After a brief word with the bartender, Vincent learnt she wasn’t just pulling pints. She owned the place.
Kira Zimina, a refugee from the USSR. She spoke sparingly, careful with words, generous with her gaze. The bar was her shelter and her home, and Rose was the bright patch that made a home feel warm. Rose had come in one rainy day, swimming in a jacket a size too big, fringe plastered to her forehead, an elastic on her wrist where a bracelet ought to be. She said she could smile at customers and learned fast. Within a week she knew who took stout, who forced down gin only for the cherry maraschino; she set glasses down softly. She stayed after hours to scrub the bar until it squeaked, switched on the old jukebox, and chose the same song each time, the voice running like a thread of light through dust. She tipped her earnings into cat food for the strays. On her palm was a small white scar, like a comma at the end of a letter. Kira noticed it whenever Rose was slicing limes with that neat quickness of hers.
The last few weeks had come out uneven. Rose began arriving late, glanced over her shoulder at the door, dabbed at a bruise under her eye with powder a touch too carefully. More than once Kira had spotted a black umbrella in the window, motionless in a misting rain. On Wednesday night Rose took a photo strip from her locker, the narrow kind from a booth. She said she’d stop by early tomorrow, “I need to explain something,” and left a scrap of paper in the tip jar: “Back soon.” By night the phone had gone silent.
Kira talked without complaint, peeling back memory as carefully as skimming the froth from a pot of stock. Vincent logged everything: the regulars’ names, someone’s forgotten scarf, the hour of CCTV that had gone missing just when Rose slipped out the back; the key on a cord she always wore round her neck, and the night she’d come in without it.
***
Vincent stepped out of the staff room. The bar’s hum fell behind him. After the talk about Rose, he remembered. Right. Find the girl who looked like Anna, or Anna herself. He stood on the pavement, staring into the street’s dark. His phone buzzed in his jacket pocket. He pulled it out without thinking; the glow cut a cold rectangle into the night.
Message from Tate:
—---------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
They’ve got him. Name’s Carmer Fleming. Along with confessing to the murder, he’s also trying to prove he’s the Faceless.
—---------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Good. For once, things lined up in a way a human mind could hold on to: a body, a suspect, a procedure. For a couple of seconds it was almost soothing. Then the sentence trying to prove he’s the Faceless spoiled it. The screen flipped: incoming call. Number withheld. It was late; he wasn’t in the mood for small talk, but he answered anyway. Occupational reflex.
A hoarse, elderly voice came on, breath heavy.
“Hello. I’d like to share some information. I recently saw a girl, about sixteen. She looked like that…”
A pause. Vincent stiffened. His brain threw up the first name: Olivia Johnson. Missing. The posters were still pinned to the noticeboards at the nick; her face had settled into his hindbrain.
“What’s her name… She’s everywhere right now.”
Olivia, his mouth nearly said, but the stranger got there first.
“Right. Anna Lord.”
“Who are you? How did you get my personal number?”
On the other end the voice dropped a notch. He smiled as he spoke, and the smile was wrong.
“It doesn’t matter. Portobello Road, number sixty-six. An alley between the flats, next to a basketball court. The girl’s still there.”
Too specific to be a drunk’s rambling. Too exact.
Vincent tightened his grip on the mobile.
“Can I take your name? Where are you right now?”
All he got back was a short breath; the caller had waited for him to finish out of courtesy. A sharp click. The line went dead. He lowered the phone and listened to the emptiness. A tug to ring the mortuary, check again. Maybe he was dreaming.
***
A red phone box stood on the corner, forgotten and scratched, plastered with flyers for missing Olivia Johnson and other missing girls, layered over older ones no one had torn away. The old man set the receiver down, breathing hard. His fingers trembled; his nails were black with grime.
In the booth’s cloudy glass, a worn-out face stared back: grey-haired, a bruise blooming under his eye. He blinked. The reflection didn’t. His neck slid forwards and back at the same time. The face in the pane stretched; the skin shivered like a film on boiling water. Dark fluid welled at the corners of its mouth. Its eyes filled with thick blackness, squeezing out the light. The man tried to jerk away, but his legs wouldn’t obey. A sharp pain flared in his chest, opening like a rusty trap. He grabbed at his heart, mouth open, but the air was gone. The receiver knocked the glass. The sound came back dull.
Within a minute the phone box was quiet. The body had slumped to the floor, his chin pressed to his knees, his eyes still open. Deep in them, for a little while, a tremor of something not his own shivered on, like an echo, before it went out. The old man was dead.
