I just knew they weren't going to get on.
"So," said Suzie, "found another lost lamb to look after, have you, John?"
"It's a living," I said. "Been a while, Suzie."
"Five years, three months. I always knew you'd come crawling back to me someday."
"Sorry, Suzie. I'm only here because I'm working a case. Soon as I find my runaway, I'm out of here. Back to the safe, sane, everyday world."
She stepped forward, fixing me with her wild, serious gaze. "You'll never fit in there, John. You belong here. With the rest of us monsters."
I didn't have an answer for that, so Joanna stepped into the silence. "What, precisely, is your connection with John, Miss Shooter?"
Suzie snorted, loudly. "I shot him once, but he got
over it. Paper I had on him turned out to be fake. We've worked together, on and off. Good man in a tight corner. And he always leads me where the action is. The real action. Never a dull moment, when John's around."
"Is that all there is to your life?" said Joanna. "Violence, and killing?"
"It's enough," said Suzie.
I decided the conversation had gone about as far as it was safe for it to go, and turned to Joanna. "I know Blaiston Street. Not far from here. Bad neighbourhood, even for the Nightside. If Cathy has gone to ground there, the sooner we find her, the better."
"Need any help?" said Suzie.
I looked at her thoughtfully. "Wouldn't say no, if you're offering. You busy?"
She shrugged. "Things have been quiet recently. I hate quiet. Just let me finish up here and collect what I'm owed, and I'll catch up with you. Usual fee?"
"Sure," I said. "My client's good for it."
Suzie looked at Joanna. "She'd better be."
Joanna started to say something, noticed that Suzie's shotgun was pointing right at her, and very sensibly decided not to take offence. She ostentatiously turned her back on Suzie, and fixed her attention on me.
"At least now we've got an address. What are the odds Cathy could have got into serious trouble there?"
"Hard to say, without knowing what drew her there. I wouldn't have thought there was anything on Blaiston Street to attract anyone. There isn't anywhere lower, except maybe the sewers. It's where you end up when you can't fall any further. Unless things have changed dramatically, since I was away. Suzie?"
She shook her head. "Still a snake pit. If you burned the street down, the whole city would smell better."
"Don't worry," I said quickly to Joanna. "She's your daughter. You said yourself she can look after herself. And we're right on her heels now."
"Don't put money on it," said Joanna, the corners of her mouth turning down. "Cathy's always been good at giving people the slip."
"Not people like us," I said confidently.
"There are no people like us," said Suzie Shooter.
"Thank God," said the voice from behind the far barricade.
Seven
Where the Really Wild Things Are
Joanna and I left Suzie Shooter intimidating the entire Fortress through the sheer force of her appalling personality, and headed for Blaiston Street. Where the wild things are. Every city has at least one area where all the rules have broken down, where humanity comes and goes, and civilisation is a sometime thing. Blaiston Street is the kind of area where no-one has ever paid any rent, where even the little comforts of life go only to the strongest, and plague rats go around in pairs because they're frightened. It's mob rule, on the few occasions when the brutal inhabitants can get their act together long enough to form a mob. They live in the dark because they like
it that way. Because that way they can't see how far they've fallen. Drink, drugs and despair are the order of the day on Blaiston Street, and no-one ends up there by accident. Which made Cathy's choice of destination all the more disturbing. What on earth, or under it, could have called a vital, mostly sensible young girl like her to such a place?
What did she think was waiting for her there?
It was raining, soft pitterpatters of blood temperature that made the streets glisten with the illusion of freshness. The air was heavy with the smell of restaurants, of cuisines from a hundred times and places, not all of them especially appealing. The ever-present neon seemed subtly out of focus behind the rain, and the people passing by had hungry, angry faces. The Nightside was getting into its stride.
"This is a hell of a place," Joanna said abruptly.
"Sometimes literally," I said. "But it has