The City's son

CHAPTER 54

Back in A amp;E, two burly male nurses were wrestling a drunkard into a wheelchair. An irascible old woman was barking incomprehensible hostilities at an unoffending triage nurse, and then repeatedly stealing her fob-watch and giggling as she dropped it on the floor.

Over the ranks of the sick, beer-soaked and disturbed that occupied the orange plastic chairs, the bandaged head of her father reared like a snowcapped mountaintop. He looked up from the tatty paperback he was reading as Beth approached. The sight of Pen’s facial injuries had scared Paul. He’d looked on with a haunted gaze as they’d wheeled her into the theatre, and accosted everyone in scrubs who emerged with questions and fervent thanks.

‘How is she?’ he asked.

Beth shrugged. ‘Her heart’s in better nick than her face. I think she’ll be okay.’

‘Thank God.’ He sagged with relief. ‘And you?’

Beth looked around a little conspiratorially, and then yanked the collar of her hoodie out past her bra-strap. The fat, jagged wound in her shoulder was sealed over with new greyish skin. An ugly, rippling seam of tar ran through it like a scar.

Her father stared for a moment, swallowed hard, and then nodded.

Get used to it, Beth thought. Daddy’s little girl has the city in her skin. She glanced at the book in her father’s lap. The Iron Condor Mystery. She barked an abrupt laugh. ‘You brought that with you?’

He cradled it defensively. ‘It was your mother’s favourite.’

Beth sighed. ‘Yeah, I know it was, Dad.’

He drew himself up, seeming to steel himself. Then he held the book out to Beth. ‘I’m done with it.’

Beth looked at him, startled.

‘You should read it some time,’ he said.

Beth turned the pages, feeling the paper flake, ready to disintegrate with years of constant reading. She didn’t know what to say.

He held his arms out to her then, and she embraced him, pulling herself tight into his chest. Uncertain fingertips pattered over her neck for a moment, feeling the pavement-texture of her skin. Then his hug engulfed her. ‘Beth, I know I haven’t- I want to make it up to you- I mean, I know I owe you so much-’

He fell into a surprised silence as Beth reached back and put a hand over his mouth.

Deals are sacred. She thought of the symmetrical oil-soaked men. Our equations always balance. Fil’s body, lying in the rubble, his own spear bleeding him dry.

You saved my life twice. By my reckoning that means I owe you.

She’d already lost too much to the brutal mathematical economy of debt. ‘It’s not about owing, Dad. This can’t be about owing.’ She pulled back to look him in the face. ‘Let’s just try again.’

The old drunk in the corner started to make high-pitched yipping noises and they let each other go. Beth sniffed back what felt like a gallon of mucus and looked at the book her father had given her. A sheet of crisply folded white paper was set inside the back cover.

‘What’s this?’

He looked embarrassed. ‘I thought you might want to know a bit more about him.’

‘About who?’

He frowned as though it were obvious. ‘The boy you were following around.’

A shiver, like a pricking of insect feet, ran down Beth’s back. With numb fingers, she unfolded the sheet. It was a printout of a page from the Evening Standard ’s online archive. The photo showed a haggard-looking woman and man appealing to the camera with their eyes. The headline read:

Hunt For Williams Baby Called Off

Beth started to read the text to herself.

Two hundred and eighty-one days after eight-month-old Michael Williams disappeared from the home of his parents, police have admitted the active search has been wound down.

Detective Inspector Ian North, leading the case, said, ‘We are not closing the book on the search for baby Michael, but there has been no new evidence in nine months. Our hotline of course remains open…’

Beth stopped reading and her eyes returned to the photograph. The caption read: Genevieve and Stephen Williams in public appeal for news of missing son.

‘I recognised him when you carried his body out,’ her dad was saying. ‘It’s weird — I only printed this out because you went missing.’

A cold weight had settled in Beth’s gut. She rummaged frantically in her pocket for the sketch of Fil, unfolded it and held it next to the printout: the portrait of the prince beside the photo of the distraught parents.

Beth’s dad’s face crinkled in sympathy. ‘The poor kid looks just like his father- Beth, what’s wrong?’

Beth had sat down hard, missing the orange plastic chair and bruising her coccyx on the concrete floor. She wanted to protest; he was wrong — her own eyes were wrong. Filius Viae couldn’t be these people’s son; it was a mistake — he was the Son of the Streets, the son of Mater Viae. He had powers. He could outrun a Railwraith, tear scaffolding in two, scale the side of a skyscraper…

All things you can do too, since your dip in the synod’s pool, a quiet voice inside reminded her.

Questions and doubts bloomed in her mind, but withered again as logic provided the obvious answers. Questions like, Why did Reach try to kill Fil with a Railwraith anyway? Three quick steps carried her to the broom cupboard in the far wall. She reached in and jerked the railing-spear free from where she’d hidden it amongst the pile of plastic sheets. She crashed through the door to the fire-escape and whirled up the stairs, her dad huffing despairingly behind her.

‘Where are you going? Please, don’t go, Beth, not again. I’ve made up your room — I-’

Beth burst onto a fourth-floor corridor. Bleak fury sat in the pit of her stomach like an ember. She’d been lied to — and what was worse, so had Fil, lied to about everything. A rain-spattered window-pane revealed what she was looking for: a slim black telephone wire stretching out from the hospital’s outer wall. The window was one of those that only pivot open about six inches, but Beth had been remade; she undulated, and slid her way out with ease onto the sill, her own oily sweat smoothing her passage.

Her dad stood inside, hands pressed to the glass, eyes wide. She could see him mouthing, ‘ Come home.’

Beth hesitated, then she called back, ‘I will, I promise, but there’s something I have to do first.’ She sidled crabwise and settled easily as a pigeon on the insulated phone wire. After the rain, the moon was bright. A sharp wind cut the air, but Beth wasn’t cold.

‘Beth!’ Through the glass, her father sounded desperate. ‘I’ll see you soon, Dad,’ she promised, and then raced away, along the cable, into the night.