The Courier's New Bicycle (19 page)

Marlene and her stupid letters.

Defeated, I squat on the outside steps, remembering Gail's will tucked in Frank's big apron. Nitro would have no qualms assuming ownership of the property, but to me this will always be my employer's house and I an interloper to privilege.

I stare at the line of terracotta urns. What had I imagined after Marlene flounced out of the Good Bean? Each missive arriving in Gail's letterbox; her walking back to the house knowing who it was from and chucking it.

I step onto gravel. Leaning over the urn closest, I shine the torch down inside — and let out a triumphant yip. Several envelopes are at the bottom. Not tied nicely together or wrapped for protection against the elements, but dumped in there like rubbish.

I use a stick from the garden to retrieve them: nine in all, addressed to Gail in a flowery script. Only one has been opened. Maybe it gave tone enough of the rest. There's a hint of scent. I bring it to my nose and time stops its beat. It's
that
scent, the one that wafted up from Albee's sheets the night he was rushed to hospital.

I'm up to the fourth letter, Nitro sitting like a pudding on the others laid out on my living room floor. Anger at Marlene vibrates in me like a wire. If she was at Albee's that night, she could have given him the OP-laced kit.

The night marches on. My body enters a twilight zone of exhaustion, rest something only other people get to do. Marlene, meanwhile, has gone from florid rehashings of her and Gail's sex together to incensed at having been ousted from her beloved's bed and removed from C&C's buyers list. This is not the cosy picture described to me in the Good Bean. It seems Gail didn't bother to reply, which really ramped her up.

Nitro comes over to butt my shin. I stroke his plush fur and pick up letter number six. Prurient fascination aside, I'm heartily sick of Marlene's manipulative tones, her confessions of undying love alternating with remonstrations over ‘injustices suffered'. I skim-read six, seven and eight and open number nine.

It's in the last paragraph that she lets it slip. Nitro's purr machine pauses momentarily at my horrified ‘
Oh no
'.

Little wonder Marlene wants her letters back.

I ring Anwar, and after a short discussion we ring off. Next I text Marlene that I've found her correspondence and to meet me at the Shangri-La at 9 am. Then I crawl into bed with the cat, and sleep.

I don't know if Albee's ready for this, but I'm counting on the sense of smell being one of memory's most powerful triggers. With all nine of Marlene's letters secreted in my daypack, I'm walking in the entrance of the Jesu Christi Hospital under the cotton-ball pinks of yet another dawn to ask him, just out of a coma, to take a sniff.

Moved out of the ICU to a medical ward, he's in a room of four beds, his by the window. I enter quietly, but he's not asleep. He's propped up on pillows, his body free at last of tubes and machinery, Paul beside him in the vinyl armchair carted from the ICU.

Paul goes off to find coffee. I swish across the privacy curtains and pull up the chair, searching my friend's face for evidence he's strong enough.

‘Albee, I want you to close your eyes and sniff something, then tell me what it reminds you of.'

He looks at me, amused, until he sees my seriousness. ‘Not a pair of your smelly old cycling socks then.'

I laugh. ‘Think yourself lucky.'

His eyelids flutter down trustingly. I draw one of Marlene's envelopes from my bag and waft it near to his nose as he breathes in, out, and in again.

Nothing.

I make a wad of five envelopes, the scent stronger. ‘Try again,' I suggest, and he takes another sniff.

I'm thinking my idea is a stupid one when his brow furrows. ‘Oh,' he says, and his eyes fly open. ‘That's Marlene's scent.'

Bingo.

‘I remember she was … We were fucking.'

‘Albee!' I can't help myself. ‘With
her
?'

Even someone freshly woken from a coma can look embarrassed. ‘She's very attractive.'

‘How could you have let her give you a jab?'

‘Did I?' he asks, and my heart sinks.

‘Please, Albee, is there anything you can recall beyond the fucking bit?'

He frowns, eyes unfocused to the past, the memory cogs trying to turn.

‘She'd brought some T as a present,' he says. ‘Told me it came special delivery from Gail. Normally I wouldn't, but I was due for a shot anyway, and the polyshell had EHg's logo on it. Not to mention I was already pretty far gone from what we were doing. She can turn the sex energy on like a solar flare.'

