The City & the City - China Mieville [84]
“Look …”
“I’m getting a bit spooked by your occult abilities, Borlú. I didn’t sit on my arse—when I heard I’d be babysitting you, I looked you up, so I know a little bit, I know you’re no one to fuck with. I’m sure you did the same, so you know the same.” I should have done. “So I was geared up to be working with a detective. Even some hot shit. I wasn’t expecting this lugubrious tutting bugger. How the fuck did you know about Jaris, and why are you protecting that little shit?”
“Okay. He phoned me last night from a car or I think from the train and told me he was going.”
He stared at me. “Why the fuck did he call you? And why the fuck did you not tell me? Are we working together or not, Borlú?”
“Why did he call me? Maybe he wasn’t bananas about your interrogation style, Dhatt. And are we working together? I thought the reason I was here was to obediently give you everything I’ve got, then watch TV in my hotel room while you find the bad guy. When did Bowden get burgled? When were you going to tell me that? I didn’t see you rushing to spill whatever shit you found out from UlHuan at the dig, and he should have the choicest info—he is the bloody government mole, isn’t he? Come on, it’s no big deal, all public works have them. What I object to is you cutting me out then coming the ‘How could you?’”
We stared at each other. After a long moment he turned and walked to the kerb.
“Put out a warrant for Jaris,” I said to his back. “Put a stop on his passports, inform the airports, stations. But he only called me because he was en route, to tell me what he thinks happened. His phone’s probably smashed up by the tracks in the middle of Cucinis Pass, halfway to the Balkans by now.”
“So what is it he thinks happened?”
“Orciny.”
He turned in disgust and waved the word away.
“Were you even going to fucking tell me this?” he said.
“I told you, didn’t I?”
“He’s just done a runner. Doesn’t that tell you anything? The goddamn guilty run.”
“What, you talking about Mahalia? Come on, what’s his motive?” I said that but remembered some of what Jaris had told me. She had not been one of their party. They had driven her out. I hesitated a little. “Or you mean Bowden? Why the hell and how the hell would Jaris organise something like that?”
“I don’t know, both. Who knows what makes these fuckers do what they do?” Dhatt said. “There’ll be some fucked-up justification or other, some conspiracy thing.”
“Doesn’t make sense,” I said carefully, after a minute. “It was … Okay, it was him who called me from here in the first place.”
“I knew it. You fucking covered for him …”
“I didn’t know. I couldn’t tell. When he called last night he told me. Wait, wait, listen, Dhatt: why would he call me in the first place if it was him who killed her?”
He stared at me. After a minute he turned and hailed a cab. He opened its door. I watched. The cab had halted skew-whiff on the road: Ul Qoman cars sounded their horns as they went past, Besź drivers cut quietly around the protub, the law-abiding not even whispering cusses.
Dhatt stood there half-in, half-out, and the cabbie made some remonstrance. Dhatt snapped something and showed him his ID.
“I don’t know why,” he said to me. “Something to find out. But it’s a bit fucking much, isn’t it? That he’s gone?”
“If he was in on it there’s no sense him drawing my attention to anything. And how’s he supposed to have got her to Besźel?”
“Called his friends over there; they did it …”
I shrugged a doubting maybe. “It was the Besź unifs who gave us our first lead on all this, guy called Drodin. I’ve heard of misdirection, but we didn’t have anything to misdirect. They don’t have the smarts or contacts to know which van to steal—not the ones I’ve met. Plus there’s more policzai agents than members on their books anyway. If this was unifs it was some secret hardcore we’ve not seen.
“I spoke to Jaris … He’s scared,” I said. “Not guilty: scared and sad. He was into her, I think.”
“Alright,” Dhatt said after a while. He looked at me, motioned me into the cab. He stayed standing outside for several