The rave was in a large free-standing structure that had been a hotel early in the last century. Now its piss-colored brick was covered with graffiti, the windows boarded up and the doors repaired with plywood. A small crowd had gathered in the street, smoking and talking. A girl bent to scoop up a snowball and tossed it, laughing, at someone on the curb. Near the far end of the block, two policemen stood and observed it all with bored expressions.
At the front of the building, a brick arch bore the name CUDLINTON HOTEL, the first word effaced so it read CUNT. Beneath this was the building’s once-grand entrance, now reduced to a bashed-in metal door guarded by several men in black anoraks and Happy Face–yellow T-shirts bearing the name REGICIDE PROJECT.
“Hullo, Adrian,” one of them said, bumping fists with him. “Lovely weather.”
I’d become so inured to the sleet and cold that I hadn’t registered it was snowing again. Adrian shook a flurry of white from his anorak’s hood. “Yeah. Happy Christmas, Usman. Tolly said Krish is here?”
Usman nodded. “Was earlier. I saw her go in—can’t say if she left by a back door. I haven’t seen her since then.”
“Thanks.” Adrian held out his hand, and Usman stamped it with the image of a broken crown. “Can you do her, too? She’s with me.”
Usman nodded and stamped my hand, and we went inside. A few of the anorak-clad guys called greetings to Adrian as we walked down a dingy corridor, but within moments it was impossible to hear anything over the pulsing din of electronic music. Dubstep, basstep, Schranz—it all boils down to the throb of blood in the skull and a migraine nightmare of flashing lights and smoke machines.
Back in the day, I’d spent plenty of time at Xenon and Hurrah, where you could dance ecstatically, inhale enough amyl nitrate and blow to induce a heart attack, and get laid more than once without leaving the premises.
The scene here looked—and smelled—pretty similar. Sweat and the eye-watering tang of poppers, skunk weed, and beer hung over a cavernous dark room irradiated by blinding flashes of colored light and dazzling pops of crimson and emerald from LED-enhanced clothing. Less public sex than forty years ago but more beats per minute, bass heavy enough to reduce my bones to sludge if I stuck around too long.
The crowd was young, clots of dancers with eyes closed, arms raised or held stiffly at the side, and faces intent with concentration as though deciphering some crucial message from the cacophony of clicks and pops, sampled strings and voices, snatches of long-forgotten songs and ethereal synthesizers. Against one wall, a DJ had set up on a makeshift platform. Banks of speakers and cables snaked around a spidery figure, backlit by lasers as it hopped back and forth between a pair of laptops and a turntable.
I shaded my eyes against the light and pushed my way through the crowd. I had grown accustomed to feeling like a ghost. Here I saw I was only one in a room thronged with phantoms who stared at their mobiles while they twitched restlessly, life-size avatars of whatever stared back at them from their glowing blue screens.
I kept Adrian within my line of sight, not as difficult as I’d feared. There only seemed to be a few hundred people in the vast space. Maybe the weather had kept the crowd down, or maybe this was par for the course. If so, I now understood why Adrian had to live in a squat—at five quid a head, the take would only be a thousand pounds, and the DJ and sound crew would take a substantial share of that.
Adrian wove in and out of the crowd, occasionally waving at someone or stopping to ask a question. As we neared the DJ’s setup, Adrian suddenly arrowed toward the wall, where a tattooed giant in a REGICIDE PROJECT T-shirt guarded an open doorway.
Adrian greeted him and the guard let us pass, into a small dark hallway with a narrow set of stairs. A few people leaned against the wall, eyes shut, catching their breath or perhaps nodding out. The only light came from a large battery-powered flashlight propped above the door.
I followed Adrian upstairs. It was even darker here, the corridor crowded with shadowy figures who filed from a black doorway to head back down to the dance floor. A man leaned against the wall, holding a flashlight beneath his chin so that his head appeared to float, disembodied, in the darkness.
“Is that Tolly?” called Adrian.
“It is.” The disembodied head grinned and shook back a sheaf of red hair. “Looking for Krishna?”
