Hard Light (22 page)

“That's from the Roman occupation—Londinium. I always loved it, it…”

I waited for him to go on, but he got out his mobile, and spent the next few minutes agitatedly texting before placing a call.

“Yo, Leon,” he mumured. “Adrian. I'll be there in about thirty minutes with a friend. When you see Krish, tell her to wait for us. Cheers.”

He slid the phone into his pocket and turned to me.

“Tamsin,” he said. “It has to be. Her and Morven fell out years ago. They never fell back in. She's the one person knows Poppy and Morven and Mallo; none of them would be surprised if she showed up at the door. Or, they might be surprised, but I doubt they would have slammed the door in her face. Leith used heroin; he was never properly a junkie, but Tamsin knew her away around getting it, either from the NHS or someone else.”

“What about Mallo? Wasn't he a dealer?”

Adrian shook his head. “Only for the raves we did together. It was like a franchise—I'd arrange for the DJ and the venue. We had no overhead—we always worked out of abandoned buildings, so we only had to charge five quid at the door. Mallo would supply the drugs; him or one of his mates would be up on the second floor of wherever we were. That's how we made money. But not heroin or freebase. Ecstasy and ketamine and acid. Speed. Cocaine sometimes, but mostly X and acid. No hard drugs.”

I shifted in my seat, wishing I'd thought to nab a bottle from the Dunfrieses' liquor cabinet. The aisle grew more crowded as people filed onto the bus. A woman who wore a fast food uniform beneath her parka; an off-duty bus driver; several teenage girls dressed improbably for a late night on the town, their pink puffy coats soaking wet and bare legs goosebumped with cold. In the seat in front of me slumped a middle-aged woman with a child on her lap.

Everyone except for the girls appeared as exhausted as I felt. I rubbed my eyes and looked at Adrian. “Why would Tamsin suddenly freak out like this? How could she think she'd get away with it?”

“She
has
gotten away with it,” Adrian retorted. “I still can't find anything about Poppy online. She'll just sit in that flat until…”

His voice trailed off. He seemed decades older than when I'd first met him just a few days earlier, his skin gray and dark eyes sunken, his louche expression hardened into a despair that appeared close to fury. I thought of Quinn, the beautiful boy I'd first known decades ago, and how smack and booze and blood had transformed him into something almost unrecognizable, except to another creature like himself.

I asked, “Does Quinn know Tamsin?”

Adrian gazed at me with loathing. “How would I know? I never saw them together, if that's what you're hoping for. Or maybe you're hoping he murdered them? Would that make your sick little romance complete?”

I clenched my camera bag to keep from hitting him. “Fuck you,” I said. The woman in front of me turned to shoot me a disapproving look. “If you're so worried, call the fucking cops.”

“Keep your goddamn voice down,” Adrian warned. “If the police get dragged in, we're both fucked. Quinn, too, if they can finger him.”

“So we find another squat and crash there until they
do
find us? Screw that.”

“No. We're going to get Krish and get out of here.”

“Krish? Why the hell do we need Krish?”

“Because whoever killed Poppy and Morven and Mallo probably knows Krish, too.”

“And you.”

“And me. And maybe you, too. Krish says she's at a squat party not too far from here. I know the guy who's running it. Can you drive a standard?”

“You mean a car? Yeah, sure.”

“Good.” He cocked his head toward the bus exit. “Get off here.”

We grabbed our bags and pushed our way down the aisle. When I glanced back, I saw the woman with the child glaring after me. I mouthed the words
fuck off
and loped down the sidewalk after Adrian.

 

27

The rave was in a large free-standing structure that had been a hotel early in the last century. Now its piss-colored brick was covered with graffiti, the windows boarded up and the doors repaired with plywood. A small crowd had gathered in the street, smoking and talking. A girl bent to scoop up a snowball and tossed it, laughing, at someone on the curb. Near the far end of the block, two policemen stood and observed it all with bored expressions.

At the front of the building, a brick arch bore the name CUDLINTON HOTEL, the first word effaced so it read CUNT. Beneath this was the building's once-grand entrance, now reduced to a bashed-in metal door guarded by several men in black anoraks and Happy Face–yellow T-shirts bearing the name REGICIDE PROJECT.

