Chapter 5
Quay Street
The bacon cost four dollars and fifty cents, and he paid with his last ten.
He did it at a little green van marked MO'S. The woman behind the counter was a broad, tired person in a hairnet, and she watched him count out the change with the expression of someone who has seen a lot of men pay for things. She slid a sandwich across in greasy paper. She said, "Sauce?" He said, "Is there a sauce that makes you forget things?" and she said, "Brown or red." He took brown.
He ate it standing up, with his back to a wall, in the thin early sun.
It was twenty past five. Quay Street was waking up. It ran along the western edge of the Yard for about half a mile, a wide cobbled road with warehouses on one side and the canal wall on the other, and every few seconds another van came rattling in over the stones and began to unload. Men in woolly hats threw down trestles. Women shook out canvas. Somebody was frying onions, and somebody else was arguing about a parking space, and a small girl in a yellow hat was being lifted out of a cargo bike, wide awake, with a stuffed rabbit by one ear.
Ethan watched her.
He couldn't stop. She stood on the cobbles with her rabbit and her father, and the father said something, and she laughed, and the sound went through the cold air and into him like a nail.
Don't, he thought. Not now.
He took a bite, and chewed, and swallowed, and it was like swallowing a stone.
He walked the length of the market once, slowly, as if he were shopping.
It was a good market. It was a real one, and it had been going on this street since before the war. There were tables of old books and tables of old tools. There was a man who sold nothing but doorknobs. A woman with a collection of single gloves. A Turkish stall with a hill of olives and a mountain of dried figs, and next to it, shoulder to shoulder, a stall of second-hand televisions with their screens turned on, all showing the same morning program, a smiling woman in a yellow dress talking about gardening in total silence.
Ethan looked at everything. He had always been a man who noticed what was bolted down and what was not, and what would hold weight. It had never been a talent. It was just a thing his eyes did.
He noticed, after a while, the blue bandages.
They were everywhere. They were on the lamp posts, one every thirty yards, with a gray box on top. They were on the corner of the old corn exchange, and the drainpipe of the fish hall, and the pole of a street sign near the canal. They had been put up very neatly. Nobody in the crowd seemed to see them. They sat above everyone's head like a row of small, patient birds.
They're on the busiest streets, he thought. The side roads have fewer. It's a net, and they've put the most mesh where I'd go.
He looked straight up at the nearest one. It looked back. He lifted one hand, in a small, tired salute, and turned away.
Somebody's watching me eat a sandwich. I hope he's enjoying it.
The policeman was standing by the fish hall.
He was a very young one, in a safety vest and a peaked cap, with a radio on his shoulder and a plastic bag of sausage rolls in one hand. He had a round, fair, anxious face. A name tape on the vest said COMMUNITY OFFICER K. RAHMAN. He was eating a sausage roll with the quick guilty bites of somebody who hasn't had a break, and when Ethan came up beside him and said, "Excuse me," he jumped.
"Morning," said the young man. "Sorry. Can I help?"
"Yes. Maybe. I need to report something."
"Right." He swallowed. He wiped his fingers on the vest. "What kind of something?"
"There are people being hurt," said Ethan.
It sounded absurd. It sounded exactly like what it was: a tired, unshaven man in a crumpled jacket, at half past five in the morning, with a bleach stain on his sleeve. He saw the young man's face change. It didn't turn hostile. It turned careful, kind, and a little afraid, as if he'd been told a child had fallen in a pond.
"Hurt where?"
"In the Yard. The east end. There's a man dead in the canal. He was shot. I saw it. There are people hunting me, there's a game, it's a long story."
"Okay."
"They've got guns."
"All right." The officer pulled out a notebook. His pen shook slightly. "Name?"
"Ethan Cole."
"And where was this?"
"The footbridge. By the pumping station. About quarter past midnight."
"Right." He wrote it in block capitals, with his tongue between his teeth, and when he got to the end of the line, he stopped, and a small frown came over his face. "The Yard. That's the exercise."
"The what?"
"It's on the board at the gate. Hang on." He pointed with his pen. At the end of the street, on a post by the barrier that closed the Yard off from the road, was a large white sign, bright new. Ethan had not seen it. "Calder Joint Emergency Services Training Event. Mercer Yard. Friday to Saturday. Live-action scenarios involving police, fire, and paramedic personnel. Members of the public are asked to stay clear."
Ethan read it twice, and the words went in one at a time, like bolts being shot, and his skin went cold.
"It's a training thing," said the officer. "They do one every year. They use actors. They had a lady in a few years back who pretended to be a bus crash. She was brilliant. She kept groaning for two hours."
