The Sunken City Trilogy Page 5

  Holly watched Barton carefully, and he didn’t dare take his eyes off her as he answered, frankly, “I don’t know. But you oughta avoid everyone he knows. And everywhere he’s been.”

  He listened without turning as she made a quiet, awkward sound, like a farewell from someone who wasn’t used to it. As the girl’s footsteps continued away, Barton put an awkward arm around Holly’s shoulders to lead her back towards the house. They walked silently across the road. He slowed down, running the last question through his mind. He took a breath and turned to shout at the girl’s retreating back. “This person who threatened you. You see their face?”

  “No,” the young woman called back. “We spoke over the phone. But they know where I live.”

  Barton cursed under his breath. Rufaizu might’ve made a thousand enemies in his life, wherever he’d been, but Barton’s instincts pointed to one obvious one. He said, “Take their threats seriously. With the people he knew, if you never see them coming, chances are it’s the Layer Fae.”

  The stranger offered him an empty smile, like it wasn’t something she understood or wanted to hear. She waved again, and continued walking.

  Holly stared at Barton to ask what he thought he was doing. He avoided her gaze and headed towards their home, leaving the car parked out on the road. She caught up to him and hissed, “Was that for my benefit?” Barton shook his head, aware that the more he said, the more she’d pick at. She said, “If you think I’m going to tell you to go help that girl, I’m not, you know that? It’s her problem.”

  “It’s her problem,” Barton repeated, in agreement. “Nothing to do with me.”

  “What did she say to you, before I came over? What’s happening?”

  “Nothing. She got in with that crowd and wanted my take. I don’t know why they’re threatening her, probably because she knows Rufaizu.” Barton’s eyes wandered back down the road. The woman was gone. He said, “God’s truth, Holly. I don’t know who she is. She wouldn’t be the first not to take this seriously, though, and I don’t need another death on my conscience.”

  9

  Cano Casaria woke for another night’s work, glad to find the sun all but set. Relieved of the ugly innocence and ignorance exposed in the daylight. Only in the shadows did the truth of the world reveal itself. Only in the dark did people really come alive.

  Thirteen storeys up, Casaria stood at his window for his daily ritual of watching the daylight ants scurrying back into their holes as the office-block lights blinked off. Making space for the real people to come out. The ones that railed against normalcy, ones who squeezed more from the world than their day jobs gave them. The drunkards, the insomniacs, the smugglers and the thieves. The sex pests and the night workers. Even the tourists who visited in passing; the victims of emergencies, the overnight journeyers, the desperate deadline-makers.

  They were the people of his world. They enjoyed empty roads with abandoned shop fronts. With less distractions, they noticed one another, noticed every little thing.

  From the panorama of his apartment, Casaria went to ground level to hover near the Underground station. He took his dinner in the window of the Indian restaurant opposite, watching the change take place up close. In the early evening, people blindly pushed past one another, pointedly ignoring the man offering free copies of the Ordshaw Evening Standard. As the population thinned, occasional enlightenment slipped in. With two people going for the same door, at night, one might let the other pass. People started to make eye contact with the newspaper vendor, just as he packed it in for the night.

  This was the world that mattered to Casaria. Only in these hours could he find people with the two values most cherished by the Ministry, and himself: an acute awareness of, and openness to, the world around them, and the resilience necessary to live in the darkness. Many of these twilight wanderers were less than fully sane, and others could not cope with people, day or night. The ones who had chosen this life when another was possible, though, they were discoveries to be treasured. They were like him. Special.

  Like the poker player.

  Over dinner, Casaria cut back his people-watching time to think about Pax Kuranes. The Roma boy had seen her potential, no doubt. She was smart, bold and seemingly normal, yet she was drinking in a dive for pleasure. And it didn’t hurt that she was easy enough on the eye. Sure, she was no ten, Casaria reflected, but she didn’t need to be. A seven would do, combined with her other qualities. He could get tens, if that was all he wanted. It wasn’t important, not necessarily.

