The City and the City

Borlú takes a tram to the ECS Centre. He calls Corwi and asks if it’s possible they’re dealing with a case of breach. She believes it’s unlikely. Another officer informs Borlú that the teenagers have been interrogated but their memories are sketchy. They remember a van pulling into the park, stopping briefly, and speeding away. Hoping to scavenge something the van may have left behind, the chewers investigated the scene and found the body.

Corwi takes Borlú through the Besźel neighborhood where the body was found. They show the victim’s picture to the local sex workers and “entry-level gangsters,” but no one recognizes her. Later, Borlú visits Shukman for his coroner’s report: The victim suffered head trauma before being stabbed to death. There are no defensive wounds, suggesting she was attacked unawares. Otherwise the report offers nothing definitive.

Borlú walks to ECS headquarters when he receives a call that they’ve found the van in question but no murder weapon. However, blood stains in the van match the victim’s, and they soon locate the van’s owner, Mikyael Khurusch, a man with a prior record of assault and solicitation. He is brought in for questioning, but he claims the van was stolen, and he has an alibi with witnesses to corroborate his story. Thus far, they have an unidentified woman, a stolen van filled with junk, and no murder weapon.

Posted photographs of the victim yield no results. Later that evening, Borlú receives an anonymous call from a man with a “foreign accent” who claims to have information about the case. He is calling from Ul Qoma, a city-state sharing the same physical space as Besźel. The victim’s name, he says, was Marya, and she was involved in underground, extremist politics. He directs Borlú to “look at the cells. The radicals. Someone’ll know who she is” (43). This case, Borlú realizes, could involve “breach.” If so, pursuing it would be in violation of a long-standing “existential protocol.” Wanting to follow the caller’s lead, but discreetly, he calls Corwi and suggests they pursue “dissident” suspects (Nazis, reds, “unificationists”).

Borlú reflects on the divergent language and history of the two cities. Corwi calls. Her investigation into extremist groups—whose common goal is the unification of the two cities—has yielded results. He meets Corwi and Pall Drodin, leader of the local chapter of the Besźqoma Solidarity Front. Borlú mentions Breach, a taboo subject, which angers Corwi, who doesn’t want to spook their informant. Drodin leads them to his headquarters in an old warehouse. He tells them the victim’s name was Byela Mar, “an obvious, and elegantly punning, pseudonym” roughly translating as nothing worth noting (57). She was mostly interested in their library, he claims, which contained banned books about the history of the two cities. Over time, however, she angered other members, so Drodin told her to leave. She was obsessed with Orciny, a mythical third city that, some believe, lies between the other two and “runs things.” However, the origins of Orciny—if real—persist only as fables. Beyla was snooping around in “dangerous shit,” Drodin claims, and she ultimately crossed over to Ul Qoma. He is not surprised she was killed.

Borlú and Corwi speculate that this case could involve Breach, and they debate whether to turn over the case to a higher authority. The higher authority, however, won’t hear the case for several days; currently they are focused on the “refugee camps.” Corwi contacts Ul Qoma law enforcement and finds information about the murder victim, whose real name is Mahalia Geary.