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A few minutes’ stroll down the wharf brought us to my barge, the Lucky Lady. Just another among a couple of dozen longboats and barges tied up to the wharf. A fairly inexpensive way to live in an expensive part of London. You get a lot of actors here…The Lucky Lady bobbed heavily in the dark tarry waters, her colours a bright racing red and green, and all her brasswork shining in the amber light of the streetlamps. (I have a little brownie creature who comes around every other week and keeps the old boat spotless in return for my leaving out a bowl of single malt whiskey. I believe in upholding the old traditions. Especially when it means I don’t have to get down on my hands and knees with the Duraglit. Hate polishing brass.)
I would have preferred to take Molly back to my nice flat in Knightsbridge, but I didn’t dare. My family knew about the flat. At best they’d have agents in place, watching and waiting in case I was stupid enough to show my face. At worst, and much more likely, they’d have already torn the flat apart looking for clues or incriminating documents leading to where I was and what I might be doing. I knew the procedure. I’d done it myself often enough. Well, let them look. I never left anything of value in my flat. Or anywhere else, really. A field agent has to be ready to walk away from anything, at a moment’s notice, and never look back. We’re not allowed to be sentimental or form attachments. Our only roots are in the family. The family sees to that.
I said as much to Molly, and she nodded.
"They probably smashed up all your good stuff, just out of spite. I’ve seen how your family operates. Are you sure there’s nothing there they can use to track you? I could find you anywhere, just from holding some object that once belonged to you."
"Not as long as I wear the torc," I said. "My armour shields me from everything."
I handed Molly down onto the deck of my barge, and then stepped lightly down to join her. Molly looked at me thoughtfully.
"Your armour comes from your family. Are you sure they don’t have some secret way of finding you through the armour?"
"Positive. That’s always been our strength and our weakness. The same armour that makes us so powerful also isolates us from everything else in the world."
"So you’re always alone?"
"Yes. That’s why so few Droods can cope, out in the world. Away from the all-embracing arms of the family. Come on, it’s cold out here. Let’s go below."
I opened the hatch and down we went into the sumptuously furnished interior of the Lucky Lady. Wherever I live, I like to live well. I won the barge several years back in a poker game with a down-on-his-luck private detective. Poor bugger ended up living in his own office. Served him right for trying to cheat. There’s nothing I enjoy more than out-cheating a cheat. I can produce extra aces from places you wouldn’t believe.
I bustled around the long living area, lighting the old naval storm lamps and adjusting the wicks, filling the barge’s interior with a warm golden glow. Molly oohed and aahed over the luxurious furnishings, and positively cooed over the period details. The Lucky Lady has no modern conveniences, no electricity. The whole point of being on the barge was to be cut off from the modern world. (There is a chemical toilet. And a portable CD player. There’s no point in being a fanatic about these things.) Finally we both settled ourselves on the comfortably padded chaise longue, and I relaxed for the first time in what seemed like forever.
"I like your place, Eddie," said Molly, tucking her legs up under her.
"It’s so not you. A bit solitary, though."
"That’s the point," I said.
She considered me seriously. "I can’t imagine what it must be like for you, to live a life so alone…so cut off from everything and everyone. Never able to trust anyone who isn’t family."
"Comes with the job," I said. "And after growing up in a hall bursting at the seams with family, I was glad to get away."
"Has there never been…anyone else? Anyone who mattered?"
"No. Never. I can’t get too close to anyone without telling them what I do. And the family doesn’t allow that. Marriage, even…friendships, only take place at the family’s discretion. They have to be approved. Especially for those of us out in the field and open to the world’s temptations. From the moment we’re born, and they clap the golden torc around our infant throats, we belong to the family, body and soul. I live alone, wherever I live, and though I may invite people in to visit me from time to time, they’re never allowed to stay. For their own safety."
"So…no girlfriends? No significant others? No real friends? What kind of a life is that?"
"A life of service, to a greater cause," I said. "That was what I believed. What I’d been taught. How was I to know it was all a lie?"
"Is there anything here to eat and drink?" Molly said, kindly changing the subject. "I could eat, if you had something."
"Of course," I said. "Let me just knock some weevils out of the hardtack."
I set about organising a basic cold meal out of the tins I keep in stock, and opened the bottle of brandy I keep for medical emergencies. Molly busied herself by looking over my collection of CDs and making disparaging comments about my taste in music.
"What is this? No Hawkwind, no Motörhead, not even any Meat Loaf? Just…Judy Collins, Mary Hopkin, and Kate Bush…"
"I like female vocalists," I said, coming in with a tray.
"All right, I’ll lend you some of my Within Temptation imports. You’ll like them. They’re a Dutch band with a magnificent female vocalist. A bit like ABBA on crack."
"Well," I said. "There’s something to look forward to."
We attacked our food with good appetite. Molly wolfed hers down, to my quiet approval. I can’t stand people who pick at their food. Afterwards we sat together with the brandy warming in our bellies, companionably close, still too buzzed from the day’s adrenaline to sleep just yet. So we talked about old times, old cases, where we’d always been on different sides and doing our best to kill each other, as often as not. There are some things you can only talk about with old enemies. Because you had to be there, to understand.
The case of the mille
We don’t normally get that excited over industrial espionage, but Herr Doktor Herman Koenig worked at the cutting edge of the computer–human mind interface and had apparently developed a means of direct contact between human thought and computer capacities. Theoretically, this could result in a combination of the two capable of producing a whole far greater than the sum of its parts. An awful lot of people were prepared to pay an awful lot of money for exclusive rights to such a process, so it was up to me to ensure that only the right sort of person got their hands on it. Or make sure no one did. My family can be very dog in the manger about some things.
Doktor Koenig had set up a makeshift laboratory in a disused government think tank in the old Bradbury Building, just down from Centre Point. Breaking in was child’s play. I was used to the kind of security that throws a demon from Hell at you if you get it wrong. Electronic locks and motion detectors aren’t really in the same league. Herr Doktor hadn’t even shelled out for some armed guards, the cheap bastard. Really, some people deserve everything that happens to them.
I let myself into the Bradbury Building lobby a good three hours before the auction was due to start and made my way easily up through the quiet building. Everyone else had gone home, oblivious to the drama to come. I armoured up and trotted easily up the forty-four flights of stairs to the doktor’s floor. (Never trust an elevator.) I didn’t expect any serious opposition on this case.