The Explosionist (20 page)

Sophie scrabbled through her satchel and dug out a ten-shilling note and two half-crowns.

“I can’t explain it,” she said, “but it really does matter—we need to leave
right now
!”

As the words left her mouth, Mikael jabbed her in the side. The beggar had materialized at the opening into the street.

Sophie thrust the note into the drawer of the bulletproof plastic partition that separated the driver from his passengers, required by law after a terrible series of murders the year before.

“Just drive!” she said, almost shrieking in her anxiety to be gone.

Shaking his head, the driver pulled out into traffic and turned left onto North Bridge.

Sophie shuddered. They were going to pass the Balmoral Hotel once again.

“No need for hysterics,” the driver said reproachfully as the car surged ahead of a bus and took them up Leith Street and into the New Town. “All you need to do is ask nicely, miss, and I’ll take you wherever you like.”

“Is he behind us still?” Sophie said to Mikael, speaking quietly to avoid attracting the driver’s attention.

“No sign of him,” Mikael reported. “This was a prime idea, Sophie. He wasn’t dressed respectably enough to hail a taxi himself, even if he had the cash. Why, we’re barely respectable enough ourselves!”

“It’s quite true,” said Sophie, looking herself and Mikael up and down and starting to laugh. They clutched at each other in a near frenzy when they saw how hot and dirty they were. Then a trickle of cold perspiration ran down into the small of Sophie’s back; she broke off laughing, and caught her breath in something like a sob.

The driver let them off in Gayfield Walk, only five minutes from Broughton Street Lane. Sophie did not have the courage to ask for change back from her note; it was an awfully expensive cab ride, but then again it had possibly saved their lives.

O
UTSIDE THE PHOTOGRAPHY
shop, Mikael paused.

“Must we really do this, Sophie?” he asked.

“We have to,” she said. “It’s our best chance. We must learn what happened to the medium; we can’t go around like this forever, with our lives perhaps in danger and not even knowing whom to suspect.”

“All right, then,” said Mikael, breathing hard and running a hand through his hair. “What are we waiting for?”

They pushed open the door and walked into the shop, the electronic chime sounding its welcome.

At first Mikael and Keith acted like two dogs circling around and deciding whether they’re going to fight. But once Keith had locked the front door and drawn the blinds and
rather stiffly offered the visitors a hot drink, Mikael unbent enough to accept a cup of coffee, and after that the obligations of the guest-host relationship forestalled any direct hostilities.

Sophie cupped her hands around a mug sporting a patchy image of a black standard poodle. The warmth of it in her hand was a comfort. Taking a sip, she thought what a good thing it was that Sir Humphry Davy had put aside his chemical experiments long enough to invent the dehydrated coffee sachet. Instant coffee was far nicer than the real coffee in Italian sandwich shops, especially with lots of condensed milk, which made it taste almost like cocoa.

“So what exactly have you two got planned?” Mikael asked.

Keith didn’t seem to notice the edge to his words.

“We’re going to test a new camera I’ve developed,” he said. “Well, to be strictly accurate, it’s not really a new camera, just a modification of an existing one. Its purpose, as I’ve designed it, is to capture the images seen by a dead person.”

Seeing Mikael about to snort, Sophie kicked him in the ankle.

“So, Keith,” Mikael said, glancing sideways at Sophie and rolling his eyes, “what parts do we play?”

“I’m going to look on,” Keith said, ignoring Mikael’s rudeness. “That may sound lazy, but in spirit photography the photographer’s own memories and desires tend to interfere
with things. We can’t do anything with the results of this evening’s experiment unless we know I haven’t affected the images we receive, either by accident or by fraud.”

“Fair enough,” Mikael said. “What do you need me to do?”

“Mikael, you’ll operate the camera,” Keith said. “It’ll be mounted on a tripod, so you won’t need to point it in any particular direction, but the machinery needs a human hand to advance the film to the next exposure. Don’t worry if you don’t have much experience with a camera, any old idiot can do it.”

“What about me?” Sophie asked, putting her hand on Mikael’s arm to stop him from reacting badly to Keith’s tactlessness.

“You’ve got the toughest job,” Keith said. “All I have to do is document everything I see in writing, and your friend here will simply advance to the next frame each time one or the other of us gives him the go-ahead. You’re the one who has to find the spirit we want and shape the series of questions. It’s best to be as specific as possible: requests like ‘show me your loved one’ are liable to backfire.”

“Oh, I’ve already thought of what I want to ask,” Sophie said. The questions had been circulating at the back of her head all day, except for during the chase, when she had been too frightened to think about spirit photography. “But how do
I get in touch with the spirit in the first place?”

