The Girl With All the Gifts(62)

“What’ve you got there?” Gallagher asks her. The floor is littered with books, so presumably that’s what she was looking at. With her hands cuffed behind her back, looking is all she can do. He picks up the nearest book. The Water-Babies, by Charles Kingsley. It looks really old, with a faded dust jacket on the cover, torn at one corner. The picture shows a bunch of cute little fairies rising into the air over the rooftops of a city. London, maybe, but Gallagher has never seen London and doesn’t have any way of knowing.

The hungry kid is watching him and not saying a word. It’s not an unfriendly look, but it’s really intent. Like she doesn’t know what he’s there for and she’s ready for the surprise not to be a nice one.

All she knows of him is that he’s one of the people who used to tie her up in that chair all the time, and wheel her in and out of the classroom. Gallagher can’t remember now if he’s ever spoken to her before this. Consequently, the words come out a little skewed, a little self-conscious. He’s not even all that sure why he says it.

“You want me to read this to you?”

A moment’s silence. A moment more of that big-eyed stare.

“No,” the kid says.

“Oh.” That’s his entire conversational strategy, shot to shit. He doesn’t have a Plan B. He heads for the door again, and the lighted room beyond. He’s swung the chair out of the way and he’s about to close the door behind him when she blurts it out.

“Can you look on the shelves?”

He turns and steps back inside, replacing the chair. “What?”

There’s a long silence. Like she’s sorry she spoke, and she’s not sure she wants to say it again. He waits her out.

“Can you look on the shelves? Miss Justineau gave me a book, but I had to leave it behind. If the same book is here…”

“Yeah?”

“Then… you could read me that.”

Gallagher hadn’t noticed the bookcase before. He follows the girl’s gaze now, sees it against the wall next to the door. “Okay,” he says. “What was the book called?”

“Tales the Muses Told.” There’s a quickening of excitement in the girl’s voice. “By Roger Lancelyn Green. It’s Greek myths.”

Gallagher goes over to the bookcase, clicks on his torch and plays it over the shelves. Most of these are picture books for little kids, with stapled spines rather than square ones, so he has to pull them out to see what they’re called. There are a few real books, though, and he works his way through them painstakingly.

No Greek myths.

“Sorry,” he says. “It’s not here. You don’t want to try something new?”

“No.”

“There’s Postman Pat here. And his black and white cat.” He holds up a book to show her. The hungry kid gives it a cold stare, then looks away.

Gallagher rejoins her, pulls up a chair at what he considers a safe distance. “My name’s Kieran,” he tells her. This elicits no response at all. “Is there one story in particular that’s your favourite?”

But she doesn’t want to talk to him, and he can understand that. Why the hell would she?

“I’m gonna read this one,” he says. He holds up a book called I Wish I Could Show You. It’s got the same kind of pictures in it as The Cat in the Hat, which is why he chose it. He used to love that story about the cat and the fish and the kids and the two Things called 1 and 2. He liked to imagine his own house getting trashed like that, and then getting put right again just a second before his dad walked in. For Gallagher, aged about seven, that was a huge, illicit thrill.

“I’m gonna sit here and read this one,” he tells the girl again.

She shrugs like that’s his business, not hers.

Gallagher opens the book. The pages are damp, so they stick to each other a little, but he’s able to pull them apart without tearing them.

“When I was out walking one day in the street,” he recites, “I met a young man with red boots on his feet. His belt had a buckle, his hat had a feather. His shirt was of silk and his pants were of leather, and he could not stand still for two seconds together.”

The kid pretends not to listen, but Gallagher isn’t taken in. It’s pretty obvious that she’s tilting her head so she can see the pictures.





39


Parks shares out some more of the brandy. It’s going fast. Justineau drinks, although she’s just reached the stage where she knows it’s a bad idea. She’ll wake up feeling like shit.

She fans her face, which is uncomfortably hot. Booze always does this to her, even in medicinal amounts. “Jesus,” she says. “I’ve got to get some air.”

But there isn’t much air to be had. The window is safety-locked and opens all of five inches. “We could go up to the roof,” Parks suggests. “There’s a fire door at the end of the corridor that leads up there.”

“Anything to say the roof is safe?” Justineau asks, and the sergeant nods. Yeah, of course, he would have checked it. Love him or hate him, he’s the kind of man who’s built his identity around the blessed sacrament of getting the job done. She saw that out on the green, when he saved all their lives by reacting pretty nearly as fast as the hungries did.