Mappa Mundi (7 page)

Natalie took a step back into the puddle that was the top step and heel-toed off her good shoes. Balancing on her left leg she karate-kicked the door on its fattest part, just by the handle. Her foot throbbed with protest, but the door swung back and slapped the wall with a noise like a gunshot that echoed in the hall and down the street. If she hadn't been doing it every day for two weeks it would have shocked the daylights out of her. It was easier to shut—she heaved against it with her bottom, her wet feet slipping on the cold floor. She leaned on the angry wood and rested. Only the stairs now—six flights, but carpeted.

Her fantasy of domestic bliss had not come true. She could tell that much just by standing in the tiny hall and looking through the various doorways.

There were odd sounds in the living room and a smog that told her Dan was in and not alone. The kitchen lights were on, showing that spag-bol had been enthusiastically cooked and then left to boil over.

She picked up her case and barged the living-room door open, making plenty of announcing-herself noise. The lights were out but as she passed the sofa reflected gleams of flame (from
her
fancy gothic candelabra and
her
candles) shone pale off three legs, an arm, and a tangle of throw-cloth on the sofa, items which her brain all-too-easily resolved into Dan and his guest
in flagrante.

She lifted her case right up next to her face to block them from her sight as she stumbled through the piles of clothes on the floor.

“Didn't see anything, didn't see anything!” she repeated in a quick burst.

Dan mumbled from somewhere in the many-limbed hillock, “'S all right, we're just about done anyway.”

From behind the thin panels of her own door she thought that the
other voice sounded like it belonged to Slow Joe, the alleged deejay who was either always one night before or one night after a really good gig that somehow Natalie or Dan never managed to get to—“You work freakth are alwayth thtuck in the offith, like. No freethtyle happenin'!” The voice had an affected lisp on top of its affected accent that was supposed to make it sound artistic. Definitely the man himself.

Natalie put the radio on to a talk station so that Joe wouldn't find an excuse to come in and start moaning about music. She opened her case and prised out the box of fried rice she'd bought on the way home. No cutlery. Well, she wasn't going through Mata Hari's boudoir scene again.

She was eating, using two pencils for chopsticks, with her face halfway inside the carton when Dan put his head round the door. His shaggy-brown-dog hair and spaced-out expression were perpetual, as though he was living in his own portable Barbados. She envied it with all her heart.

“Hello, Smiler!” He beamed at her. “How's things at the mad factory?”

It always annoyed Natalie that he talked as though he didn't work there himself, as though he had nothing to do with the place and could just leave it without a second thought, which was true. He could. She, on the other hand, had responsibilities…but she'd had enough martyrdom for one night.

She scowled. “What's that stuff in the air?”

“Joe brought it. Cuban something. ‘S useless, anyway. Bit late for you, though. Swinging from the rigging all over town, are they? Weather brings it out in people, I reckon. Rain all the time. What they need is some serious smoke.” He seemed to notice that she wasn't joining in and gestured with his nose towards the papers and electronics scattered around her, “You never know when to quit the job, do you?”

“I'm fine.” She scrubbed her feet against the carpet and nodded towards the door with a look that asked when Joe was leaving.

“Yeah, you look it. Left your shoes downstairs again? Joe's just going. I'll get ‘em.” He vanished, leaving a puff of incense and poppy ash in his wake that boiled up in the stale air of her room and then vanished.

“Your cheap conjuring does not impress me, Doctor Connor,” she said, eyes narrowed, and then sighed and looked around her. Even pantomime villains did better than this.

Peeling wallpaper, still not fixed after two years. Dirty clothes on the floor right. Part-used on the floor middle. Washed and dried but not ironed, floor left. Washed and dried, no chance of ironing
ever
, hanging on each post of the bedhead like two dead angels moulting. The incense covered most of the faint smell of mildew coming from the sash windows and it made her sneeze.

She got up to see if Slow had gone yet, and got an eyeful of bare buttock trying to squeeze itself into tight trousers that were made of some material that glowed blue in the dark. He had a sixth sense for any kind of attention and turned on her with a sneer at her grey work suit.