  The Kuranes girl’s file had further convinced him of her potential. It had been opened when she crashed her father’s car at the age of fourteen. The insurance company suspected her father hadn’t been driving, as he claimed he had, because the timing didn’t fit with his work schedule. Being an excellent lawyer, he had crushed the case, but the government had already started a file on Pax. Aged eighteen she went to university to study the Classics. Aged nineteen she dropped out. She created two hundred accounts for online casinos and poker rooms, but stopped using them within twelve months. She receded from society. Found work that left no record. Stopped using banks. The only evidence that she was still alive was that she continued to make National Insurance payments and submitted tax returns once a year. Always showing minimal earnings from what she described as consultancy work. For the most part, her gambling winnings went unreported.

  As far as the government was concerned, Pax Kuranes became a vagrant who was thankfully keeping herself off the unemployment register.

  It was easy to read between the lines. She had been raised by successful parents, was well-educated and had the capacity to do anything she set her mind to. She had run away, playing late-night card games, to avoid the trappings of conventional life. Most telling was that she had snubbed online gambling, too. It wasn’t about making money; she was exposing herself to an underworld that held her interest. She played cards face-to-face at undesirable hours, with even less desirable people, for an interesting life. Maybe she enjoyed judging people face-to-face, too. Both concepts made her ideal.

  The Rufaizu problem was under control, with no risk of him talking to anyone and no need to process him until Casaria bothered to file the paperwork, so there was plenty of time to concentrate on Pax instead. Get the measure of her. Casaria so rarely got the chance to introduce someone new to his world, and this time he was going to do it right. He wouldn’t have a repeat of Sam Ward. Ward had never really belonged out at night; she’d tricked him. She was a day-dweller who’d strayed into his territory, and she’d been drawn right back into the bland conveyor belt of admin drudgery first chance she got. Damn Ward, now settled in a sixth-floor office with her five-man Inter-Species Relations Initiative team. Good riddance to her. With Pax Kuranes, Casaria had a fresh chance to draw in a kindred spirit, and he was sure she wouldn’t be filing reports on Proper Conduct to wrangle a desk job. As long as he was careful, he could gently ease Pax in, without the attention of the bureaucracy. If it worked out, he’d simply tell the office he’d met her at a later date. He’d return the money in his glove compartment to her himself. Dispose of the forged PO-42c. It would be their little secret.

  If it didn’t work out, no one would ever need to know, and she certainly wasn’t going to be offered promotions and a fast track to management.

  But it would work out, wouldn’t it?

  Imagining a bright future, Casaria finished his curry with a smile.

  All he needed to do was show her what he had to offer. Make the possibilities clear to her. And he had a good idea of where he’d find her.

  10

  “I want it fixed by Monday morning.” Hank Cougan’s broad Yorkshire accent droned through Pax’s voicemail. “Or next Friday’s rent doesn’t even matter – you hear?”

  The last thing Pax needed, with a confirmed psycho watching her home, was her landlord informing her he’d seen the broken window. That had to be another hundred quid or more down the drain, and if she didn’t fi
nd that money, she wouldn’t even be able to negotiate a late rent. If she could survive that long. As she raced to meet Bees, ruing the fact that she hadn’t simply called Barton on the number Bees had found, she developed a short-sighted plan of action.

  “I’m heading to Frankie’s in about half an hour,” Pax told Bees, without so much as a hello, slipping into the seat opposite him. She’d scraped together a little under £60 from her apartment that morning. Frankie would front her the rest of his game’s £100 buy-in, knowing a female player would loosen up the action. She’d spend the evening making up the cost of the window and a little wriggle room for the rent. Forget the World Poker Tour, that dream was dead. Meanwhile she was counting on the psycho caller thinking she was out doing as she’d been asked. She’d avoid that problem by not going home, while she figured out what to do about Rufaizu’s mess.

  Bees had chosen a grimy pub to meet in, though his sunken posture, with an empty pint glass alongside his half-finished one, suggested he would have been here anyway.

