“So typical. The Watch do things their way, and so does Beauchamp. No bleedin’ coordination—ever. Anyway, we should get moving.”
“That makes sense, Inspector,” said Atwell. She hesitated for a second. “Inspector, I feel the chills and I’m knackered and woozy.”
“You want to leave off?”
“Oh, no, no, no. I’m just . . . not myself, OK? I’m very sorry if I seem . . . odd. I’ve been hearing such terrible noises. And this zoo—I don’t know how to put it. Something about it just gives me gippy tummy to the core. I feel somehow extra soul-tired, just being near this bleeding place, guv. Like I’m part of something awful being born, and it’s not just the lost jackals. It’s more. It’s worse.”
“I feel it, too,” said Astrid. “It’s like something bigger than the biggest animal, fighting . . . for its life.”
“Yes. I think. Or we’re mad.”
“Could very well be.”
Astrid put her palm over Atwell’s forehead. It was damp and febrile and oh so vulnerable, like a sick child’s. She did look a little bluish somehow, and slightly awestruck, Astrid saw. Her eyes appeared poorly focused. They were greenish-brown eyes of a huge size she sometimes associated with people of Scottish ancestry. Her black, penciled-up eyebrows angled slightly into peaks, giving her a puckish expression that Astrid normally found winsome.
“Yes, you’re warm. Jeez. Very warm.”
“Right,” Atwell said. “But I can work, I tell you. ‘I be iree,’* as they say.”
Astrid said, “It’s also fine if you’re not fine, too. If you need to go home . . .”
“I’ll be OK, yeah?” Atwell chuckled a little, in the throaty, sniffly way someone does when she’s just been weeping. “That was funny, how you talked back to that animal. Right funny, that. Right.” She took a breath. “Shall we find this man now?” She started to get out of the car.
When she cracked the pandaglider’s door open, Astrid could smell her more completely. Atwell didn’t wear any kind of perfume—regulation discouraged strong fragrances—but for reasons she could not guess, Atwell possessed an agreeable scent, aromatic but bright, like almonds and watercress crushed along with something strong and rough, a tropical grass—vetiver?—that she could not name.
“Can I . . . ask you something . . . Inspector?” Atwell nodded once and squinted slightly, as if uttering a credo. She wore a serious expression. “God, I feel odd. I . . . I don’t want to show you any sort of eye-pass.* But you—I heard that you’re in what they call recovery—from Flōt? Is it true?”
The question was very rarely asked in Astrid’s experience; it shocked her. “It is, for now.”
“And I’ve heard that . . . you know, Flōtism?” Astrid could hear miles and miles of Guyana in Atwell’s accent. “It’s wicked impossible to kill off, yeah? What with two withdrawals and all. And you end up trapped in the devil’s own torture chambers, and you’re pure anta banta if you go chronic. There’s no way out then. And almost everyone dies. That’s what I hear. You become a prisoner, for life, and everyone looks at you and troubles you and gives you the minute of your doom on a paper dog-horn, and then you’re dead.” Atwell cleared her throat and gazed directly at Astrid. She even leaned in a bit. “You tell me: Is that the truth?”
“Yes,” she said. “I think.”
“OK. But ma’am, here’s my perspective, right? See, I think you can make it. And that’s what I wanted to say. I think you’re different. I just do, and I know it’s kind of weird . . . but I felt I needed to tell you that. I don’t know much about recovery, like I said. But still.”
“Thanks, Atwell. Thank you, Jasmine. There’s some paracetamol back at the nick, by the way. For your fever.”
“Good. All right,” she said. She opened the door of the pandaglider and jumped out. “I’m glad you’re here, guv.” She slammed the door shut with surprising strength. “To work!” she said.
Astrid felt a wobbly sense of normalcy returning. She said, turning toward the zoo, “So, what do you think’s happening in there?”
Just as she spoke, an elephant trumpeted distantly. It was so loud Astrid could feel it in her chest.
“Unbelievable,” said Astrid. “I wonder whether things are worse in there than they seem.”
“I’ve been thinking that for the last hour, ma’am. We don’t really have situational awareness here. I wish we could talk to those frightcopters.”