“Feodor — my father — and Linus — they’ve had their differences. But only over political agendas. They’re all in league when it comes to family status and loyalty. Myself and Axel are estranged from the rest — not that it makes a difference to Axel these days.”
“But your family continue to bankroll you.” The investigator’s tone was bland. She mirrored it.
“Yes. Under the condition that I attend public functions like the one last week. Call me frivolous, Mr Lao. I daresay I am. But I like my lifestyle and I know when to compromise.”
“Your mother? I’ve heard it said she’s an intelligent woman.”
“She is. And completely allied with my father.”
“And your oldest brother — Dmitri?”
“Similarly. His fiancée is proof enough of that.”
“What are the Rechnovs’ relationships with the other venerated families — the Dumays and the Ngozis?”
“We didn’t all play together as children at midsummer, if that’s what you mean. The families are politically aligned but there are no strong personal ties. The Dumays keep themselves to themselves since the assassinations. My grandfather was very close to the other elders, Celine Dumay and Emeke Ngozi, but since they died the links have been purely strategic. Forgive me, Mr Lao, but surely this is information you can acquire equally well elsewhere? I try to spend as little time as possible thinking about my family.”
“As I said, I prefer to speak to the source. And if we are to succeed, Ms Mystik, you may have to devote a little more time than you are accustomed to thinking about your relations.” Lao put his Surfboard away. “I suggest that we proceed as follows. As the hospitals have yielded no leads, I will commence with further enquiries into those who last saw your brother.”
“Sanjay Hanif has done the same.”
“Hanif will not be paying them. I don’t doubt his ability as a detective, Ms Mystik, but results are always better with a little financial encouragement.”
She gave a half smile. “That is why I employed you. You will, naturally, receive a bonus payment in the event of a successful conclusion.”
“And what do you class as a successful conclusion?”
“Finding my brother. Alive.”
“Then I hope I shall locate him speedily.” He rose. “I’ll be in touch.”
The bath rose out of the black tiles like an island, round and white. Adelaide dipped her fingers into the searing water, then plunged both feet in and stood, gasping. Tropical scents rose with the steam. Breathing in slowly, she lowered herself into the bath until she was submerged to her neck.
She loved her monochrome bathroom. Like her bedroom, it faced east. Her apartment was on the very edge of the city and in daylight, the view from the bathroom was the wilderness beyond Osiris; endless sea merging into endless sky. It was evening now. The window-wall was darkened and held only the room’s reflection.
After a few minutes she leaned over and flicked the jacuzzi setting. She shifted to rest directly over a stream. The bubbles rippled up around her thighs and between her legs. She let her head fall back, sinking into daydreams. The water sloshed gently. She might not need company, but everyone needed physicality. Denying that urge was as foolish as believing there was life outside Osiris: it demonstrated only a basic disregard for fact.
Her hand drifted down, lazily, absently, and her breath snagged. It was not really her touch, it was Tyr’s. Their liaison had spanned some five years, but the forbidden meetings, restricted by time and place, still had an airless excitement. Sometimes she felt as though he was stitched into the fabric of her body, her responses a preordained thing. But nothing more than sex would ever lie between them. They both took other lovers; that way they averted suspicion.
The last time it had been at the theatre. With only a red curtain and the distraction of the play to cover them, he had kissed her mouth, her neck, the border of her backless dress. Her fingers lingered on the same spots. She felt every place his tongue had touched tingling again, as though the hot, scented jacuzzi tide had the potency of renewal.
In public, they used the studied banter of two rivals. Tyr worked for her father, and Adelaide hated him, so it was not a hard script for either of them to enact. She enjoyed their coded battles. But she was wary too, of the power folded into the layered phrases, the potential each of them held as a wrecker of the other’s life. Tyr would be in attendance at the Rose Night, which Adelaide traditionally held on the second Thursday of February. Her mind straddled the various possibilities of a rendezvous. Which stage in the evening might she slip away. Where they could fuck.
She slid down into the bath, out of the bubble stream. With the loss of sensation she felt her mind pulling back. She closed her eyes and remembered the theatre; the audience hushed, the sumptuous velvet of the curtain, the frisson when they kissed. She wanted the moment back. It was too late; her mind was roving now, tomorrow morning already panning out. A series of tasks. She needed to order the rose stock. In the afternoon she had a tasting session with the owner of Narwhal, who was devising the cocktail recipes.
The invitations for Rose Night had just been sent out. She imagined the squeals of delight from those receiving them. Adelaide’s guest list was the most envied publication in fourth gen Osiris. To have your name on the list was a statement: it linked the owner with dynamism and charisma, with Adelaide. In the early days, the era of the Double-A Parties, the twins had done the list together. Now it was just Adelaide.
The bath was beginning to cool. Not quite ready to depart, she leaned over and unleashed a gush of water from the taps. The hot current engulfed her feet before it bled into the rest of the pool and the temperature evened out into a pleasant shawl. Adelaide scooped up a handful of foam and held it to her face, listening to the bubbles popping against her skin.
She mulled over the meeting with Lao. The things he’d said. The things he’d implied.
Could she trust the investigator? Lao had no reason to lie to her, unlike her father. She could not escape the issue of the keys. Why would Feodor deny her access? Regardless of the press attached to Axel’s disappearance, it was hardly beyond his capabilities to find some way of sneaking her into the penthouse. No, she decided. There was more to it than public appearances. There were things he wasn’t telling her.
Adelaide had long thought her father capable of anything. But thinking a thing was not necessarily the same as believing it. Her mind skidded down the turbulent paths of suspicion. She must force herself to examine all angles. Lao had said there were three possibilities: Axel was hidden, in hiding, or dead. It was hard to imagine who would benefit from Axel’s death — if he had been killed for political reasons, the assassins would have brandished his body in public. Axel had long been a source of embarrassment to the Rechnovs, but murder — she let out a shaky breath — she could not bring herself to believe that they would murder her twin. Incarceration was more the family style. Secrets and lies. They could have locked him up in some anonymous Rechnov apartment.
Or he could be hiding. Axel was — she had to be honest with herself — not in a clear state mind.
If only she could get into the penthouse. There were no friends or confidantes to whom Axel might have entrusted a spare set of keys. Even in the old days, his relationships were superficial. He had never seemed to need people, except for Adelaide. Before.
She slid further under the bathwater, until her hair swilled around her shoulders and only her face remained above. It felt cold and exposed. She remembered Axel, hiding in a similar fashion under the bedclothes, because he was afraid of the storms. Adelaide was afraid of birds. She’d mocked her twin, they’d mocked one another, until their grandfather came to Axel’s rescue. Tell us a story, she’d begged. Tell us about the storms. And through the wind and the rain outside they listened to the slow resonant timbre of his voice as he told them about the year of the Great Storm, and how the refugees came to Osiris to escape the doomed, poisoned lands, from Patagonia, from Afrika, from India and Zeeland, even from the far flung Boreal States in the north, and how disease flew through the city like a dragon so they had to stay in the west, in quarantine. What then, she asked, what then? And he said, after the Great Storm came the Great Silence. We lost contact with the world. The people who left the City never came back. They were lost.