His teeth slid across his lower lip as he thought, eyes tight, fingers clawed. “I… shot Marigare.”

“Mari…”

“The man who shot me. I wondered if… he might be…”

“No. He wasn’t Galileo.”

“No. I know. He was… one of us.”

“He tried to kill you.”

“Yes.”

“Do you know why?”

“No.”

“He said he was following orders.”

“I know.”

“I wouldn’t take it personally. Galileo is Aquarius, and Aquarius doesn’t even know it. Maybe the person who ordered you dead can’t even remember doing it. Then again, someone has to take responsibility for following the orders, as well as giving the command. Either way, you fired in self-defence, so this one’s probably not going to the top of the sin list.”

His eyes flickered to me, fingers clenching. “You… want to find him? You want to kill Galileo?”

“Yes. I rather think I do.”

“Why?”

“Deeds done. Friends remembered. But mostly, I think, because he wants me. We have both… taken action against the other, in our times, and now it appears that our relationship has a logic all of its own. It would be unwise of me not to respond accordingly. He gives us a bad name.”

“Kepler—”

“Irena,” I corrected automatically.

“—I think you did that yourself.”

I said not a word.

On the radio a caller was shouting over the airwaves. He had a lot to shout about. Taxes–too high. Social security–too low. Hours of work–too long. Healthcare–too expensive.

What was his suggestion?

That people should try harder, of course! He’d tried his entire life and now he was living in a one-bedroom flat above a crêperie with not fifty euros to his name. He’d fought and he’d lost, but only others were to blame.

Thank you, caller, said the presenter as he cut him off. You sound like you’ve got some interesting stories to tell.

Then Coyle said, “You said you understood.”

“What?”

“On the phone. You told… it that you knew why he ordered your host’s… Josephine’s death. You said you knew.”

“Yes.”

“Why. Tell me why.”

“Because I loved her.”

“Is that it?”

“Yes. I’ve known Galileo for nearly a hundred years. He–it–loves to be loved. It is all that we ever want. We are beautiful and we are wealthy, and people love us for it, but it is not us that is loved, merely the life we are wearing. I loved Josephine. I was… happy when I was her. I was beautiful as Josephine. I was a person, when I was her, I was Josephine. Not some shadow playing a part, but her, whole and true, a truth that was more whole than anything she had been. It’s that that makes beauty. Not leg or skin or breast or face, but wholeness, total and true. I was beautiful as Josephine, and Galileo… hasn’t been beautiful for a very long time. He wanted to be in Edinburgh, needed to be in Miami, and forgot a very long time ago what beautiful really means. That is all.”

Silence a while. Then, “I’m sorry. For Josephine. For your loss.”

I didn’t reply, and he said no more, but when I glanced up from the road there was a wetness in his eyes, and he turned his face away so I might not see any more.

Then he said, “Where are we now?” and his skin was yellow-grey, and his breathing was heavy, and his eyes were low.

And I said, “We’re about to stop,” and realised that this was now the case.

A hotel of little windows and iron walls, framing a car park.

I sat in the driver’s seat for a few minutes and practised copying Irena’s signature off the back of her debit card. It was no substitute for a pin code, but you make do.

The hotel was as close to a motel as the French could manage, though they would never admit to having sunk as low as the Americans in their hospitality. I asked for, and received, the cheapest room they had, and managed to pay for it in cash.

“Checkout is 10 a.m. tomorrow morning,” explained the dull-eyed receptionist as he handed over a small key on a huge tag. “Breakfast is extra.”

“That’s OK. We’ll be long gone.”

The room was up a path of singing flagstones. A single cedar tree leaned over a curious ginger cat, which paused, one paw raised to its mouth like a child caught eating a sweet, to regard us as we staggered by, too much–far too much–of Coyle’s weight draped across my back. Irena Skarbek had many pros, but upper-body strength was not one.

Coyle got blood on the sheets the moment he sank on to the bed. I piled blankets on top of him, fetched water to drink, and water in a jug to clean away the blood from his neck, his face, his hands. I fetched the remainder of my medical supplies from the car, and as I crossed the courtyard, a voice called out, hey you! Are you the cleaning lady? I’ve got a bone to pick with you.

No, I snapped in reply. Try someone else.

“Irena?” Coyle shivered beneath the sheets.

“Yes?”

“Where’s Max?”

“Who’s Max?”

“You were him until you were Irena. What did you do with him?”

“Left him sedated in the service station lavatory. I may have punched him too–only a little.”

“He’s a good man.”

“Yeah,” I sighed. “He was probably following orders too. Sorry about this.” I slipped the needle under his skin, and though his lips curled and his eyes narrowed, he stayed still as the contents of the hypodermic entered his bloodstream. “Fingers,” I said, and he obediently pressed three fingers over the cotton wool I laid over the vein. “Pressure for two minutes.”

“What was it?”

“Sedative. You’re going to have to sleep at some point.”

“Why?”

“Because it’s sleep or dead.”

“I don’t… understand why you need me,” and already his voice was thickening. “You said you had what you needed to take down Aquarius. Why… do you need me?”

I shrugged, swinging my legs up to balance precariously on the corner of bed he wasn’t already inhabiting, leaning back against the wall. “You shot my last ally. And it’s always useful to have an obliging body.”

“Is that what I am?” His eyes were drifting shut, his lips barely shaping the sounds.

“No. You’re… something else.”

He perhaps wanted to speak, but no words came.

I doubt I’d care for anything he had to say.

Chapter 76

I sleep.

It is a fitful process.

There is one bed in this tiny room, and though it’s a double, Coyle is sprawled diagonally across it, and even if the smell of sweat weren’t enough to set my delicate nose twitching, the blood seeps into the sheets.

I sleep on the floor, waking in awkward positions, one hand high, one hand squashed. Though the room is hot, I am cold, grateful that my muscles are already worn out, annoyed I haven’t more flesh to keep in the heat.

I slip in and out of half-remembered dreams.

Dreams of

Janus. Two-faced god, who was beautiful as she lay down beside me in an apartment in Miami, sapphires in her hair. Who danced naked around the room, slapping his behind and exclaiming I love it. I love it I love it I love it. That had been when he was young, and handsome, and Michael Peter Morgan, who used to do tae kwon do, and would one day meet his perfect wife.

Janus-who-was-Marcel, melted lips and withered fingers, skin the colour of rotten tomato laced with maggoty worms, do you like what you see?

Dreams of Galileo.

He’s mine.

He’s beautiful.

He’s mine.

Do you like what you see?

And I wake and for a moment cannot remember where I am, or who, and I feel sick, and sit on the edge of the toilet bowl, clutching it for a while, knowing I will not puke and wishing this body would.

The hotel is too cheap to provide toothpaste and my teeth are starting to ache.