The cafe’s warm with the smell of fried breakfast. I followed my nose to the first place with food and this place is just grimy enough to be safe. A few guys in dusty boots and bright jackets sit at rickety tables, but otherwise it’s quiet. The radio plays out back. Some headache-y pop crap.
I order a coffee and a bagel and grab the stack of free papers from the counter, going to sit against the wall so I can keep an eye on the door.
Flipping through the papers, I hunt for anything that might be Mara-related. There’s no mention of warehouses or Skinny or ninja gangs. No missing person reports that could be his work. Nothing on the Crook Spear, either, because wouldn’t that have been nice? For a moment I’m hopeful the spear’s touring with some museum exhibit and Mara got confused, but there’s nothing. The spear’s a myth and Mara’s a maniac.
The spider in my mind draws its legs up under its belly. I chew the bagel on one side of my mouth, the broken tooth radiating pain that almost seizes up my jaw.
I finish my coffee and start getting antsy, wondering if I was followed. I should keep moving. Change my clothes. Maybe even shave my head. Anything that throws the Reverend off. I feel him watching me now with that milky eye. He sees me sitting in the cafe and he pities how easy I’m making it for him to track me down.
And the more I think about it, there really is only one person who would have the intel I need, and it’s not Julian.
There are people I’ve met over the years who’ve freaked me the hell out. You live in my world, you don’t exactly socialise with suburban housewives. When I lived on the streets, I met the kind of crazies who made me look like Mandy Moore. There was Gia, who claimed she was raised by a circus elephant and spoke to the dead in her sleep. She overdosed a few years ago. There was Hack, who wore a string of cats’ teeth around his neck and was always adding more. I don’t know what happened to him.
And then there was Bolt. He was the worst. Sly Bolt, who knew London’s shadier corners so well it was like they were part of his anatomy. Angry Bolt, whose temper was like spitting coals. Wily Bolt, who won every argument.
I can’t put it off any more. I should have gone to him in the first place. Sometimes you’re your own worst enemy.
My gaze drops to the phone resting on the table; the one Julian gave me. It’s so basic it doesn’t even have the internet and I’m trying to figure out what to do with it. Julian’s never given me a phone before. I poke it like it bites, then tear the back cover off.
I remember the way Rose reacted when I mentioned Reverend Mara. Her expression was as blank as the paper in her pad, but her eyes betrayed something.
Has Julian set me up? He flicked me off the way he’d remove a bug from his sleeve. Guilty conscience? Am I a scapegoat? The kind of people Julian does business with, I wouldn’t be surprised if he’d pissed a dozen people off in the past week alone. And blaming me would be an easy out.
Perhaps Julian has the Crook Spear.
No, there’s no such thing! This is all so messed up I can’t keep it straight in my head.
The contents of the phone stare up at me. They look normal enough, but what do I know? Julian could have bugged it. He could track me, listen in on calls, tell when I’m taking a dump, and I’d be the idiot who trusted him. Meanwhile, he’s scheming to hand me back over to Mara. This time, the Rev’ll chain me up in the pit personally, assuming I survive that long.
I dash into the cafe’s grotty toilet, dump the phone in the sink and turn the water on. When the phone’s floating, I shut the water off and stare at my exhausted reflection. My hands are in my hair and I realise I have to calm down. First thing a rat does when it’s trapped in a box is panic, then it starts chewing.
After splashing water on my face, I hurry out of the cafe.
Bolt lives in Hackney. I could drive but the car’s out of juice. I inspect the crumpled bank notes Julian left me. Over a hundred big ones. He must be feeling really guilty.
Tube? The thought of being trapped underground constricts my chest.
Taxi it is.
I catch a ride with a black cab. The driver tries to make conversation but she gives up when I stop replying. The rumble of the car threatens to rock me to sleep and I resist, though my eyelids scratch like sandpaper. I wonder if I’m concussed. In all the comics I’ve read, that’s a big deal. I hit my head when Nicotine Man tipped me into the pit. Am I awake or am I dreaming all of this?
