Midnight Lamp (30 page)

Obediently, he picked up the glass. ‘You wake up,’ he said; and smiled at her, the full blue voltage, from a core of happiness so untouchable it was chilling.

The body stayed in Carlsbad awaiting a DNA match, and Fiorinda’s dental records from London. The autopsy report, some of which Ax and Sage saw, confirmed the medical examiners initial assumptions. There were no signs of violence, or sexual interference. The lungs had been full of seawater, the face had been destroyed by accidental post mortem damage, and the body had been in the water for approximately two weeks. The dead woman had been in her early twenties, underweight but healthy. She had borne one child.

The autopsy photographs of the faceless face, which had been secured for them by Philemon Roche, showed more soft tissue damage than they’d seen in the morgue. No telling whether
this
drowned woman had ever had pierced ears.

Ax accepted the condolences of Philemon Roche, on behalf of the Committee, and took a personal phonecall from Fred Eiffrich. The English PM, however, only got to talk to Allie: Ax was prostrate with grief. Sage visited Janelle Firdous, Allie talked to Kathryn Adams. Nobody could stand to speak to Harry. They waited for someone, from the bastard Committee or otherwise, to break ranks: but nothing stirred. Sage and Ax called a meeting in the derelict spa.

The Few arrived to find them talking quietly, Sage with Ax’s arms around him, the ex-dictator’s chin resting on his former Minister’s shorn yellow curls. They did not spring apart. The public display was a surprise, everyone knew what
hadn’t
been going on with the Triumvirate: but it made a pleasant change from the way the leaders of the pack had been treating each other recently.

‘Hey,’ said Cherry, junior powerbabe, tactful and brave. ‘What happened to Harry’s rockstar ambivalence, you guys?’

‘Ambivalence is not the message,’ said Ax, keeping a firm hold on his big cat.

‘Don’t think we’ll do ambivalence again,’ said Sage. ‘It has a nasty afterburn.’ The tiger and the wolf, having made their public declaration, separated and took their usual places, on either side of an empty space reserved for Fiorinda. They had
Arbeit
running upstairs, plus, for insurance, an off-the-shelf signal jammer by the side of the pool. Anne-Marie arranged incense and myrtle twigs in a small stone bowl borrowed from the Cactus Room, and everyone kept quiet while she murmured words of warding. The incense smouldered: she stayed for a moment with her head bowed, then went to sit by Smelly.

It was all ritual, the tech as much as the “magic”, it probably didn’t achieve a thing, just made them feel a little better.

‘First off,’ said Ax, ‘You all deserve an abject apology. I lost it, it was horrible, and I’m sorry.’

‘Goes for me too,’ added Sage. ‘Very sorry, I was crap.’

There was a murmur of forbearance and relief.

‘Just glad to have you back on board,’ said Rob.

‘But no more cuddling in session,’ said Allie, with a noble attempt at levity. ‘Or we’ll make you sit on opposite sides of the classroom.’

Everyone laughed, as best they could.

Ax felt that these people should fire him, but no, they could do worse, and they were doing it: he was going to have to lead the meeting.

‘Okay, recap. We’re in trouble. I’m responsible, Sage is responsible; we know it. Harry told us, with confirmation from Fred Eiffrich, that there was an illicit Neurobomb project in California, trying to weaponise natural magic. We brought Fiorinda here,
knowing
that she was just the person, maybe the only possible person, anyone trying to do that would be looking for. We had our reasons, seeming good at the time, but we’re not making any excuses.’

‘And now they’ve got her,’ said Chip. ‘Whoever they are.’

‘Whoever the fuck they are,’ agreed Sage, giving Chip a glance of bleak acknowledgement. ‘Yeah. Now that the fog of stupidity has cleared, our best guess is the same as yours. She found out something. Maybe that afternoon in LA, maybe later, after she left us at the cabin. Maybe she genuinely did want some time alone, to think about the fertility clinic consultation, and
then
she found out something, or realised something, and decided she had to handle it herself. But she got caught. The body on the slab tells us,
at the least
, that there’s some agency besides Fiorinda involved in her “disappearence”, and that’s a great deal. As of now, we can believe she’s still alive, not likely to have been harmed, but she can’t contact us and she can’t get away from wherever she is.’

‘She’s trapped because she won’t do what they want.’ said Rob. ‘They can’t make her into their Neurobomb. That isn’t going to happen.’

Something passed between the leaders, a dark thought.

