Camera Obscura (8 page)

 
 

 
 

She was sitting at a bar that had no name, drinking coffee laced with cognac, sugar and cream. Opposite her sat the Gascon. Gazing at her, in a way that she found disconcerting. Her first husband had been a noble, renouncing his title but not his ways. This happened after… the Gascon had been his protégé, for a while at least. They had both done wrong – to others, to themselves. To each other. The Gascon was stirring a spoon of sugar in the black depths of his coffee. A quiet bar, and quiet conversations carried in dark corners. Absinthe drinkers, artists, working girls at the end of a shift, and all she could think was: a lock and a key.

  To what? To where? And why?

  The Gascon: "What do you want us to do with Madame L'Espanaye's body?"

  She looked up at him. Not smiling, neither of them. For a moment she felt comfortable with him. They were both being professional, for once. She said, "Is that who she was?" and her voice was raw.

  The Gascon nodded. His eyes were deep-set, surrounded by black rings. She wondered what she herself looked like. "We have been attempting to track her down," he said – a slight note of apology in his voice. Going against her orders. "Unfortunately, we came too late."

  "Yes," she said. "I know how that feels."

  In the silence between them the dead woman pirouetted. Three years before, across the Channel, there had been a murderer who favoured the knife. But he had been a lizard boy, or so it was rumoured, just as they said the British had a human king who had returned from exile. Perhaps this hidden king of theirs had killed the lizard boy who had preyed on Whitechapel. Fairytale stories, she thought. And then she thought of the shape that was not a shape, the elongated skull grinning at her, the knife flashing, her bullets catching the creature again, again, and making no impact.

  
As if it existed in more than one place at once.

  An odd thought. She pushed it away and drank her coffee – alcoholic, sweet. Warmth returning to her body – she didn't know that it had gone. And now she was shivering.

  The Gascon said, "Milady–" and then fell silent. He reached out a hand and covered her fingers with his own. To her surprise, she let him. "Did you see the attacker?" she said.

  He shook his head. Not a no, not a yes. A frown, a flicker of unease: "It was too dark. I cannot be sure what I saw."

  She nodded. Wrapped her fingers around the glass. Sailors in one corner of the bar. A short-legged boyish man who looked vaguely familiar, staring into a glass of absinthe in a separate corner. The Gascon returned his hand to his side of the table, took a sip of coffee, lit a cigarette. "The body," he said.

  
Grimm will take care of it
, she thought. "Leave it by the entrance to the sewers," she said. "And let no one touch it."

  "I saw shapes," he said abruptly. The cigarette sent out bluegrey smoke to hover between them – the victim replaced by her killer. "Swirls of grey moving on her arms…"

  "You saw her killer," she said – not asking, a simple statement. He stared into her eyes. "I don't know what I saw," he said.

  And there it was – his failure. A miracle world, she thought: where a lizard queen sat on the British throne, a shadowy assassin killed with books, where a corpse could be impregnated with an unknown device, where grey shapes flittered like the shadows of another reality… a fantasy? A world of science, rather: a world in which machines spoke and made plans, where stars were real, enormous things, full of potential, and promise, and threat – for who knew who, or what, lived beyond their own world, what other beings inhabited that vast realm beyond the Earth? Not angels, not gods, no burning sword or Garden of Eden. Science was the art of confronting the world as it really was. That it was strange there was no doubt. Humans continued to scheme and war and make love, to make mistakes and become confused and angry and murderous and loving, a vastly tiny microcosm, like Viktor's cultures in his test tubes in the lab. To refuse to see what was beyond did not negate its truthfulness.

  She said, "I know what I saw."

  "Then you are lucky," the Gascon said, and smiled, and for once there was nothing sarcastic in the expression, which was a little wistful, perhaps. "You always know what you see, Milady."

  "I see what is there," she said, simply, and let it rest. She pulled out her gun and began loading it with bullets. The Gascon smiled again, and now it was back to business as usual, softness melting between them like a mirage. "And a bullet is always a cure for mystery," he said.

