The Unblemished (27 page)

'Hot tea, my dear, lots of sugar,' Tina said to Nick, for the first
time her voice carrying a trace of tenderness. Sarah wondered how
much more had existed between them in the past, and found her
comparing herself with the other woman, wondering how they made
love (if they ever had); how easy, or hard, it had been for her to
achieve orgasm with him. Whether Nick would prefer her or invite
Tina into his thoughts at the crucial moment.

She felt another stab of guilt at mulling over such crap when her
daughter was suffering agonies. Could she be excused for being an
animal, like all human beings? Didn't others experience the same
moments of farce in the face of tragedy? Weren't there always going
to be nose-pickers at the graveside, thoughts of
Playboy
models while
the wife bore down in the delivery room? If that was the case, then
the animals outside were off the hook too. She felt her craw fill with
bile to think of how quickly death could be at your shoulder. How
easily it could fill your spaces, overwhelm you. The world would turn
whether she or her daughter were a part of it. She oughtn't hold
anything against Tina for wanting to look after number one. She was
a woman who understood the fragility and value of life too, that was
all.

She breathed deeply and sipped her tea. It was good, reviving. Her
mother had always given sweet tea to her when she felt ill, or sad. But
she doubted it would work with Claire. The way she was lying on
that sofa, all angles and pallor, it seemed that nothing would revive
her, or bring her back from where she was drifting.

'I'm going to try to find a doctor,' she said. 'I'm sure I'll find one
happy to wield his scalpel among all the nippers and tuckers on
Harley Street.'

'It's a bit late for that,' Tina said. 'You think surgeons don't have
homes to go to? You don't think that some of them might have
caught wind of what's up and buggered off to their country retreat to
hide?'

'The hospitals then,' Sarah said. 'I can't believe the patients there
will have been abandoned.'

'I wouldn't bet on it.'

'Then I'll find a knife and operate on her myself.' Seeing Nick's
scepticism etched on his face decided her. 'I have to start somewhere,'
she said. 'Do you have any better ideas?'

She could see he wanted to urge her to stay put. It didn't bother
her that he was losing any courage he might have had or she
suspected him of owning. She couldn't judge people as being lesser
than her just because she was brave enough to go outside. There was
nothing at stake here for him. She had to question herself. Would she
have gone to the trouble Nick had if the roles were reversed?

'You don't have to come with me,' she said.

He was shaking his head. 'I'll come,' he told her. 'When?'

Sarah turned to Tina. 'When's this window of opportunity you
were talking about?' she asked.

'I'll give you the all clear when it looks good,' said Tina. 'But don't
ask me to come with you. Don't dare.'

'How are we supposed to believe that you're like us?' Sarah asked,
suddenly, almost regretting the words even as they piled out of her.
But she had to know. 'How do we know you won't pull the knives
out after we go to sleep and start slicing bits off us?'

'You don't,' she said. 'But here we all are. I know as much about
you as you do about me. I'm happy here. I'm safe. If you don't like
it, if you think you might be at risk here, then leave. Find another
little stronghold.'

Sarah shook her head. 'I'm happy,' she said, finally. 'But I don't
trust you.'

Tina smiled. 'Welcome to London,' she said.

Humanities One, the British Library. It was a pale form of shelter,
he supposed, but it was working so far. He wanted to approach
the other people sitting at the long desks ranged around the grand
open space and ask them how they could be so calm when the centre
of where they lived was fragmenting so horribly. They turned pages,
they made notes. They were blissfully unaware. Bo wondered if he
would prefer to be like that or in his current state, knowing the
danger, the horror, if not the impulses behind it. At least he felt tooled
up with some kind of information, no matter how patchy. These poor
people had it coming to them. But what to say by way of warning?
There's a man out there with a face full of sharp litter, hoping to eat
you? Look in the quiet rooms of unassuming houses. Look for misted
glass and bloodshed. Look for yourselves.

He couldn't do it. At best he would be laughed down, at worst he
would be told to hand in his card and shown the exit and that would
be another refuge closed to him. He wondered briefly if that was what
his internal motors were pushing for, flushing him out into the open
for the inevitable epiphanies and confrontations to take place, but
although he understood the logic and the relief to be found in such an
outcome, he shied from it, from the raw self-destructiveness of an act
that was so unlike him.

He rubbed his arms – it was always a touch on the chilly side in
here and he always forgot to compensate for it in his choice of clothes
– and turned his attention to the large entry doors as another reader
came through, flashing her ID card to the security guards at their desk.
He kept hoping to see someone he recognised, someone to encourage
him that he was not alone; in truth he was hoping Keiko might arrive,
but no friendly face had shown itself as yet. At least to balance that
out there was no obvious hostile presence either. No staring, either
blatant or peripheral, no sense of danger encroaching, no seeds on that
strange eyelid grid of his, exhorting him to help. No pain or wetness
in his hand. It was as if he were sealed in lead here, impervious to
anything looking for him on the outside. Why was that? How could it
be? He had seen them everywhere else. On the forecourts of petrol
stations, on boats on the Thames, in the park, in windows of houses
both run-down and luxurious. All of his hideaways became known to
them and invaded by them before too long; they were like
cockroaches.

