Free Kraken by China Miéville Page A

get that. Everything represents something.”
    “It ain’t going to win any prizes,” Collingswood said, entering, hands in her pockets. She shrugged. “It’ll do the necessary. Invite only. It’ll hold till Doc Octopus here makes up his mind. Don’t touch.” She wagged her finger at Billy. “Hands off.”
    “You said Vardy thought I had nothing to be worried about,” Billy said. “I thought he was never wrong.”
    “Never is,” she said, and shrugged. “Never know, though, know what I mean?”
    “This is just basic precautions,” Baron said. “You should see my house. Stick around here a couple of days, while you chew stuff over. We’ll keep you in the loop. We’ve got feelers out, we know what we’re looking for. The offer’s on the table. Get back to us soon, eh?”
    Billy shook his head hopelessly. “Jesus, give me a chance …”
    “Think all you want,” Baron said, “but think to yourself, alright? Kath?” Collingswood lightly touched his Adam’s apple. He recoiled.
    “What was …?” he said.
    “Try chatting now,” she said. “For your own sake. Trust me.”
    “I do not trust you.”
    “Wise man.”
    “Pay attention. This is my number.” Baron gave him a card.
    “You don’t get mine yet,” Collingswood said. “You got to earn that sort of shit.”
    “Anything worrying, anything strange,” Baron said, “or, on the other hand, when you decide you’re on board …”
    “If,” Billy said.
    “When you decide you’re on board, call.”
    Anything strange. Billy remembered the bottled corpse. That greyed skin, those drowned eyes.
    “Seriously.” He spoke quietly. “What did they do to that guy? How did they get the squid out of there?”
    “Now, Mr. Harrow,” Baron said. He shook his head, friendly. “I told you. All those whys is not a helpful way of looking at things. And blimey, there’s plenty of stuff you’ve not even seen yet. How could you possibly understand what’s going on? If you even wanted to. Which, as I say, dot dot dot.
    “So. Rather than trying to get to grips with things you can’t possibly, I’d just say wait. Wait and see. Because you will see. There’s more to come. Good-bye now.”

Chapter Nine
    A T THE ENTRANCE TO THE FLAT, WHERE C OLLINGSWOOD HAD fiddled, there were marks. Tiny scratches. A little balsa lid, flush with the wood. He flicked it with his fingernail.
    Billy was hesitant to trust whatever protection it was he’d been afforded. He double-locked his door. He stared out through glass at the rooftop where that dirty bloody squirrel lay unseen. He wished it drowned in rainwater.
    He hunted online but failed to find a single detail of the FSRC. Thousands of organisations of those initials, but Baron’s unit was nowhere. On his university page Billy read Vardy’s publications list. “Oedipus, Charisma and Jim Jones;” “Sayyid Qutb and the Problem of Psychological Organisation;” “The Dialectics of Waco.”
    Billy drank wine in front of the television on mute, a bottled shadow-show. How often, he thought, are such offers made? A knight emerging from a wardrobe with the offer of another place but you have to come now . Was the squid out there, or destroyed? He did not trust his potential colleagues. He did not appreciate their recruitment methods.
    In the television light he watched the curtains hang limply, remembering the obscene discovery in the museum basement. He did not think he was particularly exhausted. He imagined the window beyond the fabric. He woke abruptly in a panic on his sofa.
    When the hell had he fallen asleep? He remembered no transition. The book he did not even remember starting to read slid from him like an inadequate blanket. It was dark. Billy realised he had heard tapping at his door.
    A patter like the feet of a gecko on the other side of the wood. A nail scratching and, yes, a whisper. Billy was silent. He told himself it was some remnant dream, but it was not. It sounded again.
    Billy crept to the