  She smiled back, cold again, and said, "That's right."

  Though it wasn't. There had been something familiar about the creature in the alleyway, some markers she was missing… but the bullets hadn't killed it. Why?

  She didn't know. She said, "Thanks for the drink," and got up to leave.

  The Gascon, still sardonic: "Where are you in such a hurry to?"

  Lady de Winter: "I have to find the younger L'Espanaye. Or have you forgotten her?"

  His smile, mocking, growing larger. "I have not."

  "Oh."

  "Would you like to speak to her?"

  "I thought I told you to leave this investigation alone."

  He shrugged. "So you did. It must have slipped my mind."

  "Where did you find her?"

  "Working the adjacent alley," he said. "We were on our way for the mother when–"

  "How is she?"

  "Complaining. Apart from that she's keeping quiet."

  "Complaining about what?"

  "The competition."

  She let it pass. "Where are you keeping her?"

  "The station by the cemetery."

  "Then let's go."

  He mock-saluted her, rose from his seat. He left a handful of coins on the table top, stubbed out his cigarette, and offered her his hand – which she ignored.

 
 

 
 

Along Boulevard de Clichy, the nightlife bright still in these early hours, bright lights and glimpses of naked flesh, like sordid promises. Drunks outside, drunks inside. Music, competing. Past the Moulin Rouge and the turning windmill, past the mouth of the cemetery – gaping, dark – into the station house, cheap stale coffee, cigarette smoke, urine from the cells, vomit, someone crying quietly, a couple of manacled men in flamboyant dress chatting across a desk.

  The young woman behind the table in the interview room looked worn out. Her youth had been scrubbed from her, leaving oddly old eyes in that still-unlined face. She glared up when they entered, said nothing. A cigarette was smouldering in an ashtray on the table that looked as if it had never been cleaned.

  "Mademoiselle L'Espanaye?"

  "Who the hell are you?" Turning to the Gascon, a plaintive tone – "Why did you bring her here?"

  He gave her his customary shrug, open palms facing up, and sat down in a chair.

  "She don't look like no whore. She looks like–" Mademoiselle L'Espanaye examined her opponent critically, concluded – "like a machine is what she looks like."

  Snorting. "Losing all our business to the bloody machines."

  The Gascon, in a whispered aside – "I'm afraid she's rather single-minded about her topics of conversation."

  Milady, not bothering to whisper: "That's going to change."

  Mademoiselle L'Espanaye scratched her head. A strand of red hair fell down on her face and she blew it away irritably. "Machines, machines, machines. Make them look a little like women and the punters suddenly think they're better?"

  "Mademoiselle L'Espanaye," Lady de Winter said. The woman gave her a dismissive look, said, "What do you want?"

  Milady, standing up, kicked back the chair – the gun, newly loaded, exposed in its holster. Observing the young woman taking it in. "I'm going to ask you some questions. You are going to answer them." She gave her a slow, measured smile and watched the woman swallow. "Clear?"

  Mademoiselle L'Espanaye, turned to the Gascon, a plea in her eyes. The Gascon looking elsewhere.

  "Clear?"

  Mademoiselle L'Espanaye, a little girl voice. "What do you want to know?"

  "I want to know why there was a dead body in your apartment."

  Watching her. Did she know? From the woman opposite, no visible reaction. "What are you talking about?"

  Too cocky – as if she knew something they didn't, and was enjoying it.

  Well, that was about to change.

  "His name was Yong Li," Milady said. "And someone gutted him open with a knife. Was it you – or was it your mother?"

  Ah – reaction. "You leave my mother out of this!"

  "Tell me about him," Milady said.

  A shrug. The eyes hostile, still taking her measure. She sat down slowly, faced Mademoiselle L'Espanaye. "I'm waiting."

  "Don't know what you want me to tell you." Sullen. "Sometimes we take on lodgers. To help pay the rent, see. Even a shithole like Rue Morgue costs. Don't know nothing else."

  She'd had enough. "We have your mother next door," she said. "Would you like to see her?"

