big planters up there, and filled them with dirt. One of these days I would get around to planting something in them.
That was where I took my beer.
Every city has a different-colored sky. In Amsterdam, the only city I had known until I was five, it had been gray-blue, a particular low-country Protestant shade that spoke of cheeses and oil paintings and grassy dikes. On Ratnapida it had been like light, clear glass. This city’s sky made me ache. It could have been so beautiful: full of reflected river light and that soft, clear ambience that you only get near a northern sea. But the city glow stained the atmosphere like a muddy footprint.
I propped myself up by the chimney stack and opened the first can. The beer tasted cold and bitter, like the winter-morning frost I used to scrape from the old iron railings outside the family home in Amsterdam. The night was very clear. It was freezing up here. I shuddered, forced myself to drink down more frost and iron. Halfway down the can, I started to warm up.
About five miles away I could see the twinkling night lights of the bridge—the largest single-span suspension bridge in the world. And the owners were still in debt, even thirty years after opening it to paying traffic. They always would be. There weren’t that many private cars anymore, and the local government had negotiated an annual fee for the slides that crossed and recrossed the river. The national government, of course, and ultimately the taxpayer were the big losers: the government had fronted the money, the contractors had spent it, and now the taxpayers were paying again, this time in local taxes for the slides.
I crumpled my can, opened another.
Corruption. It all stank of corruption. As did anything connected with any kind of government. There were layers upon layers upon layers. I thought about Kirghizia: the minister for labor and the commissar of the treasury whom I had wined and dined and eventually bought off. All so van de Oest Enterprises could make more money.
But that wasn’t strictly true. It would also benefit the Kirghizians in the end. They would have clean water again. I sucked at the can. It was empty already. The third one was difficult to open. My hands were cold. I looked out at the bridge. Maybe the builders had told themselves that the local people would benefit in the end—after all, they would now be free to travel straight across the huge river instead of detouring fifty miles or more. But no one had asked the people. It had all been decided by those who met over white linen and flashing crystal, who chatted over the wine and shook hands over coffee. And took home hundreds, thousands, millions. And probably slept tranquilly every night.
I remembered the woman, the city executive who had taken Spanner and me to her flat in her private car; the heat; the film; what we had done . . . Local government. She hadn’t been hurting for money. I wonder if she even knew how corrupt she was.
Did I know how corrupt I was? What did “corrupt” mean, anyway? I had never set out to hurt anyone, but I was wearing the PIDA of a dead woman. Bird was now nothing more than a plume of greasy smoke easing up into the night sky and being torn apart by the wind. I wondered what Sal Bird, aged twenty-five, had been like. Whether she had loved or been loved. If she liked her food, or smoked. What her favorite films had been. Whether she shouted out loud when she came. I wondered if anyone had grieved for Sal Bird.
I wondered if anyone had grieved for the man I had killed. I didn’t even know his name. And he had been kind to me, in his way. I remembered his eyes as he knew I was going to kill him. I pushed that thought away.
I wondered if anyone grieved for me.
So, was I corrupt? I had killed a man. I was hiding from my family and living a lie. And everyone I met shied away from me. Ruth. Now Magyar. Everyone except Spanner.
When I was finishing the fourth can, I realized I was standing at the edge of the roof. My toes poked over the gutter. One more step. No more Sal Bird, aged twenty-five. No more fear about being found out; no more worries about dangerous people coming looking for me or