And saw the boy’s eyes open very wide. ‘Tigerman and Jack.’
‘Tigerman. And Jack.’
The boy had gone off to work mojo. It was some pretty serious mojo, he said, and would need time. The Sergeant should go and do Sergeant things. ‘Go Wayne,’ the boy had said.
‘Do what?’
‘Wayne! Bruce Wayne. Be ordinary.’
Ordinary people did not have days like this. The Sergeant slept a little, then woke and went to see Inoue, because he didn’t want to feel that he hadn’t when he put on the mask. It wasn’t good to have outstanding business.
Inoue greeted him with a strained smile. ‘Did Kershaw ask you to come out?’
‘No,’ he said. ‘Just doing my rounds.’ I came for you.
She smiled bleakly. ‘There have been significant developments in my work.’
‘Significant.’
‘In two ways. The next eruption will come very soon. Three days, perhaps less. Kershaw is aware. They will announce the evacuation later. But here, we are already packing. And I am most particularly to bring my things and not… talk about my views. At all.’
‘You’re in trouble?’
‘Mm. Maybe not yet. But I am to understand that I can be if I want to experiment.’
‘Then don’t,’ he said earnestly. ‘There’s enough trouble coming out of this already.’
She sighed. ‘They will not give me a choice, I think. I am urgently required on a project back home. A very good one, apparently. There will be no time for me to oversee the departure here, I am to board a light aircraft later today. My luggage will follow. It has the form of a promotion, all very flattering.’ Her tone made it clear she was not flattered.
He stood in front of her and felt cheated. He had somehow assumed there would be time. Where that time was going to come from he had, in retrospect, no idea. There was never time. He stared at her helplessly.
‘Come,’ she said abruptly. ‘You must see the forecast data. It will help you understand.’
‘I probably won’t understand it, to be honest.’
She snorted. ‘Don’t be absurd. I will explain.’
She led him into the small, oblong room which was her private space. ‘Ichiro!’ she shouted into the hall. ‘I need the big chart in two minutes.’ The Sergeant heard an answering shout, and she shut the door. ‘Sit.’
He sat.
Inoue unrolled a piece of paper from a cardboard tube and weighted it down in front of him with a stapler and a pot of pens. Then she turned. ‘This is the pressure chart for the upper chamber,’ she said. ‘In the normal run of things I would now explain each spike and trough, and you would nod as if that meant anything outside of this building.’ She drew a breath. ‘But it is not a normal day and there is something I wish to make clear. I decline to go back home without doing so.’
She took a quick step towards him and leaned in, held his head between her hands and pressed her mouth fiercely against his. Her lips were narrow and strong. Her tongue flirted, teased. She opened her mouth in a frankly wanton invitation and growled happily when he accepted it.
And then she stepped back and it was as if the whole thing had been a dream. The door opened and Ichiro the genius came in, passed another tube to his chief and – with a rather approving expression – wandered out again.
‘The eruption is coming,’ Inoue said seriously. ‘A big one.’
I should bloody think it is.
But he nodded. ‘I understand.’
She fixed him with a stern look. ‘“I understand, Kaiko. And I have always wanted to visit Japan. Perhaps, Kaiko, I might come and see you when I travel.”’
‘Yes,’ he said. ‘That.’
‘Good. You would be very welcome.’
She loaded him with technical information and sent him away. They exchanged a formal handshake in parting, on the same gravel drive where poor Madame Duclos’s dog had landed on his car. All around, there was bustle and packing going on, and he drove back to Beauville feeling by turns elated and bewildered. How would he ever get to Japan? But on the other hand, why not? But what about the boy? And what if he was arrested? He couldn’t use chopsticks, that was a concern. He could learn, of course: it wasn’t like learning to play the violin. Japanese would be harder.
He listened to this strange, unfamiliar yammer in his mind and asked himself how long it had been since he had been truly interested in a woman, in her thinking and her laughter rather than just her body. A long time. Perhaps never. Not that he wasn’t interested in her body. My God, he was interested. He couldn’t believe – he could, actually, readily believe it, but he was appalled at himself – that he had not explored her even a little in that frozen instant. He hadn’t wanted to grab. He suspected now that she would have been quite amenable to some grabbing, might well have grabbed back. Ichiro had been an alarm clock for her, he thought, as much as for him.
At Brighton House he found a message from the boy: The Grande, side door, 7 p.m. It will be open. I am not invited. If there is trouble, I am off the books and off the hook. Do not lick anyone, they put drugs on their skin to make clients fall asleep.
PS I am serious.
PPS Bad Jack is an end-of-level boss.
The Sergeant knew what an end-of-level boss was. He was the age to have played the original Space Invaders machines, the ten-pence-per-game uprights which had stood in pub corners and kebab shops, stained with grease and beer.
The end-of-level boss was the monster who came when you’d beaten all the easy ones and then all the hard ones: the kind no ordinary mortal could fight.
Kershaw made the announcement at four. Beauville would be evacuated first, any outlying settlements thereafter. The boats would arrive in three days. Everyone would receive instructions and an evac number. Luggage was strictly limited. Livestock would remain on the island. The risk of infection was unacceptable.
People shrugged. It was old news, and Kershaw’s authority seemed contingent now on the indulgence of the world, in a way it never had before. And the world was actually watching. There was no unrest. Instead, there was a curious anticipation, as if the people had done their part and now it was the island’s turn. There would be a Cloud before the evacuation was complete, and that was one thing, but even more than that: Mancreu had decided not to give up. In the street of the card-players there were fresh flowers in the pots. The sweeper was back, hobbling and directing a small army of younger women. The press pack photographed her endlessly until she chased them away. They, too, were waiting for something they could not describe, knew in their fingertips that it was coming.
Three days was a long time. Anything might happen.
The Grande had been Shola’s competition, at least up to a point. It was a not very grand sort of place at the other end of Beauville, close by the warehouse district and the road out along the coast. It was somewhere between a seafront bar and a brothel with a strong flavour of clip joint, but at the same time it was a real place which had regulars who drank and chatted. Dirac claimed, against all likelihood, that the wine was passable and the Thursday stew excellent.
The Sergeant had parked the Land Rover a few streets away and carried the mask in his pocket. He was wearing a long dark coat over his armour. He felt a little excited and a little absurd. The recollection of Inoue’s kiss was still with him, lifting his mood.
He looked both ways and put on the mask, gasped a little at the smell of fear and exertion which clung to it, and at the sense of homecoming which burgeoned as he dipped his face into the dark. Always before he had to some extent been forced by circumstance. Now he felt he was choosing this, and with the choice came pride.