Touch (37 page)

and it occurred to me

rather late in the day

that she wasn’t wearing gloves.

Then the security guard, she with the face of stern rebuttal from the door, was inside the courtyard, radio in hand, shouting, stop, everyone, stop, and it was not Pamela who ran, but Coyle, blood pouring from his nose, bare hands outstretched for the woman’s face.

From the floor I grabbed the guard’s ankle, my fingers closing an instant before Galileo’s, and I

jumped,

slamming my radio up into the flesh below Coyle’s chin.

He staggered back, one arm sweeping a great smear of blood and nasal liquid across his face, over the side of his cheek and lips. I looked into my face

into Coyle’s face

into the face that was Galileo

shook my head, thought about begging, thought about kneeling at his feet

but he drew his fist back to strike, and I dug my radio into the wound on his shoulder, twisting the butt as hard as I dared, and Coyle

not-Coyle

screamed, the animal scream of a beast caught in barbed wire, and slammed his fist into the side of my face hard enough to knock my teeth together inside my jaw. I tasted salt and blood and loose fillings as I fell. Coyle ran by me, heading for the door, staggered through the red rope that guarded the entrance and out into the crowds of the museum.

I crawled up on to my hands and knees and looked back.

Pamela, struggling to her feet, the gun useless in her hand.

My unnamed, abandoned host in beautiful new clothes, slowly going to ruin as blood seeped from her flesh. Morgan, still sitting on his chair, his eyes turned upwards at nothing at all, his hands loose by his side. Five shots Galileo had fired as she struggled for the gun; one of them had found their home in the sponsor’s chest.

Pam’s eyes turned slowly and settled on her master, the beginning of a choke that might become a sob rising from her throat, and there was no time, no time at all as I staggered on to my feet, picked up my radio and ran into the museum.

At its busiest the Metropolitan Museum of Art can handle fifty thousand visitors a day.

This was not its busiest; there were probably only two or three thousand souls wandering through its halls.

I found Coyle gasping for breath at the top of the stairs, a small crowd of people tactfully trying not to stare. I slammed my knee into his chest, my elbow into his throat, pushing him back against the cold floor, and roared, “Who are you?!”

“Coyle!” he squeaked. “You know me as Coyle!”

“Who was I the night Marigare fired?” He didn’t answer so I dug my elbow a little deeper, his eyes rolling, tongue flopping against his lips. “Who was I?!”

“Nurse! You were… Samir! Samir Chayet!”

“Who drove you to Lyon?”

“Irena. You. Irena!” The sound barely escaped past the weight of security guard pressing down on to him, the tips of his ears bright crimson.

I rolled off him as more onlookers gathered round our little scene. “Who did you touch?” I whispered. “Who did you touch?”

“A woman. She had red hair. My shoulder…”

“I hit it. Sorry.”

Inspecting the crowd – woman with red hair, woman with red hair – I saw no such woman, but then that could mean nothing at all. “Get out,” I hissed. “Get out of here.”

“What?”

Pulled him to his feet. “Get out. Your injuries will protect you; she won’t wear damaged skin. Shots have been fired; the police will be on their way. Get out!”

“I can’t just —”

“Go!” My voice echoed down the staircase, bounced off hard, clean walls. I pushed him away from me, turned again to the crowd, snapped, “All of you, get out!”

His hand caught my sleeve as I turned. “Be me,” he whispered. “No one else dies.”

I jerked my arm away, shaking my head.

“Kepler!” He held on tighter, pulling me back. “I killed Josephine. It was me. I did it; I killed the woman you love. Be me! The woman you are now, she doesn’t have to die; no one else has to die. Galileo knows me, knows my face. Be me!”

He was crying.

I hadn’t ever seen Nathan Coyle cry.

I pulled my arm free of his grasp, pushed him away. “No,” I said. “I love you.”

And ran on through the crowd.

Galileo.

Who are you, Galileo?

I am security guard.

I am Japanese tourist admiring samurai swords.

I am schoolteacher taking notes on American sculpture.

I am student, sketching a statue of the goddess Kali as she dances on the skulls of her foes, slain in righteous retribution.

I am man who wants to sit down on a gallery bench.

Woman with flapjack stuck between my teeth.

I am catering staff pushing a tray of cakes.

Wanderer with audio guide pressed to my ear.

Usher with belt done up too tight around my underfed belly.

Every step there is someone new to be, every step a new shade of skin.

My flesh is silken soft, moisturised fresh this morning.

I have eczema beneath my elbow, red lumps up my arm.

I am old and stooped

fresh and beautiful

my skin is the colour of autumn sunset

pale as snow

dark as oil

so warm I feel every capillary tingle in my fresh wide lips

so cold that my toes are no more than slabs of defrosted meat blocking the ends of my shoes.