“Hullo, Adrian,” one of them said, bumping fists with him. “Lovely weather.”

I'd become so inured to the sleet and cold that I hadn't registered it was snowing again. Adrian shook a flurry of white from his anorak's hood. “Yeah. Happy Christmas, Usman. Tolly said Krish is here?”

Usman nodded. “Was earlier. I saw her go in—can't say if she left by a back door. I haven't seen her since then.”

“Thanks.” Adrian held out his hand, and Usman stamped it with the image of a broken crown. “Can you do her, too? She's with me.”

Usman nodded and stamped my hand, and we went inside. A few of the anorak-clad guys called greetings to Adrian as we walked down a dingy corridor, but within moments it was impossible to hear anything over the pulsing din of electronic music. Dubstep, basstep, Schranz—it all boils down to the throb of blood in the skull and a migraine nightmare of flashing lights and smoke machines.

Back in the day, I'd spent plenty of time at Xenon and Hurrah, where you could dance ecstatically, inhale enough amyl nitrate and blow to induce a heart attack, and get laid more than once without leaving the premises.

The scene here looked—and smelled—pretty similar. Sweat and the eye-watering tang of poppers, skunk weed, and beer hung over a cavernous dark room irradiated by blinding flashes of colored light and dazzling pops of crimson and emerald from LED-enhanced clothing. Less public sex than forty years ago but more beats per minute, bass heavy enough to reduce my bones to sludge if I stuck around too long.

The crowd was young, clots of dancers with eyes closed, arms raised or held stiffly at the side, and faces intent with concentration as though deciphering some crucial message from the cacophony of clicks and pops, sampled strings and voices, snatches of long-forgotten songs and ethereal synthesizers. Against one wall, a DJ had set up on a makeshift platform. Banks of speakers and cables snaked around a spidery figure, backlit by lasers as it hopped back and forth between a pair of laptops and a turntable.

I shaded my eyes against the light and pushed my way through the crowd. I had grown accustomed to feeling like a ghost. Here I saw I was only one in a room thronged with phantoms who stared at their mobiles while they twitched restlessly, life-size avatars of whatever stared back at them from their glowing blue screens.

I kept Adrian within my line of sight, not as difficult as I'd feared. There only seemed to be a few hundred people in the vast space. Maybe the weather had kept the crowd down, or maybe this was par for the course. If so, I now understood why Adrian had to live in a squat—at five quid a head, the take would only be a thousand pounds, and the DJ and sound crew would take a substantial share of that.

Adrian wove in and out of the crowd, occasionally waving at someone or stopping to ask a question. As we neared the DJ's setup, Adrian suddenly arrowed toward the wall, where a tattooed giant in a REGICIDE PROJECT T-shirt guarded an open doorway.

Adrian greeted him and the guard let us pass, into a small dark hallway with a narrow set of stairs. A few people leaned against the wall, eyes shut, catching their breath or perhaps nodding out. The only light came from a large battery-powered flashlight propped above the door.

I followed Adrian upstairs. It was even darker here, the corridor crowded with shadowy figures who filed from a black doorway to head back down to the dance floor. A man leaned against the wall, holding a flashlight beneath his chin so that his head appeared to float, disembodied, in the darkness.

“Is that Tolly?” called Adrian.

“It is.” The disembodied head grinned and shook back a sheaf of red hair. “Looking for Krishna?”

Tolly pointed into the shadowy room beyond, and we entered. The floor vibrated from the steady bass thud downstairs. Around us, an unseen crowd moved slowly, talking in hushed voices or laughing shrilly as in mockery of the party below. The air had a faint smell of rotten wood and excrement. I heard someone gag as a reassuring voice murmured, “That always happens.”

In the center of the room a woman and a man sat on folding chairs. Adrian made his way to the woman, her head lowered as she counted pound notes and folded them into a nylon pouch.

“Tatiana,” he said.

She looked up sharply, then nodded. “Oh, Adrian, hello. You on a busman's holiday?”

“I'm looking for Krishna Morgenthal. Tolly said she was here earlier?”