Maybe now, as he thought this, they were forming an orderly
queue at the admissions office, applying for their ID cards, explaining
their need to do some research.

A woman working steadily through a great stack of political
biographies looked sharply up at him as he tried to contain his
laughter. He gripped the edges of the book he was holding and forced
himself to relax. He had been trying to shave an hour or two off his
sleep patterns and was down to maybe four or five hours a night now,
although his behaviour during his waking hours was becoming
increasingly erratic. They could tell something was not right and had
been pleading with him to rest, to close his eyes so they might
properly blossom.

It's part of what being the map-reader means
, one reminded him.

You should give yourself to us, to your task
, another said.
You
asked for the map, you must shoulder your responsibilities.

And another, darkly, added:
If you do not do your job, the map
will be taken from you. Do not expect to survive this process.

He was reaching a crossroads, clearly. He would need to step out
in one determined direction before long or face being pulled apart by
competing forces. Something inside him that was being eroded by this
new element in his life, that was compelling him to help the development
of this strange breed, was eager to complete the transition,
but he was not so far gone that he did not balk at what that induction
demanded. He feared for his sanity and his strength, appalled that the
breaking down of his defences might include a sudden appetite for
human flesh. As long as he was in command of his own thoughts, he
would fight that. Which meant that he was inviting his destruction at
the hands of those relying on him to forge a path for them in the city.
Already some splinter faction, headed by the grotesque in his scarf
and red, shorn hair, were intent on killing him no matter where his
loyalties lay. Hiding was the coward's way, but it was the only way,
as far as Bo could see.

His fingers fumbled with the edges of the photographic volume he
had meant to peruse as a form of solace, but the images were too
violent, too close to what he was experiencing to offer any sort of
comfort. Even from a purely technical point of view, he was unable
to admire the work collected in front of him. Increasingly, photography
was redundant in his life, despite his insistence on carrying the
Ixus around in his pocket. Documenting the savageries of the world
could only work if you distanced yourself from what you were
framing through the viewfinder. As the target for so much of that
threat, it was something he could not claim. The images he saw on
these glossy pages were not the world-class achievements of unique
visionaries, as he might once have decided, but the shameless
invasions of opportunists. He persevered, though, if only to keep his
brain occupied and distracted from fears of attack, or thoughts of
sleep.

Another hour passed. He felt his eyes grow heavy, but could not allow
himself to sleep, not yet. Sleeping gave the green light to the others. He
had to find an irregular pattern so that they were disoriented. He wanted
their behaviour to lack any fluidity, at least until he had found Vero and
forced him to take the map back. Then they could do whatever the fuck
they wanted; he would be gone. The burned rubber and exhaust fumes
the only clue as to how. He would scoop up Keiko and take her away
from the danger, smother her with kisses and apologies, beg for
forgiveness.
I never abandoned you
, he would tell her.
I abandoned
myself. You weren't safe, nobody was safe, the way I was.

She'd castigate him for his behaviour, for his lack of faith in the
strength of their relationship; she would be ice cold with him for days,
maybe even weeks, but he knew she would come around eventually.
He had to believe that. Especially if he could make her see what he
was dealing with. The scars on his hand would persuade her. The
drop in weight. He could show her how he drooled when blood was
nearby. He could get her to follow him as he picked up the scent of a
fresh corpse and watch as he dug it up for others to devour while he
fought the craving to do the same, like a recovering junky locked in a
room with a hill of cocaine.

Coffee,
he thought.
I need coffee.

He pulled on his jacket and walked past the security staff, who
were deep in conversation, worried looks on their faces, too involved
with each other's problems to notice him leave, and headed down to
the café on the floor below. Industrious students were hunched over
laptops plugged into the wall. Couples shared muffins and lattes. A
large screen highlighted current exhibitions. Cool gusts from the airconditioning
sifted down from the vents.

Bo bought a cappuccino, avoiding the inspection of the staff, and
took it to a table at one end of the seating area, his back to the wall
so that he could see everyone as they entered or exited. Driven by an
embarrassment that had always attended him when he sat on his own
in public with a drink or a meal, he reached in his back pocket for his
notebook; he'd almost forgotten it since this whole episode began,
but there it was, filled with the notes from his job at
The Urbanite
;
names of those he had photographed, the meetings he had attended,
appointments he had kept. Business cards were tucked into a
cardboard wallet at the back of the book. He flipped through them,
wondering if this plumber was now something crazed by the smell of
dead things; if this taxi driver had dismembered anybody in the back
of his cab; if this Detective Inspector ...

Laurier. Bo got up immediately, answering an urge to call him. He
had to give himself up. There might be a cell in it for him.
Counselling. Treatment. Maybe, if he explained his plight, the map
could be forcibly removed with radiotherapy, chemicals, surgery. He
could prove that he was the graverobber that the tabloids were
foaming about. He would show them the desecrated graves that had
yet to be reported.

