On the Steel Breeze

CHAPTER TWENTY-SIX

The man called Nicolas, this person she barely knew, was sitting at her little wooden table, the one with the red and white cloth, nursing a thin-stemmed port glass, his features cast into warm, wavering relief by the light of the solitary candle furnishing the room’s illumination. ‘It’s good,’ he said, after the first few mouthfuls, and then underscored his approval by draining the glass and recharging it from the waiting bottle. He studied the yellowing label. ‘Do you go to Porto very often? I like it there very much.’

‘To tell the truth, I hardly ever leave the city.’

‘That’s what my friends told me.’ Nicolas sipped again, his heavy, gold-lit features, his beard, prominent nose and bushy eyebrows calling to mind a Rembrandt. All he needed to complete the illusion was a pipe and nightcap, and a few missing teeth. ‘The wonder,’ he went on, ‘is that our paths haven’t crossed since the last time I visited the studio.’

‘You were just one of Pedro’s clients or friends, I’m afraid. We could have walked past each other a thousand times and I wouldn’t necessarily have recognised you.’ She was standing at the uncurtained window, watching as the city – or at least the sliver of it visible from her apartment – gowned itself in evening.

‘That’s true. After fifteen years, though, I was starting to think you’d never get in touch.’

‘You could have called me. I sold the studio, but I wasn’t hard to find.’

‘No, that wouldn’t have been right at all. I knew Pedro very well, Chiku. He would only have wanted you to contact me, when you were ready – not the other way round.’

‘There were a few times when I almost called you,’ she said, ‘but something always held me back. Anyway, how do you know Pedro ever mentioned you?’

‘I don’t, but it would have been odd of him not to.’

‘Were you married?’

‘No, not married.’ He smiled, as if the idea was not without its charms. ‘We weren’t even lovers. Or brothers, or cousins, or anything like that. Friends, yes – for a very long time. And, you might say, colleagues.’

She thought back to the times when Nicolas had come to Pedro’s studio to discuss some point of business about the guitars. She had sensed a long and sometimes prickly professional history between the two men, an unrecorded past of dealings and complaints and grudging interludes of mutual satisfaction. Nicolas had never struck her as a very happy customer. More than once, she had wondered why Pedro bothered having anything to do with him. He seemed more bother than he was worth – but then that, in its way, was emblematic of his entire profession.

When Pedro mentioned Nicolas, told her that this man knew his past and would share it with her if she asked, it had required a major recalibration of her idea of the man. Friend? How was that even possible? Pedro had always groaned whenever Nicolas announced his intention to visit. It had never occurred to her that the two men might enjoy each other’s company.

‘You had a business relationship?’ Chiku asked. ‘Something to do with guitars?’

‘Almost.’ He helped himself to a little more port. She turned from the window and stood with her back to the wall, facing the table. ‘I suppose it’s possible that anything I say or do in this room might be recorded?’

‘I’ve had the apartment swept. There are no public eyes. Lots of cockroaches, but no public eyes.’

‘I’ll take a risk, then. It’s only a small one – we’re talking about the past, not some ongoing activity. You seem like a trustworthy soul, so I won’t embarrass either of us by suggesting we formulate motes.’

‘You’ve lost me, Nicolas.’

He smiled again. ‘The thing is, Chiku, Pedro and I were criminals.’

‘I’m sorry? Did I hear you correctly?’

‘I started it. I came from the Moon – you were born there, too, if I’m not mistaken?’

‘There are no criminals on Earth, Nicolas. You can’t steal things, you can’t hurt people… what’s left?’

‘Lots of things, if you’re creative. Perhaps you’re unfamiliar with the notion of “slow crime”. It’s quite an old idea. The Mechanism’s thresholds can’t detect criminal acts that take place over months or years – it just isn’t set up that way. You can’t steal someone’s house, but you could take it away brick by brick, and who would notice?’

‘I would.’

‘It’s an example. I’m just saying that the Mechanism has eliminated entire categories of crime, but not crime itself. Crime is an adaptive organism. Squeeze one niche and it moves into another.’