Marlene has never turned the flare my way — a small mercy for which I'm grateful — but there's no doubt it's a powerful talent, because she'd managed to bed not just one but two of my dear friends. I stuff the envelopes in my bag, anger rising. Even if she didn't know the kit she'd injected into Albee was dirty, she pretended ignorance to me about it in the Good Bean, which makes her a liar, and a coward for deserting him.

Albee seems suddenly drained. I lay my hand on his. ‘I'm sorry to spring that on you.'

‘Don't be,' he says. ‘Ellie's told me what's been going on while I've been napping.'

I glance away, no words to describe the last few days. Looking back, I murmur, ‘If anybody wants to know, you can't remember a thing, right?'

He nods. ‘Find Gail,' he says.

Paul arrives through the curtains with coffee and raisin toast from the Tum-Tum Tree café. We sip and munch awhile, Albee gone very quiet beside us. I have a fair idea what he's thinking about.

‘A busy Monday planned?' I ask him.

‘No rest for the wicked. They want to get me up for a walk after the white-coat brigade's done its rounds. Meanwhile, Paul's going to contaminate my mind with subversive literature.'

When not chefing for a restaurant in the city, Paul writes potboilers for a flourishing underground press. He holds up a dog-eared paperback, the title
Knock & Drop
splashed blood-red across the front.

‘Catchy.' I down the last of my coffee then check my watch. I have to leave.

As I bend to kiss Albee, he whispers, ‘How's it going with Inez?'

I straighten. ‘It's not.'

He regards me with serious eyes. ‘You know what they say about people in comas being aware of everything going on around them? It's true. As one-sided as it must have seemed, I remember the conversation we had just before I woke up.'

It was the night I poured my heart out to him; the night I felt a flicker of movement in his hand. I get a flush of embarrassment.

‘She hasn't answered her phone or replied to any of my messages since the argument.'

Albee looks at me sympathetically. ‘Don't give up trying.'

 

At the end of the corridor, I see Sarah at the nurses station talking to the nurse unit manager. She falls into step with me as I head for the lifts.

‘Just getting an update on the troublemaker,' she tells me. I hear affection in her voice. ‘Seems he's going leaps and bounds.'

‘You'll be keeping an eye on him then?' I ask hopefully.

‘As long as the hospital board doesn't decide to rip up my contract. They're purging the current nursing list of suspected subversives, so we're having a staff crisis.'

‘Will you be okay?'

‘Yeah. I'm good at hiding my light under a bushel.'

We get to the lifts. I press the ‘down' arrow, then turn to her. ‘Now he's awake, I'm hoping to ask you another favour.'

She waits, understandably not jumping in to say anything yet.

‘Ellie told me about the visits from Neighbourly Watch.'

She grimaces. ‘As if we have the time or energy to kowtow to their demands. Some Nation First politician called up too, concerned about the poisonings. Luckily I could reassure him Albee was recovering, because the first two didn't. What's the favour?'

‘Tell anyone who asks that he has amnesia and may never remember what happened to him.'

‘No probs,' she says. She knows exactly who ‘anyone' refers to.

The lift bell dings, the door opens. Inside, I watch the numbers light in descent.

Sarah gets out at Level 2. I suppose she thought it was going to be worse — like asking her to fake an entire family for the ICU visitors list. For that, and all the other things since, I can't thank her enough.

I'm walking to the tram stop on Temperance when I get a call from Geeta.

‘Hope this isn't a bad time?'

‘Not at all.'

‘You asked me who I confided in,' she begins, and I slow my step. ‘Nobody outside, like I said, but there was someone
from SADA. She vets applicants for the Ovum Recipient Program, so I didn't put her on the list I made for Tallis. We met for coffee a few times, then I stopped going.'

‘Why do you want to tell me about her?'

‘I feel guilty saying it, but she was a bit strange.'

‘Tallis should hear this.'

‘Could you do it?' She sounds so vulnerable.

‘She'll need the details from you,' I warn.

‘I know.'

I ring the SANE office while waiting at the tram stop, but get the answering machine, so leave a message for Tallis saying Roshani has some new information. I don't add that her fears of an internal leak may yet be realised.

