Amberlough(105)

“This … um…” He tapped the paper with his forefinger. “This doesn’t match my description.”

“Don’t blame me,” said Cyril. His fingers itched for a straight, but he hadn’t brought any. “This is what Cross gave me. Anyway, you’re about the right height, if you don’t slouch.”

Finn put his shoulders back and lifted his chin. It brought his eyes nearly level with Cyril’s, where they lingered for a moment before flicking up and down. He tilted his head and pursed his lips, and Cyril knew he’d been caught out. But before he’d even had a chance to breathe—to apologize, explain—a worse realization struck him.

There was one crucial detail he had missed. One thing that ruined his entire rotten plan.

He had seen the name on those false papers.

He wanted to be sick. Horror and bile crept up the back of his throat, threatening to choke him. He’d been so careful with Aristide’s instructions, not to read them, not to let Finn tell him where Aristide had gone. He’d meant to save Finn, and doing so, save Aristide.

But he’d read through those papers—thrilled like some giddy schoolboy to see his own description, to see the silly wordplay work name: Paul Darling. DePaul, darling. He could almost hear Ari purring it out.

He’d been so worried about Finn breaking under torture, so keen to send him out of the city. He’d never thought about the possibility he himself might break—he hadn’t thought he had anything to sing about. But if he gave them that name, they could trace every move Finn made on his journey north, and it would be as good as if Cyril had led them to Aristide himself.

Once, he would have been confident he could keep the secret, no matter what they did to him. Before Tatié, when this was all a game. But he no longer held those illusions.

“Cyril?”

He blinked. Finn was staring at him, still holding the damned papers. “What?”

“I said, these were meant for you, weren’t they?”

“I’m … I’m sorry?” He marshaled his thoughts around a single, unpleasant certainty. He knew how to solve this problem.

“Ari meant these papers for you. So you could come to him. I—I knew you’d been lovers but I never thought … Why are you giving them to me?”

“Because you need them,” said Cyril, knowing very shortly, Finn would not. “I know about the memos. And someone’s going to figure it out, sooner or later. You know where Aristide is, and if they question you, you’ll give him up.” Finn opened his mouth to protest, but Cyril cut him off. “No, it’s true. Whatever novels you’ve read, or whatever the pictures have you thinking, people don’t hold up under torture.”

“Not even Central’s foxes?”

“Sometimes not even them.”

“So you’re taking the fall for me?”

Cyril didn’t say yes, didn’t nod, but Finn seemed to have answered his own question.

“Holy stones, Cyril, I don’t … I don’t know what to say.”

“Don’t say anything.” He set the paper sack on the counter. “Peroxide. It’s not perfect, but it’ll get you on a train.”

“To where?”

“You know where.” He handed Finn the bottle of bleach and didn’t look him in the eye. “Get started.”

*

He waited until Finn was bent over the bathtub, rinsing the peroxide from his brassy blond hair. There was no need for him to see it coming.

The noise of the shot against the cast iron made Cyril’s ears ring. He felt a tug at his jacket, and turned to see the bullet buried in the washroom door. It had ricocheted and cut clean through the outer layer of his clothes, leaving his waistcoat intact. He let out a small breath, like a sigh but not quite, and stepped toward Finn’s limp corpse.

Water from the tap made his viscous blood curl like worms. Gray pieces of brain moved with the current, jostling bone fragments and bits of chipped porcelain. Finn’s head drooped below the rush of water. Cyril didn’t fish him out—his face would be a mess.

He let his hand linger, for just a moment, between Finn’s shoulder blades. The accountant had removed his pyjama top to rinse his hair. The skin of his back was still warm. Cyril’s fingers covered scattered freckles, tracing them like points on a map. Poor idiot.

No. Not an idiot. Obviously clever, to have come up with the memo scheme, to have run messages for Ari all this time right under the Ospies’ noses. So not an idiot. But a tool. A tool, for people he’d trusted and loved.

“Some people just aren’t cut out for it,” said Cyril, taking his hand away. He wondered who he was talking to. More importantly, who he was talking about.

*

The thing was, he could leave now. He wanted to kick himself. He’d planned this all wrong, expecting to end up in custody when he should have been expecting to run. What had Cordelia said? You’ve always gotta be the one pulling other people off the tracks. He had always thought of himself as selfish. Maybe he’d had the wrong idea.

Irrelevant now. He could take the papers and go … North, someplace. Damnation, he didn’t need to find Ari, not right away. He just needed to get out of Amberlough and go to ground.

There was a chance. If he could make it to Bythesea Station before the Ospies realized Moore and Massey had failed to report … He didn’t want to let himself hope. It had ended so bitterly the last time, and seemed so heartless now, with Finn hanging dead over the lip of his own bathtub.