Touch (32 page)

Then I was someone else, and I was gone.

A shaking awake, a starting. The sun is setting, and I have dreamed of Galileo.

Coyle is still asleep on the bed. I wake him as the last vestiges of daylight fade.

“We have to keep moving.”

“Where are we going?” he asks as I help him down to the car.

“Somewhere with trains.”

We reached Lyon shortly after 8 p.m.

Like many old cities in France, Lyon was possessed of beautiful houses pressed against a sluggish river, of a high-towered cathedral and ancient buried walls, and of suburbs of grand
supermarchés
, sprawling car parks and low-rise clothing outlets in iron-ceilinged industrial sheds. I left Coyle slumbering in the car park of one which advertised itself with the immortal words
EAT
THE
BEST
,
LIVE
THE
BEST
,
SHOP
THE
BEST
!
and went inside with my plundered euros. A child giggled on a tiny fireman’s truck that rocked back and forth to the wailing of a siren. A small marquee, perfect, declared the billboard, for weddings and festive occasions, had been erected by the supermarket checkout counters for any casual shoppers looking for the ultimate spontaneous splurge. Cold steam drifted in grey wisps over fat vegetables, and the smell of yeast mixed with light jazz pumped from the bare pipes of the ceiling.

I bought bread, meat, water and an armful of men’s clothes, all baggier than required. The woman behind the checkout counter wore a peaked green hat and a bewildered expression as my shopping drifted down the conveyer belt towards her.

“For my brother,” I explained.

“He lets you buy trousers for him?”

“I’m good at dressing people.”

Coyle was still asleep in the car.

“Coyle.” I brushed his arm gingerly and, when he didn’t stir, ran the back of my fingers, gentle as a feather, across his cheek. His eyes opened, flickering in the darkness of the car, registered where he was and who he was with, and recoiled. I swallowed and said, “We’re in Lyon.”

“What’s in Lyon?”

“Public transport, mostly. Here.”

“What’s this?”

“Clean clothes. For you.”

“Not for you?”

“If I wanted to change, it’d be more than the clothes I wear. Try them. I think I remembered your size.”

He scowled but said, “Help me with the shirt?”

I turned the heater up, helped him fumble with buttons, peeled the ruined shirt away from his skin. Remarkably the dressing across his shoulder was neither saturated with blood nor falling away. By the faint light of the car park I felt around the edges of the wound and asked, “Does it burn?”

“No.”

“How’s the pain?”

“I’m coping. Your hands are cold.”

“My circulation isn’t fantastic. Here.” I rolled a T-shirt down over his head, helped him manoeuvre one arm at a time into the sleeves, tucked it down around his trousers. He sat still and straight, breath steady, watching my every move. My fingers brushed the scar across his belly and he didn’t flinch, but every fibre was tight, every muscle locked. “Fit OK?”

“Fine.”

“I bought you a jumper too. It’ll probably disintegrate in the first wash, but it’s warm and clean.”

“Thank you.”

“You’re welcome.”

“Why are you bothering?”

I sighed and turned away. “You’ve got blood on the upholstery,” I murmured. “Blood’s hard to clean.”

Roundabouts were the lock, patience the key, to any driver seeking to find their way into the middle of Lyon. I took us through one-way systems and down towards the river, where the hot young things of the city grew cold to the sound of 90s techno and noughties bass. I parked, illegally, in front of a grey stone church from whose porch the Virgin Mary gazed sorrowfully down at her straying flock and said, “We can’t use the car any more.”

“Why not?”

“Irena’s been gone more than eight hours. If she had a shift tonight, it would have started a few hours ago. The last person I wore – Max – I left him at the service station…”

“You think Aquarius will have worked out who you are?”

“You know them better than I. Would you?”

“Yes. I think I might.”

“Then we need to lose the car. It’s public transport from now on. If we can get to Spain, or even Gibraltar, without setting off alarms, that’ll make things easier. I need a drink.”

“A drink?”

“Can you walk?”

“Is this the time for a drink?”

“Never better,” I replied, pushing open the car door. “I’m a lady who likes tequila.”

I had tequila, Coyle had orange juice.

In France orange juice means fizzy orange-coloured sugar from a spherical bottle.