The tram rolls up. I slip the phone into my jacket and board. Next stop Marlene at the Shangri-La. It's going to be an effort to stay cool and calm at this meeting, because inside I'm seething. Marlene's been stringing me along. Not only does the perfume on her letters now connect her to Albee and his brush with death, but in letter number nine she threatened that if she didn't get her donor permission, she'd wreak havoc on Gail's ‘too perfect reputation' along with her ‘bitch-faced broker's house of business'.

The Red Quarter is decidedly less atmospheric beneath the cover of an overcast sky. With the welcome lights at every entrance extinguished and the windows shuttered behind their metal bars, the buildings on Madams Row look worn out. Even the trees seem tired in their shawls of autumn leaves, ready to get on with winter hibernation. I try not to remember where else I'm supposed to be right now, heading to the Shangri-La for a showdown instead of my scheduled work appointment with Mojo Meg.

As I walk briskly along the Row, I see Marlene approaching from the other direction, her high heels tip-tapping and diamanté shoulder bag swinging on its strap. She gives a little wave, and we meet at the bordello's entrance.

‘Oh, Sal,' she gushes, as I allow her first into the tiled portico. ‘Thank goodness. I was so worried my silly love letters would fall into unscrupulous hands.'

No danger of that — now.

‘I trust you didn't betray a besotted lover's confidences by reading them?' She laughs prettily but looks at me hard. ‘And you found the donor permission to show Gail's broker? That's why we're here?'

‘I thought you could sort it out with Savannah straightaway,' I reply. ‘I'll vouch for your character.'

She's annoyed at that, but hides it in another gush of false gratitude. I lift the knocker and rap on the red door.

Savannah answers, a stilettoed figure in dominatrix black, and Marlene launches into a rehearsed spiel, vying with her host for most solicitous. I could tell her not to bother. Savannah's charm is built into her every atom, while Marlene's is a veneer as easily dissolvable as battery acid with bicarb.

I'm aware of two people arrived silently behind me: the Red Quarter protection team promised by Anwar. Marlene catches sight of them and swings around. Trapped all sides, it's dawning on her she's been set up.

She fixes on me. ‘
You
,' she says through her teeth.

The two usher her inside. ‘No need to paw me,' she says to them, heavily aggrieved. ‘I'm just a kitten among you predators.'

Yeah, a werekitten.

Down the corridor we go, Savannah leading, then into the kitchen, Anwar already sitting at the table. He greets Marlene courteously, but she decides to ignore him. Seems we have the haughty Marlene back.

The protection duo move together, seating her in one swift action before positioning themselves by the exits.

I'm impressed.

Savannah sits opposite Marlene, crossing her long black-clad legs. ‘Let's discuss your letters first,' she says, and Marlene tightens her lips.

Haughty
and
unresponsive.

I take the envelopes out of my pack and lay them on the table, then go lean against the sink to watch the thing play out.

Marlene bristles with umbrage. ‘I don't know why Salisbury tricked me here like this, but I've done nothing to deserve such harsh treatment,' she announces to the room.

Ever the innocent, ever the victim. The calm demeanour I'd promised myself completely cracks.

‘You injected Albee with dirty kit,' I say hotly.

This is not where Marlene — or any of us — thought we were going to start.

She turns to me, horrified. ‘I thought it was EHg's stuff.'

‘But you didn't get it from Gail, did you.'

Marlene knows her letters have told all that, and more.

‘I would have if I could!' she exclaims. ‘But being made
persona non grata
and taken off her buyers list meant getting any of her precious product was like sucking blood out of a stone. That's what happens when you're no longer the famous Gail Alvarez's preferred lover. She was very cruel, you know, very heartless with my affections.'

So much for not speaking ill of the dead.

‘Where did you get it then?' I ask.

‘Someone came to the speakeasy offering T at a bargain price.'

My look of disgust elicits a retort.

‘I'm not made of money,' she sniffs. ‘I can barely afford the hormones for my own requirements. If a box of polyshells dropped off the back of a C&C delivery van, so what? I was angry with Gail, so I bought one. I thought it would make a nice present for Albee.'

‘How kind of you. But you must have smelt the stuff was dirty before you gave him the jab.'

