Part 13 (1/2)
”That one is hanging around,” he whispered, to which Miss Barrow replied, ”He's sweeping the street.”
”That one is an obvious agent,” he whispered, to which Miss Barrow replied, ”He's a blind man, selling matches, pencils, and shoelaces.”
”That's what he wants you to think.”
”He's doing a brilliant job, in that case. Look, he's moving on.” She slapped Cabal's shoulder. ”I don't even know what I'm doing here. I should be pressing charges against you. Not waiting for G.o.d only knows who in some back alley in Parila. Behind a barrel. I'm mad. I must be. After all you've done, I must be mad. Not even after all you've done in general, but just after all you've done to me, today.” She looked at Cabal, bewildered by herself. ”Why am I doing this?”
”Simplicity itself. First, my ruse with the falsified bulletin must have been rapidly seen through.”
”No,” she said, shaking her head wearily. ”You're too good a forger, it seems.”
”Oh?” A slow smile of wry amus.e.m.e.nt appeared on his face. ”Why, Miss Barrow ... are you a fugitive?”
”No! Nothing so ... you. They checked their files and couldn't find a Johanna Cabal, only a Johannes. So they decided there was no conspiracy, just a bureaucratic c.o.c.k-up somewhere along the line. They're a very pragmatic bunch, the Senzans. The lieutenant who arrested me gave me his personal apology. Then he asked me out to dinner.”
Cabal grunted under his breath. ”Most pragmatic.”
”He was busily kissing my hand when Miss Ambersleigh turned up with half of the British Consulate in tow. Things were explained, and they asked if I wanted to make a formal complaint.”
”Did you?”
”Well, no.” She seemed a little embarra.s.sed. ”It seemed a bit rude, what with him kissing my hand and everything.”
”And everything?” he echoed with disdain.
She shot him a dirty look. ”You like to pretend you're some sort of pure scientist without a human feeling in your body, but you're just a horrid little man really, aren't you, Cabal?”
Cabal had no answer, or at least no answer that he cared to make, so they crouched in silence for a minute longer.
Cabal checked his watch. ”I may have miscalculated,” he said. ”We should have seen something by now. In fact”-he looked up at the road as he replaced his pocket watch-”we should have seen Cacon by now.”
”Cacon? From the aeros.h.i.+p? I thought you said you didn't know who you were waiting for?”
”I wasn't waiting for Cacon. I was waiting for the man Cacon was following.”
”Who's that?” Miss Barrow was growing more confused by the second.
”I don't know. I thought I'd already explained that.”
”You haven't explained anything. This is the first I've heard that Cacon is somehow mixed up in all this. Why is Cacon following somebody anyway?”
”I don't know,” said Cabal testily. ”That's why I was waiting for him to pa.s.s by.”
”I don't understand any of this.”
”Neither do I. Do you think I hide behind barrels in shadowy alleyways for fun? No, I don't,” he said to head off Miss Barrow, who he felt sure was about to say that it wouldn't surprise her at all. ”There is something going on, and it has to do with the murders.”
”Probable murder and suicide, you mean?”
”Oh, please.” Cabal was splendidly dismissive. ”DeGarre is murdered for some reason, then when the suicide story falls flat Zoruk is incriminated. The killer makes a hash job of it and eliminates Zoruk before the shortcomings in the charade can be exposed, not realising that it's too late.”
”Lady Ninuka's alibi for him, you mean,” said Miss Barrow.
”Exactly so. I have an inkling how DeGarre was dealt with, but killing Zoruk is a different matter. The more that I think on the matter, the more solid Schten's ridiculous concept of a league of a.s.sa.s.sins becomes.”
”That makes me think of magicians and their stage illusions, you know. They pull off half their stuff because they're prepared to do the most incredible feats of engineering, far beyond what the audience thinks is reasonable for a small effect. Just because something seems ridiculous doesn't mean it isn't true.”
Cabal considered her words, and said, ”You have a very good point, and one that undermines the basis of much of my logic to date. I told Schten that he was a fool-though not in so many words-because this conspiracy of shadows flew in the face of Ockham's razor. When given the choice between a simple explanation and a complex one, the simpler is usually the truth. That's why I believed in Zoruk's suicide for an unconscionably long time. I've been an idiot, though. 'Usually' is a long way indeed from 'always.' As with the whole Johanna Cabal nonsense-you may hate me for it now, but you will dine out on it for a year, I a.s.sure you-they preferred to believe in incompetence rather than in a forged doc.u.ment. But the doc.u.ment was forged.” He looked at her seriously. ”And there are conspiracies out there. I've stood too close to several to deny their existence. In a hotbed of intrigue like these little states, so small that you can drop a penny and it will roll over half a dozen international borders before coming to a halt, and where everyone hates their neighbours, plots and conspiracies are endemic.”
Leonie Barrow looked at him with a strange expression, her pale skin blue and shadowed by the failing light, her eyes dark and bottomless. ”Cabal ...” she whispered.
”Yes?” he replied.
”How-” She paused, searching for the words. Her gaze fell, and then rose again, and she looked deep into his eyes. ”How did you ever become so very f.u.c.ked up?”
Cabal sighed. He knew it wasn't even intended as an insult. It didn't matter; he had no answer. He looked back out onto the street. ”Cacon's gone,” he said, rising from his crouch. ”He didn't come back around this way again. You can stop hiding down there. Unless you've developed a taste for it, of course.”
She had not, and rose, patting the dust off her skirt. ”If anybody sees me coming out of a side street with you, and I'm even a bit dishevelled, I swear I will never live it down.”
”Nor I,” said Cabal offhandedly. ”I wonder where he went? Let's see if we can find him.” He walked out onto the Via Vortis and looked both ways. There was no sign of Herr Cacon.
Miss Barrow joined him, albeit in a poor temper. ”Why? He's just an odd little man. Why are you so interested in him?”
”You didn't see him. He was like a man with a mission.” He started walking, and Miss Barrow had to scuttle a little to catch up. ”Not the sort of man I would normally a.s.sociate with missions. Would you? He was behaving curiously, and since recent events render that which is curious suspicious, I want to know what he was up to.”
”Oh, come on,” she said and laughed disbelievingly. ”Are you telling me that you suspect a pug in a bad suit like Cacon of crawling around the s.h.i.+p's vents and trying to throw you to your doom? You're kidding me.”
”I am kidding n.o.body,” he said icily, then reconsidered. ”Well, apart from everybody who thinks that I'm a Mirkarvian civil servant named Gerhard Meissner, obviously. Them, I am kidding. In this case, however, I am sincere. I do not believe he attacked me, true, but I suspect he may know who did.”
”Based on what? Masculine intuition?”
”Based,” said Cabal, beginning to chafe under all the unwarranted sarcasm, ”upon the weight of probabilities.” They had by this point reached the Piazza Bior with no sign of Cacon. Cabal looked up the Viale Ogrilla, and frowned when he remembered the policeman at the cafe. He turned to Miss Barrow and, with evident reluctance, offered her his arm.
She regarded it with equally evident suspicion. ”What's this?”
Cabal forbore to state the obvious and said, ”It would help us go unnoticed if we looked like people who can actually bear to be in each other's company.”
”I'm not a good enough actress for that, Cabal.”
”I'm not asking you to look as if you dote upon my every word and glow with happiness in my mere presence-”
”That's lucky.”
”I just need you to look as if you don't loathe me.”
”I'm really not a good enough actress for that. Why the sudden concern?”