Thieves Like Us 01 - Thieves Like Us (18 page)

‘I’ve made up my mind.’

‘You think you’ll be safe back in your own world? You’re a wanted man. You’ll always be looking back over your shoulder.’

‘It was a year-long sentence for theft,’ Jonah reminded him. ‘I hardly think I’m on the Most Wanted list –’

Coldhardt’s eyes looked haunted. ‘I’m not talking about the police wanting you, Jonah.’ He turned to the marble statuette on his desk, the man and the demon locked in combat. ‘And away from my fold, I can’t protect you.’

Jonah swallowed. ‘You’re just trying to scare me.’

‘We each of us have to face our own fears on our own terms.’ His old, pale fingers caressed the unblemished marble. ‘Resist the devil and he will flee from you, the Bible teaches. But that’s simply not true, Jonah. He will return again and again. And each time, with a deal a little less fair than the one you refused the last time. Yet as the life you pursue gets harder, as second and third chances slip through your fingers …
there will come a time when you grasp that clawed, hot little hand in partnership. And you will have lost so much.’

‘I’m not sure what you’re saying,’ Jonah admitted, ‘but it sounds like you’re speaking from experience.’

‘When I was a young man, Jonah, a proposition was made to me as you would not …’ Coldhardt tailed off, staring into space. ‘But enough of this. If you feel you must leave us, so be it.’

‘Just like that?’

‘Please go to your apartment now. Don’t tell the others what we’ve talked about here.’ Still Coldhardt wouldn’t look at him. ‘I told you what would happen if you refused me. You’ll be removed from here tonight and taken somewhere.’

‘Where?’ Jonah said uneasily.

‘I doubt it will be anywhere you’ve heard of.’

‘So don’t I – can’t I say goodbye to the others?’

‘What do you care, Jonah?’ The voice was a cold caress. ‘You’re not like us. You don’t belong here, remember. Not in our world.’

‘Have I earned anything for what I’ve done for you so far?’

‘You’ve earned the right to walk away with your life,’ Coldhardt whispered. ‘No payment. This job is far from over, and your part in it unfinished. You’ll leave here with the clothes you stand in, nothing more. Now, there are arrangements I must make. Leave me now.’

Jonah opened his mouth, to argue or to apologise again he wasn’t quite sure. But there was nothing more to say.

He left the man, still tracing the outline of the cold stone with his fingertips.

Come two in the morning, Jonah lay fully dressed on his bed, alert to every sound outside.

Misshapen shadows danced about the room in the smoky light of the oil lamp beside him. He couldn’t sleep, couldn’t rest.

Where’s the smokestone?

He’d searched the cold grate and fireplace for it. He’d decided that if Coldhardt would give him nothing for the risks he’d taken – well, then. He would take it and sell it.

Or rather, he would if it hadn’t disappeared. It was either a fake and had shattered in the grate or, somehow, Coldhardt must have got it back. This was his workplace, after all.

The rules, and the terms, were his.

And that had set Jonah thinking. What if Coldhardt
wasn’t
going to set him free? Wouldn’t it be so much quicker and easier to have him killed?

No one will know I’m dead
, he realised.
And no one will mourn
.

However he left here tonight, it would be alone.

He started as the twiggy tips of the mulberry tree scraped against the panes of his bedroom window, his thoughts chasing their tails. What could he do? Strike out now, make a run for it? How far would he get? No, he was panicking needlessly. Coldhardt would release him as arranged. He had to …

Then he heard a quieter scrape. A flurry of light footsteps in the bathroom.

Jonah sat up on the bed. ‘Who’s there?’ he challenged, his voice cracking.

‘It’s just me.’ Con came out of the bathroom. She was wearing a plain dress with a scoop neck, as white as her skin. The oily light made her look almost jaundiced, and her shadow danced ten times as large behind her. ‘Hello, Jonah.’

‘What’s the matter?’ said Jonah. ‘Flush broken in yours?’

‘I did not want to be seen coming here.’ She looked at him, much as she had the first time she had come to him in his cell, half-knowing, half-curious. ‘Is it true you’re really going?’

He nodded, watching her warily as she walked towards him.

But she only smiled as she sat on the end of the bed. ‘I couldn’t let you go without saying goodbye, now, could I?’