She looks suitably chastened. ‘I may have got a whiff, but we were too far gone in our little seduction game to stop. We were in the throes of passion. He was begging for —'

I stop her there. ‘I get the picture.'

Savannah intercedes, velvety smooth. ‘Who did you go to for your own supply when Gail refused you?'

‘Mojo Meg,' Marlene answers defensively.

‘But BioPharm's goods are just as expensive as EHg's,' Savannah responds. ‘How could you afford it?'

‘She's been kind enough to give me a discount in return for a bit of industry gossip. Nothing important.'

I'll bet
. ‘So you sold Meg information in return for your hormone fixes,' I say angrily.

Marlene rounds on me. ‘Do you think on the Glory Hole's wages I can afford to buy premium blend? Maintaining a fertility regime is very expensive, and using
EHg's products put me into debt. I asked Gail for a minuscule discount to help me cope, and she ditched me.'

I'm completely unconvinced. ‘Maybe Gail ditched you because she didn't want to play yummy mummies with you. If you really want to get pregnant, why not make another arrangement with a different broker?'

‘I've spent a fortune preparing my womb for this. I don't want just any old person's egg attached to it. Of course, I don't expect someone like
you
to understand about quality chromosomes.' She casts me a dismissive glance. ‘Why would I settle for a bitzer when there's pedigree?'

I feel everyone in the room wince at that one. And she's yet to mention the quality of the other part of the baby equation: the sperm donor.

Anwar speaks, voice quiet. ‘Marlene, you're here because we believe Gail didn't OD and isn't dead.'

I wait for her to exhibit shock.

Momentarily at a loss, she looks at us brightly. ‘Well, that's wonderful news, isn't it?'

I'm outraged. ‘Is that all you have to say?'

Savannah's expression is registering that she's had enough. As she unfolds her legs, the buckles on her leather corselet glint. One hand resting on the table, she leans over Marlene.

‘You play the defenceless female because that's how you control the game; but you're going to tell us the truth now.'

‘Get off me, you cow,' Marlene spits.

Savannah smiles, unfazed. ‘I'm not the one you should be worried about. See those two strong silent types?' She motions to the protection duo. ‘They're very good at control. And unless you tell us what you know, so we can find Gail and fix the mess someone's put her in, they'll be controlling your personal space twenty-four hours a day.'

Marlene huffs contemptuously, but she's gone pale beneath the pancake.

‘They're excellent at what they do,' Savannah assures. ‘While you're here they'll search and strip you of hormone patches and subdermal implants, then they'll escort you back to your house and go through your possessions. They'll remove every gram of kit, including all those pills and powders you've stashed for a rainy day. Next will be the beauty preparations that have obviously become necessary to your daily life. By the time they're finished, you won't even have a toothbrush. Nor will you be allowed to go out for replacements. You'll have to face the world without props or potions of any kind, as dowdy as a Hausfrau.'

Savannah's words are wielded like a whip. I remember the beautifully plaited set I'd seen in the parlour cabinet. No props needed here. Marlene is forced back in her chair as Savannah leans closer, her dominatrix alter emerging like a black moth from its chrysalis. Slowly she inspects Marlene's body.

‘You've spent a fortune on surgery and hormones — I can see that.
Unfortunately
, once the supplements and special treatments are stopped, the effects will leach out of you like
water through sand. That latest vaginal rejuvenation won't last; those breast implants we can have syringed out. Soon you'll be scrounging for old troche packs, fingering up the crumbs like a coke addict; but nothing will slow the withering on the vine.'

Marlene is looking decidedly sick, her bravado punctured. The Shangri-La's chess-playing madam — a practised observer of the human psyche — knows how deeply she's committed to the trappings of femininity.

Savannah presses harder on Marlene's weak spot.

‘Oestrogen-deprived, your cunt will dry and your womb will shrink — such effort for nothing, so much money wasted. You'll be a washed-up vamp with all the sex appeal of road kill.'

Suddenly her tone changes. ‘But that's just half the story,' she says silkily. ‘Because shortly we're going to start injecting you with T. If you're
lucky
, we might even find a way to make it interesting, like you did for Albee.'

Marlene stares up at her, appalled. ‘You wouldn't,' she squeaks.