Tolly pointed into the shadowy room beyond, and we entered. The floor vibrated from the steady bass thud downstairs. Around us, an unseen crowd moved slowly, talking in hushed voices or laughing shrilly as in mockery of the party below. The air had a faint smell of rotten wood and excrement. I heard someone gag as a reassuring voice murmured, “That always happens.”
In the center of the room a woman and a man sat on folding chairs. Adrian made his way to the woman, her head lowered as she counted pound notes and folded them into a nylon pouch.
“Tatiana,” he said.
She looked up sharply, then nodded. “Oh, Adrian, hello. You on a busman’s holiday?”
“I’m looking for Krishna Morgenthal. Tolly said she was here earlier?”
“Still is,” said the man beside Tatiana. He turned on a flashlight and swept its beam across the room. Cadaverous figures appeared to jerk and leap in the sudden flare, until it settled on a girl who sat on the floor, legs stretched out before her. “Feeling no pain. Did you want anything?” He fanned out a handful of small white envelopes, like a deck of cards.
“Not tonight. Can you point that torch over there for a moment?”
The man nodded. The flashlight’s beam fixed on Krishna, and she held a hand in front of her face as though warding off a photographer’s flash. Adrian stared at her, then glanced back at the man. “I hope that’s not what it looks like.”
“I told her not to do it all at once. She’s such a wee thing.”
“Been a couple hours,” said Tatiana. “She’ll have danced it off by now.”
I walked over to Krishna and crouched beside her. She didn’t look like she was up to much dancing. I thought at first that someone had beaten her. The sarcophagus makeup was smeared across her face, and her pupils had shrunk almost to invisibility. I touched her cheek, the skin hot and moist, like a feverish child’s. Her hair stuck in wormy tendrils to her forehead. I pushed a strand behind her ears.
“Wakey wakey,” I said.
Krishna blearily looked up.
“Ado.” Her voice was thick, and I couldn’t tell if she actually saw Adrian—it seemed more like she was still in the grips of whatever drug she’d taken. She ran her tongue along her cracked lips, set one hand on the floor, tried to push herself up, then flopped back. “I know,” she whispered, staring at me with pinned eyes.
I pulled her up, pinching her chin between my thumb and forefinger until she squealed in protest and slapped at me.
“That’s better,” I said, and turned to Adrian. “Can you get her other side?”
We got Krishna to her feet, slung one of her arms around each of us and carried her downstairs. She cursed at Adrian, kicking at him ineffectually until abruptly she went limp and became a hundred pounds of dead weight. I couldn’t tell if this was out of spite—she was still breathing—or if she’d passed out once more. I began to wish she’d remained unconscious, or that Adrian had just called an ambulance.
At last we got outside. I’d feared the cold and snow might conspire to wake Krishna from her stupor. Instead she moaned and sank to the ground, talking incomprehensibly to herself. It was impossible to move her—when we tried, she gave a garbled shriek and attempted to claw at Adrian’s face.
“Fucking bastard.”
Frowning, I glanced at Adrian. What the hell had he done to piss her off? He looked around in despair. People were watching us; pretty soon we’d draw a crowd. I saw the two cops at the end of the block gaze in our direction, and turned back to Krishna.
“Come on, Krish,” I urged. “You’re gonna fucking freeze to death.”
I peeled off Bruno’s heavy overcoat and draped it across her shoulders so the leather hood shielded her face. There was nothing to be done about the rest of her attire—a man’s pinstriped suit jacket draped over a floppy red sweater and a short plaid skirt, and chunky Doc Martens with no socks. Her bare white legs were goosepimpled with cold. I hugged her tight, hoping that any onlookers would mistake our clinch for passion and not desperation.
“Remember me? ‘Be My Baby’?”
Krishna’s eyelids fluttered. “Yah, maybe. Who’re you?”
I zipped up my leather jacket and ran a hand across my cropped black hair. “Cass. We met at the Banshee a few nights ago. I got a haircut.”
“Cass.” She screwed up her eyes, staring at my cropped head. “I like it.”
“That’s great.” I gave Adrian a nod, indicating he should move fast, then said, “Listen, Krish—I’m getting a cab, why don’t you come with me?”
“Where we going?”
“I have no fucking clue,” I said, and she laughed.