‘Coldhardt said I wasn’t allowed to –’

‘We don’t have long.’ Con started crawling along the bed towards him, the open neck of her dress gaping, leaving little to the imagination. Jonah looked up and into her eyes, which were fixed on his own. ‘I had hoped we would grow to like each other properly over time. But life is too short to pass up opportunities, yes?’ A look of sadness played around her face. ‘Or so
I
believe.’

Then she was leaning in to him, her glossy lips parting as they pressed against his in a thick, smearing kiss. Their tongues touched, mouths opened wider. The fingers of her right hand coiled around the back of his neck, scrunched up his hair.

Then gently she pulled away. Her eyes were
shining. ‘You will forget me, Jonah.’

‘I won’t,’ he whispered, the taste of her lipstick on his tongue.

‘Yes, you will,’ she insisted. ‘You will forget me. All of us.’

He shook his head, gave her a puzzled smile.

‘It will be as if we did not meet.’

He leaned in to kiss her again but she shook her head softly, pressed her cold palm to his lips. Her eyes held his own, her voice calm and steady, soothing. ‘For you, it will be like none of this has ever happened. You will forget everything. Everything that has happened since the date of –’

Jonah realised what she was doing, dragged himself free from her spell. He grabbed her hand and twisted it and she gasped. ‘Bitch!’ he hissed. ‘Coldhardt sent you here, didn’t he?’

‘You know so much about us, Jonah,’ she whispered, pulling her hand away. ‘Enough to make you dangerous to us. And to make yourself a target.’

‘So you mess with my mind? Take away my memories?’

‘Isn’t it better this way?’ Her eyes were hard. ‘You want to leave us, Jonah, remember? To turn your back on all we have offered you.’

‘Like that kiss, like your friendship. It’s all fake.’

‘You want fake?’ Her expression grew colder. ‘You are right, I was sent here to reprogram you. But I didn’t. If I’d really meant to, Jonah, you’d be out like a light by now. You’d be waking up somewhere foreign and strange with no clue how you got there, no money, no protection.’ She looked away, eased herself
off the bed. ‘I can’t do that to you, Jonah. So we fake it, yes?’

‘You’d do that?’

‘Go to the main gates and wait for the car. Take nothing. Say nothing.’ The lamplight sputtered violently as she crossed back towards the bathroom. ‘Act spaced when they come for you. Convince the driver, for both our sakes.’

‘Con, wait –’

‘Take care of yourself, Jonah Wish.’ She disappeared inside the door.

He got up from the bed to follow her, but the rattle of the window told him she’d gone before he’d taken more than a couple of steps.

Jonah listened for any sound of her outside, but there was only the scrape of the branches in the warm breeze, tapping at the glass like they wanted to come in.

He waited five minutes, then he left the apartment. A fine rain was falling. Moisture ghosted on his face and he wiped it crossly away from his eyes. The grass dampened his trainers as he walked.

The moon was close to full, and Jonah glimpsed movement at the gates. Tye, maybe? He felt like such an idiot after what had happened with Con …It would be good to see Tye again, to say goodbye. Acting spaced, as ordered, at first he pretended not to notice. But then, with a twist of disappointment, he saw it was Patch.

‘We had a bit of a collection for you, Jonah.’ Patch glanced about quickly, clearly afraid he would be seen.
‘Me, Tye, Motti. We didn’t want you going with nothing.’

He held out a thick wad of euros.

Jonah hesitated a few moments before taking it gratefully. ‘Thanks, Patch.’

‘Con didn’t chip in. She don’t hand over money to no one if she can help it. But you still know who we are, don’t you?
That’s
what she’s given you.’

Jonah nodded. ‘I won’t forget a thing. Not a minute of it.’

‘I’m sorry it didn’t work out, mate.’ Patch heaved a sad sigh. ‘Anyway, here’s some extra. From me.’ He held out a slimmer wad of notes.

‘You don’t need to.’

‘Nah, go on, take it. I can afford it.’ He closed Jonah’s fingers round the money and gave him a conspiratorial smile. ‘I been saving, see.’

‘Yeah?’

‘One day, when I’ve saved up enough, maybe I can get myself a real eye. A proper one, that I can see through and everything.’ He smiled. ‘And I’ll find my mum and say, “It don’t matter what you did to me, Mum – look. Look, you can forgive yourself now, I got my eye back again.”’

Jonah just stared at him, pity and admiration all mixed up and choking his throat. The rain was falling harder, a summer storm. He pulled up the collar on his thin jacket. ‘You know, I never thought to ask your real name.’

