to most attempted recall, Saira said, there had never been either such place.
“You remember them, Dane?” Saira said.
“No.”
“Yeah.” She crossed her arms. “You don’t.” The lorry lurched and she adjusted while Fitch staggered, his beard and hair wild. “You and everyone else.”
“So how do you know there was ever anything there?” Billy said. She stared at him.
“Hello,” she said. “Perhaps we haven’t met. Hi. My name’s Saira Mukhopadhyay, I’m a Londonmancer. London’s my job.”
“You remember them?” Billy said.
“I don’t, but the city does. A bit. It knows something’s up. The burn’s not perfect. The … skin’s puckered, sort of. I remember remembering one of them. But they were never here. We’ve checked records. Never there. There was a fire-engine farting around the day Grisamentum’s must have gone up. The firemen were just driving around, didn’t know why they were supposed to be there.”
“It’s Cole’s thing, it’s got to be,” Dane said slowly. “Who is it getting him to … Where’s that paper? The one that was in the book?” Billy gave it. “Here. ‘Katachronophlogiston.’ Look.”
“Burning stuff right out of time,” Billy said. “Yeah. So, who and why?”
“He might know,” Saira said. “He knows more than us.” She stared at Paul. Indicated his back. A long, unhappy pause. “He might know stuff about Cole. Might not even know he does.” They waited, they hesitated. They tried to think of interrogator’s tricks.
Paul spoke. “Don’t,” he said. “He won’t … I can tell you.” He was so quiet they thought they had misheard, until he said it again. “I can tell you. Why he wants it. What he wants it for. I can tell you everything.”
“IT WAS A TATTOOIST IN BRIXTON,” HE SAID. “I CAME IN TO HAVE A big, you know, Celtic cross on my back, but not only black and white—I wanted greens and stuff too, you know, and it was going to take hours. I always rather do that in one go—I can’t get my head around loads of sessions, you know, it’s all or nothing for me; it was always that way.” No one interrupted him. Someone brought him a drink that he drank without looking anywhere other than the nowhere at which he was staring.
“I knew it was going to hurt, but I’d got drunk even though you ain’t supposed to. I been to that tattooist before. We’d talked, so he knew a bit about me. About the people I knew, about what I did, that sort of thing, you know? I think he was saying what he’d been told, because I think he was like searching for candidates.
“He asked if I minded him having this other bloke there, who was like another tattooist, he said, and they were comparing designs, and I said no, I didn’t care. He wasn’t much like a tattooist, I thought. I don’t know what I meant. I was too drunk, though, to care.
“He watched while the guy did me, and he was like giving him advice. He kept going into a back room. I think we know what was in there? Who I mean I should say.” He gave a horrible sad little pretend laugh. This was not the story they had hoped for, but who could interrupt him?
“They kept showing me my back in the mirror. The tattooist was giggling every time he did, but the other bloke wasn’t—he was all quiet about it. They must’ve done something to the mirror. Because when I looked in it, it was a cross. It looked fine. I don’t know how they did that.
“The second day I unwrap the bandages to show a friend, and she’s like, “I thought you was going to get a cross.” I thought she meant it was too finickety. I didn’t even look at it. It was a little while after that, when the scabs came off, that it woke up.”
It had been Grisamentum overseeing the design. And there in that back room, imprisoned and diminished over the hours, the man who then became the Tattoo. What an arcane gang hit. Not a murder—these men were too baroquely cruel for that—but a banishing, an imprisonment. Perhaps it had been blood colouring the ink. Certainly some essence, call it soul, drained from the man and left a man-shaped meat husk behind.
PAUL HAD WOKEN TO THE MUTTERINGS FROM HIS SKIN. THERE WAS no one in his bed but him. The voice was muffled.
“What did they do? What did they do?” That was what Paul first heard. “What did those fuckers do