I move between the galleries, stand beneath the stones of Egyptian temples, before the gaze of medieval saints, looking for the one who looks for me.

Where are you, Galileo?

Won’t be far.

Won’t have run, not this time.

Do you like what you see?

We have come here for this, you and I.

Come to make an end of it.

Do you like what you see?

And then I am…

armed security, because shots were fired in the Chinese tea garden, and a man is dead in his chair, a wealthy man, a sponsor of a great many cultural events, and there are bullet holes in the wall, and bullet holes in the glass ceiling, whose panels have cracked to let in the angry sky, and a woman lies bleeding on the floor, a handbag full of money and no recollection of how she came to be in this place, and so armed security have sealed off the wing and the police are sealing off the gallery, but that’s fine, Galileo, that’s absolutely fine.

Because where there are policemen, there are weapons, there is armour, there is opportunity.

I slip into a man with a great flat nose, black hair cut close to my head. I am NYPD, New York’s finest, shotgun held in both hands, body armour blue on chest, big black boots and knee pads, and I move with the team I’ve been assigned to because that is what I would do, and nod my answer to any questions, and do not speak, not knowing what it is I would say.

The NYPD seal off the Chinese tea room, set up cordons at the door, and where there were only half a dozen of us before, now there are twenty, thirty, trucks pulling up outside, and news crews too. A few hours and we’ll have made headlines,
GUNS
FIRED
AT
THE
METROPOLITAN
MUSEUM
OF
ART
,
and just you wait because there’s more to come; there’ll be bullets flying.

Will you close the museum?

No, we will not close the museum.

You must close the museum, sir.

Do you know how long it will take, how much it will cost?

A man is dead, sir.

And that’s a tragedy, but these things happen, and hell, you’ve already got the gun that did it, can you stop frightening our visitors?

I look around at the dozens of policemen and armed guards, and one of them is Galileo. We’ll have both gone for a weapon, preferably carried by someone in full body armour, now look, just look, seek out the anomaly, the man who staggers, the man who is slow, the man who does not respond to his name, the man who falls behind. Look for him who does not belong, whose shoulders are not drawn back in pride, for him whose finger nervously taps the trigger guard of his weapon, for the one who too closely scrutinises his neighbours.

Who among you speaks French when he should not speak French?

Which of you loves the Mets but has “Yankees” on his underpants?

(Mr Whatever-your-name-is.)

Who cannot remember the number of their badge.

What they had for breakfast.

Their very name.

(I am Kepler.)

Who are you, Galileo?

Then a man comes up to me, revolver at his side, badge clipped to his leather belt, and says, “You got it, Jim?”

I turn and look into his eyes, and he must be my partner, and I must be Jim, and perhaps I do have it, whatever it is, but damned if I can tell him that.

Or perhaps my name isn’t Jim at all.

He looks at me, and I look at him, and there is a moment which becomes a moment too long, and he smiles, trying to read the strangeness in my eyes, and I finger the trigger of my shotgun and wonder whether, at this very close range, he really stands a chance, even in the body armour. Or whether I do too.

“Jim?” he says again. “You got it?”

“No,” I reply. “Not yet.”

“Jim?” Irritation, worry in his voice. “Jim? Where is it?”

A moment, a doubt, a hesitation, and in the corner of my eye I see a movement that might be as innocent as the scratching of a nose, as circumspect as the tugging of an itchy earlobe, and I don’t hesitate but reach out and press my fingers against my partner’s neck and

blood splatters my face.

Point-blank range, blood and brain and little bits of skull, I stare into the face of the man who almost certainly was called Jim, and probably did have whatever it was I was asking for, stare into his eyes as he falls, crumpled like a paper cup before me, one hand slipping away from my neck, my shoulder as he drops, a dead weight to the floor, a bullet straight through the back of his head and out the forehead, slamming in a little bloody cloud into the pillar at my back.

Behind him, the shooter, a man of barely nineteen years old, gun held out in one hand, finger still resting on the trigger, policeman’s cap pulled down over his eyes, giggles.

I grab my gun, and as the shooter’s eyes widen in surprise put two in his chest and a third in his neck, firing as the arc of my weapon comes up from my hip, an empty sound of incoherent rage even as the body of the man I was rolls beneath my feet, his wet blood slipping under my shoes.

Arms grab me, pulling the gun from my hand, and I scream in fury as they take me down, three, four men knocking me off my feet, hands on my head, my face, my arms, but my fury is not for them, it’s for the three other men pulling the shooter down, pulling Galileo down as the blood pops and bubbles around his throat, bursts upwards with every breath in great splatters, and then

one of them steps away.