‘Patch
is
my real name. Long time ago I used to be Patrick Kendall, no fixed abode. Used, abused, no offer refused.’ He shrugged, pinged the black elastic
on his face. ‘That’s why I’m happy to wear this thing, even when I got a false eye in. Reckon being Patch saved my life.’

A pair of powerful headlights swung into view, strobing past the railings of the main gate, illuminating the rain like a billion fireflies.

‘Be careful, Jonah.’ The boy gave him an awkward hug, and stole away into the darkness.

Jonah stood alone in the bright rain, slipped his money into his pocket out of sight. Here he was, ready to go off and face the unknown. Turning his back on people who could have been real friends. On maybe the biggest opportunity of his life.

The gates hummed open. The giant palms shook in the wind.

Jonah took a few stumbling steps towards the large, dark car. He paused and looked back through the rain, though there was nothing and no one to see in the bright-daggered dark.

Then someone got out of the car, took his arm, steered him towards it. Jonah leaned back heavily in the back seat, his wet clothes snagging on the leather upholstery. His eyes felt hot as the driver took him away into the night along its twisted, narrow lanes.

Tye viewed the washed-out grey morning through the window and wished she’d said goodbye to Jonah in person. She’d spent so much of her childhood saying goodbye. Goodbye to guys who took what they wanted and left. To friends, clawing their way out of the slums on to better things, or as they were lowered into the ground. To chances for change, when she’d jacked in school again or walked out on Dad – or when she’d been bullied, bludgeoned or blackmailed into one more run, one last time.

She didn’t know what to say at goodbyes any more.

But she knew she was hurting somewhere – some soft, half-forgotten part she had little use for these days. As long ago as their exchange in the pool in Cairo, Tye had sensed she would be able to talk to Jonah in a way she couldn’t with the others.

And that of course had been enough to scare her miles away.

She didn’t want to open up. Didn’t want to let in mess, to share anything more than her skill with the people around her. Of course she didn’t.

‘Liar,’ Tye whispered miserably. She turned on her side, her back to the window.

* * *

The summons from Coldhardt came early, as she had expected. She sat beside Motti in the hub. Jonah’s seat was empty, of course. Patch was staring at it morosely, so Tye was glad when Con slumped there with a cup of strong-smelling coffee. Though her make-up had been applied with her usual skill, she still looked tired, like she hadn’t slept well. Tye supposed none of them had.

It wasn’t like any of them even knew Jonah that well. But they’d told him he could be family, and he didn’t want to know – threw the opportunity back in their faces. Tye knew that tapped into stuff for all of them, no matter how cool they acted on the surface.

Motti sniffed. ‘Coulda made me some, Con.’

‘Do I look like your slave, Motti?’

‘Truth is, you look all-out gross. Even Patch would say no this morning, right, Patch?’

‘Leave it, Mot.’

‘Jeez, are we all on tippy-toes today just ’cause the geek cleared out? Does it have to be like someone died –?’

‘That’s enough,’ said Coldhardt, looking up languidly from the head of the table. He was dressed in his habitual black, but somehow his manner this morning seemed a little more funereal. ‘The cipher has been decrypted,’ he announced, with no mention of the boy who’d cracked it. ‘Unfortunately, it is inconclusive. We must locate and retrieve the rest of the lekythos. As Tye and Con have informed us, it was sent to the Serpens Biotech plant in Rome. And it is from there that we must recover it.’

‘Why should the fragments still be there?’ Con asked. ‘Surely it was just another drop point, no? It’s a genetics lab.’

‘Which makes it the perfect place for testing that mysterious organic powder inside the lekythos,’ Coldhardt said heavily.

‘But what about the lekythos itself?’ asked Motti. ‘Y’know, I’m surprised we didn’t find what’s left of it in Samraj’s mansion. I mean, it’s just clay, man – got no call to be in a lab.’ He looked at Coldhardt, smiling slyly. ‘Hey, speaking of Samraj’s place, how come you knew where that secret safe of hers was, anyway –?’

Coldhardt slammed down both fists on the antique wood of the table. ‘You question
me
?’

The table jumped under the force of the blow. Patch quailed, covering his head. Con and Tye both stared at Coldhardt in shock.

‘Was just impressed, man,’ Motti said hoarsely.

‘If you’re not prepared to trust me you can walk out now,’ he snapped, glaring round at them. ‘Leave here for good. That goes for any of you.’