Amberlough(103)

There was another piece of paper beneath the ID papers. Cyril slid the stack of documents aside and picked it up. He read the first line and panicked, unsure where to put his eyes. He clenched his fists and balled the note up. Edges of the crumpled paper bit into his palms.

All he’d seen was 5 a.m. northbound from Bythesea, and then fragments, farther down: friend will meet you, and by car from there. Instructions. Not a location, but enough to put Aristide in serious danger if Cyril read them and talked. So he didn’t read them.

Finn knew where Aristide was. Knew exactly. Under torture he would give it up, and they would torture him. Cyril, on the other hand, knew nothing except what Finn had told him: north. And that wasn’t enough, or shouldn’t be.

He flushed the instructions, folded up the paper around the false ID, and washed his hands. Out in the hall, he yawned, hugely—not even faking it.

“Do you mind if I turn in?” he asked. “I don’t think I’ve slept in three whole days.”

“Makes my job easier,” said Massey. “Go ahead.”





CHAPTER

THIRTY-THREE

Cordelia went to Malcolm’s place. There was nowhere else for her to go, not really.

He lived between the train yards and the wharves, not too far from the end of the Seagate line. By the time she got there, the promise of the red sunrise had played out. A front piled up over the harbor, lashing the Spits with whitecaps and lightning.

She let herself in and sat at the bottom of the staircase to catch her breath. It took her a good long while to make it up the two flights—longer than it had taken for her to do twice the distance back home. When she knocked on his door, she was seeing spots and shivering. He didn’t answer. She banged again, and called out his name.

There was a drawn-out silence. She slid to the floor, crumpled against the door frame. “Malcolm Sailer,” she said, her voice squeaking in her worn-out throat. “Open this rotten door or I’ll know why.”

Nothing.

Cold, slippery fear slid through her exhaustion, masking her pain. She reached up with her shaking, bandaged hand and tried the knob. It twisted easily, and the door swung open.

Nobody in this part of town left their door unlocked.

Clawing her way upright, Cordelia staggered into Malcolm’s flat. It wasn’t a big place—three rooms, and two of those barely more than closets—so the smell hit her fast. Butcher-shop stink: iron, copper, salt. A sour trace of shit.

The door to the bedroom was closed. She took a step toward it, but caught a sight out of the corner of her eye and turned.

In the kitchenette, Malcolm leaned back in his chair like he’d passed out. His mouth hung open, and there was an empty bottle on the table. A shred of her felt relief—he’d just been drinking, probably lost hold on his bowels … But she wasn’t that stupid.

Closer up, she saw the cabinets behind him were spattered red. His right hand hung limp where the revolver had dragged it down. The gun lay half-in, half-out of a puddle of congealing blood.

Cordelia sat down, hard, in the chair opposite Malcolm’s corpse.

A copy of the Clarion sat beside the empty bottle, doubled over and creased flat to show a chunk of midlist news. The article was headlined Bumble Bee busted for ballast. Malcolm’s haunted mug shot stared out from between columns.

She could see him, almost, rubbing his thumb over the print, drinking himself down to the bottom of a handle of who knew what. Had he wondered where she was? Had he known? Ari might have told him, if he’d asked. What had finally put the revolver in his hand?

Her breath hitched, and the pain made her see stars. She couldn’t cry. It hurt too much, and it wouldn’t get her even with the Ospies.

She tried to think what would. And somewhere in between explosives and assassinations, she drifted off into a red haze of sleep.

*

When she woke up it was dark and the storm was going full-tilt outside the kitchen window, pelting the glass with wind-driven rain. Lightning seared the room flashbulb-white, making the whole gory scene like something out of a moving picture.

Cordelia straightened, stiffly, and cased herself. Her body hurt worse than ever, but sleep had done her head and heart some good.

While she’d dozed and dreamed about revenge, something in her broken chest had changed. Not her ribs, not a muscle or an organ, but something deeper and more vital. It had turned hard and crooked, like a fracture healed up wrong.

The Ospies had killed Tory. The Ospies had taken the Bee. The Ospies had driven Malcolm Sailer to swallow a bullet. Cordelia wished he’d saved the lead; she would’ve liked to put it square between Caleb Acherby’s eyes.

And who said she couldn’t? Maybe not right away, and maybe not on her own. But she had time, and she knew people. Running for Ari had put her in touch with all sorts—money launderers and gunrunners and folk in every seedy trade imaginable. Not just small-timers, either.

They’d be nervous, sure, and rightly so. Her own smashed face was reason enough. But they had no love for the Ospies, and Cordelia had talked punters around to some wild schemes. Maybe not so wild as this, but what did she have to lose?

Her life. But she’d given that up for gone sometime yesterday, under the thin man’s steel-toed boots.





CHAPTER

THIRTY-FOUR

Cyril didn’t have a lot of time to plan, and the options available were limited. What he did come up with was half plot, half prayer—inelegant and brutal.