“Fashion pathing you by again, ith it?” he said, the effect spoiled as he hopped to put his shoes on. He gave her a twirl when he was done, and had to thrust a hand out to the table to stop himself falling over. Cologne, alcohol, and fresh sweat wafted off him. A nervous giggle passed his lips and was stifled. He glanced to see if she'd noticed.

“It's pathed you on the way back again,” she retorted, unable to prevent herself mimicking his lisp. “Where did you get that shirt? It looks like it's made of cheese.”

“Pith off.” He grabbed his coat from the darkness on the sofa and gave her the fingers.

She gave them back to him without any interest. “Got any gigs lined up?”

“Got any life lined up?” he shot back over his shoulder as he groped around in the half-light, picking things up and stuffing them in his pockets.

Natalie watched him, trying to see what items of debauchery he'd
brought with him, or if he was stealing, but it was too difficult and besides, she didn't know what she or Dan owned that was worth the bother. She hadn't got enough energy left to make a witty response to his last dig. Instead, she chewed her rice at him vacantly, following his every move until he made for the door, his trousers giving him the revolving hip action of a carriage clock. It looked painful and she was glad. She thumbed the lights and the TV on and sat down, with only a trace of revulsion, in the warm crater that was the sofa.

It was good to be home.

She felt even better when Dan returned with her shoes, rescued from the puddle outside. He put them to dry under the radiator and sat down next to her. They both stared at the big-screen doings of some US police show involving a team of trained dogs. Dan liked the programme: it reminded him of
White Fang
, but less romantic.

“Some bloke called,” he said after a minute.

Her heart sank; she knew no one. “Who?”

“I dunno. Some American.”

“Shit. When?” An efficient stalker she could live without. “What did you say?” She put the rice down and searched around for the remote. Dan was sitting on it.

“Important is he?” Dan said, feigning lack of interest.

“Move your arse. I didn't say that.”

Dan turned his head and looked down at her, “Got a fancy man, have we? All tucked away at the Hilton when she says she's going to do the volunteer hotline. And such a virtuous cover story, too.”

“And if I did, why would he be calling here?” Natalie leaned over him to make a grab for the house controller but he picked it up first and held it out of her reach. “Dan!”

“If you tell me…” he began.

“He called the hotline!” she snapped. “Tonight. He called me there and he knew my name. I don't want some mad git knowing everything about me.”

Dan's taunting grin softened. He let her have the remote.

Natalie cued the answer service. It was the same man. There was no image, only voice. It played over the silenced pictures of slo-mo malamutes on patrol.

“Doctor Armstrong? I've gotta see you straightaway. Please call. Here's the number, in case you didn't get the message at the Clinic. I'll be at the hotel.”

“You think he's a nut?” Dan asked, using his toe to pick up a sock from the carpet. “He sounds normal. Could have got your number from the Clinic registry.”

“Not the flat number,” she said. “And they always start by sounding normal. Mostly. And here, what would you bet on it? He says he's an agent for the FBI, but he's in Britain. He says he has to see me, but not why. He doesn't give any proof of ID. His name, for Christ's sake, is
Jude Westhorpe.
Allegedly.”

“Now you mention it, it does sound something of a long shot.” Dan drew a thumb and forefinger around his nonexistent goatee and narrowed his eyes. His heavy fringe came down like the fire curtain at a theatre and made him look like an old sheepdog. “Ten quid he's real.”

“Done.” She finished her rice and threw the carton onto the table.

In the dark and the quiet the room smelled terrible; smoke and sweat, sex and old dust. The TV dogs bounded down an alley and leapt a six-foot chain link fence. Soft rock accompanied their flight as Dan cued the sound. Natalie stood up to open the window and let a blast of cold air in. She looked out at the night across the roofs of the terraces opposite and wondered where life was going. She'd done nothing important in six months. She had her interview with the Ministry to wait for. If that went bad then she didn't know what she'd do. She didn't like to think of leaving, not when Dan was here. Without her, what would he get up to?

Under her sore, door-karate foot she felt something unidentifiable, but moist and a little slimy. It was, curiously, the most sensual and attractive experience she could remember having in recent weeks.