"They aren't actors."
"I'm sure it looked very real."
"There was a man. In the water."
"They do that," said the officer. "They do the water rescue. My sister's husband was in it last year. He was a drowning tourist. He had a wig."
"This isn't."
"Sir." The young man put his notebook away. He said it very gently, with a small wrinkle of concern. He had a slow, slightly flushed, willing face, the sort of face you see in a church choir. "I'll put it in the log. But I had the briefing on Wednesday. They said if anyone comes up and says there's a real incident, it's probably part of the scenario. It's what they call immersive. We're not supposed to intervene."
"Who said that?"
"Sergeant Mills. He got a call from someone at the City Council. It's all signed off. There's a permit. I've seen it. It's got a stamp."
Ethan stood quite still.
They've done this before.
He had known it somewhere at the back of his mind, from the moment Pierce said forty-two people. But he had not understood what it meant. A great patient mechanism had been built, with its cameras and its boots and its blue tape, and it had been built so that when somebody walked up to a young man with a radio and told him the truth, the young man would write it down in capitals and put it in a file.
It's already been explained to him. It's been explained to all of them.
"Thank you," he said.
"I'm sorry I can't." The officer took a nervous bite of his sausage roll. "If it's any help, I'd say it's very safe. Nobody's ever been hurt."
"That's good to know."
"It really is." He brightened. "They do a lovely buffet."
Ethan walked away between the stalls with his head down. He was thinking hard, in a flat, dull, stubborn way, as he used to at the bench when a repair would not come right, going round and round the same three wires.
It's a good cover. It's better than a wall. If you say anything, they say, "Sir, there's a permit." A stamp's all it takes.
I really wanted that to work. I had it all planned. He'd say, "Blimey," and put me in the back of a car, and I'd have a cup of tea in a police station. With a cookie.
I'd have liked the cookie.
The corn exchange was a great glass hall at the middle of the market, shaped like a barn, with a curved iron roof and a floor of worn gray stone. Under the high dim arch, in the smell of fried onions and wet coats, two hundred people moved to and fro among a hundred and fifty stalls. A brass band was setting up in a corner. A baby was shrieking. In the very middle of the floor stood a tea bar, a long steel counter with a hissing urn, and round it, at four little tables, sat the early regulars: a pair of old men playing dominoes, three women in headscarves, a solitary man reading a paper in a language Ethan didn't know.
He took the table in the corner, with his back to the wall.
It was five to eight. He put the phone on the table in front of him and sat looking at it.
They'll know where I am for ninety seconds. If I'm in a place where they can't do anything, it won't matter. He looked up at the high glass roof. Crowd. Two hundred people. Let them look.
He was still thinking it when a tray landed on the table beside him.
"I hope I'm not intruding," said a pleasant voice.
The woman in the lilac coat had come across the floor like a ship under sail.
She was sixty-one or sixty-two. She was short and wide, with a head of silver curls and a round, soft, powdery face, and she wore a long lilac coat with a brooch in the shape of a cat. A large knitted bag hung from one arm. In her other hand, balanced with great care, she carried a metal tray with two cups of tea and a plate of shortbread, and she moved among the tables with small quick steps and little exclamations of apology, "Oh, sorry, dear, if I could just squeeze," so that people made way for her without looking. She had the look of a woman who has been making way for others all her life and has learned to treat it as a form of power.
She sat down without being asked, in the spare chair, and tucked the bag between her feet.
"That's yours, dear," said Linda Pratt. "Two sugars. I guessed."
He did not touch it.
"I know what you're thinking." She sounded quite sincere. "You're thinking, Don't drink the tea. It's what they think in books. But I'd never. There are too many people, and the rules say we mustn't, and, well." She smiled at him, gently. "I wouldn't want to upset anyone's breakfast."
"What do you want?"
"Oh, nothing, dear. I'm just keeping you company."
"Why?"
"Because you're lonely." She drew out a ball of yellow wool and a pair of needles, and bent over her lap, and began to knit. "You've been up all night. You've seen something unpleasant. And you've got nobody to tell. I always find it helps, to have a bit of company."
"You killed a man."
"I didn't, dear. It was my husband."
It was said so simply that for a moment he did not understand it.
"I'm not saying it's not a pity," said Linda. "It's always a pity. Mr. Wise was a very nice man. I looked at his photograph. He had a lovely smile. He had a wife called Jean. He'd been a watchman at the water board for thirty years." The needles clicked. "It's a shame. But there it is. He saw Dave's face."