  “Enough time for a pint,” he replied. He had a gravelly voice, the sort a man acquired after years of inhaling powdered stone down a mine. His darkly tinged skin and the uniform grey stubble which joined his shaved hair complemented this strange affinity with stone.

  “No, I’ve got to keep my focus,” Pax said, shuffling out of her coat. “It’s payday at the club and I need the cash.”

  “Need a stake?” he offered. She didn’t reply. Pax had refused a thousand stakes from the likes of Bees. She didn’t begrudge criminals their trades at the table, within reason, as they tended to be honourable gamblers with high-stakes games, but she stayed well out of their debt. She wouldn’t even take a marker for a hand she had pat. She’d lost sizable pots due to that caution, but she was happy to pay that price. In her silence, Bees nodded understanding. He wouldn’t probe. Bankrolls came and went; if explanations weren’t offered it was rude to ask. It was enough to know she needed to crash a small game like Frankie’s.

  “So?” Pax leant towards Bees. “What’s so scary you can’t talk about it on the phone?”

  Bees rolled his eyes to check the pub, with the least amount of effort. He said, “What do you make of this bus crash on the news? One of the kids what died, he stood to inherit a lot from his dad. Divorced. Would’ve provided for his mum, but she’s out on her ear, now. Think there’s a connection?”

  Pax waited for him to finish the thought, knowing better than to get drawn into it. He took a sip from his beer, foam collecting around his mouth like a second beard. Sure enough, he abandoned that pondering intro to get to the point.

  “Ministry of Environmental Energy was created about fifteen years ago. Under the guise of tackling climate change and that sort of shit. But there’s already the Department for Environment, see, and there was a Department of Energy and Climate Change until recently. Doing the jobs you’d assume Environmental Energy would.”

  “You think it’s a cover,” Pax concluded. Bees nodded.

  “The MEE has never submitted any reports or shown any evidence of actually doing anything, see. You’ve seen their web portal? Nothing there. All records of them are so obscure you won’t find anything else, neither. Except I happen to have seen a bit of their mandate. They have national jurisdiction to investigate – I kid you not, these are the words in their founding documents – any and all circumstances relating to energy and environment, with practical powers to disband, restrain and otherwise enforce government policy regarding threats. No one independently reviewing their work, though, just a few ministers paid a full-time wage to meet twice a year to go over the Ministry’s budget.”

  “Okay,” Pax said. “So they’re siphoning money into what? Greedy politicians’ pockets? Or something covert? Security?”

  “They’re not lining pockets,” Bees said. He took his time to gulp down more beer, breathing deeply to savour the taste. Someone who didn’t know him might have thought he had nothing left to say. His eyes were dull, resting on Pax without any particular interest. She waited. He said, “This Ministry, it was set up in 2001. There was a big shuffle in Environment departments, all this hoo-ha with foot and mouth disease. You ask me, it’s got nothing to do with climate change, that was only a convenient umbrella to get it through parliament. But they’re not doing nothing, the money’s being used. I got a few ideas on it.”

  Pax waited again, sure he would tell her. He took his time, drinking again and staring into the glass as though his beer held the answers. It distracted him instead.

  “You know these people have been doing whatever they’ve been doing longer than we’ve been allowed to keep pubs open all night? That was 2003. This Ministry had been going two years already, by then. Could be a connection.”

  “Why would there be a connection?” Pax asked, blunt enough to tell him his wandering thoughts weren’t helpful.

  “Not as crazy as you might think,” Bees said, pointing a stubby finger upwards. “I’ve looked into the MEE a couple of times, and there’s two things I’ve pegged them on. One’s that they only seem to come out at night. Everyone that’s met one of these guys has met them at the weirdest hours. I mean, any time after six is weird to meet a civil servant, ain’t that right?”

  “Tell me they’re vampires and I walk,” Pax said. Bees smiled. He had a thick, slightly sinister smile that suggested he might be considering punching your face off. His teeth were a little too big for his mouth.