We sat at the counter of a bar whose flat-screen TVs showed football and BMX. Only one game interested the crowd, and by their gripes it was both local and not going well. Coyle was sweating, one hand clenched around a paper napkin, his teeth drawn back across his lips.

The barman said, “You all right?”

And I replied, “He twisted his ankle.”

“You should see a doctor. Sometimes these things are worse than you think.”

“They usually are. More tequila?”

His eyes radiated scepticism, but economics guided his hand to another glass. Behind us someone scored, and the room groaned its universal dismay.

“You’re knocking it back,” grunted Coyle to the sound of sporting hearts breaking and the hissing of fresh beer.

“I’ll let you into a secret. It’s far easier to divert the world’s attention away from a host if that host can be discovered intoxicated, bewildered, concussed or otherwise in an altered mental state upon her awakening.”

“You’re moving on?”

I took another slurp, felt salt crackle, alcohol burn, hissed in satisfaction at the effect. “There’s a file – I stole records from Aquarius while in Berlin.”

“You told me.”

“And did you tell Aquarius?”

“I did. We…
they
… are afraid of you.”

“I take it they didn’t realise I was with Janus?”

“No.”

“Why were you there?”

“It’s my job,” he replied. “It’s what I do.” Another drink; I put the empty glass to one side. “No. That’s not it.” His voice was for him, though I happened to hear it. “I asked about Galileo, and they reassigned me to Paris. At the time I thought it was… At the time I didn’t think. That’s what I was doing there, as you ask.”

My nails were hard and sharp as they rattled around the edge of the glass.

“I’m not going to help you hurt them,” he breathed. “I won’t help you against Aquarius, no matter what they did. If it was them who did it. You’re not my friend. This is about Galileo – nothing more.”

“I understand.”

The busy roar of the football screen, the busy contempt of the disappointed fans lamenting the game. I ran my finger round the lip of the glass, which stoutly refused to hum.

Then, “New York,” said Coyle. “There’s a… sponsor in New York. After Berlin, after you showed me the file, I tried to speak to him, but Aquarius said no. Told me you’d lied to me about Galileo, that it was what you did – spread the chaos. You put Alice in hospital, did you know that?”

“She was bruised but walking when I left her. The rest is psychological, nothing to do with me.”

“Do you care?”

“Not right now.”

He sipped his juice like it was whisky, salve to the wounds, old and new, still burning on his body. “I knew they were lying to me. You’re a parasite, but you didn’t lie. I guess I should thank you for that.”

“Knock yourself out.”

“A sponsor,” he tried again. “There’s a sponsor in New York.”

“What does he sponsor?”

“Us. Aquarius. The units are kept largely separate. If one is infiltrated, the others should be safe, but there has to be some central authority, someone who watches it all. We aren’t bad people. We don’t hurt our own. If there were orders… if Galileo is being protected… the sponsor will know why.”

“I wouldn’t hold your breath on that count. Do you know who this sponsor is?”

“No.”

“You know where to find him?”

Silence.

I squeezed the last dregs of lime into the bottom of my glass, watched the innards of the fruit pop between my fingers. “You’re wondering if I’ll kill him,” I breathed. “If this is all just part of one big trick. It’s a good instinct. It could keep you safe right up to that moment when your fear of being stabbed in the back means there’s no one left to watch it. So don’t ask yourself what I want or even who I am. Ask yourself only this: what could I do? Ten seconds are all I need to destroy a man. When you shot me on the steps in Taksim, I thought, Yes. Why not. I’ll be him, I’ll be her – I’ll be someone – and I’ll slit your throat. It’ll only take a moment, and when the cops take me away, blood still warm on my skin, I’ll be gone. All that your death would be to me, as I carried on with my life, was a few seconds. Consequences are for the flesh. Yet for some reason I couldn’t fully fathom at the time, I let you live. I could have run. I’m very good at running. Now, having had a while to consider it, I think I spared you, whatever-your-name-is, because in trying to kill me you performed the single most personal act anyone has done for me in… I don’t know how long. You tried to kill
me
. For all the things that I have done. I can barely describe the excitement of that feeling. So, here we are now, you and I, and I think you should know that my sentiments have perhaps evolved. Become a little more nuanced as, in the course of this merry round, I have come to know you, and, simply put, I love you. Curse me, hate me, spit on me, it’s all the same – an act of revulsion against my very soul. Not who I seem to be, but who I actually am. You are beautiful. And I would no sooner hurt you than I would walk barefoot to Aleppo in a leper’s skin.”

