Redlaw - 01

by James Lovegrove

  “That you know of Subject V and have taken no steps to report it makes you an accessory,” Lambourne said. “Don’t even think of ever using his existence as leverage against me. Try to topple me, and you’ll be the one going down. And on that note...”

  Lambourne took out his iPhone and summoned his chauffeur with a tap of an icon. By the time he reached the park gates, his Bentley Continental would be there waiting for him, door open.

  “A useful chat, Giles. I hope you’ll come away from it with a slightly clearer grasp of the state of our relationship.”

  “Oh, I have, Nathaniel, don’t you worry.”

  After Lambourne had gone, Slocock loitered a little longer in the shadow of the Memorial Fountain. The monument had been erected in 1865 by an MP, Charles Buxton, to celebrate the abolition of the slave trade. The drinking fountain which sheltered within the ornate gothic structure bore an inscription saluting William Wilberforce and other emancipators, including Buxton’s own father.

  Slocock found sympathising with the downtrodden difficult at the best of times. But this was not the best of times, and as he bent to take a drink at one of the fountain’s four marble basins, he felt that he understood the thirst of the shackled and indentured to be free.

  CHAPTER FIFTEEN

  Redlaw awoke with a start. His Cindermaker rested in his left hand, his index finger curled loosely around the trigger. His right shoulder was still a nexus of pain, but hurt markedly less than earlier.

  He was sitting propped up against a bare brick wall. He smelled dust, dankness and the stale-sweet aroma of beer. He blinked into a cavernous gloom, fuzzily piecing together where he was. He had slept hard—the deep dreamless slumber of the lost and dispossessed.

  He was in the cellar of a pub. An old pub—old, out of business and closed down. A sliver of light fell from between the flaps of the steel trapdoor overhead like a guillotine blade, dust motes turning to gold as they drifted through it. Midday, by the angle of the light. Damn it. He’d been out far longer than planned.

  He creaked upright. Illyria. Where was she? He looked over to a corner of the cellar, the one furthest from the trapdoor, where empty wine racks and a few sticks of furniture from upstairs had been piled up tightly and carefully. Together they formed a kind of lean-to tepee, and inside it, balled like a foetus, she lay.

  Redlaw was struck by how vulnerable she seemed, in sleep. There was no hint here of the lithe, lethal creature he had witnessed just a few hours ago, tearing a dozen Sunless apart with virtually no effort. This, now, was a slender, frail-looking thing, huddled behind a makeshift bulwark in fear of even the slightest touch of sunlight.

  He had no choice but to leave her there. It surprised him that this even bothered him; Illyria Strakosha could unarguably fend for herself. It felt like an abandonment nonetheless.

  He climbed the steep cobwebby staircase up to the bar and retraced the route he and Illyria had taken through the building, after they had broken in last night. He found the back door whose boarded-up window Illyria had punched through. He stepped out, shading his eyes, into a backyard where locals had fly-tipped all the rubbish they couldn’t be bothered to carry down to the proper waste dump. He picked his way through to the back gate and out to the street.

  The pub—The Cross In Hand; he recalled Illyria pointing out the sign to him and making some crack—stood on a corner. He was a while getting his bearings. One tract of north London suburbia looked much like another. NW2, the street signs said. Borough of Barnet. He followed his nose until he reached Cricklewood Broadway. The blood pouch in his coat pocket sloshed gloopily with every step, as if to remind him what he had to do.

  He would attend to it. First things first, though. He was famished. A Starbucks lured him in, and he wolfed down two croissants and a massive cappuccino. That wasn’t enough, and he went in search of a greasy-spoon café serving all-day breakfasts, ordered a full English and polished it off in record time. Using his right hand to carve up rashers of bacon was a small torture but, again, he was aware that his shoulder was nowhere near as bad as it had been.

  In the café’s toilet he removed his coat, rolled up his sleeve, peeled back the dressing and inspected the wound in the mirror. It was puckered, puffy, flaring-red, very ugly. He noticed that, while most of the stitches were surgical sutures tied in neat square knots, two weren’t. Another type of thread had been used for them—it looked like ordinary sewing cotton—and the knots were tidy in their fashion but still cruder than the rest.