Am I still in the pit?
The taxi drops me off on a small street near Brick Lane.
‘You be careful, love, lots of weirdos out there,’ she says as I slam the door. Everybody’s suddenly so worried about me.
‘I am the weirdo,’ I mutter.
The rain’s eased off but the sky’s swollen with black clouds. I check the street and I’m pretty sure I’m not being followed. By Reverend Mara. By Julian. Two days ago, I had no enemies. Now I have enough to start a rock band.
Shivering into the wind, I approach a run-down row of shops. Most of them are boarded up. Sandwiched between two windows is Bolt’s place. Assuming he’s still here. I eye the displays behind smudged glass. Mildew clings to the mannequins and the clothes wear furry green coats. It looks condemned, but aside from a fresh outbreak of black mould, it’s not much different to how I remember.
The sign on the door says CLOSED. I knock.
I count to thirty. Then another thirty. I knock again.
Part of me hopes Bolt won’t answer. Then I’ll have to find another way. That would be easier than dealing with him.
Another minute passes and there’s no sign of Bolt.
I turn to leave and an arm locks around my throat. I grab it, beating against sinewy forearms and the body pressing behind me, but then I’m hoisted back through the shop door and thrown against a wall.
A face looms towards mine. One side is burnt and waxy, a flinty eye shining at me. His nostrils flare.
‘Bolt,’ I gasp, his forearm crushing my throat.
‘How you know my name?’ His whisky-soured breath blasts my face.
‘It’s… Rumer… you idiot…’
‘What are you doing here? Who sent you?’
‘Nobody. Bolt… Get the… fuck off me…’
He shakes me and my lungs are on fire.
I knee him in the groin and he drops me. We both gasp for air. Bolt throws his weight against the shop door, double-locking it.
‘It’s good to see you, too.’ My throat’s dented and sore.
‘Can’t bang on a man’s door like that.’ He’s wearing a stained white T-shirt that shows hard muscle and his hair’s long enough to cover the burnt side of his face. It’s hard to tell how old he is. Mid-twenties, but his paranoia ages him.
‘I’m guessing you don’t get many visitors these days,’ I say.
‘Nobody polite enough to knock.’
‘That why the place looks like a neat-freak’s nightmare?’
‘What do you want, Rumer?’
Maybe I hurt him more than I realised. He’s even more of a mess than he was a year ago.
‘I need intel.’
His eyes are dark under his brow.
‘Nobody ever comes with flowers,’ he mutters, going past me to the back of the shop. Warily, I follow, trudging up a narrow staircase into the flat above the shop. It’s as creaky as the rest of the place. The lounge walls are cracked, revealing gap-toothed slats beneath the plaster.
Bolt leans by the window, which is barely covered by a rag of a curtain. Arms crossed, expression as grim as I always remember it.
‘Well?’
That’s the pleasantries out the way, then.
I don’t know where to start. The past few days have been a chaotic jumble of places and people and faces. Now I’m in a room with Bolt and all I can think about is the fire, the upturned cars, dragging him across the road. Running. Leaving him to bleed into the tarmac.
I stay by the door and start with the part where Nicotine Man kidnapped me. I don’t stop until I get to the bit where Bolt’s strangling me. I try to read his expression but it remains blank throughout. He always was good at poker. When I finish, his expression’s gloomy.
‘And so you decided to involve me,’ he grunts. ‘Should’ve kept strangling you.’
‘I figured if anybody knew anything about this, it’d be you.’
‘Because everybody knows Bolt’s always caught up in somebody’s messy business.’
‘Because you’re a miserable bastard and I knew you’d get some sick pleasure out of seeing somebody else is miserable, too.’
His laugh cuts the air between us. ‘You’re right, there.’
We stare at each other. His green eyes are sharp as cut stone and I can tell he’s trying to figure out how he can benefit from this.
‘What’s it been, a year?’