Coyle drained the last of his juice, looked into the empty glass. “Well,” he said at last, then stopped. “OK,” he went on, after a moment’s reflection. “Right.”

I waggled my empty glass at the barman. “Tequila. More tequila.”

“You haven’t had enough, Madame?”

“I’ll have had enough when I can’t walk. And my lovely friend here is going to help me home.”

The man shrugged as only a French barman can, all wisdom and apathy, and poured another glass. At my side Coyle had grown still. “And how am I helping you home, exactly?”

“What do you look for when you hunt my kind? Do you scour hospital records, looking for patients with sudden amnesia? Or is it financial blips, the poor man who suddenly starts buying, the rich man who gives it all away?”

“Both. We follow the carnage.”

“But amnesia can be caused by all sorts of things. A hit on the head. A shock to the system. A chemical cocktail perhaps, that too.”

“Kepler –” a note of warning, understanding seeped into his voice “– where is this going?”

“Every body I pick up, every body I leave behind, is someone else who can be traced. The car can be traced; Irena can be traced. Time to move on.”

“To what? Another cleaning lady? Or more hookers and thieves – that’s your style, isn’t it?”

“Usually, yes. But circumstances are different. Irena isn’t my only liability.”

The penny, which had been balancing on the edge for a while, dropped. “No way.”

“Coyle…”

“Don’t call me that. No fucking way!”

“Think about it…”

“Is this why you let me sleep? Patched me up?”

“I didn’t want you dead.”

“Or too uncomfortable.”

“A cooperative host, a willing body…”

“Chemically corrected for your pleasure…”

“Coyle!” I nearly shouted, pushed my hands into my lap, swallowed a lungful of cold dark air. “I can think of few bodies I would rather inhabit less than yours. I have rejected skins because they have itchy knees or their knuckles crack; do you really think I’d want to inhabit a body with a bullet wound if there was a better choice?”

“And if they find you?”

“I promise to do my very best to move into a more combat-ready skin at the earliest opportunity. What options do you have?”

“Plenty.”

“You’ve still got a bullet in your shoulder.”

“I can’t imagine you’ll be in a hurry to take it out.”

“Your own people…”

“I know!” He shouted now, hands slamming into the counter top, hard enough to make my glass jump, loud enough for heads to turn. He shrank down before the stares, seemed to curl in around his own core. “I know,” he murmured. “I know.”

“I can get you to New York.”

“How?”

“I can get you to your sponsor. I won’t hurt him. Have I lied to you? Have I killed?”

“You killed Eugene. In Berlin – you did that.”

“Alice killed Eugene,” I retorted. “She shot him because I was there, but he died and I lived. He’d have lived if you’d left me alone. I can get you to Galileo.”

“I… don’t know. I need to think. You’ve… drugged me. Talked. Jesus, you talk. I need to think.”

I laid my hand gently on top of his.

“That’s great,” I said. “But I’m going to throw up, and we’re all out of time.”

His hand twitched, but he was far, far too late.

I said, “Hi.”

Coyle opened his eyes, licked his lips and said, “Where am I?”

“Dentist’s.”

His eyes wandered across the low ceiling, the white tiled floor, to me. “Who are you?”

“I am Nehra Beck, married, two kids, loyalty card for the local coffee shop, fastidious – some might say obsessive – collector of receipts.”

“What time is it?”

“Midnight, give or take. I – or rather you – explained that it was an emergency and you’d pay, and when Nehra realised that I had a bullet in my shoulder he became a little distressed and I had to explain that my emergency wasn’t so much about teeth, and then… Well, here we are.”

“Which day?”

“Same day,” I replied. “Only a few hours gone. I’m sorry about just jumping in like that, but you were getting unreasonable and I was really very, very drunk. But once in I realised that this whole stoical thing you’ve been doing was actually secondary to the fact that the bullet has got to come out.” I picked a pair of industrial-sized tweezers off the metal table at my side, clicked them together thoughtfully. “I figured a dentist might have enough happy drugs to ease the experience a little. I, for one, am looking forward to the after-effects.”