  He had no recollection of Illyria mending the stitches he had torn. She must have done it while he slept. Dear God, how insensible did you have to be for someone to put two fresh stitches in you and not be woken by it? He was both alarmed and oddly touched, picturing her ministering to him in the dark. Any other Sunless would have taken advantage, ripped a hole in his neck and drunk from his jugular as though slurping water from a spigot. Illyria, instead, had deftly, delicately fixed him up, knowing he would never have given his consent had he been conscious.

  You let your guard down, Redlaw.

  No, wrong tense.

  You’ve let your guard down.

  He caught the Tube at Kilburn Park. Redlaw loved the Underground. You could go down a rabbit hole almost anywhere in London and emerge from another rabbit hole almost anywhere else. It was magic—he’d known that since a child. Dirty, noisy, smelly, overcrowded and unreliable, but magic all the same.

  He felt safe and anonymous among the milling throngs of passengers. Shadies as a rule didn’t travel by Tube, certainly not during daylight hours, so it was unlikely he would bump into someone he knew. The Metropolitan Police might be on the lookout for him, he supposed, London Transport Police too, but the odds on running into a representative of either force were slim. As for CCTV, as long as he kept his head down, half buried in the upturned lapels of his overcoat, he should be all right. Calm and unobtrusive, that was the way to play it.

  He rode the rumbling rails southward, then westward.

  A short time later, he came up at Ladbroke Grove. Outside the station a newsvendor had just finished installing a recently arrived headline sheet behind the grille in his stand. Redlaw glimpsed the words “PM’s bold Sunless relocation scheme.” The newsvendor began cutting the twine on a bale of Evening Standards, hot off the press. Redlaw snatched up the top copy and hurried to a nearby bench.

  Most of the front page was taken up by a picture of Solarville One, squatting on the landscape like a big fat black blood-blister. Inside there was an array of images of its interior, and the accompanying text reproduced the Prime Minister’s statement verbatim along with facts and figures about the dome and houses and, in a boxout, a profile of Nathaniel Lambourne. The Standard’s editorial was broadly in favour of the Solarville project. “It severs the Gordian Knot of a seemingly intractable problem,” was its conclusion. “Some may carp, but the right-thinking majority will surely heave a sigh of relief.”

  Redlaw read and reread. Nothing in the article changed anything. The Sunless were swapping one form of internment for another, that was all. He could see a kind of sense to it.

  All the same, he was uneasy. The involvement of Nathaniel Lambourne in the Solarville project set his antennae twitching. BovPlas was a subsidiary holding of Lambourne’s Dependable Chemicals. That seemed more than coincidence.

  Redlaw was conscious of events moving fast, the stage scenery shifting around him. That made it all the more urgent that he get on with the matter at hand.

  The spire of St Erasmus’s rose clear above the rooftops, visible from some distance, like an immense finger pointing the way. Redlaw binned the newspaper and started walking.

  “John Redlaw in full daylight. Wonders will never cease. Aren’t you afraid you’ll burst into flames?”

  From Redlaw’s expression, Father Dixon gathered that jokes were unwelcome—not even a little light teasing. Well, tough.

  “Come in, come in,” he said, and in no time he was plonking a mug of steam
ing tea in front of his guest. The mug bore the inscription Vicars Do It On Their Knees. It was a gift from a parishioner, one of many cat-loving spinsters in Father Dixon’s flock who’d developed a complicated, daughter-like crush on their pastor. “Don’t suppose you’d care for a dash of cognac in that?”

  Redlaw fixed him with a stony look. “I couldn’t think of anything more revolting.”

  “Only asking. You look like you could do with some, that’s all. Me, I rarely take tea without, when I’m at home.” As if to prove the point, Father Dixon charged his own mug with a generous dash of Courvoisier. “Makes everything slip down more easily.”

