After the door closed Adelaide listened to his footsteps fading down the corridor outside. Her bare legs felt cold. The hotel’s heating probably hadn’t been serviced in years. Adelaide pulled on her trousers, tucking in the candy-striped shirt and cinching the belt tight. She didn’t trust the shower. Besides, she enjoyed the feeling that they had marked one another; that each carried the other’s imprint. She liked the feeling of secrecy as she went back into the public world, on the shuttle lines, into the shops, the restaurants, wearing Tyr’s sweat on her skin.
She opened the curtains and picked up the binoculars once more. The Sobek Electronics logo blinked innocently from the top of the adjacent factory. Across the waterway, a blonde woman sat at a desk with a headset. Adelaide tried to decipher the glowing display on a large notice board behind her, but the zoom function on the binoculars was not quite powerful enough. She caught a brief glimpse of Sanjay Hanif. He was wearing black again. What were they discussing in there? Shouldn’t Hanif be out searching for Axel?
It had been fun, tracking down Hanif’s office. Fun inviting Tyr over. But Adelaide was angry with herself. Here she was acting as if her twin’s disappearance was some kind of game, a game that he himself had instigated. But it couldn’t be. The Axel who had disappeared was not the Axel she had lost. That man-that boy-was long gone. All she could hope to recover was his shadow.
She had to start thinking like Axel. What would her twin do? What had been going through his head in those last few weeks? If he had run away, then why?
The Rose Night was two days away. She would give Lao another week. If he had no further information, he would have to help her get into the penthouse. There, she would find clues that Sanjay Hanif and his secretary had no chance of deciphering. After all, Adelaide knew that apartment better than anybody. She used to live there.
10 VIKRAM
The doorman’s eyes flicked from the invitation’s inscription, to Vikram’s face, to his clothes and his shoes. He turned over the card and held it up to the light, examining the watermark. At last he straightened, and opened the door. A wave of music spilled out.
“Welcome to the Red Rooms, sir,” said the doorman.
“Thank you.”
He’d passed. Hoping his relief did not show, Vikram stepped inside and found himself in a hallway lined with mirrors and roses. At the end on the right was an archway. The music pulsed from the other side of it, the floor thrummed beneath his feet. Without pausing to check his reflection or allow himself second thoughts, Vikram walked through.
He was assailed by red, smoke, bodies and chatter. There were more flowers than he had ever seen in his life, all of them roses, all of them perfectly crimson. They were everywhere. On the walls, hanging from the ceilings, twined around furniture and plants and in sprays protruding from heads and corsages. Their scent infused the air, a light but sinuous perfume. The women’s costumes were also red, and so, he realized, was all the decor. Behind the people there were plush red backless sofas, soft red rugs, red meshing screens.
Adelaide Mystik’s legendary set, the Haze, were busy with drinks and cigarettes, their lips with newly chartered gossip. The women looked like an exotic breed of bird, encased in beaded corsets, flame-coloured feather skirts, shimmering stockings and jewelled sandals. Plumes erupted from their heads, making them taller than most of the men, who were a sleek contrast in black and white. Heads swivelled; they were continually looking over each other’s shoulders to check on new arrivals. Vikram edged to a corner.
Already he could feel sweat on the back of his neck. The room was vast but it was intensely, tropically hot. There were no air vents open. Near the entrance end, several people clustered around a large piano, their glasses resting upon its shiny black lid. At the other end was a mezzanine and beyond the mezzanine he could see an open doorway, where the apartment opened into other rooms. The prospect of so much space for one person was incredible.
“Olga! Darling! Been to Ilse’s yet?”
“On Tuesday, sweetie.”
“The opening was so charming, very select.”
“Oh? I was at the Weedy Seahorse.”
“That little nook Mino found? How is she? Still dallying with the Ngozi boy? Naughty.”
He listened a little longer but it was all names; who had done this, who had been there, who had taken that new lover. Vikram recognized faces he had only ever seen on display boards. There was the acrobat Lilja Aapo, chatting to the guy who had won the biking championship. A girl with blue hair whispered to another girl wearing a tiara of thin blossom branches that she’d found messages on Jokum’s Neptune. Of course she wasn’t meant to be looking, but she was sure he was seeing another mistress and did Idunn think she should confront him? Idunn didn’t.
Adelaide Mystik was nowhere to be seen.
For a few minutes he played the old game: guessing which Old World land each guest was descended from, imagining the landscapes where their ancestors had lived. He wondered if Citizens even cared about those places, or if it no longer mattered to them.
There was a relentless, kinetic energy about the party. Near the mezzanine, people were dancing. A DJ was up there. Vikram imagined these people would die rather than allow silence to fall between them. He lit a cigarette, because everyone else was, and almost ashed in a glass bowl before he realized there were petals and a ladle in it. A few glasses with the dredges of liquid were stacked beside. He looked about for a new one. A red jacketed man appeared, refilled the bowl with a pale pink liquid, replaced the used glasses with clean ones, and retreated.
“Thanks-”
The man had already gone. Vikram took a glass and ladled himself a drink. It was strong and very sweet. Heady too, or maybe that was the rose perfume, twining about his senses.
Now armed with the two essential accessories for the party, he made his way across the room. He knew that it was important to look purposeful. All of these people were actors; they might be Citizens, but Citizens had things to hide too. He found himself looking out for cats, remembering Mikkeli’s old tales about the City. She would have gone crazy to see this.
Under the mezzanine, a couple were entwined upon a sofa. The woman’s eyes met his over the man’s shoulder, thick lashed, boldly inviting. Imperceptibly, she patted the seat. Vikram moved on.
The next room was much smaller. A table made out of shiny dark wood was in the centre, and along the wall there were shelves lined with paper books and scale mosaics. At the table, a man shook out a line of milaine.
“Hello.” He nodded easily to Vikram. His pupils were dilated.
“Hi.”
The man cut the line with an invitation card identical to Vikram’s.
There were two doors leading out of this room. Vikram tried the first. It was a bathroom. The bath was full of ice and bottles. Vikram retreated.
The man lifted his head, sniffing. “There’s another bathroom through there.”
“Thanks.”
The man frowned. “Not seen you before. What d’you do?”
“I’m a biker.”
“Ah. Probably seen you at the races. From afar.”
“Probably.”
The second door took him into a sparkling chrome kitchen. A few people were leaning against the counters, smoking and chatting. Potted herbs lined the window wall. Vikram could not imagine Adelaide as a cook.
He passed straight through into a dining area, empty this time. Vikram exhaled shakily. It was the layout of the place that was making him nervous. With each room, he took himself further away from the exit, and escape.
He forced himself to survey the room rationally. Like everything else in Adelaide’s apartment, this space was elegantly beautiful. He counted eight chairs pushed in under the glass-topped table, but it was laid, inexplicably, for two people.
