Edge (20 page)

    "Gotta happen. He's just torn up Laurenson's clothes. They'll change the rules and make 'em fight, guaranteed."

    "Shit, that Knife Edge House."

    "Crazy, ain't it?"

    "Wish I was in there."

    "Huh? Now that is insane. Spycams on you for what, three months? Can't even pull the weasel in private, so how would you survive?"

    So it was here again, the world's craziness swirling around, Knifefighter Challenge and all the rest, and couldn't anyone see how insane it was? But he remem bered Mr Dutton, in the calm of his classroom, explaining that we create our models of the world through perceptual filters, so people see what they focus on: "'
To
someone with a hammer, everything looks like a nail.
' Anyone know who said that?"

    He and Jayce and Opal and Brian lived in a different world, saw different things than–

    
Arches, Wandsworth, 9pm Thursday.

    Jayce had got him to write the words, a reminder of someplace he had to be. Tonight. Of course. And he probably knew nothing of the men who were looking for him. Someone had to tell him.

Finally, so tired from what seemed a full day walking, Richard reached the right area. He passed a road that would lead back to the squat, but ignored it, following the railway line overhead. If he had misunderstood, then there was nothing he could do; but if arches meant railway arches, then Jayce would be around here somewhere. He looked around as a scarlet bullet bus whooshed past. No sign of… A splash of red hair. The same shirt. Blanket beneath one arm. Jayce was ambling along the main road.

    Richard called out, but Jayce kept moving along, head bobbing.

    "Hey! Jayce! Jayce!"

    He waved both arms. Several passersby glanced at him.

    "Jayce!"

    The redhead turned – it was him – then turned left and disappeared behind a building.

    Why did he do that?

    Trying to jog, Richard moved faster, or at least with more effort – could you call it a limp if it was in both legs? – feeling the jolt in his knees. Three rats bigger than his forearm scampered across the street in front of him. Turning a corner, he skirted a bulbous pile of binbags, starting to wheeze, no longer with the breath to shout for Jayce. This was not a good place – sensitised now, he noted the street cams smeared with black, like congealed tar. Up ahead, Jayce broke into a run.

    "Wait…"

    His vision was watery, his gait a continuous stumble, unable to understand why Jayce was intent on getting away – doesn't he recognise me? – while scarcely noticing the silver-grey van that screeched past, heading in the same direction but an awful lot faster. Seconds later, smoke pouring from the wheel arches, tyres screaming, it swung across the road. A door banged open, three men tumbled out, and then they had Jayce. Levering his arms, they swung him inside, rolled back in, and closed the door, the van already accelerating, hurtling around a corner, and out of his world.

    Jayce…

    But that was the end of him. Richard took some dreamlike paces forward. Jayce had been standing right there, where the blanket had fallen.

    I should call the police.

    But what he imagined was heavy hands coming down on his shoulders, snapping cuffs around his wrists, and throwing him into a police van much as the strangers had done to Jayce.

    He picked up the blanket.

    It's Jayce's, isn't it?

    Did he want to remember his sort-of friend? Or was he just keeping an abandoned item that he could use? Was this all that life was on the streets?

    It's awful here.

    He rolled the blanket, draped it over his shoulder, walked on.

Somehow he found himself amid greenery, sitting on grass and staring at a flowering plant, captivated by its leaves more than its yellow blossoms. He blinked, trying to remember how he'd got here. It was a tiny public garden, no more area than a large town house, encircled with tall brick walls. Rhododendrons and other things he couldn't name grew from strips of black soil, surrounding lawn grass, impeccably maintained.

    During his walk here, he had passed a pub just as a door slammed open and a man flew out, launched by two large bouncers. On screen it would have looked like a cartoon, but up close the suddenness, the thump of bone on pavement, made it physical. From inside the pub came the sound of shattering glass, and the larger bouncer said: "When will this heat let up? People are going nuts."

    "Keeps us in work," his colleague answered. "Got your baton? Let's get back in there."

