Waywalkers: Number 1 in Series (8 page)

He took a gulp from the glass in his hand. No – however hard he tried, he found it difficult to get drunk.
Time, Time, Time!
he swore.
Why can’t my body not work for once?
He’d already downed half a bottle of whisky. Yet there was no sign of its effects, but for the smell on his breath and the occasional turning of his stomach as his body broke down a thousand little toxins that might have half killed a human.

Someone staggered out next to him on to the balcony. A young woman, twentyish, giggling violently. She gasped down several gulps of air, clinging to the railing; then her head tipped forward as though it were a dead weight. Indeed, but for a small groan it seemed she might have died standing there.

‘Shit,’ she declared finally.

‘Why?’ he asked in French.

Rolling her head around a few times and hugging herself against the cold in her thin dress, she declared in a slurred voice, ‘I’m drunk.’

‘You are.’

‘Shit.’

‘It’s not such a bad thing,’ said Sam, wishing he could share her mindless condition, hangover and all.

She seemed only now to become aware of herself, and smiled prettily, as if just noticing his existence. ‘Who are you, then?’

‘Luc.’

‘And what do you do?’ she asked, almost crooning the words. She staggered, and he caught her automatically. Leaning against the railing, she began again to giggle.

‘I’m the Devil in disguise,’ he assured her. ‘Are you okay?’

She laughed. ‘My name’s Annette. What’s yours?’

‘I said. Luc.’

But Annette just went on laughing.

Why did you have to be mortal?
he thought wearily, rolling over on one side, struggling to find sleep, that like the effects of drugs, alcohol and cigarettes, seemed denied to him.
And since you are mortal, why can’t you simply die and leave me to my memories? Why do you always have to be there?

He woke to the thud of mail falling on the mat. The sun was already putting his threadbare curtains to shame, and a quick glance at the clock shamed him too. Was it already so late?

Sam managed to wash and dress in a little over ten minutes. He took his mail into the kitchen, reading it over a bowl of cereal and not caring that he might splash it with milk or coffee.

It was after he’d opened three items – a bill, an ad declaring that his house was perfect for a certain housing agency to represent, should he
ever
require their services, and another bill – that he came across a letter sealed in a brown envelope and addressed in Adam’s hand to Luc – no, that was crossed out – Sam Linnfer. He wondered what Adam could have found out so swiftly.

There was a single note inside, on which a hurried hand had scrawled, ‘The old hammer’s found you. The valkyries took every address I know. Get out. Adam.’ It had been delivered by hand.

He stared at it for a long while, reading and re-reading as though he couldn’t quite believe it. Then he sprang into action, leaping round the flat in a flurry, digging out passports, keys, clothes, maps – everything he could fit into one small rucksack. He couldn’t afford to be burdened.

As he hurried to and fro he struggled to remember how many addresses Adam knew. Three, maybe four? All but one in England. What else did Adam know? Contacts, emergency meeting-places, alternative names.
Assume Sam and Luc are known. How far does Thor’s influence stretch – will he have eyes in passport control too? Or am I the only one who’s bothered to set up proper networks? Will he just send the
valkyries
after me, or is that too blunt even for Thor’s little mind?

How many addresses could they have checked so far? Quite a few
, he decided. Shouldering his luggage, he slammed the door behind him and galloped down the stairs. ‘Mrs Dinken! If anyone asks to go into my flat for whatever reason, please don’t let them. Oh – and have you got a pen?’ it occurred to him to ask, going through his pockets as she stood in the hall before him, her head bobbing up and down in agreement to words not being said. She waddled back into a room, emerging an eternity later with pen and paper. Sam scrawled a hasty note, bounded back upstairs and stuck it to his door.

‘I’m sorry, but Mr Sam Linnfer is currently away on business in Oxford. Please contact his assistant for a telephone number.’ He had no assistant, but that wasn’t the point.

In the street, every car held staring eyes and the sky felt full of ravens. He tried to use what he knew about finding pursuers. Check cars, look for interesting features that help you remember them. Look for faces in the cars. Look for pedestrians who spend too much time staring into the same shop windows as you. Remember what other contacts Adam had access to, what others he knew of.