"He wasn't even playing."
"No, dear." She patted his hand. Her fingers were soft and warm and smelled of wool. "Nobody who sees is. That's the trouble with the Yard. It's a very big place, but it's not empty. There's always somebody who's wandered in. Dave says it's like fishing. You get a few you didn't want."
"And you just."
"We don't take it personally. It's our only rule." She looked up and beamed. She had a tiny gap between her front teeth, and small, bright, blue eyes, and a cloud of pink powder on her cheeks. "It's what keeps a marriage going."
The small garment on her needles was the back of a cardigan, the width of her hand, in a soft, buttery yellow. It was very neatly done. A pattern of tiny raised stitches spread across the row, like a field of daisies.
"It's for my granddaughter," said Linda. "She's three weeks. She's called Lily."
"That's a nice name."
"I think so."
"Is she well?"
"She's perfect." The needles went on. "She's got a little face like a plum. I think it runs in the family."
At the next table an old man put down his domino with a click.
It was exactly two minutes to eight. Ethan sat with his hands round the cup. He could feel the heat through the china, and the faint tremor of his own fingers, and the big white clock on the wall seemed to him to be going very slowly. Linda looked up at it.
"Ooh," she said. "Nearly."
The hand clicked over.
In his pocket the phone gave one small, soft buzz, like the pulse of a sleeping animal. He took it out under the edge of the table and held down the button. The screen lit, and counted, and said the same thing it always said. POSITION RECEIVED.
Across the table, Linda did not move. She went on knitting. But her eyes, behind the thick pink glasses, rose slowly from the wool to meet his, and held them, and in the blue, bright, friendly depths of them he saw something he had not seen in the old man's. It was not cruelty. It was not hate. It was a sort of tidy, incurious, grandmotherly satisfaction, the look of a woman who has seen the kettle come to the boil.
"There we are," said Linda Pratt. "Now we both know where everyone is."
They stayed for three hours.
It was the strangest three hours of his life. He did not leave. He could not. Nobody told him to. He sat in a corner of a warm hall full of cheerful noise, with a woman knitting a baby's jacket across the table, and he drank the tea, because not to would have been absurd, and he ate the shortbread. They talked. They talked about anything. The weather. The band, which had started a medley of old songs. A man at the next table who had lost a shoe. She told him about a cruise she and Dave had been on, and a captain who sang. She laughed, in the right places, with a dry soft pleasant chuckle, and said, "Oh, you are awful."
It was like being at a funeral where the guest of honor had come back to chat.
At ten, the phone buzzed again, and he went through it again, under the table. POSITION RECEIVED. Linda looked up. "Ten o'clock," she said. "Lovely. We've all got all day, haven't we?"
The screen had not gone dark.
There was a second message. He had nearly missed it. It sat there under the first, pale and quiet, and he read it with a slow cold feeling, as a man reads the small print at the bottom of a bill.
NOTICE TO THE RUNNER.
THE RUNNER HAS SOUGHT HELP FROM A PUBLIC OFFICER. THIS IS A BREACH OF THE TERMS. THE PUBLIC-AREA PROTECTION WILL BE WITHDRAWN AT 12:00, AND THE QUAY STREET ZONE CLOSED TO THE RUNNER FROM THAT TIME. THE HOUSE THANKS YOU FOR YOUR PATIENCE.
He read it twice. Then he looked up, and met a pair of small blue eyes that had been waiting for him.
"Oh, you've got it," said Linda Pratt, with pleasure. "I'm so glad. I did hope they'd send it."
"It says it's noon."
"Does it, dear?"
"Noon, and then nobody's going to stop you."
"It's very sensible," she said comfortably. "You couldn't expect them to leave a thing like that going all day. It's not fair on the hunters."
He sat quite still.
It's because of the policeman. I told one person, and it cost me the one safe place I had.
That's the rule. That's the whole rule. Whatever you try, they'll make it cost.
At eleven, Dave came in.
He came through the side door, with the light behind him, a tall pink figure in a beige coat, with his right arm in a blue sling. He walked a little stiffly. A strip of white tape ran across his forehead, and one lens of his glasses had been mended with tape. He stopped at the tea bar, and bought a cup, and stood with his back to them, sipping it, gazing round the hall like a man in a museum.
He did not come over. After ten minutes, he lifted his hand, and gave a small friendly wave. Linda waved back with her needle.
"He's a bit sore," she said. "But he's not cross. He's very forgiving. He says it was an excellent bucket."
"I'm glad."
"He says to say well done."