  The vicarage kitchen was modest and unmodernised, all fixtures dating back to the 1970s, the golden age of Formica. The vicarage was also modest, a little redbrick cube crouching across the road from the church on the edge of a housing estate. The original official residence of the priest of the parish of St Erasmus was a huge, beautiful Victorian manse, but that had been sold off to property developers decades ago and converted into luxury apartments. There was a fine, uninterrupted view of it from the kitchen window, which Father Dixon could enjoy every time he did the washing-up at his tiny sink.

  “I feel I’m going to need it,” he added. “What’s on your mind?”

  “I have a favour to ask,” said Redlaw.

  “It’s the Pope grants favours. We in the C of E just go in for a bit of light mutual back-scratching.” Still only po-faced blankness from Redlaw. “Oh, come on, John. This is interdenominational comedy gold. I could go on stage with this kind of material.”

  “Don’t give up the day job.”

  “Tough crowd,” Father Dixon muttered. “What sort of favour, then?”

  Redlaw wasn’t sure how much to reveal. “You’ve seen the news, I take it.”

  “‘My husband’s no love rat,’ claims footballer’s wife. Poor lass. The phone footage of him and that nightclub stripper are pretty conclusive evidence. Or are you referring to the Prime Minister’s Solarville statement? I’m going to chance my arm and say it’s that one.”

  “And the riots that have prompted it. I’m halfway convinced this isn’t just some random sequence of events. Something bigger and more far-reaching is going on, and I aim to find out what. That’s where the favour comes in.”

  “I’ll help if I can. I’ve no idea how, though. I’m just a humble pulpit jockey.”

  “The thing is, it so happens I can’t go into HQ right now.”

  “Why ever not?”

  “Long, complicated story. Let’s just say I’m persona non grata at SHADE.”

  “Persona non...? You mean fired?” Father Dixon was genuinely flabbergasted. “What have you done? It must have been pretty severe. You’re John Redlaw, for you-know-who’s sake. Poster boy for the Night Brigade. Wait. Did you criticise Macarthur’s hair? That would do it.”

  “I’m not prepared to go into it,” Redlaw said patiently. “All I want is for you to go to HQ and take something down to the forensics lab for me. Ask Dr Wing if she’ll analyse it ASAP.”

  “‘Something’ being...?”

  Redlaw placed the blood pouch on the table.

  Father Dixon peered at it, frowning particularly over the BovPlas sticker. “What should I tell the delectable Delilah Wing to look for? Assuming I do this for you.”

  “Anything anomalous. Anything that doesn’t belong.”

  “Meaning it mightn’t be pure cattle blood in there as advertised on the label. But why...? Oh. Oh. And that’s what... That could be the reason for...”

  All at once he was regarding the pouch with suspicion and a touch of wariness.

  “I could be wrong. It could be nothing,” Redlaw said. “Dr Wing will be able to establish that one way or the other.”

  “And what excuse should I give for being at HQ in the first place?”

  “You pop in now and then, don’t you, for old times’ sake? No excuse necessary.”

  “You realise you’re asking a priest to lie,” said Father Dixon sternly.

  “I’m asking a friend to go out on a limb for me, in the name of the greater good.”

  “But it’s still a sin. We reverends are held to a higher standard of morality than your average punter. I could go to Hell for this.”

  “Look, if you’re not up for it, for whatever reason, that’s fine. I’ll figure out some other way of—”

  “John, I’m messing with you.” Father Dixon chortled. “Of course I’ll do it. It’ll be a laugh. Besides, I’ve nothing else on this afternoon. Nothing that can’t be postponed, at least. The sick and dying of St Erasmus’s parish will still be sick and dying tomorrow—apart from the ones that don’t last ’til tomorrow, but they’ll just have to lump it. God’ll welcome them to His bosom regardless of whether they had a chat with their vicar immediately beforehand. He’s decent that way. Doesn’t demand deathbed confessions, not like the other lot’s God.”

  “I appreciate this, Father. Really I do.”