    Here in the garden, the heat was peaceful, and there was little traffic sound, though it was in the heart of London. As he thought that, a beep sounded, high up. On spycams atop the walls, orange lights were flashing, and an automated warning sounded. "
This park will close
in five minutes. Please vacate. Thank you, ladies and gentle
men."

    There was no one besides Richard. No camera was turned in his direction. He moved deep beneath a rhododendron.

    
"Please vacate the park. Thank you."

    There was only one gate, made of patterned steel bars, taller than a man. And on the street beyond–

    –someone in a dark uniform was coming closer. He strode into the park, turned around and called: "Anybody there?" Back at the gate, he pressed his thumb against a scanpad and exited. Steel swung shut, clanged, then locks clicked home.

    Richard was shut in.

    From his hiding place, he could see a wooden bench, luminous in the sunset, a bronze plaque glowing: IN MEMORY OF JASMINE BARCLAY, 1991-2022. Had she sat here? Alone or with others? Did she take sandwiches to feed the birds? Underneath Father's headquarters in the City, as in so many corporate buildings, was a glasslined basement containing Roman ruins, once occupied by Roman soldiers, some perhaps from Tuscany, dreaming of their vineyards, suffering in the British chill. Everything was so… temporary.

    His eyelids drooped. Still crouched beneath shrubbery, he felt his shirt beneath his chin, realised his head had lowered; then toppled downward into sleep.

 

It was nearly 7pm when Josh's phone chirped and Petra's image grinned at him. He had been in a dark, quiet mood for hours, staring at the barges on the Thames, seeing the man he had killed, smelling the stench, not comforted by the memory of naked teenagers turned into nanoviral factories, and the knowledge that he would kill again in such a situation.

    "Hey, lover. I wanted to give you an invitation."

    "Petra. What kind of invitation?"

    Earlier, he had gone to the hostel at Zenith Place, checking out the only piece of information Khan had given him. No one had recognised the pictures of Jayce or Richard. But one of the volunteers mentioned that there were other volunteers and other clients – meaning drop-in homeless people – so that if he came back later, he might get better results. What he ought to do was return now, and check again, not stand around chatting to Petra.

    "The short-notice kind of invite that says, come round to my place tonight, for late supper, dinner, whatever."

    "Your place?"

    "With zero evil intentions on my part, tight-buns. Yukiko will be there, and she gets jealous. Bring your girlfriend, make it a foursome."

    "She isn't my… Well."

    Petra was a careful planner. If she were going to invite him over for dinner – which had never happened before – it would have been two weeks in advance, with detailed interrogation about allergies and preferences. But if he were to pick a list of places likely to be hardened against eavesdropping, her flat would be in the top ten.

    "So you're coming, then?"

    "I guess so. Can't speak for Suzanne, though."

    "Come anyway. Bring her if she's free."

    "I'll do my best. See you later."

    "Later."

    One of the barges sounded electronic chimes, for no reason he could see. He watched it move across the darkening water, against a backdrop of golden-orange radiance and the ornate silhouette of Parliament. Then he called Suzanne.

    "Oh, hi, Josh. I was expecting another call. Good to see you."

    "Sorry, is this a bad time?"

    "I've a client coming – this is my late night at Elliptical House. Evening appointments, once a week."

    "I didn't realise."

    "So, if you want to talk in person, be here at eight, when my seven o'clock leaves."

    "Petra's invited us to her place. For supper. And her, uh, partner will be there. Yukiko."

    "You want to go?"

    "I think we should."

    An eavesdropper might think they were a couple, the way they were talking. He had emphasised should as a way of suggesting they had things to talk about, but only offline. He thought Suzanne understood.

    "So you want to come here, and we can go together?"

    "Sure."

    "See you in a bit, then."

    "Yeah. See you."

    He sighed when her image winked out.

