Iain Banks - Against a Dark Background

“The Universal Principles ,” Zefla breathed. She looked thought-ful. “Supposed to be somewhere midsystem, if you can believe thousand-year-old rumours. This just an excuse to put some vacuum between you and the Huhsz?”

Sharrow shook her head. “Like I say, I have a lead.” She glanced at Dloan, who was stroking the sarflet. “Gory details to follow,” she told Zefla.

“Can’t wait,” Zefla said, waggling her dark blonde brows and flexing her perfect toes.

Sharrow raised her glass. “Think team,” she said.

Zefla raised her glass. “Yo to that.”

Dloan raised his glass. “Team,” he said.

Zefla frowned at her glass as though it contained something disgusting. “This calls for something stronger,” she said. “And I’m getting too sober anyway.” She put the glass down under her seat, felt around and pulled out an inhalant tube with a look of victorious anticipation on her face. “Let’s get into something mind bending !”

She stood in the doorway and looked out, shivering, at the night. It was raining and the wind was hurrying down the dimly lit street, filling the air with paper scraps like a flock of palely fluttering injured birds. The water in the gutters was thick and black and smelled rancid, washed from some of the hillside tip-mines further up the slope.

She was average height and dressed cheaply but gaudily; high heels, a micro skirt and a figure-hugging top. She clutched a small, shiny black fake-hide purse, and wore a little pillbox hat with a black lace veil which even with the heavy make-up couldn’t quite hide the mass of ridged, twisted scar tissue that covered the left side of her face. She held a little transparent plastic parasol over herself, but some of its spokes were broken and the wind kept gusting, sending rain spraying into her face every now and again. It smelled like somebody had used the doorway as a urinal earlier in the evening.

The street was fairly quiet for this time of night. The occasional car crawled past, windows mirrored. A variety of civilians splashed along the pavement, huddled under cloaks or umbrellas. There were few punters. The ones that were around mostly knew her already; you could always tell the new ones because they’d pass by the doorway she was standing in, do a double-take-or just stare-then come forward, looking her up and down and grinning that big grin that said, My lucky night!

It was only when they looked beneath the veil that they backed off, embarrassed, apologising, as though the Incident had somehow been their fault… But there had only been a couple of those this evening.

The wind shook the scrawny wires strung between the low tenements, producing a whistling noise and making the dim yellow streetlamps sway and flicker.

A trolley car went clanking up the street, its skinny whip-mast scratching at the wires above, producing crackling blue sparks. Two boys were hitching a late-night ride on the back fender; they had to keep quiet in case the conductor heard them, but when the blue flashes revealed a girl standing in a doorway, or up an alley with a client, they pointed and waved and made thrusting motions with their groins.

She hoped the trolley wouldn’t make a spark when it went past her, but it did. She flinched at the harsh burst of light and the sizzle of noise. She waited for the boys to make some obscene gesture at her, but they were looking at somebody standing in the alley-way directly across from her. The trolley’s power line flashed again and she caught another glimpse of the figure in the alley opposite. Somebody in a long dark coat. For a moment she had the impression she was being watched. Her heart started to beat faster; oh, not police, not tonight!

Then the figure-medium height, face hidden by a hat and a filter mask-left the alley-way and walked down the pavement on the far side of the street, walking slightly oddly, stiff-legged, like somebody trying to disguise a limp.

Just then two uniformed policemen walked past her doorway, their long capes dripping. She shrank back, but they weren’t on a round-up, not tonight. Probably they were intent on getting back to the precinct station and hitting the canteen. She relaxed again.

Suddenly the figure was in front of her.

She drew her breath in.

“Hi,” the man said, pulling his mask down.

She relaxed. It wasn’t the person from the other side of the street; it was a regular, the one she’d been hoping would turn up. He wore a short, pale cape and a broad hat. He was a smallish, thin man with muddy-looking skin and intensely blue eyes you couldn’t look at for too long.

“Oh,” she said, and smiled. She had slightly prominent teeth, already spotted with decay. “Hi, sweetie.”

“Sweetie…” he said, sounding amused. He stood in the doorway with her, and gently put his hand up underneath the lace veil to her face and stroked the rough surface of the old radiation burn. His fingers were delicate and slim. She tried not to flinch.

“You smell different this evening,” he said. His voice was like his eyes; sharp and demanding.

“New perfume. Like it?”

“It’ll do,” he said. He withdrew his hand from her ruined face, and sighed. “Shall we go?”

“Okay.”

They left the doorway and walked down the street together, not touching; she had to walk quickly, teetering on her high heels, to keep up with him. A couple of times, glancing at their reflections in shop windows, she thought she saw the figure she’d seen earlier in the alley-way, following them with that odd, stiff-legged gait.

“Here,” he said, entering a narrow alley. It was dark, and she almost tripped on rubbish left on the dark, uneven bricks underfoot.

“But, doll,” she said, following him down the alley and won-dering what was going on. “This isn’t your-”

“Shut up,” he told her. He started up a flight of rickety wooden steps. She looked back, and saw the stiff-legged figure enter the alley-way behind them, silhouetting against the marginally brighter street behind, then disappearing into the shadows. “Hurry up!” her client hissed from the top of the steps. She glanced back at the darkness where the figure had vanished, and then ran as fast as her high heels would allow, up the creaking wooden steps.

There was a broad wooden gantry at the top of the steps, dotted with small sheds and ladders; it stretched along the side of the dank, bow-sided tenement. She couldn’t see him, but then a hand came out of the shadows and pulled her into the shelter of a small lean-to. A hand went over her mouth and she let him pull her against him, his breath warm on the back of her neck. Something glinted in his other hand, pointing out to the deck of the wooden gantry. Her eyes were wide and her heart thudded. She clutched the little black purse to her chest, as though hoping it would protect her.

She heard a creaking noise, then slow footsteps. The hand over her mouth clamped tighter.

The figure in the long dark coat came into view, still walking lopsidedly, then stopping and standing directly opposite them. The figure reached in through the coat, and from what must have been a leg-holster, pulled out a very long gun with a slim sight on top of the barrel. The man holding her tensed.

A creaking noise came from behind and beneath her.

The figure spun towards them, the gun coming up.

The man behind her shouted something; his gun fired, a burst of light and sound that lit up every grubby cranny of the alley and filled its length with a terrible barking noise. The figure with the rifle was blown back, folding in two; the great long gun made a quiet roar and something flashed overhead as the figure went straight through the hand rail at the edge of the wooden gantry to fall flaming to the stones of the alley-way.