“What will happen to the blocker?” Madame d’Ortolan asked.
Mrs Siankung looked at her. “You know what will happen.”
Mr Kleist returned with one of the two blockers a few minutes later.
The young man had been dried off after his dunking in the canal beside the palace’s landing stage. His dark hair was slicked down, he was dressed in a towelling robe and he was smoking a cigarette.
“Put that out,” Mrs Siankung told him.
“I work better with it,” he said, glancing to Madame d’Ortolan, who remained expressionless.
He sighed, took a final deep draw, found an ashtray on the broad desk and stubbed the cigarette out. He took a frowning look at Bisquitine as he did so. She was in turn obviously fascinated by him, staring wide-eyed and still holding the hank of hair to her mouth while she chewed noisily at it.
A slight, bald man hurried through the study doors, came up to Madame d’Ortolan and kissed her hand.
“Madame, I am at your disposal.”
“Professore Loscelles,” she replied, patting his hand. “A pleasure, as ever. I am so sorry your lovely home has been made such a mess of.”
“Not at all, not at all,” he murmured.
“Please stay, will you?”
“Certainly.”
The Professore stood at the rear of Madame d’Ortolan’s chair.
The sheet-covered table was moved back and the young man who was employed as a blocker was sat on a chair immediately in front of Bisquitine, almost knee to knee. He looked a little nervous. He pulled the robe tighter, cleared his throat.
“She will take your wrists,” Mrs Siankung told him.
He nodded, cleared his throat again. Bisquitine looked expectantly at Mrs Siankung, who nodded. The girl made a noise like “Grooh!” and sat forward quickly, grabbing at the young man’s wrists and encircling them as best she could with her own smaller hands while she thudded her head against his chest.
The reaction was immediate. The young man bowed his back, jackknifed forward and as though doing so deliberately vomited copiously over Bisquitine’s head, hair and back before quivering as though suffering a fit and starting to slump backwards in the seat and then slide forwards out of it, legs splaying as he lost control of his bladder and bowels at the same time.
“Dear fuck!” Madame d’Ortolan said, standing so suddenly that she knocked her chair over.
Professore Loscelles put a handkerchief to his mouth and nose and turned away, bowing his head.
Mr Kleist did not react at all, save to glance briefly, as though concerned, at Madame d’Ortolan. Then he walked over and carefully set her chair upright again.
Mrs Siankung moved her feet away from the mess.
Bisquitine didn’t seem to have noticed, still cuddling into the young man and pulling him to her as he spasmed and jerked and voided noisily from various orifices.
“Who’s a bad boy, then?” they heard Bisquitine say over the noises of evacuation coming from the young man, her voice muffled as she hugged his shaking body and they collapsed together onto the floor. A thick, earthy stink filled the air. “Who’s a bad boy? Where’s this? Where’s this, then? You tell me. Ay, Ferrovia, Ferrovia, al San Marco, Fondamenta Venier, Ay! Giacobbe, is that you? No, it’s not me. Ponte Guglie; alora, Rio Tera De La Madalena. Strada Nova, al San Marco. Alora; il Quadri. Due espressi, per favore, signori. Bozman, who said you could come along? Get back, get away, get thee to your own shop, if you have one!… Euh, yucky.” Bisquitine seemed to notice the mess she was lying in. She let go of the young man, who flopped lifeless on the rug, streaked with his own excrement. His eyes – wide, almost popping – stared up at the biblical scene depicted on the ceiling.
Bisquitine got to her feet, smiling brightly. She stuck the length of hair in her mouth again, then made a sour face and spat it out. She continued to spit for a few more moments before holding her arms out to Mrs Siankung as a child would, straight, fingers spread. “ Bath time!” she cried out.
Madame d’Ortolan looked to Professore Loscelles, who was dabbing at his lips with his handkerchief. He nodded. “It would sound,” he said hoarsely, “as though the person is heading from Santa Lucia – the railway station – towards the Piazza San Marco. So it would seem, given the names of the thoroughfares mentioned. Or they may already be there, at the Quadri. It is a café and rather fine restaurant. Very good cake.”
Madame d’Ortolan looked at the other man standing nearby. “Mr Kleist?”
“I’ll see to it, ma’am.” He left the room.
Bisquitine stamped one foot, messily. “ Bath time!” she said loudly.
Mrs Siankung looked to Madame d’Ortolan, who said, “Shower.” She glanced distastefully at Bisquitine. “And don’t tarry. We may need her again, soon.”
I make my way through the slow bustle of tourists on the main route leading towards the Rialto and beyond towards both the Accademia and Piazza San Marco, moving as quickly as I can without actually throwing people aside or trampling small children. “Scusi. Scusi, scusi, signora, excuse me, sorry, scusi, coming through. Scusi, scusi…”
At the same time I’m still trying to monitor what’s going on just across the Grand Canal. What a stew of conflicting talents and abilities are massed around the Palazzo Chirezzia! There are blockers and trackers and inhibitors and foreseers and adepts with skills I barely recognise, many of them recently arrived. I think I can identify individual presences now, too. That one there would be Madame d’Ortolan, this one here might be Professore Loscelles. And at the centre of them all that bizarre presence, that strange, guileless malignity.
One of the blockers seems to have gone. I remember the first blocker I’d Tasered, the young man who was smoking and fell into the small canal at the side of the palace. He isn’t there any more. And some of the others are starting to move, quitting the Chirezzia and streaming in this direction, heading for the Rialto, others clustering in what must be a launch-
“Jesus! Hey! Watch where you’re going! What the – I mean, Jesus.”
“Scusi, sorry, sorry, signore, I beg your pardon,” I tell the backpacker I’ve just knocked to his knees, helping him back up to a surrounding chorus of tutting.
“Well, just-”
“Scusi!” Then I’m off again, sliding and dancing through the crowd like the people are flags on a slalom course, leading with one shoulder then the other, sliding and swivelling on the balls of my feet. The boat with the half-dozen or so Concern people in it is on its way down the Grand Canal. More – maybe a dozen – are on foot, heading over the Rialto now. I’m just a couple of minutes away from there. If they turn left on its far side, they’ll pass right by me or we’ll bump into each other.
My phone goes. It’s Ade. A symbol on the display that wasn’t flashing before is flashing now. I suspect the battery is about to give out.
“Fred?”
“Hello, Adrian.”
“Just landed at the Rialto, mate, just past the vaporetto sort of floating bus stop wotsit. On the bridge in one minute.”
“I’ll see you very shortly.”
I stop, walking into the doorway of a glove shop, breathing hard. I still can’t flit across to another person. I can feel the squad of Concern people splitting up, most heading on down the main route for San Marco, three coming this way. I turn to face the calle and close down as much as I can, calming myself, attempting, if it’s possible, to take all that I can of my new abilities off-line. A minute or two passes, the street teems with people. I recognise somebody and my heart leaps, then I realise they’re heading the other way and it’s just the backpacker I bowled into earlier. I try a quick toe-in reading with my sense of where the Concern people are. All three of the nearest are still heading up the way I’ve just come.