‘Mm. So why isn’t the world full of criminals?’

‘Lack of imagination? Lack of patience? Patience, mostly. You can’t murder someone by hitting them with a club, but you could grind them down over years and years, a sort of psychological assassination. If you had the patience. If you wanted to.’

‘And did you?’

‘Good grief, no. We never wanted to hurt anyone, just do something forbidden and get away with it. And make some money, if possible.’

‘And did you?’

‘Yes, rather a lot of it. Pedro and I were master forgers.’

‘Forgers.’ She said the word as if it was new to her, some curious medieval profession that had no correlative in the present, like almsgiver or pardoner.

‘We made musical instruments,’ he said, ‘and aged them so they appeared to be hundreds and hundreds of years old. Perhaps one great forgery every decade, so as not to flood the market. We were superbly good at it.’

She listened and considered. This brazen admission of criminality was the last thing she had been expecting, but it had the heft of truth. She could see, or begin to see, how such a thing might be possible. Pedro had always worked with traditional materials and methods, and more than once he had shown her techniques for inducing the illusion of antiquity when a customer requested it. There were ways to age varnish, and to make one type of material look like another. Dodges and tricks that could fool the eye, and sometimes even fairly sophisticated analysis methods.

Clever, clever work. It had never occurred to her that there might be profit in it.

‘What type of instruments?’

‘Violins, guitars, lutes, cellos… we only made a few of each, all different, and each one took more work than the last. Making the instrument was only half the difficulty. Getting it out there, finding a buyer… that was at least as much trouble.’

‘I don’t understand why anyone would do something like that.’

‘Because it was fun? Because it was a challenge? We were living on the edge. You’ll never know how that feels, surviving on your wits, never quite knowing when the game might be up.’

‘You’d be surprised.’

He looked up, his expression both amused and sceptical. ‘This from a woman who thinks it’s a wild adventure to leave Lisbon?’

‘You don’t know the half of it, Nicolas.’

‘Perhaps not. But there was a special thrill in doing what we did. I almost miss it, you know?’

‘Fleecing people? Was that the best bit?’

‘If you go looking for a very rare thing, so rare that there aren’t supposed to be any left in the world – none that aren’t accounted for, anyway – you’re practically asking to be fleeced. But that wasn’t the point of it, and we never dealt with the buyers, anyway. There were contacts, brokers, chains of people between us and the final customer. The only part that mattered to us was making the forgery and getting it out into the world.’

‘And the money.’

‘And the money,’ Nicolas concurred. ‘But we had to be careful with that. We couldn’t go splashing it around. Pedro was running his ordinary business the whole time – it would have looked suspicious if he’d suddenly become the richest man in Portugal.’

That was another little mystery solved. During her time with him, Pedro had never done much more than break even, and his attention to detail had often cost him dearly. But somehow he had always been able to draw on financial reserves that she could not square with what he earned from his little studio in Lisbon. Now she knew where the mysterious money came from.

‘You could be lying about all this, I suppose.’

‘Yes – incriminating myself, just for the hell of it, makes perfect sense.’

‘And of course, I might not have swept the apartment as thoroughly as I claimed, and am planning to take my memories of this conversation and turn you in to the authorities.’

‘I decided I’d take that chance. Plus it’s all deniable at this point – I haven’t given you any specifics, and there’s no tangible evidence that could prove things one way or the other.’

‘It’s still quite trusting of you.’

‘You asked, and it’s the least I can do for my friend’s widow. I just wish Pedro was here, so he could remind me of all the good stories I’ve forgotten.’

‘I never realised that you’d been friends.’

‘We always were! We came very close to being found out one year and had to give up making the forgeries. It was touch and go for a little while, and after that blew over, we disassociated ourselves from each other as well as we were able. Coming to the studio was a risk, but I’d had always had above-board dealings with Pedro as well, and didn’t want to give up that side of our business relationship.’ He paused. ‘Has all this… discomforted you? Learning that Pedro had another side to his personality?’

