“Jesus fuck,” she said. “OK, let’s do our best to find out what’s going on. We sure as hell can’t establish a perimeter with two officers, can we? We’ll do what we can.”
She handed a torch and a baton to Atwell, and Atwell reminded her about the terribly distressed man who claimed to be the night watchman, whose mother was somehow still in the zoo—they wouldn’t forget about him, would they? She assured her they would look for them, but she thought it a waste of time. The real danger lay in Beauchamp’s appearing. He was such a fool. Then Astrid realized something.
“Oh Jesus, Atwell. We’re in for it tonight. I tell you, mark my words. I’d forgot something—you know Beauchamp’s going to have us at his disposal? That’s the reg. Crown property and whatnot.”
“Maybe it won’t be so bad, ma’am,” said Atwell. “Least it’s not the Watch as gaffer.”
“True.”
Atwell flipped the torch on and it shone up into her face. It gave her a sinister look with a moonglow brow and icy-looking cheeks.
They decided to walk down toward the place where the jackals had been. Astrid felt charged. Here she was in the midst of interesting police work. It was rare for Parkies. But there was something more and more frightening about the night, too, a sense of things flying out in broken pieces she could neither catch nor fix without getting hurt. The feeling back at the FA meeting, and Atwell’s jumbie, and the terrifying sounds in the zoo—there was something baleful afoot.
“You know,” said Astrid. “I think we’d better freq Omotoso. But I can’t imagine the old man’s going to be happy.”
Astrid waited as Atwell glanced down to prepare a new orange-freq.
“It’s done,” she said. “Omotoso knows a thing or two now.”
finding the head of satan
THEY WOULD FIRST CIRCUMNAVIGATE THE ZOO, Astrid decided, and inspect the fence. Meanwhile, they would also keep on the lookout for the alleged watchman—and, perhaps, of all people, his poor mother.
The two officers—one an addict in extremis, the other an unwell rookie—stayed on the Broad Walk, which, in the constricting darkness, hardly lived up to its name. The beams from their torches waved back and forth over the edges of the pink pavement like the antennae of a giant, blind beetle, and the night seemed to have grown unusually murky; Astrid thought this was due to some trick of the torches on her digitalized retinas, or perhaps because of the security lamps jumping on and off and on inside the zoo, to their right, as they patrolled forward. They passed a small tea kiosk, little more than a whitewashed hut built around a big gas-operated kettle. Beside it was a folding chair, apparently forgotten after closing. The chair had been knocked onto its side.
Atwell seemed rapt by the strange, melted-looking granite of the contemporary statues in the large children’s field to their left. They were all elephants. “See that, Inspector?” she said. “They sort of come to life in the night. They’re like hearts, folded up on themselves and all gone gray. I don’t know if I see elephants, per se. But I see loads of feeling. It’s nice, ma’am, yeah?”
“Yes, yes,” she said. “I suppose you’re right.”
In truth, Astrid didn’t see indrawn hearts—she saw insufficiency, the grayness of indecision, an ingrownness of old dreams. This art didn’t move her. They walked on.
But there was that comet somewhere, Astrid thought, the one all over the WikiNous. Something brighter and more cutting than this world—now that would speak to her. The “most widely observed comet in human history” visible and she was stuck chasing wild dogs down. Urga-Rampos—it would really be something to see.
Ironically, the comet was actually more luminous in southern Britain at that time than almost anywhere else on Earth, but it was blocked, in north London, by a very southern English formation of stratus clouds. The cloud cover was beginning to push off.
Astrid thought about Atwell’s apparently heartfelt conviction that she could do what almost no one else had—withstand second withdrawal. It was touching, but wasn’t it misplaced? Oh, she hoped not. Could she beat Death? She was so close, after all, wasn’t she? Or was she? For if she could drink just one orb of Flōt—and no more—and walk sober thereafter—and never again after that. If, if, if. Just one orb. One and only one and never again on this debased Earth.
“Inspector!” Atwell was scurrying ahead of her. She had her torch trained on a red and black shape. “There’s something wrong up there.” She pointed toward a shadowy misplacement.
“Wait, Jasmine. Wait!” But she kept bustling along, well in front now.
Now she shined her torch over the thing. It was a small, chawed-out head of some kind. Atwell reeled backward.
“Jesus!” she said, her hand over her mouth. “I’m going to be sick.”