“Yeah,” she said. “I can imagine.” Laura was considering going back to do a master’s in literature. She pulled up files. “Were you at the sale?” she said. “Did you dress up?”
“Oh yeah,” he said. “Colour me all beamed up.”
“Do you need all of them?” she said. “I have to have authorisation, you know.”
“Well,” he said thoughtfully. “I should probably get them all, but …” He chewed his lip. “Tell you what,” he said. “If you call upstairs you can get confirmation from, you know, John, and maybe print me off the lot, but there’s no hurry. In the meantime, though, could you just give me the details of lot 601?”
Laura click-clicked. “Alright,” she said. “Can I get back to you about the others in a couple of hours?”
“No hurry.”
“Ooh, anonymous buyer,” she said.
“Yeah, I know, that’s why I need to find out who he was.”
Laura glanced at the familiar face. “Alright then. What are you checking?” She wound backward through the spools of anonymity.
“Oh lord,” he said. He rolled his eyes. “Don’t ask. Problems problems. We’re on it, though.” She printed. The man picked up the sheet, waved thanks and walked away.
“HERE HE COMES,” DANE SAID.
He loitered with Billy by a newspaper vendor. Jason Smyle, the proletarian chameleon, crossed the road. Here he came, folding and unfolding a piece of paper.
Jason still plied his knack as he came, and the people he passed were momentarily vaguely sure they knew him, that he worked in the office a couple of desks along, or carried bricks in the building site, or ground coffee beans like them, though they couldn’t remember his name.
“Dane,” he said. Hugged him hello. “Billy. Where’s Wati? He here?”
“Strike duty,” Dane said.
Jason was a function of the economy. His knack deshaped him, he was not specific. He was abstract, not a worker but a man-shape of wage-labour itself. Who could look that gorgon in the face? So whoever saw him would concretise him into their local vernacular. Which made him impossible to notice.
If Smyle had not existed London and its economy would have spat him out, budded him like a baby. He would find an unoccupied desk, play solitaire or shuffle paperwork, and at the end of the day ask Human Resources for a cash advance on his paycheque, which unorthodox request would cause consternation, but largely because though they were sure they knew him they couldn’t find his file, so they would loan the money from petty cash and make a note.
Smyle could do commission work too, or favours for friends. The residue still clung to him, so Billy, knowing it was not the case, looked at him and had a sense that Jason worked in the Darwin Centre, was maybe a lab tech, maybe a biologist, something like that.
“Here.” Jason handed over the printout. “That’s the buyer of your laser gun. I’m serious, what I said, Dane. I couldn’t believe it when I heard you’d been … you know, that you and the church … I’m glad I could help. Whatever you need.”
“I appreciate it.”
Jason nodded. “You know how to get me,” he said. He got on a passing bus for free, because the driver knew they worked in the same garage.
Dane unfolded the paper slowly as if for a drumroll. “You know what it’s going to say,” Billy said. “We just don’t know why yet.”
It took several seconds for them to make sense of what they were reading. A collection of information—price paid, percentages, relevant addresses, dates, original owner, and there, marked to indicate that it was anonymised in other contexts, the name of the buyer.
“It ain’t, though,” said Dane. “It ain’t Grisamentum.”
“Saira Mukhopadhyay?” read Billy. He knew how to pronounce it. “Saira Mukhopadhyay? Who the hell is that?”
“Fitch’s assistant,” Dane said quietly. “That posh one. She was there when he read the guts.” They looked at each other.
Not Grisamentum, then. “The person who bought this gun, and knacked it, and used it to buy Simon’s services …” Billy said. “A Londonmancer.”
Chapter Forty-Two
THERE WAS A HUBBUB IN BILLY’S HEAD ALL NIGHT. HE WOULD hardly call so raging and discombobulated a torrent of images a dream. Call it a vomit, call it a gush.
He was back in the water, not braving but frowning, synchronised swimming, not swimming but sinking, toward the godsquid he knew was there, tentacular fleshscape and the moon-sized eye that he never saw but knew, as if the core of the fucking planet was not searing metal but mollusc, as