  “No, I don’t believe they’re of the supernatural,” Bees replied, “But it’s important. Because the other thing I know about them is that they make people disappear. Ronnie Sweet, you remember him?”

  “Fat guy who plays at the Ocean Club. Sure.”

  “Seen him since last October?”

  Pax pictured the ever-sweating sporting goods store manager, always late to a game and always eating. He was one of the many people she loved taking money from but hated being around. It was true, he hadn’t been at a game for a long time. She shrugged. “Maybe he retired.”

  “Sweet asked Mr Monroe for some money, around a year ago. Wanted to open another shop. He’d found this nice property under the arches, near the West Quay. Disappeared before it got started. We got curious, found out he’d had a few meetings with someone from the MEE. Then, poof, vanished.”

  “Could’ve been discussing regulations,” Pax said. “Could be anything. He was meeting with your boss too, you don’t blame him for the disappearance.”

  “No,” Bees grinned. “My boss didn’t disappear him. Want to ask me how I know?”

  Pax shook her head. His boss, Mr Monroe, was a gentleman at the card table, but had an ugly reputation. She had always taken care to distance Bees from the rumours she heard about Monroe, so she could hold conversations with him without a moral crisis.

  “Anyway” – Bees’ smile left his face – “it’s not just him. I found three or four other people with similar stories. People who’ve had a meeting or two with someone from the MEE then vanished. Also found one or two who hadn’t vanished, but met someone late at night claiming to be from the Ministry asking odd questions. Like if they’d seen anything strange on the train tracks.”

  “Right,” Pax said. “What’s your theory?”

  “Clearly,” Bees said, “they’re hiding some nocturnal work. Seems to be something underground. Could be anything, though: illegal gas lines, sneaking war criminals across borders, who the fuck knows.”

  “Those are the two things that spring to your mind,” Pax noted. “Not stockpiling chemical weapons or conducting experiments on aliens?”

  “Could be anything. Nothing seemed to connect these people that disappeared. Maybe they’re watering down alcohol on a national scale,” Bees said, with an air of finality. “Who. The Fuck. Knows.”

  “Whatever the case,” Pax said, “the point is they’re shady and best avoided.”

  “Bingo. And being that they’re government, that means don’t talk about them on the phone and don’t go s
earching on the internet. Now.” Bees gulped down the last of his beer. “You gonna tell me how you came to meet one of them?”

  “In the Sticky Tap. He made someone mysteriously disappear.”

  “Sounds juicy.”

  Pax took out her phone and checked the time. She had a moment of relief in seeing no one had tried to call her, but she needed to get to the game. All this was adding up to the simple conclusion that she wasn’t likely to see Rufaizu or her money ever again, however much she wanted to end this, and whatever the lunatic caller threatened her with. “I’ll tell you about it another time. One more quick question: you ever heard of a group called the Layer Fae?”

  Bees shook his head. “Good name for a biker gang. Interesting word, fey. Could relate to magic, could relate to death and doom. Like, this fey guy, he’s gonna die. No one says that any more, though.”

  “Yet you know it.”

  “Well…” Bees’ smile returned. “I like to know things.”

  “Yeah, me too,” Pax said. “And this ambiguous shit is starting to bug me.”

  Circling around thoughts of Rufaizu in a torture chamber and snipers ready to cripple her, Pax raced towards Frankie’s game, hoping against hope to simply survive the night. If she could scrape her living costs together, maybe she could give the psycho caller the book and the weird device as a compromise. Barton had suggested the Layer Fae weren’t likely to help Rufaizu, but maybe he was wrong – maybe they were his friends, after all. She could give them everything she knew and they could figure it out themselves, couldn’t they? It was neater than the thought that no one was looking out for her brother.

  No. Not her brother. Rufaizu. Some tramp.

  She had to block the madness out, at least for the evening, to play her best and avoid eviction. It’d be easy. The lads at Frankie’s club weren’t the sort to ask about anything personal, they had their own shit to deal with and would sooner talk about that than worry about her. She could unwind. She could pick up on the hot streak she’d enjoyed the night before.