The Cutting Crew (30 page)

Whoever it was laughed again and repeated my words back to me:

'Who's that?'

My aim flicked to the opposite side of the room. Nobody there.

They came out of the walls.

At the time, I'd laughed off what Jamie had said. Now, my skin started crawling. I took a better grip of the gun.

'Who's that?'

Closer now, as though the person was sidling across the room towards me. Winding like a snake.

'Who's that?'

And then I saw him, out of the corner of my eye, creeping slowly along the wall to the right of me. I turned quickly, almost fired but there was nobody there. Then I saw him again, on the other side of me. Impossible. And as I flipped my aim round that way he was gone again.

'Who is that?'

This time, the voice came from right in front of me.

And there he was. I had time for my eyes to blink a photograph of him, for my free hand to move up in self-defence, and then everything went black.

Chapter
Eighteen

I dreamed about Sean. To begin with, my mind was simply filling in the gaps of the past few months, and I saw images of him contacting Jamie and Keleigh; of him sitting in his room, reading by torchlight. Taking photographs. Shadowing people on the streets.

Each image flashed up, leaving a mark on my thoughts that slowly faded back to nothing.

Here he was, answering the phone.

Flash; fade; gone.

And then, he was dying. Illuminated cuts of the beating, strobe lit into slow, staccato motion as blows landed. The memories flashed into still life, and then sank back into black mist. Sean on the floor, the bats raining down on him. His body losing cohesion as bones shattered, flesh bruised, joints dislocated. The twitches as, despite everything, the ebbing currents of life continued to spark in him, growing fainter. His lights going out.

'Wake him up.'

His past: about to become my present and future. Inside, I was panicking. There was something pitch black and furious in my mind, pounding the inside of a dark box that was hidden too well to see. As I surfaced and heard the words again, I knew that I was going to lose it badly if I wasn't careful. Now, I really did need to keep it together.

'Wake him up.'

I said, 'I am awake.'

'Open your eyes, then.'

I did as I was told, blinking against the sudden light and then looking around cautiously. I was sitting in a comfortable chair, made of black leather that looked and felt as tight as swollen skin.

It was a little too close to the floor: my feet stretched out over pale, clean floorboards that had been polished to minimalist perfection.

Where was I?

Probably the bar across the street - maybe a back room.

Take in as much as you can.

For what it would be worth, I did. The room was very spare most of the furnishings were black or white, complementing the light-brown flooring, and it all looked expensive and well-coordinated.

A very old and thin man was sitting opposite me, in the centre of a leather sofa that matched my own chair. Between us, there was a coffee table made of glass. I recognised the man: he was one of the men from Sean's photographs, the one marked by a 'K', only he was dressed more casually now, wearing old, black suit trousers and a white shirt with the sleeves rolled up. It was like he'd been designed to match the decor.

He was leaning forward with his elbows resting on his knees, smoking a cigarette and staring at me a little curiously, as though he'd caught something by accident and wasn't quite sure what it was. Two of his bodyguards were loitering in the background, and they both seemed entirely indifferent and non-threatened by me. It was almost insulting, although I supposed in the circumstances they were probably right.

'Nice to meet you,' I said.

He didn't say anything, but kept staring at me and smoking his cigarette thoughtfully. I couldn't keep his gaze, so I looked over to my right at a fish tank on the other side of the room. It was large and seemed to be filled mainly with pale green, glowing bubbles.

No windows in here, I noticed.

Was it still daylight? I had no idea what time it was, and very little sense of how long I'd been unconscious. It didn't feel long. I wondered whether I still had my phone. I was willing to bet they had taken my gun. But I wasn't about to check my clothes for either of them.

After a moment, I looked back at the man and he spoke in an old, weary voice.

'You're feeling better now, I take it?'

The question caught me off guard. My head hurt, my pride hurt, and I was pretty sure that I was going to die. But since this man was either past, present or likely future cause of all of those things, I couldn't imagine why he might care.

'Not great, no,' I said. 'Thanks for the concern though.'

'Oh - top marks.' He leaned over and tapped his cigarette into an ashtray on the coffee table. 'I'm always pleased when people in real trouble can still manage sarcasm and humour. It has a certain existential honesty to it. I'm not likely to ever be in such trouble as you are, Detective Weaver, but I can only dream of handling it so well if I were.'

'I'm not a detective anymore,' I said.

'Well, no.' He conceded it with a slight incline of his head.

'That's certainly true. The reason I asked is because people generally do feel better when they find us. We're a relief. Do you still feel nauseous, for example?'

I felt it stir as he said that - that lurching, panicked feeling I'd had nearly all day - and found myself swallowing it down.

You're not going to be sick.

And as I fought it back, I saw that he was smiling at me. Like he could tell.

'I don't know what you mean,' I said, but my mouth was too dry and it was obvious I was lying.

He tapped the cigarette again. When he raised it back to his lips and inhaled, there was something slow and dainty about the manoeuvre.

'You were looking for us,' he said.

There didn't seem to be any point in denying it.

I said, 'I'm looking for the people who killed my friend.'

