I, Alice Mair, partner of the man who called himself Nathan Coyle–folded myself on to the floor just out of the reach of his legs and opened the laptop.
He made a strangled sound against his gag; heels pounded on the floor.
I said, “There’s something I want to show you.”
Another noise, rage popping against his eyelids, skin flushing red as he tried to throw himself at me through sheer force of will.
I pushed the USB stick into the machine, let the files unfold.
“I stole these,” I said, “from Aquarius. At a brief glance, it’s clear that I’ve got account information, personnel information, emails, correspondence, documentation. Enough to destroy Aquarius by remote control, wearing bank managers and clerks, nothing more.”
He tore again at the cuffs, a throat-deep animal snarl tangling mutely on the gag.
“However,” I went on, “what I want to show to you is this.”
I turned the laptop screen so he could see the images as I opened them. “This is the file of the entity you call Galileo. It’s patchy–remarkably more so than any other file, including my own. Here we see, for example, a shot of a man in 1957 who may or may not have been Galileo. Here, the corpses of the Milli Vra, a ferry whose passengers went mad and killed each other one by one on a midnight voyage. Here’s a photo–” I pushed the screen a little closer “–of an individual reported to be Galileo, taken in 2006. A New York gentleman. Observe the dapper dress, the smart black shoes, the professionally manicured nails. I can see why someone might want to be this man–he doubtless has dinner parties and attends all the best shows. But look a little closer–” my finger tapped the screen “–and observe where his neck meets his collar. Do you see?”
For a moment curiosity overwhelmed Coyle’s pride, and there was a flicker in his eye as he saw the infiltration of broken capillaries and torn-up veins running through the surface of the stranger’s skin in a reddish burst, just above the collar.
I ploughed on. “Most people are hypersensitive about their skin–it’s what strangers see, what they judge–and any anomaly, anything which may not conform to the image they wish to project of social perfection, they disguise. No such effort is being made here. What may we conclude? Either that this gentleman doesn’t care for appearances, which seems unlikely considering the neatness of his apparel, or that lesions are a common feature of his flesh and he no longer regards their appearance as anomalous. What do you think?”
Coyle, behind his gag and chains, thought nothing. His struggles had slowed. Now he lay still, staring at the photo which he must have stared at a hundred times before, of a man alleged to be Galileo.
I let him stare, then flicked over to the next. “How about this? Female, early twenties, stunning, absolutely. I would, wouldn’t you? For a day in that skin, for an hour of that pride. But then look–really look. Observe her shoes where they meet the ankle. Observe the plasters. Blisters and blood–the price of being desirable, you might say, but I say no. There are few irritations as inescapable as badly fitting shoes. And your file says that this woman was Galileo for three months?” I flicked through more pictures, fast now, shaking my head. “Blisters, more blisters! And this!” Another photo, another face. “Do you really think he was Galileo?” I demanded, holding up the laptop incredulously for Coyle’s inspection. “Gold watch, silk shirt, all very appealing. But look, I mean look at his face! The man has a glass eye.”
Coyle was frozen, shoulders slumped, legs straight. Quieter, I flicked through more photos, shaking my head, a tut, a sigh. “These are not Galileo. Three months with blisters, two with lesions on the skin? Look at her–she’s old. Her face has been maintained with creams, but her fingers are withered, they show her age because so many people in tending their faces forget their hands. No ghost would wear her for more than a few minutes. Back problems, arthritis–any estate agent worth their skin could tell you no. Not for any ghost. Galileo wants to be loved. He wants to look in the mirror and love his face, and see his face loving him back. He wants to kiss his reflection, feel a shudder of delight when his hands touch his skin. He wants strangers to fall into his arms because he’s beautiful, so beautiful, and when he fucks them he wants to flick, one to the other and back again, a breath, a second. He wants to love everyone and everything all at once, as long as everyone and everything loves him. And when he kills, it’s because he looks in the mirror and sees only contempt staring back, and he needs to destroy that face, so he cuts it off, and then looks again and still can’t find any beauty in it, so kills again, and again, and… Well. I won’t go on. You know this story better than most. You should also know, therefore, that these people are not Galileo. Even if they were… Here…”
I turned to the final photograph, dated 2001, of a woman lounging across a leather sofa, a cocktail in her hand. “November 2001 to January 2002. I grant you there are no physical deformities in this individual, nothing obvious disbarring her from being a suitable habitation, but I know where Galileo was in November 2001. I know who he was. And he was not her.”
So saying, I closed my laptop.
Coyle was motionless.
My eyes felt sticky inside, full of weight.
“Aquarius experiments on ghosts.” The words fell from my tongue. “The torture isn’t about cooperation. It’s limit testing. They want to know how we work. Look at Galileo’s file. Look at Josephine’s–at her real file, not the tissue of lies they gave you to read. Look again at Frankfurt, ask yourself if this was a vaccination programme or something else entirely. Consider the data they gathered, observe the direction of their enquiries, the resources available. Ask yourself why the researchers died, and why in so much pain. Look at my file, look at dates, times, places, see if I was in Frankfurt when they were killed. Look at Josephine’s face in the CCTV camera and ask who is looking back at you. Understand that as I have a history with Galileo, so it has a history with me, and this is not the first time we have danced around each other in the course of our lives. Ask yourself: who in Aquarius has been losing time. But don’t tell. Whatever happens, do not tell them what you find. You’re compromised now.”
I stood up.
“I’m going,” I said, barely bothering to glance at him as I spoke. “I’ll send someone to pick you up. You can keep the laptop, the money. I can’t take it with me. But this–” my fist tightened around Schwarb’s USB stick “–is mine. Tell your bosses that. And ask them why, of all the ghosts they’ve broken and all the skins they’ve killed, they lied about Galileo.”
I nudged the laptop closer to him with the end of my foot so that it was just within his reach.
Walked away.
Chapter 58
You must travel light when you wear another’s skin.
Everything you own belongs to someone else.
Everything you value you must leave behind.
It is not I who made a family.
It is not I who have a home.
It is someone else, whose face I borrowed for a little while, whose life I lived and who now may live the life I lived as I move on.
Time to go.
I went to the post office and sent my USB stick first class to a PO box in Edinburgh, where some time I had worn a skin whose name was
something-son
and had opened an account and been careful never to close it. Because even a ghost needs something to call their own.
I headed to the airport.
This is how I run.
I am Alice.
I stand in the departures lounge of Brandenburg airport, and as the crowds bustle around me on their way to the luggage check-in, I spread my fingers wide and brush