Ian Hocking - Flashback

‘Ego?’

‘Jem,’ said a voice in the earpiece, ‘I have booked your flight.’

‘I don’t want to fly.’

‘That is your best option. Other forms of transport are less safe.’

‘Less safe? From Cory?’

Ego paused. ‘I’m afraid he is certain to find you. He is focused on locating the information that he believes Saskia possessed. If he can’t have Saskia, he will have you.’

The coldness came. Jem tried to picture a life on the run from Cory. She could not.

‘There’s still the computer in her apartment.’

‘According to the German AP, an apartment on Dublinerstrasse was destroyed by fire in the early hours of this morning. I’m certain it was Saskia’s.’

‘Did Cory do it?’

‘Or incendiary countermeasures triggered by his attempts to access the computer.’

‘What will I do when he finds me?’

‘Imply that Saskia was carrying copies of her important documents on her person when the plane went down. That will give him something to go on—something to leave you for.’

‘If he thinks that I believe that, then I should be travelling to Saskia myself when he finds me. I’ll tell him I want her gambling system.’

‘Is that a lie or the truth?’

‘Up yours.’

‘It might be important, given that Cory might have enhanced sensory capabilities.’

‘He’ll be able to tell when I’m lying?’

‘Just so. Now, I will book you on five trains over the next two days. This should cause confusion. Begin by collecting your ticket from the information desk on your right.’

‘I have to get my gear first. I stashed it here this morning.’

She located the bank of lockers near the first platform and took the key from her pocket. The rucksack was still there.

‘Your train will leave from Gleis 4 in half an hour,’ said Ego. ‘Please collect your ticket.’

‘I’ll pretend to be French. You know, just in case they’re looking for an English woman.’

‘ Pouvez-vous parler comme une personne native de France? ’

‘ Que? ’

‘Try Lithuanian.’

‘Get bent, K9.’ She hefted the rucksack. ‘What about Danny?’

‘There is some chatter on the police network concerning Danny and Inspector Duczyński. Danny cannot be located and the Berlin police have instructions to detain him for questioning. However, their physical description is inaccurate. This is due to some nuisance phone calls on my part.’

‘Is the inspector hurt?’

‘It appears that Inspector Duczyński is not severely injured. He received a concussion and a flesh wound. He will be discharged from the UKB hospital later today. He has, however, been suspended pending disciplinary action for involving Wolfgang and losing Cory.’

‘Who, let me guess, is nowhere to be found.’

‘Correct.’

The crowd flowed around her stopped body and cold air touched the last of the water on her neck. She thought of Cory watching the flames in Saskia’s apartment.

Pyrene. ‘They make fire extinguishers. Ironically.’

Fire: Did it roll up the cabin of the aircraft as it dived? Burned jeans and cowgirl boots. And in the jeans: the pink sheets of an unbeatable gambling system, edges charred.

‘Where might Cory be?’

‘I have no idea.’

Jem remembered the sensation that had overwhelmed her the previous night, just after she had returned to Saskia’s apartment, when Cory walked into the kitchen: the silence had been so complete that she had questioned her perceptions of the man. Was Cory even there? Had she imagined him?

‘Jem,’ said Ego. ‘We must go to the library on Fasanenstrasse to locate a book called Resources and Parsing .’

‘Why?’

‘It is one of the few books in that library that has never been borrowed. It will make an effective hiding place.’

Jem walked to the end of the platform, where the long train began to curl. She entered the tenth couchette and found an empty compartment. Its four beds had been folded out. The mattress on each was hard. The pillows, at least, were English in size and shape. Thick curtains covered the window and the door to the corridor. The compartment smelled of feet. Jem finished her baguette, screwed up the paper bag, and put her bottle of water on the small table beneath the window. There was a ladder against the bunk. She put an elbow on a rung.

As the train pulled away, she was watching her expression in the mirror of a washroom. The configuration of her eyes and mouth—the triangle one might draw between them—seemed different. Perhaps this was due to her hair. It was now black, not blue, and the loss of the gas-flame colour was like misplacing an enjoyable book half-read.

She returned to her compartment. No late-boarding passengers had joined her. This part of the couchette was empty, though she could hear a group of Dutch students at the far end playing a drinking game. She twisted the door lock and pressed the switch that toggled between the ceiling light and the lights in each berth. She fell across her mattress and climbed, fully clothed apart from her skirt, beneath the thin sheet. It was stitched along one side to make a bag. She lay there, thinking. Raindrops made slick diagonals on the window. There was a cord to pull the curtains but she wanted to keep the night close. Outskirts of Berlin. Factories. Endless flatness. Did Regensburg mean ‘city of rain’? She had no-one to ask. She tugged the string and the curtains shut.

She dreamed of a castle whose walls moved at night. Saskia was there. She knew its secret passages. Her eyes were swollen and her hair long—the hair of the dead grew—and her lips were like meat on a barbecue, part-cooked and split.

When she awoke, it was still night, but the train had stopped. She plumped her sweaty pillow and waited for the beat of the wheels to resume. After some minutes, they did, and she let the movement wash her to the edge of sleep. But she had a headache where the plates of her skull met, at her crown, and the pain in her abdomen refused to let her move from doziness to true sleep. Her eyes wandered over the sooty shapes in her room and she named them, in order, as the overhead luggage basket, the laminated fire safety poster, and the door. A glimmer winked from the lock. The other beds, the bottle of water, the ladder. Her eyes returned to that glimmering lock. Something was wrong.

Like the sudden falling away of the sea before a tsunami.

Like everything was about to go wrong.

The tab was vertical. Unlocked.

She heard a sound from her nightstand. In the pile of coins she had scooped from the pocket of her duffle coat and placed there, an unnoticed bead the size of a breath freshener rolled—impossibly—over the raised edge and bounced twice on the carriage floor. She heard it cross to the door.

Blood hissed in her ears. Her muscles reeled tight. She could not move anything but her eyes. She found a shape in the darkness. Incidental light shifted in the tell-tale pattern of another person, reaching down to pick up the white bead.

Her struggle resolved to a thought. It condensed on her lips.

‘Cory?’

Suddenly, the cabin was filled with light.

Cory was wearing a black overcoat. There was a dash of white at his neck. She stared at it, conscious of the absurdity but not sure why, until she released that he was disguised as a priest. His hair was wet and his eyes had lost the depth of their blue. White stubble dusted his cheeks. He looked like a man in the last days of an illness. His finger remained on the light switch. As she looked from his hand to his face, Cory nodded slowly. It was the nod of a boxer before a round.