Sam walked briskly down the road, ignoring bus stops and passing endless shops offering half-price sales. This place, unlike Holcombe, had lost all personality. Teenagers pressed their noses against the window at Gap, and businessmen drank over-priced coffees, thinking of them instead as ‘expresso grande’ or ‘special mocca’. The main street was one large chain store, divided by a river of cars and trucks aggressively seeking the end of their road. The man in the small red convertible had his stereo up full blast in an attempt to drown out the classical music of the family in the large green Volvo: one wife with flowery silk scarf, one father with tie, two tidily dressed children with sulky expressions who’d grow up to be lawyers, maybe High Court judges.

Thor thinks I killed Freya. Or maybe he doesn’t; maybe he’s just using it as an excuse to get even on past hatreds. Why? I never did anything to him.
 

There’s no evidence against me, either. They can’t prove anything.
 

The inevitable rejoinder piped up.
Thor doesn’t want to prove anything. He just wants to beat a confession out of anything that moves, and I’ve been moving for too long already.

He’d reached his first destination. A side street thronging with market stalls, erected in all their plastic and metal glory in front of fish and chip shops, DIY stores and florists selling authentic plastic blooms, one pound each. This litter-filled byway of noise and colour had personality, albeit of the watch-your-wallet variety. Twisted towards the shady side of the law, by dubious boxes of watches and videos in unorthodox covers that had somehow been released at the same time as the film itself.

Here Sam brought a cheap green anorak and a baseball cap, reasoning that these were what he’d be least expected to wear. He did have
some
taste – enough at least not to dress as a trainspotter.
Hi, I’m the Prince of Darkness, is that really a Castles Class, 1923? Wow, let me write down the serial number.
Pushing his way back to the main road, he got on the first bus that came along. He had a definite destination in mind, but planned on taking a long time to get there.

The bus was bound for King’s Cross down the Caledonian Road, with its dismal blocks of flats, run-down terraces, pet shops, municipal pool, and prison. Yet here too was life, of a sort. A few blocks to the east were green squares and private gardens and luxurious restored houses in which bankers, accountants and politicians neighboured one another in competitive bourgeois elegance. None of them said they lived near the Caledonian Road; they were from Islington. Their children had neat hair and played with clean new toys. The streets where they lived were tightly parked with sensible cars for the school run. And this not half a mile from the seedy streets round Pentonville Gaol. It was as if God, in all his wisdom, had drawn a social boundary down the middle of a road over which the local pub glowered at the new wine bar and which none but the foolhardy crossed.

At King’s Cross Sam changed buses. The station was a scruffy building, made shabbier beneath its huge wrought-iron roof by a plaza full of McDonald’s and the like, and notices declaring that this train was also delayed. It was horribly dwarfed by St Pancras next door, with its fairy-tale towers and gothic majesty, even though the people going through King’s Cross quite outnumbered those in the sister station.

Down the Euston Road in the next bus at walking speed, turning now towards Tavistock Square and an area of hotels, offices and underground car parks. At Russell Square there was the shade of great trees, and university buildings whose offices had spilled over into the tall Georgian terraces. Sam leapt off at a traffic light and made his way towards Holborn, where a third bus took him down to the river. Walking along the Embankment he was careful to take his time. He was still alert for pursuers, magical or mundane, however confident that he didn’t have any.

Besides, he had to work out what he was going to say. ‘Hi, you used to be a spy and had access to a network that I need. Where is it?’

To which the obvious answer would be, ‘But that was sixty years ago and it was
you
who decided to close down the Moondance network.’

Why had he done that? Had he convinced himself he didn’t need it, and could live a nice peaceful life without its help? To say the least, a rash thought.

Not so rash, though, that he’d left every door closed.
You left her a back way in, in case she ever needed
Moondance
again. And because she has a back door, so do you. Maybe you haven’t been so naïve.

