and she seems shaky and discombobulated like an astronaut adjusting to some new kind of gravity.

“Thank you,” Toby says. “It’s such a relief. I can’t tell you... To hear you say so.”

Gabriela nods with a kind of mock-sobriety. “Feels like we’re waking from a dream.”

“You’re right.” Even his words, it seems to him, are slightly slurred. “That’s exactly how it feels.”

“I’ve got the day off tomorrow. And I have a car. I’ll drive you to the Archive.”

“Are you sure?”

“Yep.”

“You saw the news. I’m a wanted man. You don’t think I should turn myself in to the police?”

“Angeyo knew something—or at least he suspected it. And now he’s dead. You really think you’ll be safe if you just hand yourself over to the fuzz?”

“No. No, I suppose not.” A new objection strikes him. “But I’ll be seen. My face is everywhere. All over TV. The authorities will be looking for me.”

Gabriela gets to her feet and walks across the room to Toby. “I’ll think of something. Trust me. For now, why don’t you try to get some sleep? Don’t worry. No one will ever dream of looking for you here. I’ll try to shift these two sleeping beauties so that you can have the sofa.” She moves away towards the others, waking them gently, each in turn and sending them both to their beds. She fetches a clean blanket from a trunk in the corner of the room and unfolds it on the sofa, does her best to make a comfortable nest of the thing. Toby watches numbly, impressed at her quiet rigour in that closeted chamber.

“There,” she says, once she’s finished and Toby, grateful, stumbles towards it.

Gabriela smiles, walks to the window and opens it. “Time for some fresh air. Clear our heads.”

Toby agrees. On the sofa now, he asks: “Why are you helping me?”

She hesitates. Toby wonders if the reply that she gives is truly the first that comes to her. “I don’t like being lied to,” she says eventually. “I hate it. I’ve good reason to. And I think we’re all being lied to here.”

Toby, deciding, for now, to accept her explanation, nods.

At the doorway, Gabriela stops and adds: “Besides, I think you could probably use a friend.”

“Yes,” he says simply.

Gabriela smiles tiredly. “Good night, Dr Judd.”

Minutes later, Toby is asleep. Unusually, he dreams no dreams—or, if he does, then he is wholly unable to recollect them when he wakes.

T
HE FIRST THING
that he sees on returning to consciousness is the face of Gabriela Vale, half concerned and half amused.

“Wake up,” she is saying, with gentle insistence. “You have to wake up now.”

It is mid-morning. Daylight fills the room. Only the faintest tendrils of scented smoke still linger.

“You’re all over the news,” she says without discernible emotion. “Time to get moving.”

Toby glances over to the TV in the corner. There is no sound but the parade of photographs tell their own story—a dead conspiracy theorist, a murdered policeman, a flaky, wired-looking man on the run, about whom rumours of mental instability are already swirling. Someone grave and blandly handsome is talking to camera. Underneath, a ticker-tape runs: HERO COP MURDERER STILL ON LOOSE—POLICE SEEK MAN TO “ANSWER URGENT QUESTIONS”. And then, once again, a clip from YouTube, Toby sweaty and out of control, never having looked so crazed.

Judd swings his feet from the sofa to the floor and, in the manner of a creature emerging from hibernation, rises laboriously to his feet. His head swims from interrupted sleep and from the breathing-in of second-hand marijuana. Nonetheless, when he speaks, there is new steel.

“Turn it off,” he says and, as Gabriela reaches for the remote: “I’m still not going to the police.”

“Good.” The screen goes dark.

“It’s just that—you know—when you read stories about people on the run, there’s always a part of you that wonders why they don’t just give themselves up to the authorities.”

“But you’re not in a story now, Dr Judd.”

“I know.”

“Two men who got close to the truth are dead.”

“You’re right, of course. And yet... it’s so strange.” He seems to shake off his doubts. “Anyway, you ought to be calling me Toby.”

“Cup of tea, Toby?”

“Thank you, yes. Two sugars.”

“Once you’ve drunk it, there’s something we should do.”

“And what’s that?”

“We need to put you in disguise.”