“Still is,” said the man beside Tatiana. He turned on a flashlight and swept its beam across the room. Cadaverous figures appeared to jerk and leap in the sudden flare, until it settled on a girl who sat on the floor, legs stretched out before her. “Feeling no pain. Did you want anything?” He fanned out a handful of small white envelopes, like a deck of cards.

“Not tonight. Can you point that torch over there for a moment?”

The man nodded. The flashlight's beam fixed on Krishna, and she held a hand in front of her face as though warding off a photographer's flash. Adrian stared at her, then glanced back at the man. “I hope that's not what it looks like.”

“I told her not to do it all at once. She's such a wee thing.”

“Been a couple hours,” said Tatiana. “She'll have danced it off by now.”

I walked over to Krishna and crouched beside her. She didn't look like she was up to much dancing. I thought at first that someone had beaten her. The sarcophagus makeup was smeared across her face, and her pupils had shrunk almost to invisibility. I touched her cheek, the skin hot and moist, like a feverish child's. Her hair stuck in wormy tendrils to her forehead. I pushed a strand behind her ears.

“Wakey wakey,” I said.

Krishna blearily looked up.

“Ado.” Her voice was thick, and I couldn't tell if she actually saw Adrian—it seemed more like she was still in the grips of whatever drug she'd taken. She ran her tongue along her cracked lips, set one hand on the floor, tried to push herself up, then flopped back. “I know,” she whispered, staring at me with pinned eyes.

I pulled her up, pinching her chin between my thumb and forefinger until she squealed in protest and slapped at me.

“That's better,” I said, and turned to Adrian. “Can you get her other side?”

We got Krishna to her feet, slung one of her arms around each of us and carried her downstairs. She cursed at Adrian, kicking at him ineffectually until abruptly she went limp and became a hundred pounds of dead weight. I couldn't tell if this was out of spite—she was still breathing—or if she'd passed out once more. I began to wish she'd remained unconscious, or that Adrian had just called an ambulance.

At last we got outside. I'd feared the cold and snow might conspire to wake Krishna from her stupor. Instead she moaned and sank to the ground, talking incomprehensibly to herself. It was impossible to move her—when we tried, she gave a garbled shriek and attempted to claw at Adrian's face.

“Fucking
bastard.
”

Frowning, I glanced at Adrian. What the hell had he done to piss her off? He looked around in despair. People were watching us; pretty soon we'd draw a crowd. I saw the two cops at the end of the block gaze in our direction, and turned back to Krishna.

“Come on, Krish,” I urged. “You're gonna fucking freeze to death.”

I peeled off Bruno's heavy overcoat and draped it across her shoulders so the leather hood shielded her face. There was nothing to be done about the rest of her attire—a man's pinstriped suit jacket draped over a floppy red sweater and a short plaid skirt, and chunky Doc Martens with no socks. Her bare white legs were goosepimpled with cold. I hugged her tight, hoping that any onlookers would mistake our clinch for passion and not desperation.

“Remember me? ‘Be My Baby'?”

Krishna's eyelids fluttered. “Yah, maybe. Who're you?”

I zipped up my leather jacket and ran a hand across my cropped black hair. “Cass. We met at the Banshee a few nights ago. I got a haircut.”

“Cass.” She screwed up her eyes, staring at my cropped head. “I like it.”

“That's great.” I gave Adrian a nod, indicating he should move fast, then said, “Listen, Krish—I'm getting a cab, why don't you come with me?”

“Where we going?”

“I have no fucking clue,” I said, and she laughed.

“Yah, sure.” She staggered to her feet, and I caught her before she could fall. “Less go.”

We managed to get her around the block and out of sight of the cops. “C'mon, Krish, straighten up,” I said impatiently, but it was hopeless. She was surprisingly strong for such a tiny person. Her head lolled onto her chest and she dragged both feet. When I glanced over my shoulder, I saw two ragged lines drawn in the snow, as though a tiny, drunken skier accompanied us.

“Hang on to her while I find a cab,” Adrian said at last, defeated. “Try to make her not look like a drug casualty.”

“Yeah, right,” I said.

Adrian stood beneath a streetlight and spoke into his mobile. He held up his hand and mouthed
Five minutes
. It took a little longer than that, but when a taxi at last pulled over, Adrian quickly opened the door. I slid inside, dragging Krishna after me, and Adrian hopped in last.