“You’ll call it to you, of course,” Keith said. “Don’t worry, it won’t be difficult. It’s often tricky to get spirits to come and let you take pictures of them, but that’s not what you’re asking. You just want to know what they
saw
. Dead people aren’t so different from living ones, really: even folks who run and hide when there’s any risk of their being photographed are usually quite happy to take a photograph as a favor. I’ve got a good feeling about this, Sophie.”

“So who exactly are you going to contact, Sophie?” Mikael asked, smirking a little.

Before Sophie could say, Keith held up one hand, palm toward them.

“It’s best we watch with an open mind,” he said. “Sophie, don’t tell us a thing until afterward. Are you ready to get started?”

Sophie and Mikael looked at each other, then nodded.

They followed Keith from the small lounge to a tiny darkroom at the back of the shop. As Keith switched on the infrared lamp, they looked warily at each other in the spooky orange glow.

Keith showed Mikael how to operate the camera, then told him to load a clean roll of film; the factory seal was unbroken. He asked Sophie whether she’d rather sit or stand.

“Stand,” she said.

She stayed quite still while Keith fastened a blindfold over her eyes.

“All set,” he said after that. “Mikael, I’ll tell you when it’s time to release the shutter. Sophie, it’s all yours.”

Sophie took a minute to slow her breathing back down to the normal rate. There was no point being nervous. She was among friends, wasn’t she?

The room felt small and cramped and airless. Sophie could smell sweat through the photographic chemicals. It was strange having no visual input at all. She put up her hand and tweaked the blindfold into a more natural position. She hoped it would stay properly fastened; Keith hadn’t really tied it tightly enough.

She had actually worked out her plan the night before in bed. It had to be Mrs. Tansy she would contact, though Sophie was frightened of the medium’s strongly malevolent personality and her almost palpable desire to come back and make somebody pay.

Sophie focused on breathing in a slow, regular pattern as she waited for the spirit to find its way to the darkroom.

“You’re not far away,” she said. “You found me the other day in Miss Botham’s class. You worked out how to speak to me through the Dictaphone. Now I’ve got something different for you, something even easier because you won’t have to put any of it into words. I’m going to ask you some questions.
When you answer, I don’t want names, just faces. My friend Keith’s built a special camera and after each question, you’ll picture the face of the person I’ve asked about. Mikael and I will help you print the pictures; together we’ll organize the light so that the image can be laid down on the film in the camera.”

She stopped to take several deep breaths, then readied herself to begin.

“I want you to put yourself in a very particular time and place,” she said slowly. “It’s the fifteenth of June—a Wednesday—and you’ve checked into a grand suite at the Balmoral Hotel.”

Mikael coughed, and Sophie lost her concentration for a second.

“It’s midday and you’re waiting for your next appointment,” she went on after a minute. “It’s the young man booked by the night receptionist. There’s a knock at the door. You open it and show the boy in. Now, the first thing I want you to give me is a shot of that boy.”

Sophie squeezed her eyes tightly shut behind the blindfold, wrapping her fingers around her thumbs, and concentrated as hard as she could to help the spirit lay down the memory of Mikael’s face onto the film in the camera. This would be a kind of control for the rest of the experiment. It was a good way of getting a feel for it, and the medium’s
experience with this kind of work would surely make everything easier.

She kept her eyes closed until she felt a kind of sliding-into-place, like the
snick
when a jigsaw piece slots into the right spot.

“I think that’s it,” she whispered.

“Mikael, advance the film, please,” Keith said, sounding quite calm. “From now on, I’ll tap you on the shoulder to let you know when it’s time. Sophie, you’re doing very well.”

“All right,” Sophie said, speaking not to Keith but to the spirit, who felt very close by. She hoped the medium hadn’t actually materialized: an ectoplasmic embodiment of her too, too solid flesh would be beyond awful.

“You had another visitor after that. That’s the person I want you to picture for us now. Before you answered the door, you bundled Mikael into the wardrobe and locked him in. Then you answered the door. Who did you see there?”

She waited without feeling anything, then realized she had to give the medium a little more help.

“What was it?” she said, breathing deeply and feeling suddenly as if her rib cage had come into alignment with someone else’s, two hearts pumping, two pairs of lungs expanding and contracting. “Oh. You answered the door and at first you thought that nobody was there.”

She paused to get a clearer sense of the scene.

“You’re looking straight ahead and you don’t see anybody. You’re thinking someone’s knocked and then run away, like those awful children in the street where you used to live.”

