‘Not the way I thought it would feel,’ he says.
Goodglass nods understandingly. ‘I’m going to punish you now, Carl. But I’m not going to kill you.’
She’s playing with him, allowing him a glimmer of hope before crushing it for all eternity.
‘Why not?’ he asks.
‘Because if you were dead, you wouldn’t make much of an exhibit. When we’re done here, I’m going to donate you to a suitable recipient.’ Then she turns to the palanquin. ‘There’s something I should have told you. I lied about my husband. Edric was a good man: he cared for me, loved me, when he could have made his fortune from what I was. Unfortunately, he never got to see me like this. Edric died during the early months of the plague.’
Grafenwalder says nothing. He’s out of words, out of questions.
‘You’re probably wondering who’s in the palanquin,’ Goodglass says. ‘He’s going to come out now, for a little while. Not too long, because he can’t risk coming into contact with plague spores, not when so much of him is mechanical. But that won’t stop him doing his job. He’s always been a quick worker.’
With a hiss of escaping pressure, the entire front of the palanquin lifts up on shining pistons. The first thing Grafenwalder sees, the last thing before he starts screaming, is a silver hand clutching a black Homburg hat.
Then he sees the face.
NIGHTINGALE
I checked the address Tomas Martinez had given me, shielding the paper against the rain while I squinted at my scrawl. The number I’d written down didn’t correspond with any of the high-and-dry offices, but it was a dead ringer for one of the low-rent premises at street level. Here the walls of Threadfall Canyon had been cut and buttressed to the height of six or seven storeys, widening the available space at the bottom of the trench. Buildings covered most of the walls, piled on top of each other, supported by a haphazard arrangement of stilts and rickety, semipermanent bamboo scaffolding. Aerial walkways had been strung from one side of the street to the other, with stairs and ladders snaking their way through the dark fissures between the buildings. Now and then a wheeler sped through the water, sending a filthy brown wave in its wake. Very rarely, a sleek, claw-like volantor slid overhead. But volantors were off-world tech and not many people on Sky’s Edge could afford that kind of thing any more.
It didn’t look right to me, but all the evidence said that this had to be the place.
I stepped out of the water onto the wooden platform in front of the office and knocked on the glass-fronted door while rain curtained down through holes in the striped awning above me. I was pushing soaked hair out of my eyes when the door opened.
I’d seen enough photographs of Martinez to know this wasn’t him. This was a big bull of a man, nearly as wide as the door. He stood there with his arms crossed in front of his chest, over which he wore only a sleeveless black vest that was zipped down to his midriff. His muscles were so tight it looked as if he was wearing some kind of body-hugging amplification suit. His head was very large and very bald, rooted to his body by a neck like a small mountain range. The skin around his right eye was paler than the rest of his face, in a neatly circular patch.
He looked down at me as if I was something unpleasant the rain had washed in.
‘What?’ he said, his voice like the distant rumble of artillery.
‘I’m here to see Martinez.’
‘Mister Martinez to you,’ he said.
‘Whatever. But I’m still here to see him, and he should be expecting me. I’m—’
‘Dexia Scarrow,’ called another voice — fractionally more welcoming, this one — and a smaller, older man bustled into view from behind the pillar of muscle blocking the door, snatching delicate pince-nez glasses from his nose. ‘Let her in, Norbert. She’s expected. Just a little late.’
‘I got held up around Armesto — my hired wheeler hit a pothole and tipped over. Couldn’t get the thing started again, so had to—’
The smaller man waved aside my excuse. ‘You’re here now, which is all that matters. I’ll have Norbert dry your clothes, if you wish.’
I peeled off my coat. ‘Maybe this.’
‘Norbert will attend to your galoshes as well. Would you care for something to drink? I have tea already prepared, but if you would rather something else…’
‘Tea will be fine, Mister Martinez,’ I said.
‘Please, call me Tomas. It’s my sincere wish that we will work together as friends.’
I stepped out of my galoshes and handed my dripping-wet coat to the big man. Martinez nodded once, the gesture precise and birdlike, and then beckoned me to follow him further into his rooms. He was slighter and older than I’d been expecting, although still recognisable as the man in the photographs. His hair was grey turning to white, thinning on his crown and shaved close to his scalp elsewhere on his head. He wore a grey waistcoat over a grey shirt, the ensemble lending him a drab, clerkish air.
We navigated a twisting labyrinth formed by four layers of brown boxes, piled to head height. ‘Excuse the mess,’ Martinez said, looking back at me over his shoulder. ‘I really should find a better solution to my filing problems, but there’s always something more pressing that needs doing instead.’
‘I’m surprised you have time to eat, let alone worry about filing problems.’
‘Well, things haven’t been quite as hectic lately, I must confess. If you’ve been following the news you’ll know that I’ve already caught most of my big fish. There’s some mopping up to do, but I’ve been nowhere near as busy as in…’ Martinez stopped suddenly next to one of the piles of boxes, placed his glasses back on the bridge of his nose and scuffed dust from the paper label on the side of the box nearest his face. ‘No,’ he said, shaking his head. ‘Wrong place. Wrong damned place! Norbert!’
Norbert trudged along behind us, my sodden coat still draped over one of his enormous, trunk-like arms. ‘Mister Martinez?’
‘This one is in the wrong place.’ The smaller man turned around and indicated a spot between two other boxes, on the opposite side of the corridor. ‘It goes here. It needs to be properly filed. Kessler’s case is moving into court next month, and we don’t want any trouble with missing documentation.’
‘Attend to it,’ Norbert said, which sounded like an order but which I assumed was his way of saying he’d remember to move the box when he was done with my laundry.
‘Kessler?’ I asked, when Norbert had left. ‘As in Tillman Kessler, the NC interrogator?’
‘One and the same, yes. Did you have experience with him?’
‘I wouldn’t be standing here if I did.’
‘True enough. But a small number of people were fortunate enough to survive their encounters with Kessler. Their testimonies will help bring him to justice.’
‘By which you mean crucifixion.’
‘I detect faint disapproval, Dexia,’ Martinez said.
‘You’re right. It’s barbaric.’
‘It’s how we’ve always done things. The Haussmann way, if you like.’
Sky Haussmann: the man who gave this world its name, and who sparked off the two-hundred-and-fifty-year war we’ve only just learned to stop fighting. When they crucified Sky they thought they were putting an early end to the violence. They couldn’t have been more wrong. Ever since, crucifixion has been the preferred method of execution.
‘Is Kessler the reason you asked me here, sir? Were you expecting me to add to the case file against him?’