***
Portobello Road was sleeping, but not fully: the odd car, late walkers, neon in the windows of twenty-four-hour shops. Deeper in the estate, tucked between the blocks, a basketball court hid itself: rusted hoop, flaking backboard, a forgotten ball in the corner.
Vincent killed the engine and got out, checking the surroundings on autopilot. The alley beside it was narrow and tight, smelling of rubbish and wet concrete. The shadows bunched into a hard corridor leading inward. He headed in at a brisk pace. A weak streetlamp lit only a patch of tarmac; the rest was swallowed by the dark.
He didn’t see Anna at once. First, just a pale blot on the ground. Then the outline of a body, wrapped in a fabric he recognised. She lay on her side with her legs drawn up, one hand holding the edge of the blanket to herself. Her hair was strewn across the filthy concrete, stuck to damp patches.
Vincent stopped to make sure no one else was there. Then he walked forward, slowly.
“Anna,” he said softly, afraid he had the name wrong. He crouched beside her and touched her shoulder with care. “Are you really Anna?”
His fingers met warm skin. The girl sucked in a sharp breath. Her eyes flew open. Dark and glossy, and at first they held only a panicked glint of light. She flinched, trying to pull away, but her back hit the wall. The blanket slipped, baring a thin shoulder.
“Don’t be afraid. It’s me. Vincent.”
She looked at him the way you look at a stranger who’s come too close. There was no recognition there, no distant memory, only annoyance.
“It is really you… alive.”
Hearing it aloud felt strange. He barely believed himself.
Anna pushed herself up with an effort, keeping hold of the blanket. Her gaze shifted from him to the alley.
“What did you say your name was? Bin-sent?”
He blinked. Bin-sent? Took him a second. Then he corrected her.
“Vincent.”
“I don’t get it. Who even are you? I’ve had enough of strange familiars for one day. And where’s the old man? Yeah… the old man… Wh-what did he do to me? Why did I black out?!”
The words tumbled out unevenly, catching on themselves. She was shaking, but not from cold. He looked at her more closely. The same line of the jaw. The same mole under the eye. The same dark eyes, only now there was no childish stubbornness in them, just a scorched emptiness.
“I’m your uncle. Have you forgotten me already?” Vincent took her hand. “Come on, I’ll get you to a hospital.”
“Uncle? Oh, of course, and I’m Jesus. I’m not going anywhere with you, bloke. I’m not that thick.”
Vincent made himself speak more evenly, dropping his voice.
“Listen. We’ve had our clashes, sure. I get that you hate me. But don’t pretend you don’t know me. You need medical attention. Your body…” He paused. “Rather, you spent a long time in the mortuary.”
Anna turned away, heading for the mouth of the alley, giving him a little wave in parting.
“I’ve no idea what you’re on about. Bonjur.”
“Bonjur?” he echoed softly, almost at a loss.
He watched her shape recede into the dark, then gathered himself and forced out the words he hadn’t managed in years. Words snagged somewhere between pride, guilt, and the fear of being turned away.
‘forgive me’
‘sorry’
‘i’m sorry’
They came too late. Or else, for the first time, exactly on time. He didn’t know. He only thought that if she’d heard them then, things might have gone differently.
Anna stopped. Slowly looked back over her shoulder. In her eyes there was something familiar, not from memory but from that tether relatives sometimes feel, even when everything else is wrecked. Sadness settled over anger like a thin layer of ash.
A flare of the past washed over him: her wet hair, a scream, his own voice snapping into irritation when he’d shouted at her instead of pulling her into a hug.
“What are you apologising for?”
He stepped closer. He looked into her face, and the longer he looked, the clearer he saw the hollow gaps where memories used to be.
“You don’t remember me, do you?”
Anna said nothing. No confirmation, no denial, nothing.
He drew back and straightened.
“What do you remember?”
“My name. That’s it.”
Vincent rubbed a hand across his forehead, feeling the usual headache rise.
“All right. We’ll start again. I’m Detective Chief Inspector Vincent Lord.”
He took his warrant card from his inside pocket, flipped it open, showed it. For her, the document carried more weight just now than any talk of family.
“I’m not asking you to believe the family tie. I’m asking you to trust me as a police officer. Something has happened to you… unusual, to put it mildly. You could be in danger.”
Anna looked at the warrant card. At the crest, the photograph, the surname. The word “Lord” lent the whole thing a twist of irony, but she didn’t smile. He slid the document away. She watched him in silence, her lips trembling, thoughts skittering between several phrases at once. None of them fit.
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