“Yah, sure.” She staggered to her feet, and I caught her before she could fall. “Less go.”
We managed to get her around the block and out of sight of the cops. “C’mon, Krish, straighten up,” I said impatiently, but it was hopeless. She was surprisingly strong for such a tiny person. Her head lolled onto her chest and she dragged both feet. When I glanced over my shoulder, I saw two ragged lines drawn in the snow, as though a tiny, drunken skier accompanied us.
“Hang on to her while I find a cab,” Adrian said at last, defeated. “Try to make her not look like a drug casualty.”
“Yeah, right,” I said.
Adrian stood beneath a streetlight and spoke into his mobile. He held up his hand and mouthed Five minutes. It took a little longer than that, but when a taxi at last pulled over, Adrian quickly opened the door. I slid inside, dragging Krishna after me, and Adrian hopped in last.
The driver looked at Krishna, then Adrian. “Hospital?”
“No, no.” Adrian shook his head and recited an address before leaning back, eyes closed. “God, I haven’t spent this much time in cabs in my entire life.”
Krishna put her head in my lap. Her drug-fueled rage toward Adrian appeared to have run its course: She stared at him, glassy-eyed, before her lids fluttered and she zoned out. I turned to Adrian.
“Now what? Back to your squat?”
“No. I need to get out of London. Krish, too.”
“Fine. Just drop me off wherever. Someplace I can find a hotel.”
He took a breath, then said, “Look, I know it’s a huge favor to ask, but I’d appreciate if you came with me and Krish.”
“Go with you?”
He nodded. My mental portfolio of bad scenarios expanded to include my own corpse, and maybe Krishna’s, laid out on the floor of an abandoned building, or floating in the Thames. Krishna might not have been the best judge of character—her dalliances with me and Lance proved that. But her sudden animus toward Adrian unnerved me slightly.
“Forget it.” I tapped at the plexiglass window that separated us from the driver. “Hey, stop here. I’m getting out.”
The driver ignored me.
“I’m not a murderer,” Adrian insisted. “I don’t have the discipline. Or the imagination.”
“Doesn’t take much imagination to push someone down an elevator shaft or put a roofie in their drink.”
“I was home—Mariah and several others can testify to that. And I detest red wine—it gives me migraines. Listen—
“This is not a good place for you to be right now, Cass.” His tone became more urgent. “Poppy’s death might have gone unnoticed, but that’s over. People will connect the dots between her and Morven and Mallo. If there’s any CCTV footage, you and I will show up. We’re neither of us easy to miss. But I have an alibi. You don’t.”
“So why help me out? Why not just leave me here for the wolves? It’s what Mallo would do.”
“If Mallo was going to throw you to the wolves, he’d have done it when he caught you fondling the medicine cabinet. I have my own reasons for not wanting a conversation with the local constabulary. And I’m not particularly fond of wolves. Nasty hairy things.”
I remained silent and refused to meet his gaze. After a few minutes, the cab pulled over. Adrian thrust several five-pound notes through a slot for the fare, opened his door, and hoisted Krishna to a sitting position.
“Could you please offer some assistance?” he asked with a glare.
I swore and I grabbed my bag, took Krishna’s other arm, and helped him maneuver her onto the sidewalk. She might have weighed only only a hundred pounds soaking wet, but she was well on her way to being soaking wet, by the time Adrian and I managed to get her down a snow-covered alley that ended in a cul-de-sac.
“Hold on to her,” commanded Adrian, and slogged toward the door of a garage bay.
With Krishna propped alongside me, I watched Adrian fiddle with his keys until he found one that worked. He opened the garage door and I hurried over, half carrying, half dragging Krishna. Adrian flipped a switch, and a fluorescent light flickered on.
In the middle of the garage stood a small vintage Land Rover, pale green and remarkably free of rust. One back window was cracked. Peeling decals formed an intaglio on the other, along with a membership chevron for a single-marque car club. I looked at Adrian.
“What the fuck is this?”
He withdrew his alligator cigarette case, removed an e-cigarette, tapped it against the case, and looked at me with eyebrows raised.
“Fancy a road trip?” he asked.