He almost ran to the public phone booth situated by the locker
room. He fed coins into the slot and dialled the police number. It rang
two dozen times before Bo realised it was not going to be picked up.
He rubbed the card with his fingers and felt an odd depression on the
surface. Turning it over he noticed a mobile phone number had been
written in Biro on the other side. He tried it. It rang for so long he
thought the network provider's answering service was about to kick
in when the dialling tone vanished, replaced by thin, tortuous
breathing.

'Joseph Laurier, please,' Bo said. High heels clattered across the
hall behind him. He could hear water in the fountain, the tearing of
a receipt from the register for a customer in the bookshop. He heard
people transferring their belongings into clear plastic bags used in the
reading rooms. He closed his eyes. Nobody was answering although
there was clearly someone there.

'Detective Inspector Laurier? Is that you? This is Bo Mulvey. You
remember? You know, Richard Dreyfuss.'

'Mmf.' Tired. Frail.

'Sorry? Look, I'm ringing about the graverobber. I need to speak
to you. I have something to confess.'

Something approximating a moan floated down the line to him. It
sounded tired, pathologically tired. Bo could imagine it belonging to
a much older man, not to someone as lithe and lucid as the snide,
hawkish copper, someone who had struck him as enjoying his job
perhaps too much. A lifer. A pro. He could tell from the sound that
Laurier was in trouble, that he might even be dying.

Bo didn't know how to fill the silence that pooled between them.
It struck him that of every person he knew who could offer him help
and strength, Laurier had always been his best bet, if only he'd been
able to shrug off the feeling that the policeman was too dismissive of
him, or, conversely, too suspicious. That he suddenly sounded like an
invalid was a shock that broadsided him.

'Where are you?' he asked.

'Aah,' Laurier managed. 'Aah.' And then the link was dead.

Aah.
Bo bit his lip. It had to be. There was nothing else it could be;
nothing else he could think of.

Yard.

London was a different city now, in early December. Bo was hit by
the immensity of the place, or rather, the loneliness of it. Hardly
anybody walked its streets; those that did were as owl-eyed as
himself. He told some of them to leave, to get in the car and go, but
they either looked at him as if he were mad, ignored him or told him
to go himself, without any of Bo's firm politeness. There were no cars,
no buses. He wondered what the state of the country beyond the
metropolis must be like for there not to be helicopters in the sky, men
in khaki driving jeeps, troops dressed for biological warfare, rifles at
the ready, reporters from all corners coming to find out why London
was going to sleep.

He took the Ninja south through Holborn, along Kingsway to the
Victoria Embankment where three men in suits hailed him and
pursued him east, parallel to the river until he reached the Houses of
Parliament. He swung around Parliament Square into Victoria Street.
Outside the glass front of the Department of Trade and Industry, a
woman with red, shorn hair threw a blazing carrier bag at him. It
missed him by inches, landing on the road where it burst, sending a
long arm of fire across the tarmac; the smell of petrol followed him,
as did her mostly unintelligible stream of invective.

He turned on to Broadway and stowed the bike out of sight behind
the Italian restaurant in front of New Scotland Yard. His blood was
up, his legs jittery from the unprovoked attack. He scanned the street
for other threats. There was no uniformed constable at the door to
greet him. The eternal flame was doused. A figure slouched in the
doorway of the Post Office across the road, reluctant to step out from
the shadows. A man in a hooded top was too intent on what he was
scooping into his mouth from a greasy cardboard box on the steps
outside St James's Park tube station to notice Bo cautiously approach
the entrance to the police headquarters.

There was nobody at the reception desk. Potted plants were strewn
across the floor, their pots shattered. Soil was scattered around,
imprinted with frantic footprints. An arc of dried blood was a ghastly
rainbow painted upon one wall. A lift door was opening and closing
on a motionless leg poking out into the corridor. Bo stood for a
moment, listening to the building make itself known around him. The
lack of traffic, of phones ringing, of the general hubbub of people
milling around, meant that the steel and concrete and glass moaned
and sighed with the infinitesimal strains of realignment, or in sadness
at some of the things they must have witnessed over the years, or over
the last few days. Perhaps even hours.

Bo couldn't understand why Laurier was still in the building, with
the stink of death coming off it in hot, hard pulses. Maybe when he
had said, had tried to say, 'Yard', he had meant some other place
bearing the same name, or perhaps Bo had simply misheard him. But
he doubted it. Laurier would have come here once the trouble started,
to co-ordinate responses in the incident room, or whatever it was
called here in the real world. Any involvement he had had with the
police had generally come from TV. He imagined plain-clothes
officers, dour experience burned into tired eyes, smoking over plastic
cups of coffee while 'Guv' told them to get out there, knock on some
doors, do some legwork. It would be good to find such a room to find
out if they had any more clue than he as to what they were up against,
and what measures had been taken by way of a response. He guessed,
then, that some kind of planning suite was what he needed to look
for. First, though, it made sense to seek out Laurier's office.