One of the men holding him down just steps away, and looks at me and smiles

and I scream again

and

a hand is against my face

I hold a hand against his face

pull it away from the writhing, bewildered body and myself free of the scrum and scream, “
Galileo!
”

He turns and runs.

I ran after him, leaving my bewildered colleagues behind, fumbled at my side, felt the gun, raised it to fire and he swerved round a corner, boundless giddy energy in his youthful, uniformed body, past statues of the serene Buddha, carved jade of fair Kuanyin, lute in hand, willow branches at her back. I fired and my shot went wide, impaling a screen of delicate wading birds brushed on to silk, which toppled as the people around screamed and parted before us, and then Galileo

staggered

and as he staggered his hand seemed to brush the arm of a woman dressed in purple and pigtails and I screamed again, “Galileo!”

And she looked back, and saw me coming, and saw that I saw
her
,
and she ran on, beneath the dark wood of a Shinto arch, raised against all evil spirits, and swerved again, feet slipping on marble, into a room of violins and cellos, ivory-carved flutes and pearl-embossed guitars, a palace to the music of the ages, where she

caught the arm of a man dressed all in white, who looked towards me and, seeing that I looked at him, for the first time showed a little fear, and he too ran, his feet faster than hers had been, his shoes more appropriate for the chase, throwing off his coat and bag as he fled through rustic scenes of haystacks and lambs, of dancing farmgirls and dying saints, and again a turn, and again he tried a switch, not running this time but sitting still and serene in the body of the guard by the door, but to hell with that, I raised my gun to fire, and seeing my face the guard threw himself, tooth and nail, towards me, and I pulled the trigger, knocking him back, and as he fell his hand caught the hand of the very same man he’d just been, who at once leaped back to his feet and turned and ran again, leaving the screaming guard behind him.

“
Galileo!
”

My voice, strange, a copper’s throat, a smoker’s lung, echoed through the corridors. Now he is a woman who throws her bag at me as I pursue, now she is a teenager with an incredible stride, a breathtaking burst of speed, and I am panting, gasping for breath, but I will not give up this chase or this body with its armour and gun, so as he rushes fresh-faced and full of air through the halls I sweat and pound after him, a clear shot – just give me a clear shot.

Crowds scream and part around us, like the ocean before an angry Moses as we move through halls of ancient totem poles pillaged from the Pacific, past cloaks of shell taken from the backs of dead American priests. He jumps and is a she, she jumps and is a child, it jumps and is a man again as we pass monuments to the dead, ancient images of gods who faded when their worshippers forgot, carved tokens to speed departed souls on to the afterlife or sink their bodies into the embrace of those loving oceans whence they came.

There are policemen after us, security, but who knows who to pursue? A man who was Galileo is tackled to the ground; a woman who three bodies ago ran now stands and screams as guns are pointed in her face, who are you, who are you, why did you run? Run where? she gasps. Run why?

A figure in grey, Galileo is a child, straight black hair, pale beige skin, grey uniform and knee-length socks. In one hand he holds a satchel, half-open to reveal the schoolbooks within; papers spilling from the bag as he runs down the hall.

A woman ahead. She’s got a gun, the veil across her face is dishevelled. I can see bare skin about her wrists, eyes and throat, but she doesn’t seem to care, raises the gun, levels it at

not the child

at me.

Pamela, back on her feet, I scream. “I’m Kepler, I’m Kepler!”

She doesn’t seem to care, doesn’t seem to perceive the child running towards her as she raises the gun and

fires.

I throw myself to the ground. I am policeman. I wear body armour, build up muscle tone, take long walks around my local beat… or perhaps I don’t. Perhaps I drive everywhere and live on doughnuts, and my heart is going to give out any moment. In all the fuss I didn’t really have time to check. Either way, a bullet is a bullet, and we’re all out of time.

I drop.

Zeus stares down at us, full of anger and sorrow at the deeds mortals do. Aphrodite combs her marble hair, Ares grapples with a raging warrior, Hercules strangles a snake, and two-faced Janus, god of gates, doorways, endings and times, laughs from one side of his face and weeps from the other, and I? I am cowering beneath a statue of Athena, goddess of wisdom and war, her face turned down in a serene smile, already knowing who will win.

Pam stands in the centre of the hall. She has followed the sound of gunfire, which makes her brave or foolish or otherwise emotionally involved. She doesn’t fire again, but enough has already been done: people are running, fleeing from the gallery, pushing and shoving their way to the exit. Someone, somewhere has sounded an alarm, and an evacuation is under way, just like the NYPD wanted. On a stairway behind me someone falls, someone cries, someone sobs, and I remember Taksim station, where this all began, when I ran from a stranger’s gun as Galileo runs from mine.