"Tell him I'm sorry about the shoulder."
"Oh, I will." She smiled. "He'll be so pleased."
She had done forty rows, he saw. She had not missed a single stitch. She was not even looking at the work. She was looking, quite steadily, between rows, at the door.
At half past eleven, Ethan went to the restroom, and stood at a basin, and washed his face.
It was a municipal one, behind the corn exchange, with a tiled floor and a tap that squealed. The water was cold. He splashed it over his eyes and his neck, and stared at himself in the steel mirror, a gray dented oval, in which a man he hardly knew looked back. He had not shaved. His eyes were red. There was a bruise on his jaw he didn't remember getting.
You look like your father, he thought.
His father had been a thick, silent, hard-handed man who worked on the railroad and died when Ethan was nineteen, of a cough that nobody had made him see to. He had never said sorry, or well done, or I love you. But he had said, once, in a bar, after three beers, in a flat bleak voice, looking at the table: The thing about a man is, he's what he does when it's too late to do anything.
Ethan had never known what it meant.
The door banged. A man came in and ran the tap at the next basin. He was a big, easy-going figure in a blue jacket, with a trucker's cap, and he whistled while he washed, a thin plain tune, over and over.
Abide with me.
Ethan's hands stopped.
He lifted his head, very slowly, and looked in the mirror.
The man had taken off his cap. He was drying his hands on a paper towel. His hair was short and gray, and his face was long and plain and kind, with a straight nose, and he had a small stub of cinnamon stick in the corner of his mouth.
"Morning," said Jack Ford.
Ethan didn't answer.
"Don't look so worried. I'm not going to do anything." He balled up the towel, and dropped it in the trash can, and turned to face him. He had taken off the green jacket and put on a blue one, but there was no mistaking him. He looked like a man who had come to read the meter. "This is a public restroom. I've got a perfect right to be in it."
"You're not allowed."
"Not allowed what?"
"To do anything. With people around."
"That's correct." He smiled, a little. "I'm only washing my hands. I thought I'd say hello, since you were so decent as to leave me a gate."
Ethan's back was against the basin. The cold of the porcelain pressed into his spine. He could hear, through the wall, very faintly, the brass band, playing a march.
"You were in the loft," said Jack.
"Yes."
"I knew."
"I know."
"I've been thinking about that file marks thing. I thought it was nice. I wanted to tell you." He tapped his temple. "You're an unusually careful man. Most of them go to the roof, or the cellar, or the cupboard under the stairs. They go where they'd go in a film. You went to a place with a lock, and then you made a point of picking the lock." He tilted his head. "And then the can of peaches. I'd like to know what you were thinking."
"I was thinking you wouldn't look."
"And?"
"And you did."
"I did." He nodded, with a certain gravity. "It's the problem with being good at a thing. You only get to fool people who aren't." He took the cinnamon out of his mouth, looked at it, and put it back. "I'll tell you what I'm thinking, if you like."
"No."
"I'm thinking you're going to be at the Fairway at one o'clock."
Ethan said nothing.
"It's the only shelter on this side. It's got a roof, and a cold store, and a loading bay at the back. When the market closes, a man in your position will want a place to go." Jack said it kindly. He might have been giving directions. "I'd be there at five to. I'd come in by the delivery gate. That's the one the tradesmen use. It's open till half past."
"Why are you telling me?"
"Because I'd like it to be interesting." He turned to the door. "I've done this a long time. I like it best when they're thinking. It makes it a fair match."
"This isn't a match."
"Isn't it?"
"It's murder."
"It's both," said Jack Ford. He opened the door. The sound of the band came in, and the smell of onions, and a bright slice of daylight lay across the tiles. "Good luck, Mr. Cole."
He went out.
Ethan stood where he was. He heard the thin tune go away through the crowd, patient, unhurried, a little flat. When it had gone, he found that he had both hands locked over the edge of the basin, and that the porcelain had left a bright red line across each palm.
He took out the little map and spread it on the wet steel, and found the Fairway, a gray rectangle at the bottom of the page, a hundred yards south of the corn exchange. It had a parking lot. It had a loading bay.
It was exactly the place he would have chosen.
He told me. He told me where he'd be, and where I'd go. And he told me when.
He folded the map. He turned on the cold tap and washed his face for a third time, with a slow, rubbing, careful thoroughness, and when he lifted his head, the man in the mirror had stopped looking tired. He looked like somebody who has just been shown a hand of cards and has realized, for the first time, that it is possible to refuse to play it.
All right, he thought.
Then I won't go to the Fairway.