“I get them straight off the boat,” she said. She had the velvet burr of an urban Farbourgere, colored with something foreign. “When they come up the river.”
“I know a man who can get you better,” he said.
“I got a man,” she said, irritated.
He let himself smile, slightly. “I know. You’ve got the best.”
She cocked her head, pinning him with a suspicious glance. Then, a faint dawn of comprehension. “They told me you’d come.”
She had no idea who he was, not really. She thought he was one of his own agents. So much the better. “Did they tell you what to do?”
She pulled a ragged brown envelope from beneath the grapes and handed it over. “Papers, and your ticket.”
He put it into his jacket, then handed her a folded bill. “Thank you. And the other thing?”
“The grease-paws at the garage have an auto ready for him.”
“He’ll be here soon,” said Ari. “Maybe tomorrow, maybe not for a week or so. He knows to look for you. He’ll make a gibe about the oranges; ask to see his scar.” He hadn’t prepped Cyril for that. Which meant no one else would be expecting it, if they turned up instead.
She made a face. “That’s a bit—”
“It will be right here.” Aristide drew a finger down his abdomen. “If he doesn’t have one, don’t tell him anything.”
A sharp whistle sliced the misty air. Aristide reached for his watch and realized he didn’t have one. He checked the clock above the station.
“Must run,” he told her. “Remember: the oranges, the scar.”
She gave him a sharp nod, and turned back to her wares.
*
The platform at Beckover was exactly as he remembered it, though the boards were newer: just a pallet set up by the tracks to keep travelers’ feet out of the mud. He was the only person disembarking. The train sighed steam and pulled away with a groan of steel on steel, leaving Aristide standing alone in the dusk. It came quickly in the Currin Pass, especially at the waning end of summer. As soon as the sun slipped behind the peaks of the Culthams, the temperature dropped and the air turned heavy with dew. Gentian light softened the edges of the crags and made the streams run black and spangled. A distant herd of sheep—pale smears in the gloom—trotted home over the tussocks of tangled grass that grew up the steep hillsides.
Time telescoped; he was a boy again, filled with the urgent despair of the young. He turned back to the tracks, but the train was gone. All that remained to him was the muddy road switchbacking up the mountain. He shouldered his bag and started up the path to his father’s house.
It was exactly as small as he remembered it, and even shabbier. The dirty thatch needed changing, and the whole structure sagged in the center like a swaybacked horse. The single step was splattered with bird droppings and lichen. Aristide took it like a gallows march and put his hands to the door, letting his forehead fall against the damp-slimed wood and chipping paint. The hinges squeaked, and he went forward into darkness.
Fumbling, he found an oil lamp on the table and lit it, with a match from the dwindling pack Cyril had sent from the Stevedore. He set the chimney over the wick and the flame leapt up, showing swathes of cobwebs. A bird stirred in the rafters.
The mattress in the corner was old and flat, and when Aristide sat on it, the rope ties of the bed frame creaked. A few drops of rain rustled on the thatch, building into a steady patter.
It was colder inside than out, but he had no peat for the stove. Tomorrow. He would do that tomorrow. The thought filled him with exhaustion. He had not dug peat in almost thirty years; he had promised that he never would again.
He had escaped this house once, and he would do it once more. It would be easier. He was wiser now, and he would not be alone.
Closing his fist on the grubby pack of matches, he curled around his clenched hand and shut his eyes. Fully dressed and freezing cold, he lay awake and waited for morning.
CHAPTER
THIRTY-SIX
Cyril lost track of time; they left him in a windowless white room and didn’t turn off the light. A fly had got in somehow, and careened against the bare bulb over and over and over again.
He thought it had been about a day. He was hungry, his throat dry, whole body aching. But when the blackboots came to haul him out, he fought, and they weren’t gentle either. By the time they dragged him up the stairs, he could hardly see for the blood pouring into his eyes. Blinking the sting of salt away, he found himself in a chair opposite Van der Joost. In the back corner of the room, a thin man with rolled-up sleeves picked at a loose thread in his shirttail.
“Mr. DePaul,” said Van der Joost. “I’m glad you made it to our meeting after all.”
“Veedge,” said Cyril, and spat blood on the table.
Van der Joost cleared his throat and smoothed a stray wisp of thin hair back into place. “You didn’t hide Moore and Massey’s bodies very well. In a hurry, were you?”
“You could say that.”
“You must have been a very good agent, once.”
“You’ve read my file,” said Cyril.
“Indeed.”
“And what do you think?”