‘Yeah,’ said Ax. ‘So it’s up to us. We have to find her, but to protect Fiorinda, we don’t let anything challenge the official story. She’s dead, suicide, very sad…that’s our line. What about your Dr Trigos, Rob?’

‘Already covered. The doctor said her staff don’t tell tales, and for a baby farmer she talked like someone with ethics.’ (Rob had been through the fertility clinic mill, he was cynical). ‘Maybe someone, a woman, should go back, nail down the point we don’t want a media fest over the tragic irony?’

‘Better not. If you want something kept quiet, never say so twice, it’s asking for trouble.’

‘Why the fuck
not
challenge the official version?’ demanded Felice, ‘It’s shaky as all shit. Where’s the money she took out? Where’s her purse? What was she doing in that Carlsbad place? Shit, I remember that girl when she was sixteen years old, crazy little kid, talent big as a bonfire. I remember when she laid down her fucking
life
for us, the hell she suffered, and now you say we have to…to go along with the
how tragic
bereavement circus run by dogshit like Harry. Why
can’t
we say it doesn’t add up? Ax, listen to yourself. You’re like, someone’s trying to rape you, and he says,
don’t scream’

‘No,’ said Ax, grimly. ‘I’m like, someone’s trying to rape you, and he has you handcuffed to the wall with his pals holding you down and a gun at your head. If you don’t scream, you might live to fight another day.’

‘Okay, you know about rape, you called me, but—’

‘The purse could have been found on the beach and stolen, either that or it’s still in the ocean. Why was she in Carlsbad? Why not…? I’m sorry, it’s no good. The clothes were hers, the ring is hers, there was no face to identify, and if anyone gets picky, you can bet the DNA and the dental records will match Fiorinda’s. The moment we saw that body we knew we had to keep our mouths tight shut. If we protest, we’ll achieve nothing bar letting them know we’re onto them. This isn’t England, F’lice. It’s not our manor.’

‘Face it, we’re up against the US government,’ said Sage. ‘On an issue of national security. If we cause them any aggravation they can lock us up or simply deport us, and be sure they will. That’s not going to help Fee.’

‘Okay, I see that,’ muttered Felice, subsiding. ‘I just, God,
hate
this.’

‘So do we all.’

‘Why d’you think they’re keeping her phone?’ wondered Verlaine.

The rest of Fiorinda’s possessions had been returned, including her saltbox: bagged with the other contents of her shoulder bag, and tagged
wooden ornament
. Nothing was missing except her clutch purse; and the phone, which the police were retaining for “further analysis”. It was a freebie from a cereal packet, not a very complex communications device. The Rugrat had also been released and delivered to Sunset Cape, valeted squeaky-clean inside and out. The car seemed fine, but the working record of its last journey and the Carlsbad carpark stay had been wiped. The police had actually explained, without prompting, that this was an inevitable consequence of the forensic examination of an AI car.

‘They broke it,’ said Chip. ‘We’ll get it back, eventually, sewn up and made respectable for the funeral.’

‘Thanks, dipstick. We needed that thought.’

Dora bent forward to crush the smouldering myrtle twigs. The smoke had been rising, threatening to trigger the sprinklers. ‘Do you really think President Eiffrich
lured
you guys here, to get hold of Fio?’

Ax shook his head. ‘I don’t know. I find it hard to believe, but these things happen, Dor. You’re in power, so called, you can often get forced into a blind alley, and do terrible things, when there seems no choice but bad or worse.’

‘And had you send for us? Isn’t that just too screwy?’

‘Nothing’s too screwy.’

‘I will
never, never
believe she killed herself,’ whispered Allie.

This was her mantra, repeated incessantly. Allie was taking things as badly, in her way, as Sage and Ax had done. They kept trying to get her at least to
share
the front desk hell: but she wouldn’t be parted from her job.

Dilip took her hand, ‘Sssh, it’s okay,’ he murmured, without meaning.

Ax combed his hair back with his fingers, ‘Allie, I have a wild, crazy idea even the President of the United States doesn’t expect us to
believe
it, but—’

The smell of disinfectant caught in his throat; the seaweed mass of hair, the flowerstem line of a girl’s throat, undisfigured… When he took the President’s call, Ax had dared to hint at some last-ditch hope that the drowned woman wasn’t Fiorinda. A tiny pause, and then a kindly, final rebuff. ‘I can’t give you the hope you’re asking for,’ says Kathryn’s uncle Fred. ‘It’s a terrible tragedy, words cannot express my sympathy, I just wish I’d known how vulnerable she was, before I called you guys here. When the identification’s done with, and they’re able to release her body, it will be easier to accept.’