The words were coming fast to Sophie’s tongue.

“You look left, then right. And then you hear someone chuckling and you look down….”

The
click
from before echoed again in Sophie’s head. Keith seemed to hear it too, for he muttered encouragement to Sophie.

“The man comes into the room. He’s at ground level. Now he’s coming toward you and throwing his arms around your knees in something like a rugby tackle. He’s bringing you to the floor. He’s got a straight razor and almost before you know it, he’s clambered up onto your body and slashed your throat and you roll back away from him as the blood starts gushing out. Look—look right at his face. Look at the face of the man who’s just killed you. There—give it to us now.”

Snick
. Louder and more definite than before.

“And your spirit’s leaving your body now, hovering over it. But I need you to answer a few more questions. Mrs. Tansy, did you ever talk to someone from the Nobel Consortium? The police seem to think you were in contact with someone—is there a person I can talk to and find out more?”

Sophie felt the spirit
waver
. It was rather like leaning over a boiling saucepan and letting the tiny waves of warmth hit
one’s face like hot invisible jelly.

She concentrated hard. “Nobel,” she said again. “Did you speak to someone of Nobel’s?”

Click
. Faint but firm.

“Forward to the next frame, Mikael,” Keith whispered. “I’m sure we got an image there.”

“Just two more things,” Sophie said now, trying not to betray the importance of these last questions.

“We think you had strong suspicions about who was behind the bombings. Did you identify anyone in connection with them? And if so, who was it? We might need this picture to track the person down,” she added, “so it will be especially helpful if you can give us a really good shot.”

Click
. The unmistakable sound of a picture being taken. Sophie heard Mikael advance the film to the next exposure.

“One more,” said Sophie softly. She felt drained and exhausted from concentrating so hard. “Just one more thing. Can you tell us who you think hired the man who killed you? Who sent the Veteran to kill you, Mrs. Tansy?”

SNICK
. This time the click was quite loud. Sophie heard one of the boys swear—she couldn’t tell which—as he failed to catch a jar of chemicals that slid off a shelf and smashed on the floor.

“Time to stop this,” Mikael said in a loud voice, angry and afraid.

“Don’t worry,” Keith said, his voice more excited than fearful. “Telekinetic disturbances often accompany this kind of manifestation. Sophie, can you hear me? Are you ready to stop?”

Sophie reached up to take off the blindfold, but paused to thank the medium first. She did it silently, not wanting to sound silly to the others, but the words in her head were heartfelt. Thank you. Thank you so much. That was really helpful. And I promise you I’m going to bring your true murderer to justice. The Veteran’s dead. I expect you know that. But I swear to you I’ll do everything I possibly can to find the person who sent him to kill you. I’ll stop that person, if it’s the last thing I do.

She hoped the medium would go away now. She still had a slight unpleasant sense of the woman’s presence in the room.

Taking off the blindfold, she found the other two staring at her.

“What’s wrong?” she asked.

“Are you all right, Sophie?” Keith asked.

Sophie considered the question.

“I’ve got a bit of a headache,” she said. “Not too bad, though. How soon will we know whether we’ve got any results?”

Keith looked at his watch.

“It’s half past seven,” he said. “Even working with high-speed chemicals, it’s going to take me at least ninety minutes to process the film, make a contact sheet from the negatives, and blow up the prints. Why don’t you two leave me to it for now and come back just before nine to take a look at what we’ve got?”

“How do we know you’re not going to pull a switcheroo on us and substitute another film for the one in the camera, or give us a completely different set of proofs for that matter?” Mikael asked, advancing on Keith, his right hand clenched.

Sophie shrank away from Mikael’s fist, but Keith just sighed and held his ground.

“Look,” he said, “I suggested that Sophie mix in questions she knew the answers to with ones she didn’t, if you see what I mean. I don’t even know Sophie’s last name or where she lives, let alone what she’s just been talking about.”

“Don’t you read the papers? You must have recognized the details—the murder of the woman at the Balmoral—”

“
Now
I do, but I couldn’t have had pictures prepared in advance. You’re going to have to trust me on this. You can certainly stay and watch if you like, but it’s awfully cramped in here and the smell of the chemicals gets to you after a while, especially if you’re not used to it. Sophie needs to eat something—she’s just expended a huge amount of mental energy, and I bet her blood sugar’s low. Do me a favor and go to the
chip shop around the corner, get her something to eat, and let me do my part of the job in peace and quiet, all right?”

He let Sophie and Mikael out the back door into an alley full of garbage, a pack of feral cats nosing through it for their dinner.