Savannah smiles. ‘Try me.'

Marlene's composure completely shatters. Collapsing onto the Shangri-La's kitchen table, a low wail comes out of her, winding into a caterwaul of anguish.

‘Monsters! You don't know what it's been like, watching Gail take herself every month to Cutters Lane. Number 137 gets all her ova! How dare she sell to people she doesn't even know and not spare me a single egg. Is that fair? Is that
caring?' Her voice scritches up the decibels. ‘Since that stupid vaccine, I've been stuck like a genie half out of the bottle — and unlike
you,
' she stares straight at me, ‘I don't enjoy it here. I deserve a full complement of my rightful hormones.'

I look at her face contorted by anguish and can't feel offended. After it got out about the additive in the vaccine, the reports were everywhere of premature ovarian failures and plummeting sperm counts. Then came mass panic, everyone trying to conceive or store their fertile eggs and seed before reproductive shutdown.

‘We trusted them,' Marlene sobs. ‘No side effects, they said. But what they did was criminal: they stole our parenthoods. I always assumed one day I'd have a baby. Then I couldn't even
buy
one from my fertile lover. What was wrong with bringing her down a peg or two to make her grateful that I would
want
to have her child?'

‘What did you do?' I demand.

She stops sobbing. ‘
I
didn't do anything.'

‘Tell that to Albee.'

She regards me from beneath her lashes. I realise how much she hates me.

Savannah signals and the protection duo move in. Marlene squeals, and Savannah holds up a staying hand.

‘Let's try that again,' she says. ‘Who's making Gail “grateful” right now?'

Marlene turns nervously from one unfriendly face to the next. ‘If I tell you, will you keep those two robots away from me?'

The protection duo don't even blink.

Anwar responds. ‘All we want, Marlene, is to get Gail back unharmed. Beyond that, we have no interest in you.'

She brushes ineffectually at a strand of hair that's escaped its stylish coiffure while he sits calmly opposite, the picture of mild containment, as if he's come visiting for a nice cup of tea.

He smiles encouragingly at her. ‘Help us now, and that will be the end of it. Otherwise, I'm afraid …' He glances at Savannah then the protection duo, his meaning clear.

Her shoulders slump. ‘His name's Doug Smeg — he's a Neighbourly Watch official,' she says almost inaudibly. ‘He was very supportive after Gail dumped me.'

Anwar freezes at the name, but Marlene doesn't notice. She continues, eyes downcast.

‘The batch of fake EHg kit was his idea. I just helped with the drop-offs in the city. He said if we gave Gail a bit of a shake-up it would make her more amenable to my situation.'

‘And bring down everything she's built across the last ten years,' I cut in.

Marlene ignores me. ‘All he wanted in return was the opportunity to be my sperm donor. He's very keen to continue the Smeg line.' A flicker of her old self reappears. ‘Not that I'd ever burden a child with
that
dreadful surname.'

I want to gag in the sink. And someone should tell her that her own last name, Bott, isn't much of an improvement.

‘Who supplied the kit?' Savannah asks.

Marlene chews on one plump, carmined lip. ‘He said he had a mate working at a hormone farm who could provide the goods. I didn't ask how, or which one, and he wouldn't have told me anyway.' She looks up. ‘But I swear on my grandmother's shroud the stuff wasn't meant to
poison
anyone. I went to him after the accident with Albee and he got all creepy — said he'd “sort” it. I could tell it wasn't in his plan. Something went wrong at the supplier's end. I told him I wanted out of the arrangement, but he convinced me that if I held my nerve a bit longer, he could persuade Gail to sign the donor permission. He just needed the chance to put his “unrefusable offer” to her without her minders around.'

I exchange looks with Anwar. She believed Doug would do all this just to be a daddy?

‘You didn't think he might have been after something else from Gail?' I ask.

‘Does it
matter
? He was my last resort.' She eyes the letters on the table, then me. ‘Actually, I was expecting her to sic her bloodhounds on me over the last one of those; but she didn't …'

She hasn't worked it out yet that Gail never read it — just me. I don't enlighten her.

‘So I agreed to get him through her gates,' she says.

I suppress an impulse to walk over and slap her. ‘Gail wouldn't have let you or him on her property.'