I cannot give you the hope
… The little halt in Fred Eifrrich’s warm, homely, patrician voice, country-bred aristocrat. When he had heard that, and known his babe was alive, but that there was no appeal—

The body was still in limbo. The residual fingerprints were inadequate, a bureaucratic hitch over the DNA matching, a problem with the dental records sent over from London. Ax took faint comfort in the delay. It seemed as if somebody (maybe Fred himself?) was holding off from final committment until… Until what? Ax swallowed bile, and looked down at his clasped hands. His Triumvirate ring on the left; on the ring finger of his right hand the carnelian ring she’d given him long ago, the bevel inscribed in Arabic.

This too will pass.

He hadn’t finished his sentence, and they were all waiting.

‘I wish to God we’d never brought her here,’ said Sage.

No one had tidied away Fiorinda’s stray belongings; Emilia’s cleaners weren’t allowed in the spa. A book of hers lay by the dry swimming pool, a silver scarf on the hooks by the defunct sauna. A pair of scuffed beach sandals, traps for her friends’ glances. Poor Fiorinda, she’s gone like into water, the surface closes over. You hear her step, you look around and no one’s there.

Smelly Hugh said, ‘But you didn’t bring her, it was the lady brought you guys. Don’t beat yerselves up too badly mates, it was her gig. I remember that.’

Sage smiled wanly. ‘Thanks, Hugh.’

‘What I think is, if it was Fio’s idea, it was probably, like, a good one.’

Smelly sat back: proud of his contribution, not bothered that nobody responded. He was getting the hang of this round table palavar at long last. When to put your hand up, when to keep your head down.

‘We
can
ask questions,’ said Chez Dawkins. ‘Listen, how about this? We know she’s gone, but we need to hear all the details for ourselves, so we can mourn and move on. It works in the movies. I think of the studio. And phonecalls. If the police can ask the company for those records, why can’t we?’

‘I think of Silverlode,’ said Dora. ‘It’s the last place we know.’

The Digital Artists troubleshooters had checked out the little town when Fiorinda first went missing. Discreet questioning had established that she, or someone very like her, had eaten an ice cream at the coffee shop, in the early evening of the fatal day, and gone on her way, alone and showing no signs of distress—the studio had taken this as proof that there was no need for alarm. Remarkably, despite the time lapse, the police had later been able to confirm this report from CCTV images. Apparently.

‘Okay,’ said Ax, (and wondered why the fuck they should take his orders). ‘All good, but not yet. Not before we’ve talked to Laz Catskill. We’re going to meet him up at the cabin.’

Laz and Kaya had been out of town, they’d sent messages of shock and sympathy, naturally. They were back in LA now. The Few looked at each other: strange, uneasy glances. Laz Catskill fit the profile.

‘You’re going up there? Are you sure that’s wise?’ said Dilip, slowly, ‘You know, we thought Laz Catskill might be the candidate.’

‘I never thought that,’ said Sage, dismissive. ‘Okay, outside chance: but when we met, the message I got was that he had something he wanted to tell me. He invited us to that cabin, Fiorinda disappeared, and the more I think about it, the more I want to talk to him, tha’s all. Could be nothing in it.’

They weren’t fooled. ‘Sage,’ asked Anne-Marie. ‘When you went to his house, did he
give
you anything, from his hands to yours?’

‘Nah. Fucking poor planning on my part. I could have screwed a private jet or so out of him, I didn’t think of asking. Why?’

‘Food or drink?’

‘Hm. A maid brought coffee. I poured my own.’

‘Did he touch you?’

Aoxomoxoa and Laz might have hugged, or high-fived, in the past. They’d never been touchie-feelie, so maybe not. Nowadays it was A-list manners (daft, when there were so many more risky occasions) to avoid skin contact greetings.

‘No,’ said Sage. ‘Oh, wait, shit… He
did
touch me. He touched my ring.’

‘Ah.’

‘You think Lazarus Catskill did a hex, on
Sage
?’ exclaimed Chip. ‘Whoa!’

‘I don’t know,’ said Anne-Marie. ‘I’m just thinking.’

‘What?’ Sage tried to sound casual, but he’d become very attentive.

‘I’m thinking that’s the way magic is. I couldn’t harm anyone, I haven’t the power, and I wouldn’t if I could. It’s wicked
and it comes back on you
. But that’s the sign of a hex. It’s not what people think, it’s really subtle. It twists the world, just slightly, so ruin falls on someone like horrible coincidences, evil bad luck. That’s what used to happen with people who crossed Rufus. Check it out.’