Kraken Read Online Free PDF

woman looked at each other in speechless conclave. They communicated something with waggled eyebrows and pouted lips, repeated quick nods.
    Baron said, slowly, “Well if you should think of anything, Mr. Harrow, do please let us know.”
    “Yeah.” Billy shook his head. “Yeah, I will.” He put up surrender hands.
    “Good man.” Baron stood. He gave Billy a card, shook his hand as if the gratitude were genuine, pointed him to the door. “Don’t go anywhere, will you? We might want to have another chat.”
    “Yeah, I think we will,” the woman said.
    “What did you mean ‘Pin Man’s disappeared’?” said Billy.
    Baron shrugged. “Everything and everyone’s vanishing, isn’t it? Not that he ‘disappeared’ really; that would imply he was ever there. Your visitors have to book and leave a number. We’ve called everyone you were escorting yesterday. And the gentleman with the sparkle on his lapel …” Baron tap-tapped the design. “Ed, he told your desk his name was. Right, Ed . The number he gave’s unregistered, and no one’s answering.”
    “Hie thee to your books, Billy,” Vardy said as Billy opened the door. “I’m disappointed in you.” He tapped the paper. “See what Kooby Derry and Morry can show you.” The words were weird but weirdly familiar.
    “Wait, what?” said Billy from the doorway. “What was that?” Vardy waved him away.
    B ILLY TRIED AND FAILED TO PARSE THE ENCOUNTER ON HIS BEWILDERED way south. He had not been under arrest: he could have left at any time. He had his phone out, ready to do a tirade for Leon, but again for reasons he could not put into words, he did not make the call.
    Nor did he go home. Instead, full of an unending sense of being under observation, Billy went to the centre of London. From café to bookshop café, mooching through paperbacks on his way through too much tea.
    He did not have a phone with Internet connection, nor did he have his laptop with him, so could not test his intuition that his own reveal the previous night notwithstanding, there would be no information about the squid’s disappearance in the news. The London papers certainly did not cover it. He did not eat, though he stayed out late enough, hours, that it was past time, until it was evening, then early night. He did not really do anything but moodily consider and grow frustrated, did not call the centre, only tried to consider possibilities.
    What came back and back to him, what grew to gnaw him most throughout those hours, were the names that Vardy had said. Billy was absolutely certain he had heard them, that they meant something to him. He regretted that he hadn’t insisted on more from Vardy: he did not even know how to spell them. He scribbled possibilities on a scrap of paper, kubi derry, morry, moray, kobadara , and more.
    Got some bloody poking around to do , he thought.
    On his way home at last his attention was drawn, he was not sure why, to a man on the backseat of his bus. He tried to work out what he had noticed. He could not get a clear view.
    The guy was big and broad, in a hoodie, looking down. Whenever Billy turned, he was hunched over or with his face to the glass. Everything they passed tried to grab Billy’s attention.
    It was as if he were watched by the city’s night animals and buildings, and by every passenger. I shouldn’t feel like this , Billy thought. Neither should things. He watched a woman and man who had just got on. He imagined the couple shifting straight through the metal chair behind him, out of his sight.
    A gust of pigeons shadowed the bus. They should be sleeping. They flew when the bus moved, stopped when it stopped. He wished he had a mirror, so he could watch without turning his head, see that man in back’s evasive face.
    They were on the top deck, above the most garish of central London’s neon, by low treetops and first-floor windows, the tops of street signs. The light zones were reversed from their oceanic order, rising, not