A night-time receptionist at Elliptical House made him sign in, just to wait downstairs. He hoped that Suzanne was equally security conscious. If she started to say anything untoward, he would have to stop her. As the lift door dinged open, he felt his breathing stop, and perhaps his mouth drifted open, because her presence was as amazing as he had remembered.

    Her kiss on his cheek was acetylene fire, or maybe sheet lightning.

    "Josh. Hey. So we're off to visit Petra. That'll be nice."

    "Well, I'm hungry and she promised us supper."

    "Bad Josh." To the receptionist: "Night, Bill. Regards to Shannon."

    "I'll pass it on. Night, Suzanne."

    Josh smiled at the guy, because if he was on a firstname basis with Suzanne, he must be all right. So how do I know that? But he just did, that was all. As they exited, he took hold of Suzanne's hand, her skin so electric, and she allowed it to happen without flinching, just like a pro, making no mention of the hard object in his palm. When their hands disengaged it was quite natural, and she waited until they stopped at the kerb on Victoria Street before pushing at her hair, a covering gesture as she inserted the earbead he had passed her.

    With the traffic noise, it was easier to form the words in his throat like humming, not opening his mouth: "If you have a throat mic, the bead will tune in to it, without your phone. Otherwise, you'll just have to listen."

    They reached the entrance to the Tube, and began to descend, the mag-escalator scraping, though it was supposed to be silent. Suzanne looped her throat cord in place, started to attach her phone, then shook her head as though changing her mind. A disconnected throat mic, though it had a tiny processor, would normally be useless without a phone; but the earbead would already be hooking in by infrared, acting as transceiver, its signal firmware-encrypted.

    "Josh?" Her neck muscles moved. "How's this?"

    "Good. Petra said there was a watch on query attempts, for anyone searching for Richard Broomhall."

    "Yes, I remember."

    "Petra's never invited me to her place. She worded the invite as if it were natural, you know? Like she's always doing it."

    "She's being watched?"

    They were on the platform now, and a train was whooshing in.

    "Nice timing," Josh said aloud, then subvocalised: "Her or us. It takes official sanction for Broomhall to be on a watch list."

    There was a vacant seat and she took it, while Josh turned to stand by the door. As the train slid into the tunnel and the windows went black, he stared, hoping to look lost in thought.

    "OK," subvocalised Suzanne. "What about the Brezhinski family?"

    Josh blinked. The injured boy Marek, and his parents in Swindon. He had forgotten. "You called them?"

    "We talked, and I think I can help them. Where do you want me to do it?"

    "What do you mean?"

    "Isn't this part of the search for Richard?"

    She didn't know about Sophie. "Um, not really. I just thought you could help."

    "Then it doesn't matter whether they come to London or I travel to Swindon."

    "No. Except–"

    He shut down his mind.
Except I have to go see Maria,
and the only reason she wants to see me is to make it official,
because she's leaving me for good. I'm sure that's it.

    In her seat, Suzanne twitched her head, grew still. Had she heard? The problem with subvocalising was that sometimes you transmitted too much. He clucked his tongue, deactivating the mike.
Balls
. When he looked again, Suzanne was staring at the advert screens, with the bored expression of any other traveller.

    
She knows.

    Or maybe he was wrong, because she was impossible to read and totally intriguing; and how could he be thinking like this? Petra's supper invitation was a signal to be careful, and his attention needed to be out in the world, not wrapped up in his own head. Among the other passengers, no one betrayed the signs of trained watchers: the use of geometry and reflection, or a toodeliberate attempt to ignore him.

    One missing boy. That's all we're after.

    But the real world was more complicated and nastier than simple missions. And it always threw surprises, his being Sophie, and the end of the future he had always imagined.

• • •

Petra grinned at them, ushering them inside her flat. Josh checked the short hallway – droplet-lensed cameras, spyballs, beaded the interior – and stopped at the edge of the lounge. It was far bigger than expected, with a sunken square in the middle, and black leather couches running along the edges. The floor was polished wood. And as part of the effect, the other occupant was beautiful, dressed in trousers and threequarter-sleeve shirt.