‘Better get some sleep, Sevgi.’
Still aching as she stumbles into bed, still half-dressed. Curtains not properly drawn, sunlight slanting in, but no fucking way that’s going to stop her sleeping, the way she feels now. No fucking way…
Sunlight outside.
Aches and pains forgotten. The long, warming slide into not worrying about anything at all.
And the room and all that was in it went away gently, like Murat closing her bedroom door.
When it was done, when her eyes slid finally closed and her breathing stopped, when Murat Ertekin bent over her, sobbing uncontrollably, and checked the pulse in her neck and nodded, when it was over and there was, finally, no more left for him to do, Carl walked away.
He left Murat Ertekin sitting with his daughter. He left Norton standing trembling like a bodyguard running a high fever but still on duty. He left and headed down the corridor alone. It felt as if he was wading in thigh-deep water. Humans brushed past, moving aside for him, cued in by the blank face and the forced gait. There was no panic, no buzz of activity in his wake – Murat knew how to bypass the machines so they wouldn’t scream for help when Sevgi’s vital signs sank to the bottom.
They would know soon enough. Norton had promised to deal with it. That was his end – Carl had done what he did best.
He walked away.
The memories scurried after him, anxious not to be left behind.
‘Don’t know what’s next,’ she says, smiling as the drug takes hold. ‘But if it feels anything like this, it’ll do.’
And then, as her eyelids begin to sag, ‘I’ll see you all in the garden, I guess.’
‘Yeah, with all that fruit and the stream running under the trees there,’ he tells her, through lips that seem to have gone numb. Voice suddenly hoarse. He’s the only one talking to her now. Norton is silent and rigid at his side, no use to anyone. Murat Ertekin has sunk to his knees beside the bed, face pressed into his daughter’s hand, holding back tears with an effort that shakes him visibly as he breathes. He summons strength to keep speaking. Squeezes her hand. ‘Remember that, Sevgi. All that sunlight through the trees.’
She squeezes back, barely. She sniggers, a gentle rupturing of air out through her lips, barely any actual sound. ‘And the virgins. Don’t forget them.’
He swallows hard.
‘Yeah, well, you save me one of those. I’ll be along, Sevgi. I’ll catch you up. We all will.’
‘Fucking virgins,’ she murmurs sleepily. ‘Who needs ’em? Gotta teach ’em every fucking thing…’
And then, finally, just before the breathing stops,
‘Baba, he’s a good man. He’s clean.’
He smashed back the doors out of the ward, along the corridors people got out of his way. He found the stairs, plunged downward, looking for a way out.
Knowing there wasn’t one.
CHAPTER FORTY-EIGHT
Afterwards, the COLIN exec came to find him in the garden. Carl hadn’t said he was going there, but it wouldn’t have taken a detective to work it out. The benches around the fountain had become a standard haunt for all of them over the past week, familiar with habitual use. It was where they went when the weight of the hospital pressed down on them, when the antiseptic-scented, nano-cleansed air grew too hard and arid to breathe. Norton slumped onto the bench beside him like someone getting home to a shared house and hitting the sofa. He stared into the sunlit splash of the fountain and said nothing at all. He’d cleaned up, but his face still looked feverish from the crying.
‘Any trouble?’ Carl asked him.
Norton shook his head numbly. His voice came out mechanical. ‘They’re making some noise. The COLIN brief should cover it. Ertekin’s talking to them.’
‘So we’re free to go.’
‘Free to…?’ The exec’s brow furrowed, uncomprehending. ‘You’ve always been free to go, Marsalis.’
‘That’s not what I mean.’
Norton swallowed. ‘Listen, there’s the funeral. Arrangements. I don’t know if—’
‘I’m not interested in what they do with her corpse. I’m going to find Onbekend. Are you going to help me?’
‘Marsalis, listen—’
‘It’s a simple question, Norton. You watched her die in there. What are you going to do about it?’
The COLIN exec drew a shuddering breath. ‘You think killing Onbekend is going to make things better? You think that’ll bring her back?’
Carl stared at him. ‘I’m going to assume that’s rhetorical.’
‘Haven’t you had enough yet?’
‘Enough of what?’
‘Enough of killing whatever you can get your fucking hands on.’ Norton came off the bench, stood over him. The words hissed out like vented poison gas. ‘You just took Sevgi’s life in there, and all you can think of to do is go look for someone else to kill? Is that all you fucking know how to do?’
Across the gardens, heads turned.
‘Sit down,’ Carl said grimly. ‘Before I break your fucking neck for you.’
Norton grinned hard. He sank onto his haunches, brought his face level with Carl’s.
‘You want to break my fucking neck.’ He gestured up. ‘Here it is, my friend. Right fucking here.’
He meant it. Carl closed his eyes and sighed. Opened them and looked at Norton again, nodded slowly.
‘All right.’ He cleared his throat. ‘There are two ways to look at this, my friend. See, we can do the civilised, feminised, constructive thing, and work a long by-the-book investigation that may or may not lead us eventually back to Manco Bambaren and the altiplano and Onbekend. Or, we can take your COLIN authorisation and a little hardware, and we can fly down there and set fire to Manco’s machine.’
Norton levered himself upright again. He shook his head. ‘And you think that’s going to make him cave in? Just like that?’
‘Onbekend is a thirteen.’ Carl wondered fleetingly if he shouldn’t try harder with Norton, lever his voice up out of the dead tone he could hear in it. ‘Manco Bambaren may have hired him, or he may just be doing business with the people who did, but whatever the connection is, it’s not blood the way it was with Merrin. Manco’s going to see Onbekend and me as two of a kind, monsters he can play off against each other for whatever best result there is. He gave me Névant three years ago to get me off his back, and he’ll give me Onbekend for the same reason. In the end, he’s a businessman, and he’ll do what’s good for business. If we make it bad enough for business to hold out, then he’ll cave in.’
‘We?’
‘Slip of the tongue. I’m going anyway. You can come with me or not, as your non-variant conscience sees fit. Be easier for me if you did, but if you don’t, well.’ Carl shrugged. ‘I promised Gutierrez I’d go back to Mars to kill him, and I meant it. The altiplano’s a lot easier gig than that.’