The City & the City - China Mieville [15]
“The woman who you’re … She’s dead. Isn’t she? She is. I knew her.”
“I’m sorry to …” I only said this after he was silent many seconds.
“I’ve known her … I met her a time ago. I want to help you, Borlú, but not because you’re a cop. Holy Light. I don’t recognize your authority. But if Marya was … if she was killed, then some people I care about may not be safe. Including the one I care about most, my very own self. And she deserves … So—this is all I know.
“Her name’s Marya. That’s what she went by. I met her here. Ul Qoma-here. I’m telling you what I can, but I never knew much. Not my business. She was a foreigner. I knew her from politics. She was serious—committed, you know? Just not to what I thought at first. She knew a lot; she was no time-waster.”
“Look,” I said.
“That’s all I can tell you. She lived here.”
“She was in Besźel.”
“Come on.” He was angry. “Come on. Not officially. She couldn’t. Even if she was, she was here. Go look at the cells, the radicals. Someone’ll know who she is. She went everywhere. All the underground. Both sides, must have done. She wanted to go everywhere because she needed to know everything. And she did. That’s all.”
“How did you find out that she’d been killed?” I heard his hiss of breath.
“Borlú, if you really mean that you’re stupid and I’m wasting my time. I recognized her picture, Borlú. Do you think I’d be helping you if I didn’t think I had to? If I didn’t think this was important? How do you think I found out? I saw your fucking poster.”
He put the phone down. I held my receiver to my ear a while as if he might return.
I saw your poster. When I looked down at my notepad, I had written on it, beside the details he had given me, shit/shit/shit.
I DID NOT STAY in the office much longer. “Are you alright, Tyador?” Gadlem said. “You look …” I’m sure I did. At a pavement stall I had a strong coffee aj Tyrko—Turkish style—a mistake. I was even more antsy.
It was, not surprisingly that day perhaps, hard to observe borders, to see and unsee only what I should, on my way home. I was hemmed in by people not in my city, walking slowly through areas crowded but not crowded in Besźel. I focused on the stones really around me—cathedrals, bars, the brick flourishes of what had been a school—that I had grown up with. I ignored the rest or tried.
I dialled the number of Sariska, the historian, that evening. Sex would have been good, but also sometimes she liked to talk over cases that I was working on, and she was smart. I dialled her number twice but disconnected twice before she could respond. I would not involve her in this. A disguised-as-hypothesis infraction of the confidentiality clause on ongoing investigations was one thing. Making her accessory to breach was another.
I kept coming back to that shit/shit/shit. In the end I got home with two bottles of wine and set out slowly—cushioning them in my stomach with a pick-pick supper of olives, cheese, sausage—to finish them. I made more useless notes, some in arcane diagram form as if I might draw a way out, but the situation—the conundrum—was clear. I might be the victim of a pointless and laboured hoax, but it did not seem likely. More probable was that the man on the telephone had been telling the truth.
In which case I had been given a major lead, close information about Fulana-Marya. I had been told where to go and who to chase to find out more. Which it was my job to do. But if it came out that I acted on the information no conviction would ever stand. And much more serious, it would be far worse than illegal for me to pursue it, not only illegal according to Besź codes—I would be in breach.
My informant should not have seen the posters. They were not in his country. He should never have told me. He made me accessory. The information was an allergen in Besźel—the mere fact of it in my head was a kind of trauma. I was complicit. It was done. (Perhaps because