Landen shook his head slowly.
‘Sweetness, I don’t want you to go into The Raven.’
I looked up at him.
‘You heard. Leave Jack Schitt where he is. How many people would have died for him to make a packet out of that Plasma rifle scam? One thousand? Ten thousand? Listen, your memory may grow fuzzy, but I’ll still be here, the good times—’
‘But I don’t want just the good times, Land. I want all the times. The shitty ones, the arguments, that annoying habit you had of always trying to make the next filling station and running out of petrol. Picking your nose, farting in bed. But more than that, I want the times that haven’t happened yet—the future. Our future! I am getting Schitt out, Land—make no mistake about that’
‘Let’s talk about something else again,’ said Landen. ‘Listen—I’m a bit worried about someone trying to kill you with coincidences.’
‘I can look after myself.’
He looked at me solemnly.
‘I don’t doubt it for one moment. But I’m only alive in your memories—and some mewling and puking ones of my mum’s, I suppose—and without you I’m nothing at all, ever. So if whoever is juggling with entropy gets lucky next time, you and I are both for the high jump—but at least you get a memorial and a SpecOps regulation headstone.’
‘I see your point, however muddled you might make it. Did you see how I used the last entropy lapse to find Mrs Nakyima? Clever, eh?’
‘Inspired. Now, can you think of any linking factor—except the intended victim—that connects the three attacks?’
‘No.’
‘Are you sure?’
‘Positive. I’ve thought it through a thousand times. Nothing.’
Landen thought for a moment, tapped a finger on his temple and smiled.
‘Don’t be so sure. I’ve been having a little peek myself, and, well, I want to show you something.’
And there we were, on the platform of the Skyrail station at South Cerney. But it wasn’t a moving memory, like the other ones I had enjoyed with Landen, it was frozen like a stilled video image—and like a stilled video image, it wasn’t very good; all blurry and a bit jumpy.
‘Okay, what now?’ I asked as we walked along the platform.
‘Have a look at everyone. See if there is anyone you recognise.’
I stepped on to the shuttle and walked round the players in the fiasco, who were frozen like statues. The faces that were most distinct were the Neanderthal driver-operator, the well-heeled woman, the woman with Pixie Frou-Frou and the woman with the crossword. The rest were vague shapes, generic female human forms and little else—no mnemonic tags to make them unique. I pointed them out.
‘Good,’ said Landen, ‘but what about her?’
And there she was, the young woman sitting on the bench in the station, doing her face in a make-up mirror. We walked closer and I looked intently at the fuzzy, nondescript face that loomed murkily out of my memory.
‘I only glimpsed her for a moment, Land. Slightly built, mid-twenties, red shoes. So what?’
‘She was here when you arrived, she’s on the southbound platform, all trains go to all stops—yet she didn’t take the Skyrail. Suspicious?’
‘Not really.’
‘No,’ said Landen, slightly crestfallen. ‘Not exactly a smoking gun, is it? Unless’—he smiled—’unless you look at this.’
And in a trice we were at the Uffington White Horse on the day of the picnic. I looked up nervously. The large Hispano-Suiza automobile was hanging motionless in the air not fifty feet up.
‘Anything spring to mind?’ asked Landen.
I looked around carefully. It was another bizarre frozen vignette. Everyone and everything was there—Major Fairwelle, Sue Long, my old croquet captain, the mammoths, the gingham tablecloth—even the bootleg cheese. I looked at Landen.
‘Nothing, Land.’
‘Are you sure? Look again.’
I sighed and scanned their faces. Sue Long, an old schoolfriend whose boyfriend set his own trousers on fire for a bet, Sarah Nara, who lost her ear at Bilohirsk on a training accident and ended up marrying General Pearson, croquet pro Alf Widdershaine, who taught me how to ‘peg out’ all the way from the forty-yard line. Even the previously unknown Bonnie Voige was there, and—
‘Who’s this’’ I asked, pointing at a shimmering memory in front of me.
‘It’s the woman who called herself Violet De’ath,’ answered Landen. ‘Does she seem familiar?’
I looked at her blank features. I hadn’t given her a second thought at the time but something about her was familiar.
‘Sort of,’ I responded. ‘Have I seen her somewhere before?’
‘You tell me, Thursday.’ Landen shrugged. ‘It’s your memory—but if you want a clue, look at her shoes.’
And there they were. Bright red shoes that just might have been the same as those on the girl at the Skyrail platform.
‘There’s more than one pair of red shoes in Wessex, Land.’
‘You’re right,’ he observed. ‘I did say it was a long shot.’
I had an idea, and before Landen could say another word we were in the square at Osaka with all the Nextian-logoed Japanese, the fortune-teller frozen in mid-beckon, the crowd around us an untidy splash of visual noise which is the way crowds appear to the mind’s eye, the logos I remembered jutting out in sharp contrast to the unremembered faces. I peered through the crowd as I anxiously searched for anything that might resemble a young European woman.
‘See anything?’ asked Landen, hands on hips and surveying the strange scene.
‘No,’ I replied. ‘Wait a minute. Let’s come in a bit earlier.’
I took myself back a minute and there she was, getting up from the fortune-teller’s chair the moment I first saw him. I walked closer and looked at the vague shape. I squinted at her feet. There, in the haziest corner of my mind, was the memory I was looking for. The shoes were definitely red.
‘It’s her, isn’t it?’ asked Landen
‘Yes,’ I murmured, staring at the wraith-like figure in front of me. ‘But it doesn’t help; none of these memories is strong enough for a positive ID.’
‘Perhaps not on their own,’ observed Landen. ‘But since I’ve been in here I’ve figured out a few things about how your memory works. Try and superimpose the images.’
I thought of the woman on the platform, placed her across the vague form in the market and then added the spectre who had called herself De’ath. The three images shimmered for a bit before they locked together. It wasn’t great. I needed more. I pulled from my memory the half-shredded picture that Lamb and Slaughter had shown me. It fitted perfectly, and Landen and I stared at the result.
‘What do you think?’ asked Landen. ‘Twenty-five?’
‘Possibly a little older,’ I muttered, looking closer at the amalgam of my attacker, trying to fix it in my memory. She had plain features, a small amount of make-up and blonde hair cut in an asymmetric bob. She didn’t look like a killer. I ran through all the information I had—which didn’t take long. The failed SpecOps 5 investigations allowed me a few clues: the recurring name of Hades, the initials ‘A.H.’, the fact that she did resolve on pictures. Clearly it wasn’t Acheron in disguise but perhaps—
‘Oh, shit.’
‘What?’
‘It’s Hades.’
‘It can’t be. You killed him.’
‘I killed Acheron. He had a brother named Styx—why couldn’t he have a sister?’
We exchanged nervous looks and stared at the mnemonograph in front of us. Some of her features did seem to resemble those of Acheron now I stared at her. For a start, she was tall. And the way her lips were thin, and the eyes—they had a sort of brooding darkness to them.
‘No wonder she’s pissed off with you,’ murmured Landen ‘You killed her brother.’