“I'm off to bed.”

Dan snorted, “What, and I threw Joe out for one mad bloke's phone call and two minutes of mind-numbing conversation? Jesus, it's more fun at work.”

“Yeah,” she said and was already more than half asleep before her head hit the pillow. As Natalie slid out of the waking world it occurred to her that half asleep was the state she lived in these days. Awake was something she wouldn't know if it bit her on the ankle. Awake people noticed that Dan needed her attention and she didn't do that. She tried to get up and apologize but it was too late for that. Her mind slipped from her and into the dark.

Jude Westhorpe stood on the long straight section of Haxby Road where the spiked iron railings that surrounded the York Clinic for Psychiatric and Psychological Research were overhung by mature lime trees offering a small measure of concealment. He idled for a minute or two to look, his jacket slung over his shoulder, expression vague, pretending to be a curious tourist. The trees formed a single row that bordered a wide swathe of grass, landscaped in curves and dips so that it held the old red-brick buildings as though in the palm of a protecting hand. He recognized the pattern as one that made fast running impossible and mowing a trial. On the far side of the compound the parking lot was a maze of thorny bushes, again giving no clear escape routes.

Jude began walking slowly along the lane. Closer to the gates he noticed that there was a uniformed security official/greeter at the door, who was connected by lapel mike to the ones manning the barriers at the fence. He made as though to tie his laces, reaching through the rails at the same time to recover the tiny surveillance unit he'd left the day before. He had a feeling his high-tech espionage was all in vain. From the aerials and dishes on the flat roof of the modern block to the suspiciously large number of people who moved around the doors, he didn't think there was going to be an easy way in,
and this Armstrong woman wasn't going to call him, not with the approach tactics he'd used so far.

Once he was out of sight of the Clinic he paused to sit on a bench, wood grey with age and wear, on its back a bronze plaque that said “Mrs. Phillip Sillitoe, MP.” He used his Pad to check Armstrong's picture again—by now it was almost etched on his brain. He looked for her everywhere he went: a small woman, early thirties, slim, with a red-purple crop cut and a face made elfin and bold at the same time by sharp cheekbones and a powerful, long mouth that she usually lipsticked in shocking colour. Her mouth fascinated him. It looked like it would open onto something more than just teeth and tongue. It looked as though something wicked and erotic, sharp and lethal lived inside it and could leap out.

The surveillance unit hadn't managed to get any sightings of her. Jude sighed with annoyance and made himself start walking towards the city centre. The hangers-on he'd seen must be Ministry agents or plainclothes police, and he had maybe two days left before someone noticed that he wasn't on vacation at his mother's house in Seattle. He had to do something more drastic.

Considering exactly what this could be lengthened his walk until he was almost through the centre of the impossibly tiny town, approaching one of the bridges that crossed the river. Unwilling to go further he took a turn down to the waterfront and bought a drink at the small pub there named the King's Arms, which seemed to be one of the attractions he ought to visit, judging by the number of students and pot-bellied men loafing around it.

The barman, a genial, overweight, utterly unremarkable man in some new, sleazy shirt whose material played video images across the pockets, served him a pint of Theakston's; a dark beer, it smelled faintly of vinegar and old, watery cellars. Jude watched the windows on the man's chest, sun setting behind the clouds, a flight of black-winged gulls. He wondered what the images were supposed to tell him
and briefly wondered what he'd put on his own pockets if he had the bad taste to try it. Probably a picture of some fabric, the same as the rest of the shirt. Ironic, but not very original.

Jude sighed with annoyance at his own predictability, took the drink outside, and sat at a trestle table that was covered in old glasses and sandwich packets, drinking the beer very slowly. In obedience to his wishes and the alcohol in his otherwise empty stomach time stretched out and developed holes, beckoning him to fall into them.

He stared at the river. The water was high enough to be almost level with his feet. Brown and thick, it was full of unpredictable currents, slow on the surface, racing underneath. It looked almost like you could walk on it. Getting into the clinic would be like that, too—like walking on water.