‘It’s not what I was expecting.’

‘It doesn’t mean that he was a bad person,’ Nicolas said urgently. ‘Not at all. Mischievous, definitely. And we didn’t hurt anyone, when all’s said and done.’

‘Except the ones you fooled.’

‘We helped put their money back into circulation. Increased the liquidity of the global economy.’

She had not wanted a drink until now, content to leave the bottle to Nicolas, but her mood had changed. She fetched the other port glass from the cupboard over the sink and poured herself the last measure from the bottle.

‘I should be horrified. Pedro never told me a word of this.’

‘He wanted to protect you. But he also wanted you to know the truth, when you were ready to hear it. I miss him like hell, you know? He was a good forger, one of the best. But making guitars was his real calling. The fakes were just a lucrative side-line. And he was really happy to have found you.’

‘He told you that?’

‘He didn’t need to.’

After a while, she said: ‘Thank you.’

‘You’re welcome. And for the record, I’m not involved in any of that forgery stuff now. Although I do miss it! God, I miss it.’

‘It’s good to have adventures. But one’s enough for a lifetime, I think.’

‘Yes,’ he said, narrowing his eyes at her, as if he was ready to concede this point on theoretical grounds, but couldn’t credit her with any actual experience in the subject.

‘You know how Pedro died, Nicolas.’

‘An accident, I heard. They do still happen, even on the Mechanism’s watch. I knew a man who was struck by lightning, and I heard of a woman who died when a tree toppled onto her…’

‘This wasn’t that sort of accident.’

‘I heard some old technology malfunctioned, and that he was in the wrong place at the wrong time.’

‘Someone was trying to kill us. I can’t go into specifics – that wouldn’t be clever for either of us – but it was nothing to do with your old line of work. I was the real problem, and Pedro got caught up in my business. But I’m still here, and he isn’t. It’s been hard, living with that.’

‘I won’t pry.’ He stared sadly at the empty port glass. That was it, though – she had nothing more to tell him even if he asked. ‘This trouble you were in… did it all end, fifteen years ago?’

‘I don’t know. I made a powerful enemy, and I’m pretty sure my enemy is still out there. Whether it… she… still regards me as a threat… I suppose I’ll only find out the hard way.’

‘Why did you just say “she”?’

‘A slip of the tongue, Nicolas.’

He reflected on this. ‘But Lisbon’s safe for you? You can move around the city without fear?’

‘I wouldn’t say without fear. It’s always there, at the back of my mind. I think I’m fairly safe, though. Look, I didn’t want to talk about any of this, but Pedro and I had our adventure, Nicolas. We did something together, and I think it was important.’

‘You think?’

‘Nothing’s certain. I live each day as it comes.’

‘It’s the only way. Pedro would have agreed.’

‘We have that much in common, then.’

‘You look sad, Chiku Akinya. You were never sad when I used to come to the studio. A little self-absorbed, perhaps. But I wouldn’t say sad.’

‘Things change.’

‘I have a proposition. It’s a minor one, but I would ask you to give it your full consideration.’

He said this with such seriousness that the only response she could give was to nod earnestly. ‘All right.’

‘I propose that we drink more port. On the assumption that this was your last bottle, we must therefore take our leave of your apartment and venture into the city. I know a bar or two.’

‘So do I.’

‘Then we shall fight for the privilege of choosing the first. When we arrive, I will speak more of Pedro Braga – of the things we did together. Some of these accounts I think you will find amusing. Others, I am confident, will horrify you to the very core of your being. Since we will be subject to public scrutiny, I will of course be circumspect in the matter of names and dates and places. But I’m sure you’ll have no difficulty in following the particulars.’

‘I’d like that very much, Nicolas. But I can’t reciprocate, if you’re expecting me to tell you about what happened to Pedro and me.’

‘I understand. I always do most of the talking anyway.’

‘I’m glad you came, Nicolas,’ she said, as they moved to the door.

‘And I’m glad you called. I have a suspicion that by the end of this evening, the world will not feel like such a terrible place to either of us.’