Instinct made Zara cover her breasts, and water made her choke as her head bobbed below the surface. When she'd finished coughing, she concentrated on swearing. She knew who it was.
What she didn't recognize was the voice of whoever spoke next.
That was rude.'
Arms splashed up to snake round Zara's neck and Hani was suddenly glued fast like a limpet. She was grinning in the darkness. Breathing hard, though at first Zara thought that was from the swim. Then she realized the child was excited, dangerously excited.
'He hit a big man at the door,' said Hani. There was a horrified fascination in her voice.
'He wouldn't let us in,' Raf said apologetically.
Zara snorted, her face hidden in shadow until Raf adjusted his eyes and she came into view as cleanly as if someone had toggled the brightness on a screen.
'He didn't get up,' Hani added.
'Unconscious,' insisted Raf hastily, 'nothing worse. I had to see you ...'
'Why?'
Of all questions it was the simplest to ask and the hardest to answer. Had Raf been thinking clearly, or even at all, he might have known he was in shock from Felix: seeing someone killed did that to you. But he wasn't supposed to do shock, at least not according to the wretched genetic-heritability guarantee. And anyway, he had more than one reply to her question.
Club. Felix. Hani , .. which came first?
Raf had to remind himself that Zara couldn't see in the dark, that her hearing was probably only average. So she might have missed the thud of heavy boots as bouncers criss-crossed the club searching for him. Pretty soon one of the bone clones would engage his brain and decide to fire up the water lights.
Except that they were about to be cornered themselves, if the distant clang of a door and abrupt trill of sirens at the high edge of his range was any clue.
'You're being raided,' Raf told Zara.
'Shit...'She sounded almost grateful.'That's what you came to tell me?'
No, he'd come to beg her to look after Hani and to tell her was Felix was dead. Just like his aunt was dead. This city was turning into a personal war-zone and he was still busy trying to spot the enemy.
Raf shook his head, remembered she couldn't see him and opened his mouth to speak. But it was already too late. Up on the spiral, a riot cop using a throat mike attached to the kind of bass-heavy public hailer that turns your guts to water and dribbles them round your feet was demanding that Someone Turn On The Lights. NOW ...
'How many ways in?' Raf felt an adrenalin rush kick-in with a vengeance. The fox was back on line.
'One,' said Zara.
Even Hani groaned.
'Two,' Zara amended, then corrected herself again. 'Three ... Do storm drains count?'
Hani grabbed her tee-shirt from a corner where she'd left it and scooped up Ali-Din while Zara went looking for her clothes, which should have been folded neatly beneath a bench. Raf's own suit was sodden but at least he was wearing it.
'You need new clothes,' Raf ordered.
Zara opened her mouth to protest but Raf was gone, sliding off in a different direction towards a blonde girl in spray tights, a snakeskin waistcoat that might once have slithered and a long trench coat cut from wafer-thin faux ocelot. Zara couldn't hear what Raf said but the girl handed over her coat without comment.
'Use this.' He stood between Zara and the worst of the crowd while she struggled into the coat. Searchlights were in use but the house system seemed down. If Avatar had any sense, thought Zara, he'd have pulled the fuses.
'Over there ...' Zara said, nodding to a wall that lit and vanished as a hand-held hiLux hit the stonework and then swept back over the restless crowd. The crash squad were still looking for the main switch.
"... We need to get over there.'
Covering part of the wall was a swirl curtain that shimmered with an infinitely ridiculous number of infinitesimally small fluorescent beads trapped between its warp and weft. Raf didn't really have time to admire the effect. His brain was rich with theta waves that rolled across his cortex, firing neurones. Behind his eyes was a memory of Zara naked, soft hips and no body hair. Her legs long, her stomach almost flat. Water rolling in droplets between full breasts.
Sweet memories that stopped him remembering ugly things. Like blood turning black in a gutter or a breeze-blown fragment of ribbon fluttering across the road towards him.
'He wasn't listening,' Hani said.
Zara sucked her teeth, crossly. 'This way,' she ordered and ducked under the curtain. Her fingers twisted and fluorescence blossomed from a broken trance tube. They were inside a packed alcove that was arched over with crumbling red brick, and around them was rubbish, mostly broken beer boxes or empty industrial-size containers of still mineral water. Someone's knickers lay discarded on the floor.
Beyond the alcove was a gap where a storm drain fed into the cistern from the street. Clearly visible on the wall were crumbling iron handholds, rusted with age.
'You first,' Zara told Hani, 'Me next, Ashraf last ...'
That was the order in which they went and that was the order in which the morales arrested them in the narrow side street where the drain began. With Raf climbing out to find Hani silenced by a hand over her mouth, while Zara stared furiously at a gendarme officer with skin the colour of pure chocolate and a bottle-green uniform so immaculate it must have come straight out of a box.
Overhead an ex-Soviet copter, with a searchlight now fixed to the side of its gun bubble, pinned Raf in its beam then flicked its attention to another street as soon as the officer moved in, Colt held tightly in her hand.
'AshrafBey,' she said, looking in shock at Raf's still-dripping suit.
'Yeah,' said Raf. 'Me.'
Behind the officer were two privates and at the end of the narrow street was a green van the same colour as the woman's uniform. Its rear doors were open and waiting.
Been here, thought Raf, done that. Not doing it again.
There were three ways it could go. She could let him walk, try to arrest him or call for advice and back-up. Only the first was any good to him and Raf didn't see it happening. Not if the screen-splash he'd caught at the madersa had been right and the IPD were busy nailing Felix to his forehead like the mark of Cain.
Crunch time came as the officer lifted her wrist to her face, ready to call HQ.
'Don't even think about it.' Raf had the fat man's gun out of his sodden pocket and in his hand before she had time to do much more than flinch. Her own weapon still pointed lazily at the ground. She'd got the uniform all right, she just hadn't got the moves.
'Fuck up and I'll kill her,' Raf told the two privates. 'Understood?' The gun wasn't the only thing he'd borrowed from Felix. The sudden hard-ass drawl also belonged to the fat man.
'Your watch,' Raf demanded.
Bottle-green handed it over with a scowl that turned to distilled hatred as Raf tossed her elegant mobile straight down the storm drain. Now her HQ could pinpoint it all they liked.
'Going to shoot me too?' The woman's voice was cold, her contempt unchecked. Raf didn't know quite what she saw when she looked at him but it was something she hated. He wasn't too sure he liked it that much himself.
'Felix was dying,' Raf said shortly. Which was true. Half of the fat man's skull was gone, his brain a fat slug that gravity enticed towards the pavement.
'This man murdered Felix Bey.'
For all the attention the officer gave the gun in his hand, Raf might as well have been unarmed. Except then, of course, he'd have been under arrest already.