The Translated Man and Other Stories - Chris Braak [72]
Slowly, Beckett handed the articles back to Karine. “Nothing. They’ve taken his body already and burned it, cleaned his house. We couldn’t even bring a psychometrist on.” A dreadful certainty was growing inside him. “We have nothing. No idea who murdered these men…” Some idea, he though, but it was an idea he’d rather not have had. “No way to connect them to Wyndham-Vie. The log at Corimander Street is gone. The only two people we know that came to Zindel’s home are dead. Unless there’s something good in that book…”
“Nothing so far,” muttered Valentine.
“Then we have nothing.” He leaned back in his chair and steepled his numb fingers. He shook his head. “I’ll stay here, tonight. You two are welcome to do what you like.”
Alan Charterhouse packed his papers into a small satchel. He put on his Primeday clothes, the dark blue suit and shiny shoes that his father had always made him wear when they went to church. There was something a little ironic about that, thought Alan, that he should be wearing it when he confessed to heresy. He left his room, which still looked as though a tornado had whirled through, leaving papers and detritus scattered in his wake. He closed the door and locked it.
That’s it, thought Alan. That’s the last time I’ll see it. After a moment’s hesitation, he opened the door again and looked in. He tried to take everything in. The bed with the tall wooden posts and the burgundy curtains. The writing desk with the comically-small chair that accompanied it—his father had bought if for him when Alan was only ten, and he’d never gotten around to getting a new one. The washbasin, ceramic white with little blue flowers around the outside, in the dark-wood carved stand. His bookcase, which still had the old picture books that Ian Charterhouse had read to his son—Benjamin Walpole’s Anything Stories with their crudely-illustrated fables about leopards and tarrasques and therians, Gunther Molnar’s Tales of the Trow, stories of epic majesty accompanied by beautiful copperplate etchings—all the dog-eared copies of Ted East novels, Wolfram Harcourt’s Principles of Mathematics.
There was paper scattered everywhere. Alan had thought that perhaps he’d tidy the place up before he left, because it didn’t seem fair to leave all of that to his uncle, who’d surely be full of grief when he heard about his nephew’s execution. The fact was that there just wasn’t enough time. Alan was, he realized, sitting on top of a grenade whose fuse was still burning, one that could go off at any time.
Alan closed and locked his door again and hurried downstairs. Uncle Malcolm was asleep in the sitting-room, and Alan looked fondly on him while he tried to fix the old man’s features in his mind. Last time. Goodbye, Uncle Malcolm. The young man slipped out the front door and into the cold night.
The air was still cold and raw, and it had been raining all morning and afternoon. The downpour had helped to put the fires out in Mudside. Alan pulled his coat tight about himself and slung his satchel over his shoulder, plunging his free hand as deep into the wool pocket of his coat as he could.
A deep sense of loss and loneliness washed over him, as Alan Charterhouse left his life behind. He knew what he had to do, and that it was right that he should do it, but the knowledge that it would bring his execution seemed to crowd out all other thoughts.
There was a tension in the air as Alan approached Old Bank, and he was at a loss to explain it. There were sharpsies, many more than usual, lurking in shadows and corners, gathering in small groups by the crevices in the street that led down to the Arcadium. Alan had not read the broadsheets in several days, and so was not aware of the events that had taken place in the sharpsie ghetto; he was moreover unaware of how remarkable a thing it was that he should be seeing any sharpsies, let alone in the numbers that now wandered Old Bank.
It was not long before he realized that there were two sharpsies following him, springing along with casual, athletic