  She had gone back to the alley. A guard on the street, no one inside. In the shadows, Grimm, slowly working, summoned by the mechanism inside her bracelet. She stroked his head and said, "Leave me the face. And one of the arms."

  An old wedding ring on one finger.

  Transported what remained of the head back to the station, the gendarmes cursing her, but quietly. "And don't touch it!" she'd said. "Whatever you do, don't make contact with the body."

  "What have you done to my mother? You let her be!"

  The Gascon murmured something inaudible. Milady, reaching over, a graceful hand to assist the younger woman. "Come with me."

  Mademoiselle L'Espanaye, brushing away her hand. Following her nevertheless, a tough child-woman – let's see how tough you are, she thought, but said nothing as she led her out of the door and to the next room – opening the door for her, waiting for her to step inside–

  Eyes to adjust to the dim light, time to put together the pieces on the table, the ruined face, one eye staring into nothing, a loose arm with an old ring on a finger that would never move again, time to comprehend their meaning, time to–

  She caught the girl as she fell. Gave her a moment, stood her up. Forcing her to look. A small voice, choked, broken, polluted water running over pebbles – "Mother…"

  A shake of the head. Inaudibly – "No. No!"

  Milady, holding her, a silent command –
look.

  The girl looked. A head, an arm – was sick all over the floor. Milady held her all the while.

  "And now we talk."

 
 

 
 

And now she hated her. Hated her, yes, but feared her more. The woman behind the table was afraid, terribly afraid – of her? Only a part. And the rest?

  "Tell me about the man in your apartment."

  She talked.

  The safe house – Tom Thumb – the arrangement – "We slept in the same room, my mother and I, and the guest –" she referred to them as guests – "in my room, unless, you know."

  A pause, waiting. The girl smoking a cigarette as if it were a life line of oxygen and she was drowning. "Unless I liked him."

  Always men. Not many – perhaps ten, twelve in the past three years. All via Tom, "That horny little midget, I wouldn't give him the time of day –" some staying a day or two, some weeks. "All Asian?"

  No. One African, a couple of Europeans from the East, one Vespuccian man who said he was a Sioux, whatever that was. Never any visitors. Stayed inside, until other arrangements had been made, and then they left.

  "And Yong Li?"

  He was a nice guy. On that she seemed in agreement with Tom Thumb. He liked to drink but was a polite drunk. He had a good singing voice. He never made advances, even though–

  "I wouldn't have minded, you know. Even with that stomach of his…"

  "Tell me about his stomach."

  If she thought it was odd she gave no sign. "He looked pregnant," she said. It was odd. She saw him naked, a couple of times – "Coming out of the shower. He had a scar running down it. His belly protruded so… he used to touch it, stroke it as if there was something living inside. He walked funny. Carrying around that weight – we used to make jokes about it. Mother–"

  A wait as she cried. Lit another cigarette from the one glowing in the ashtray. The smell of it mingling with puke, the girl's body odour. The Gascon silent beside her, as if he had fallen asleep. But she knew he was listening.

  "Did you kill him?"

  "No!" Looking at her, the hatred returning. Then, eyes softening – "Is he really dead?"

  "When did you leave the apartment?"

  They left as usual, with night falling. Heading off to Pigalle, to work – "Girl's got to work, right?" staring at her, defying her, but no longer having the heart for it. "We left together, Mother and me. Last I saw of him he was asleep on the couch. That's all I know, honest."

  Only she was lying.

  "Where was he meant to go once he left you?"

  "I don't know."

  "Did he go out? Did he meet anyone?"

  "I told you, none of them ever–"

  Faltering. Milady's eyes never leaving the girl's face. Daring her back – dare to lie to me again.

  "You went out with him?"

  Only once! It wasn't meant to happen, the rules were very clear. She woke up – it was about a week before – and saw him pacing the floor, looking nervous and excited. The window was open. There was something in his hand, a note perhaps, but when she looked again it had disappeared. He said, "There is a place I want to visit."