The river was at high tide, and a tracery of sea breeze blew away the fumes of the Embankment; it was even possible to shut out the roar of traffic edging towards Westminster. At a small park near one of the grand hotels claiming much of this part of London as its own, Sam cut inland and took a flight of stairs two at a time between giant buildings full of civil servants. The steps came out on a back street, empty of traffic except for a postal van. Glancing back, he saw that no one had followed. He moved faster now, his destination in sight, slipping through more small streets where sunlight rarely peeped over the high buildings, until any traffic was a distant roar, a world away and little more than a minute from where he stood.

The building he was looking for had two brass plaques by the door. One declared that the bottom floor was the property of Noble and Transton, lawyers to the very rich and trivial, no tradesmen please. A much smaller one, weatherworn, and green around the edges, announced the residence of Mrs Annette Wilson.

He rang the bell, and a curt voice declared from the speakers in a slight French accent, ‘Yes?’

‘It’s Luc.’

There was a long silence, in which he imagined what she was doing. Probably staring in shock at the speaker, trying to convince herself that her failing ears hadn’t heard what she had, rubbing her withered little hands together and straining her bent back as she reached for the open button. Didn’t she keep a nurse? he remembered. A watery-eyed girl who hardly spoke a word of English and looked after Annette as punishment for a sin from some other lifetime?

Finally the door buzzed, and he pushed. Inside, the hall was marbled and cold. He jogged up the stairs, trying to get a little warmth into his system after the chill of the February streets. A heavy panelled door opened and this same sinner peered down at him, and asked with a heavy accent, ‘Mr Luc?’

He nodded, and without another word she showed him in.

The carpet was so thick Sam felt he’d be engulfed. He had forgotten what a taste for luxury Annette had. She was not by any means a poor woman – the French government had rewarded her well for her work in the Resistance and she’d gone through a collection of rich husbands as a child consumes his favourite sweets. Sculptures, strange things of twisted wood, adorned the room’s corners, and bent lights illuminated numerous paintings, some of them her own. As an artist Annette had been good. At least one shelf was full of books on her favourite occupation – weaving.
Poor Annette. Can your hands hold anything, these days?

And there she was, bent over in a huge chair bursting with pillows. Even now her ancient, wrinkled face bore signs of how pretty she’d once been. Her eyes, still horribly, accusingly bright with intelligence, looked him up and down as she vaguely waved the sinner from the room. Finally she spoke.

‘It’s true. You don’t age, do you? Why couldn’t you have grown old, Luc? Why couldn’t you have been like my husbands? As soon as I married them I forgot why, because they were old and lifeless suddenly. Why couldn’t you be like that?’

‘How are you?’ he asked, squatting at her feet and taking her hand, her cold frail hand. She smiled with contentment at his touch.

‘You never grow old,’ she murmured wearily. ‘How many hearts have you broken by refusing to die like the rest of us?’

‘I need help. I need to get in contact with some old friends, very old. I know we closed the network down when the war was over, but now I need access again.’

‘Which network?’ she asked feebly. ‘There were so many.’ Annette had been parachuted behind enemy lines, then moved around a lot.

‘Our network. The one nobody else knew about. The network that helped you, if you helped it.
Our
network.’

‘Ah yes,’ she said, as if just remembering. ‘The Moondance network, founded nineteen forty-one, headed by Luc Satise. Purpose…’ her voice trailed off again, as she tried to recall the unwritten files that no one had dared to record… ‘to employ aid of a non-mundane nature against occupying forces. Magic. Can you still do your tricks, Luc? Can you still light a fire with a sigh and make the wind sing?’

‘The Moondance network,’ he repeated. ‘You were a special operations executive behind enemy lines. I approached you, told you I could give you access to a group of untraceable saboteurs willing to help.’

‘Moondance,’ she said dreamily. ‘You were our luck. Whenever the Resistance tried something that went wrong, but everyone got out alive, or whenever we were being chased and a fog fell, or whenever the charge didn’t explode and we thought we’d failed, only to have it explode when we were miles away – we called it luck. But it wasn’t, was it? All those extraordinary Moondance operators.’ She frowned. ‘But it was broken up. The world wasn’t ready for magic, you said. And peace was the ultimate good luck.’