Landon pulls a vacuous expression.
“You don’t remember it?”
“No,” says he. “Was it bad?”
“Didn’t you write it down somewhere?”
He shakes his head.
“Then it probably was.”
The supermarket is a tranquil haven at midnight, its half-depleted shelves and empty aisles accented with the ambience of a dystopian film. Light piano music haunts the forlorn spaces. Here and there gaunt, shadowy figures flit about with packs of beer and nuts. One of them picks out a bottle of cheap Chinese liquor. An employee stoops at a corner and stocks a shelf. A lone cashier sits at an open till and entertains herself on her mobile. Landon and Hannah saunter down an aisle, swinging their shopping baskets. Time slows to a crawl.
“Where were you all these years?” Landon asks.
Hannah flips a pack of crisps over and looks at it. “Everywhere, doing what I do best.”
“Killing?”
“Cleansing.” She replaces the pack and moves on. “There’re many rogues out there.”
“Like me?”
“Worse.”
For a while they strolled in silence, then Landon succumbs to a compulsion to warm the chill between them. “I’ve got an idea if they decide to kill me in the end.”
“What’s that?”
“We could kill ourselves.”
“Done that a dozen times over.” She reaches for another packet. “There is a fail-safe for Trackers like us. A part of the Serum can be programmed to respond to neuro-stimulus arising from suicidal tendencies, like serotonin levels, and prevent an act of suicide.”
“How?”
“It stalls your brain.” She taps her temple. “Induces a seizure.”
“Maybe I could do you first then myself.”
“Word of advice.” Hannah stops and turns around to look at him. “Never fraternise with your executioner.”
Her response blanches him to a chalky pallor that drives her into fits of lavish, velvet laughter. “You’re a darling, you know that?” she says, still tittering. “A century-old darling.”
The remark leaves Landon dry and cold.
Her laughter recedes into giggles. “I’ll go get some bread. You hit the warmers.”
A feeling of insecurity gnaws. “Perhaps we should go together.”
“Afraid I might disappear?”
“Yes.”
“Isn’t that a good thing, considering what I’m supposed to do to you?”
Again Landon finds himself in a fix, unable to retort, and once more his wretched disposition tickles Hannah to laughter. “Don’t worry, Arthur.” She runs her fingers through her hair. “Now it is I who won’t let you go.”
A familiar pang of loneliness descends when he sees her disappear around an aisle. He shrugs it off and considers picking up some canned ham and sausages. At the same time Hannah makes her selection and drops a country loaf into her shopping basket along with a slab of butter. The entire operation has taken her three minutes or less.
And at the end of it she finds Landon missing.
34
DECEMBER 1923
THE RICKSHAW PULLER dropped Anton off at a three-storey tenement along Guthrie Lane, just a block west of Meyer Chambers at Raffles Place. He ascended a teak staircase that led to a corridor smelling of stale sweat and disinfectants. The psychiatric clinic was on the left, where the doctor’s name, speciality and credentials were engraved on a bronze plaque beside the door. Anton jimmied the brass doorknob and found it locked.
“I’m afraid he’s passed on,” said a burly brunette who had been stamping up the stairs after him. Her hair stuck out from the sides of her sun-hat in tiny red curls.
Anton gasped. “He did? How?”
“His heart,” she said. “So I heard from the constables. Pity, he was such a gentleman.”
After she lumbered up the next flight and out of sight Anton pried a misshapen journal from his rear pocket and consulted an entry written a week ago:
Got another dose of barbiturate this morning. The good doctor thinks sleep therapy might help if I should have any schizophrenic undertones associated with my memory loss. Otherwise it would have to be a case of syphilis that might still be incubating. He called it general paresis, and insisted that I be completely honest with him concerning any visits to brothels despite countless attempts on my part to convince him otherwise. After waking from the barbiturate he didn’t tell me much, though he said something about my blood being very peculiar and that he’ll need time for a more accurate diagnosis.
It would’ve done Anton some good knowing what exactly was wrong with his blood. The doctor had charged him nothing for the treatments because he regarded Anton to be some sort of a lab rat, and it was for the better since Anton had scarcely been able to make ends meet from peddling cigarettes.
Not that it mattered now because the doctor was dead.
It so happened that at noon Anton was waiting in line by the jinriksha station at Maxwell Road when a Kling approached him. He had been considering the benefits of pulling the night shift as he stood sandwiched between two sweaty, steaming coolies.
Like him they were seeking to bolster their income by pulling rickshaws on days when quayside jobs were few. Even as the laden bumboats docked there’d be a long line of coolies waiting for their turn to unload the cargo. If you were far behind in the line, you missed the work and you didn’t get paid. Rickshaws, on the other hand, were a more reliable source of income. The jinriksha station rented out rickshaws at a good rate of 11 cents a day, and the waiting coolies packed themselves tightly for fear of queue jumping, which almost always degenerated into brawls.
When the Kling came over many greasy, sun-scorched faces turned to him all at once. Anton too looked in their direction, catching waft after waft of their stale, hot breaths. He stared at the Kling and pointed to his chest. Me?
The Kling grinned, revealing a flawless set of white teeth. “Come.”
“I’ve been queuing for an hour,” said Anton. “Not about to give it up.”
“I got something better. A job offer,” said the Kling.
“What job?”
The Kling surveyed the line. “Too many eyes lah. You want to know, you come.”
Anton closed his eyes and made the leap. As soon as he left the queue the coolie behind him stepped forward and pressed in chesttoback against the man in front. The lines advanced a foot, and the waiting continued under the blinding noonday sun.
“Why did you pick me?” Anton asked.
“Because you look too weak to pull rickshaw lah.” The Kling draped an arm over Anton’s shoulders and offered a hand. “My name is Amal.”
“Anton.”
Amal took him a hundred yards down Maxwell Road into an alley where roaches roamed the sewerage-crusted drains, even in the day. There he opened a wicker basket he had been carrying and furtively fished out a bottle of brandy.
“We can sell this.”
“They’re expensive,” said Anton. “I don’t have any money for them.”
“They’re fake one.” Amal wiggled his head at the confession. “Very cheap, so don’t worry about money. I only need you to help carry and move them. And you know,” he said, scratching a cheek, “be lookout lah.”
“Isn’t it illegal?”
“No—” The word came out as a drawling growl, as if Anton had uttered the most ridiculous thing in the world. “If people like the liquor, we re-brand into our own brand lah.”
Anton picked at the back of his ear. “Well, I’m not sure if…”
“If you so scared I also got other business.” Amal took out a warmer flask and poured out, in its cap, a brew that exuded a delicious scent. Anton sipped it cautiously.