I nod.
A year since we argued in the car and you were so angry I thought you’d open the door and toss me out into the road.
Instead, something equally awful happened and Bolt quit his police job, handed his badge in, retreating into the shop his father left him. I watched him for a while, when I had plucked up the courage. He barely came out of the shop for the first six months, even when the bandages weren’t plastered to his face any more. It got too painful, though, and I got busy working for Julian.
‘You’re in quite a pickle,’ Bolt says finally.
‘I wish I was pickled.’
He roams the room, his arms still crossed.
‘If Reverend Mara wants you, you’re in deep shit.’
‘You know who he is?’ My pulse quickens.
Bolt nods. Chews a fingernail. ‘He’s been throwing his weight around ever since Takehiko Kobayashi died.’
Everybody in London knows that name. Kobayashi was a Japanese businessman whose roots were tangled in the city’s criminal underworld. Every deal he made, he sealed with blood. He had allies everywhere. The law couldn’t touch him. Twenty years ago he was at the corrupt heart of the City. Then his skull made friends with a bullet.
‘Mara?’ I ask.
‘Mara worked for Kobayashi. When Kobayashi died, various factions fought for his crown. Mara’s spent almost two decades taking out the competition and now he’s got a foothold, he’s going in for the kill. Wants to become king of the underworld, and he’s got some pretty radical ideas about how to do that.’
‘Radical why?’
‘The Crook Spear,’ Bolt says.
‘But it doesn’t exist. He’s chasing some kind of Holy Grail.’
‘Doesn’t matter. If he has this great, mythical weapon, nobody would dare challenge him.’
‘Assuming they believe it has magical powers, too,’ I say.
‘I’m not saying it’s not a flawed plan…’
‘So it’s a spear.’
‘A pointy one, I’m guessing.’
My mind somersaults. ‘If Mara thinks I have a spear, I can find a spear from somewhere, hand it over, job done. We’d be shot of each other.’
Bolt’s grin doesn’t inspire confidence. ‘Some people say it’s not a spear.’
‘Of course they do. What do they say it is?’
‘Hell if I know. It’s all bullshit, Rumer. The guy’s crazier than a flea-bitten cat.’
Stands to reason.
‘Look, if he’s after you, the best you can do is get out of town. If he thinks you have the spear, he won’t give up.’
‘I’m not hiding.’
Bolt comes closer. He’s almost a foot taller than me. His hair hangs over his face and remorse leeches at me as I glimpse the waxy burns.
‘Rumer, this guy’s bad. When Kobayashi died, there was talk Mara did it. He killed his own father to take his throne.’
‘Wait, Kobayashi was Mara’s dad?’
Bolt nods. ‘He’s a pit bull. Worse, a Dobermann. He’ll tear you to pieces.’
I stare up into his shadowy face, then frown. Kobayashi is famous as a mobster, but I know his name from somewhere else. For some reason, I’m thinking about my mother. She knew Kobayashi.
The curse of Celene Cross.
I remember the article I read as a teenager. Kobayashi was the monster who formed The Divine Order, the cult my mother joined before she fell pregnant. She worked for him.
It all comes back to my mother. A snake eating its tail.
Is that why Mara thinks I have the spear? Something to do with her?
‘I should go.’
‘What you going to do?’
‘Find out who’s setting me up, for a start.’ I descend the stairs back into the shop. Bolt follows.
‘You changed,’ he says.
For a moment he almost looks sane. I forget the guilt and all I want is to forget everything else. Forgetting would be bliss. But I can never forget. Every time I’ve relaxed, somebody’s died.
‘You look good.’ Bolt half lingers in shadow. ‘I–’ Before he can say something we’ll both regret, I’m out of the shop and back on the street. I turn into the wind and stop suddenly.
Further up the street, a figure hurries round a corner and vanishes. I chase after it, but when I reach the corner, there’s nobody in sight. I could swear somebody was watching me.
It looked like Julian’s assistant, Rose.