Nick Harkaway - Tigerman

He glanced across at his friend, afraid he would see fear or shock, but the boy looked quite impressed, even encouraging. Well, yes. All he had done was shout. Shouting was fair enough. He turned his gaze back to the prisoner.

But his monstering seemed to have achieved nothing at all. The man stared at them and then, after a moment, he suddenly shouted back, screamed that his foot was rotting and burning and hurting and he wanted more, more, MORE MORE MORE. It was like an echo. The man began to wail then, like an infant. More, more, more. Perhaps he was an addict already and this had just sharpened his need. (More, more, MORE!)

Useless.

The last cell was bigger, and the man in the bed was unconscious. His eyes were burned. It was all treatable, but that kind of medical care was expensive and no one cared. The Sergeant shrugged and made a note to request it. Maybe the man would open up when he saw the world again. Or maybe he’d be able to look a jury in the eye and see their verdict. Whatever. On the scale of things here, the ships and the NatProMan deployment, it wasn’t that much money. Maybe they’d save this man’s vision only for him to be acquitted or just released and that would be Shola’s memorial: an almost miraculous gift to one of his murderers. That was the world sometimes, and Mancreu, especially. Kswah swah.

He went in again, cell by cell, repeated his lines. Then he had the boy try in Moitié, listened to the ebb and flow and heard the story in cell two expand a little. ‘I was on the high road by the river. There were men, they offered me money. They had bags. I thought these bags contained contraband for sale. I thought we would sell it. At the bar we got out. It is a good place to sell, a bar, everyone knows this. Then they took out guns. I also must carry a gun. I fire into the air. I know no names. I know nothing. I am bystander. I wished only to make a little money to take a ship. To go away before the end. I have no family.’

The Sergeant slipped himself into the discussion, made the man tell it in reverse. It’s hard to lie in reverse. The story bent a little, acquired details, but did not change. He didn’t know if that was because it was a simple lie, or because it was true.

Then he photographed them one by one, and they made this hard or not hard, each according to his lights.

When the interrogators came out into the fresh air, a light mist had settled over the ocean and the fishing boats and even the Black Fleet seemed to be suspended somewhere between the water and the sky. The horizon line had vanished entirely from east to west, and sea and cloud had melded into a purpled canvas so that the Arlington Bride — a Swiss-owned, Wilmington-registered cargo hauler which had been one of the first to arrive when Mancreu was extralegalised — appeared to be hovering over the automated lighthouse at the end of the pier. The boy sighed deeply.

‘I know,’ the Sergeant said. ‘They didn’t give us anything.’

‘No,’ the boy replied.

‘They will. We’ll get there.’

‘Maybe.’ He had dropped directly into the dejected funk which was the flipside of his manic highs. The Sergeant wasn’t sure if this was the sort of thing which would be considered an actual sickness or just a part of being however old he was. Probably it depended where you were. In France, he knew, they used a different manual for psychological medicine. They might well say no. In America, everything was diagnosable, probably even positive traits could be treated if you wanted to get rid of them. Then, too, the boy had real things to be sad about. He had lost a friend, and the interrogation which had promised an explanation of sorts had failed to deliver. Instinct told the Sergeant to keep his friend moving forwards, to avoid letting him dwell on the bad things. There was time for that, but you wanted momentum to get you through it, so that you could grieve without ceasing to function. Sorrow was something you did best if you did it while other things were happening, or it could freeze you in place.

‘We will get there. But maybe we’ll have to poke around a bit. I’ve got a few things to look into otherwise, too.’ He needed it to be true. He had seen the boy’s face in the café after the fight, the look which said Lester Ferris was an actual superstar. He didn’t need it to be that way all the time, but the more distant it became the more conscious he was of a kind of pain.

‘Yes,’ the boy said dully, meaning ‘no’.

So the Sergeant told him about the tiger.

It was a strange story and he told it haltingly, and he probably oversold the part about being very drunk, because the boy’s lips twitched in puritanical disdain. All the same, when he got to the good bit, about scratching the huge head, the boy’s eyes were very wide. The Sergeant had to break off and swear, repeatedly, to the truth of it. He swore several different appalling oaths, each bringing doom and despair on him in different ways if he was lying in the smallest particular, but what finally persuaded his audience was how the story ended, without resolution.

‘Real life has no understanding of proper structure,’ the boy said, ‘which is why news stories are always made of little lies.’ This pleased the Sergeant very much because it was a brief flicker of the boy’s usual self, like a familiar face in a crowd.

He saw a way forward, considered briefly, and then jumped. ‘It might speed things up with my other stuff if I had some help,’ he said. ‘I mean: usually, in a p’lice context,’ and bless DI Burroughs for this bit of coppering nonsense, ‘usually these sorts of matters would be dealt with by an investigation team, so it’s hardly surprising I’m struggling a bit with the caseload all by myself.’

The boy nodded in a worldly, serious way. Of course. Anyone of consequence knew that about policing. There might be less educated persons who would disagree, his manner said, but we need not concern ourselves with them at present.

Deep breath. ‘So what I was thinking was that you could come along. Help out. Unofficially deputised into the Mancreu Investigatory Force, as it were. Only if you want. I know you’ve got things to do, I don’t mean to say you haven’t. But if you did want to, well, there’s always things I can’t get to and which you might be ideally placed for, being familiar with the local environment and so on.’ He trailed off, looking at the impossible flying ships.

After a moment, he heard the boy say tentatively: ‘Fight crime?’

‘Well, yes. I mean, any actual fighting — and there won’t be any — but if there was, then that would be my part. You’d be my eyes and ears. Make sure I didn’t miss anything. Use that brain of yours.’

The boy seemed to expand, the damp rag of his depression becoming a sort of balloon.

‘Fight crime!’

‘In a strictly auxiliary capacity,’ the Sergeant said hastily.

‘Taking the law to the mean streets of the city!’

‘Well—’

‘Yes! You will need me. I am your kid partner. I will crack wise. I will rock it Gangnam Style!’

‘I don’t want you getting in trouble. You’re a minor.’

‘Yes! Pretty weird kid partner, otherwise.’ The Sergeant saw teeth, and knew he was being teased.

‘You wouldn’t be my partner. That’s—’ He choked down insane and discarded against regulations , wondering what he’d got himself into. ‘Not something I’m allowed to do.’

‘Of course! I am not with you. We are in the same place at the same time. If anything happens, I shall run away. I am a civilian.’

‘Yes.’

‘But when danger strikes: I am off the books and off the hook!’

‘No!’

‘Excellent! Just like that: deny, deny, deny! Sometimes justice must wear a mask!’