'No - not just that. You've been searching for longer than that.

All of you, but you and your friend especially.'

'You've been following us?' I said, not understanding what he meant.

'No. I don't need to follow people.'

'What's that supposed to mean?'

He smiled a little absently. 'I've not followed you because I haven't needed to. But I've seen you watching the city lights. I've sat behind you in bars and listened to you talking. You and that other policeman were always looking for us. It's just that neither of you realised it. And why would you?'

'I've not been looking for you,' I said. 'I don't even know who you are.'

He smiled again, and then took a long drag on the cigarette and held it in for a while, thinking things through. One of his bodyguards started slowly circling the room, moving out of sight behind me. I heard his feet tapping on the wood, and then nothing.

He had stopped behind me. My neck started tingling and I wanted to lean forwards. Instead, I did my best to keep still.

'I don't even know who you are,' I said again.

The old man breathed out, and the smoke filled the air between us.

'Do you remember a man named Timothy Hartley?' he asked.

Hartley. Yes, I remembered. He'd been the first man I'd gone along with Rosh, Lucy and Sean to kill - the man who'd taken that little girl and who had then, in his turn, been taken by us. I remembered him and what had happened to him. When Sean had found her safe, Lucy had shot Timothy Hartley in the head. At the time, I'd been shocked, but then my feelings had lessened. He'd been a small, insignificant man who'd hurt a lot of people and with hindsight it didn't seem like his death had reduced anything in the slightest. In fact, the world felt fuller without him.

'Name doesn't ring a bell,' I said.

'You don't remember killing him?' The old man looked mildly surprised. 'I would have thought it would stick in the mind, something like that. It certainly stuck in mine, as he was working for me at the time.'

'Oh right?' I said, glancing at the bodyguard behind him. 'Do you employ a lot of paedophiles and rapists?'

The old man laughed, dismissing it with a wave of his hand.

'Well, they're everywhere these days. Don't you read the papers?'

'I just think you can generally tell a lot about a man by the company he keeps.'

'Perhaps,' the old man said, considering the point for as long as it took to breathe out a mouthful of smoke. 'But Hartley was a hard worker, no matter what else he was.'

'And what sort of work did he do for you?'

'He moved money, people. Other things on occasion. Hartley had a small workshop, you might remember, and we used his accounts a few times. Nothing too important, but serious enough for me to take an interest when he died. You weren't as hard to pick out as you might imagine, and it didn't take long to work out what you were doing. You and your little vigilante friends.'

'Oh yeah?' I was angry despite myself. The girl we rescued the night Hartley died had been okay, but only because of us. 'And what were we doing?'

'Well - killing people.' He looked a little confused that he had to explain it to me at all. 'Killing people you didn't like.'

'Bad people,' I said. 'Who deserved it.'

'No. People you didn't like.' He carried on without giving me time to reply. 'And that's fine. We all do it. I was mostly just relieved to find out that my brother wasn't involved. We have an agreement to leave each other alone, and I thought he might have been going against it. But it only took a few phonecalls to discover that you were doing this entirely on your own. He never had a clue.'

'Your brother?'

'Eli.' He inhaled and then breathed out slowly, allowing the name to hang in the air for a moment. Then, he said: 'Eli powers law and order in the city.'

'Eli,' I repeated. 'Right.'

'You've never met him, don't worry. Not yet.'

'Okay.'

The legend of the brothers who'd founded the city came back to me. I remembered the photographs that Sean had marked: one with an 'E'; another - this man - with a 'K'.

I said, 'So that would make you ... Kama?'

'That's right.' He stubbed out the cigarette. 'Top marks.'

And despite everything, I laughed.

Kama - or whoever the fuck he really was - kept smiling to himself as he reached for a pack of cigarettes on the table and shook one free.

I could feel his bodyguard standing close behind me but I nodded at the pack anyway.

'I guess that ghosts don't have to worry about their health?'

'Good guess.' The old man lit the cigarette with a match and then waved the match out with a hand that was almost too quick to see. 'Now, let me guess something. You've been feeling sick recently. Very sick. And now, as I said before, you feel much better.'

He was right - I didn't feel great, but I certainly did feel better.

When I'd been in Hedge's flat, watching the computer program, I hadn't been entirely confident of keeping myself upright. Now, although I still felt strange, I figured that standing up would have been fine, assuming anyone here would have let me.

'That happens.' Kama pointed the glowing end of the cigarette at me. 'When you begin, you're not equipped to deal with us, and that sickness is what you feel as you grow closer. You start seeing coincidences for what they are. It's us. We bring about those coincidences.'

'Is that right?'

But I'd stopped smiling now, and I felt uncomfortable again; my bravado seemed false even to me. Coincidences. Sickness. I wondered if someone might have slipped me something to create those kinds of feelings and thoughts. It seemed unlikely, but I couldn't be sure. Perhaps.

'We're at the heart of this city,' Kama said, 'and when people are drawn to us they spiral down into that heart. Like dirty water sucked down a sink.'

He made a circling motion with his cigarette hand.