The Mortality Principle. Alex Archer
got a segment to tape.”
“Excellent. I’ve been getting antsy kicking my heels here all day.”
She laughed at that. “I don’t know if you’ve been watching the news, but there’s a killer on the loose in the city and we didn’t even know about it.”
The penny dropped. “Are you out of your mind? There’s a lunatic out there and you want us to go looking for him? I thought we were here to shoot a segment about the golem.”
“We are. But it’s not quite that simple,” she said. “There’s a journalist who seems to think that there’s a link to the golem.”
“You mean like it’s the golem doing the killing kind of link? Or some kind of homage?”
“I don’t know. I want to talk to him, but that means finding him, and the best link I’ve got is that he’s living on the street right now. He’s been covering the story since it began, living among the people who are the most vulnerable.”
“You mean he’s sleeping outside when there’s a killer who’s preying on the homeless? That’s one crazy mofo.”
“He’s certainly dedicated to the truth,” Annja said.
“And you want us to go out into his hunting ground? Are you planning on painting a target on our backs, as well?”
“Nothing so risky. I just want to poke about a bit.”
“I remember the last time you just wanted to poke about, Annja. Just promise me no burning churches this time.”
“We’ll be fine,” Annja said, trying to reassure him even though she remembered all too vividly what had happened the last time they’d gone out on a shoot together. How could she forget? She really hated fire.
She didn’t have to take him out on this little recce, but given what she had in mind for the live show, grabbing some footage of the homeless on the streets of Prague might just be useful filler, assuming the program came together the way she wanted it to. It certainly wouldn’t hurt.
“I’ll hold you to that. Just tell me what time you want me and I’ll be there.”
“I always want you,” Annja said, deliberately flirting with the Swede. They enjoyed a good bit of lighthearted banter. It helped to take her mind off what they were about to do, and that was not a bad thing. “There’s no point in heading out before dark, and this place doesn’t feel like it slows down even then. All the shops around the Charles Bridge are still open, selling their tourist crap, so we’re looking at a late night. Probably after eleven. Turek, the journalist, is almost certainly going to be tucked up in bed until then, but if I hear from him earlier I’ll let you know.”
“He knows you’re trying to get hold of him?”
“I left a message with the newspaper that’s been running his stories, and they promised to reach out to him. Who knows?”
“Well, if that’s the case I may just continue my sightseeing tour. First stop, I think, the House of the Black Madonna, the cubist café. Might even catch a movie after that. Someone mentioned an English theater in town.”
“Knock yourself out.”
The rest of the day passed slowly.
The hotel lobby filled and emptied, filled and emptied, all walks of life seeming to drift through the atrium and yet it maintained its sense of calm. She could imagine the monks all those years ago shuffling through the same chambers, heads bowed in quiet contemplation. There was a conference in town, medical supplies by the sounds of the jargon being bandied about by the participants as they tried to one-up one another with jokes and punch lines that made no sense to Annja.
By early evening she was finally starting to feel hungry. She thought about calling room service, but the menu was fairly unappetizing and she had an entire city at her disposal. She’d heard about a place down by the river where the intellectuals and artists used to gather that had become a hive of secret activity during the revolution and now was renown for cheap good-quality eats in an authentic environment. It was proper precapitalism Prague, and it was only a five-minute walk away along one of the wider boulevards. Nothing was going to happen at five-thirty, she told herself, and ventured out in search of food.
Shop windows with words she couldn’t read emblazoned across them shone invitingly at one end of the street and were boarded up at the other. She saw young women walking in groups, laughing, and young men behind them, studious with book bags slung over their shoulders and earnest expressions behind their black plastic-framed glasses. She heard snatches of conversation in English about Kafka and a church around the corner that they were sure was featured in one of his stories. Those strands of intellectualism were cut across by more mundane chatter, including the fact that some website had gone down. What she didn’t hear was anyone talking about the murders.
The restaurant itself was the last building on the street, with huge plate-glass windows looking out over the Vltava. Inside, soft lighting from huge chandeliers gave the impression of opulence that was contradicted almost immediately by the tables beneath them, which looked like they would have been at home in a greasy spoon in the Bowery.
She sat at a table by the window, with a great view of the castle on the hill, and watched as one by one the stars came out. She asked the waiter what he’d recommend, something local, authentic Czech cuisine. He came back with a sampler filled with all sorts of peculiarities. She had no idea what she was putting into her mouth. Some of it was delicious, some of it wasn’t.
The meal killed another hour, the leisurely coffee after it another thirty minutes. Annja was good when it came to keeping her own company. She didn’t need to hide herself in a book, either. She was just content to simply be. To sit, gazing out of the window at the world as it passed by. To think.
And tonight she was thinking about Roux and Garin.
There was obviously something going on between the pair of them again. They were like a couple of teenage girls sometimes. She wanted to bang their heads together. But Roux was right: Garin’s simply turning up this morning was uncharacteristic even if he tried to pass it off as boredom. Very little Garin Braden did was without some underlying cause, and that cause only ever benefited Garin Braden. That was just the way of the world. It was hard to be angry with him for it. It was who he was. You might as well be angry with the wasp for stinging you or the milk for expiring. To quote the motivational poster: shit happens.
By the time Annja headed back to the hotel, the sun was a thing of the past, and the sky was verging on black. Cities were a different animal at night. Streets that had felt safe even just an hour earlier had a hostile undercurrent once the moon ruled the sky.
Annja made it back to her room for nine. Garin was nowhere in sight. It was still early to go out looking for the journalist, but she called Lars, anyway. “Fifteen minutes?” she said.
Getting back out there seemed to be more useful than sitting there tapping her foot. She didn’t know how life on the street worked. Turek might already be trying to lay claim to a sheltered spot for the night.
“Thought you’d bailed on me,” Lars replied. “I’ve been watching the news for the past three hours, but there’s been no mention of the killings.”
Annja wasn’t surprised. She said as much to Lars.
They arranged to meet down in the atrium.
Annja didn’t take much with her. All she needed was the street map where she’d marked a few possible locations and landmarks of interest. It hadn’t been difficult to identify the kinds of places where the homeless gathered, where soup kitchens were set up to feed them and where the hostel beds could be found to keep a few of them warm at night. But she wasn’t interested in those places. There was safety in numbers.