T
HERE IS A
car parked outside the flat. A Saab. Dark and expensive, sleek and slightly out of place in this bedraggled place. The man inside it sits patiently, discreetly, barely moving—a slender shadow behind the wheel. He breathes slowly and deliberately, like someone who has been locked in, who knows that his oxygen supply is finite and that to gasp and splutter would only use it up the quicker. His cool brown eyes are trained upon the entrance to the building. On his lap sits a small bag of toffees. He extricates one from the packet and pushes it free from its plastic wrapping. He winces slightly at the accompanying rustling and slides the sweet, with no visible indication of even the mildest expectation of pleasure, into his mouth. If you were close enough to him, you’d see one other, slightly unexpected thing: a hint of something blue lodged deep inside each of his ears—soft foam plugs, intended to block out the sounds of the world, to muffle the everyday.

And so he sits, our man in his dark car, and sucks his toffee whilst he monitors the only possible exit, in a cocoon of his own making where everything sounds dull and faraway, where every event is distant and happens in somebody else’s life. He chews, and he waits, and he watches.

It is almost noon before the door opens. A young woman steps out—raven-haired, pretty in a wan sort of way and in possession of a remarkable set of eyebrows. With her is a man, rather smaller than the lady. He is entirely bald, his head newly shaved, nicked in places by the razor. He wears a pair of cheap sunglasses and is dressed in clothes that are several sizes too big for him.

As an attempt to hide in plain sight, the man with the toffees finds himself almost admiring the goofy chutzpah of it.

He watches. The man and the woman climb into a battered-looking Fiat parked (badly) towards the end of the street. The woman drives. Baldie sits in the passenger seat, his hands constantly wandering up to his head, touching the unfamiliar smoothness of it. The Fiat pulls away. The man in the dark car ceases to chew for a moment, then starts the engine, pulls out and sets off in quiet pursuit. As soon as the vehicle is moving, the chewing commences once again. His every movement is careful, considered and deliberate. He keeps his distance, sometimes even allowing the car out of his sight but, as they leave Leith and edge out towards the countryside, the man knows at all times where the Fiat and its occupants are likeliest to be. He considers every option. He plans for every possibility. He sees, he understands and, although you would not know it to look at his stern, unsmiling face, on the inside he is laughing.

I
N THE PASSENGER
seat, Toby is fumbling with a map which he has extricated from the glove compartment where it had been abandoned beside three bananas, two empty cartons of fruit juice, a bottle of stale water, a copy of Plato’s
Republic
and an unopened box of tampons.

“You looking for something?” Gabriela asks, a flicker of amusement, despite the severity of the situation, playing about her lips.

“Map,” says Toby, too brusquely, before, remembering his manners, adding: “I mean I was wondering if you had a map.”

“No need for that,” says the woman and Toby sees now the little metal device that is clamped to the right of the dashboard. “Sat nav.” Dexterously, she reaches out with one hand whilst driving with the other and taps in six digits. The machine bleeps approvingly and brings up an animated diagram of their progress.

Toby asks wonderingly: “Where did you get the postcode?”

She pouts, playfully. “Looked it up on my phone,” she says. “God, what century are you from anyway?”

And Toby, saying nothing, settles back into his seat and, noticing now the sugared tang of his companion’s perfume, feels suddenly much older than his years.

T
HE MAN IN
the car that is following Gabriela’s Fiat—the man with the toffees and the earplugs—is, let us just say, an extremely patient man. Not that he has always been so. He didn’t used to be. There was a time when he was all fire and fury and a kind of sentimental righteousness. But things had changed him—the years had changed him, altering him incrementally until he became something quite different. A key part of this process had been teaching himself patience, a careful, steady programme of self-improvement which had resulted in his becoming the best at what he does.

He’s never in a hurry, our man with the toffees, but he always gets the job done, coolly and efficiently and without any unnecessary fuss. It comes to him easily now, this watchful calm. He is an expert at waiting. And so he tails the targets’ Fiat with his usual unblinking detachment. He keeps his distance and hangs back and makes sure, as ever, that no one he follows will know that they’re being followed unless he wishes them to realise it. He tracks them out of Leith and away from the city towards the country, on the M9 towards Falkirk, then, leaving the motorway and heading into the green, until they reach their destination, a long, shaded, cedar-lined drive which leads off from the road. The Fiat takes this turning—the Saab does not, but pulls up at the mouth of it, and waits.