  “In this context, John, it’s Graham, not Father. And if it’s okay with you, I’m going to help myself to another nip of cognac, without the tea this time. The old nerves could definitely do with some steadying.”

  Father Dixon left for SHADE HQ an hour later. He had stowed the blood pouch in the battered leather holdall in which he normally carried his stole, chasuble and sacrament when visiting parishioners. He gave Redlaw a cockeyed salute as he set off down the front path—man on a mission. Redlaw last’s sight of him was him straightening his cardigan and adjusting his clerical collar as he stepped through the gate onto the road.

  Half an hour to walk from Ladbroke Grove to Paddington. He’d get there around four. Dr Wing was an early bird by SHADE standards. She would probably have just arrived.

  Beneath the superciliousness, Father Dixon was a decent man. But was he capable of being discreet and wily?

  Redlaw had to hope so.

  CHAPTER SIXTEEN

  SHADE headquarters occupied a former set of council offices a stone’s throw from Paddington station. Only its sheer size—extending the length of a city block, nine storeys tall—hinted at importance. Otherwise it was outwardly unimpressive, a nondescript specimen of municipal architecture, all prestressed concrete and unopenable windows.

  The place was busier than Father Dixon had anticipated. The SHADE working ‘day’ didn’t usually start until shortly before sunset, but this afternoon, with nightfall not due for another three hours yet, the building thrummed with activity. Out in the street, patrol cars had already begun to surface from the sub-basement garage. In the lobby, shadies by the dozen were clocking in, yawning as they swiped their ID cards through the barrier sensor.

  Father Dixon signed in at the front desk. The duty officer asked him if he had an appointment.

  “No, this is just a social call,” he replied.

  “Who to?”

  “The Commodore.” It was the only answer Father Dixon could think of. He didn’t want to say Dr Wing in case it aroused suspicion. Dropping by to see Macarthur was a plausible pretext—he’d done it before.

  “You’re in luck, Father. She’s in. Let me just call up and tell her you’re here.” The duty officer picked up the phone.

  “Oh, that won’t be necessary,” Father Dixon said hurriedly.

  “I think it will. We’ve got a nightmare of a night ahead of us. In case you haven’t noticed, every shady in town’s been drafted in to help with the ’Less relocation. The Commodore is rushed off her feet organising it all. You can’t just wander up to her office and walk in willy-nilly. She won’t like it.”

  He dialled an extension number. Father Dixon waited on tenterhooks.

  “All right, well, she must be away from her desk.” The duty officer put down the receiver and gestured to a row of chairs. “You sit over there and I’ll try her again for you in a minute.”

  “How about I just go up anyway?”

  “How do you expect to find her? Rabbit warren up there. She could be anywher
e.”

  “I’ll stand outside her office like a supplicant ’til she returns. She’s bound to sooner or later.”

  The duty officer eyed him sceptically. “Hmmm. If it was anyone else... but I don’t suppose there’d be any trouble with you...”

  “Bless you,” said Father Dixon, affixing a visitor’s permit to the lapel of his cardigan.

  He took the lift down instead of up, and after wandering lost in the basement for several minutes, eventually found his way to the forensics lab. He was feeling flushed and exhilarated as he rapped at the door. Cloak-and-dagger stuff wasn’t his forte—not much call for subterfuge in the daily life of your average vicar—but here he was, bluffing and bamboozling with the best of them. God evidently approved of what he was up to, otherwise He wouldn’t have given him such an easy ride so far.

  Delilah Wing, one quarter Chinese, three quarters Caucasian, dumpy-cute, blinked up at him in surprise through her bottle-bottom spectacles. She was wearing scrubs, a plastic apron and a pair of latex gloves smeared with traces of blood.

  “Oh. I wasn’t expecting anyone.”

  “Father Dixon. Remember me? Used to work here. May I come in?”

  “Um, sure, okay.”

  “I won’t shake hands, if you don’t mind.”

  Dr Wing closed the door as she had opened it, with her elbow, then peeled off the gloves and tossed them in a hazmat bin.

  The lab was sparsely furnished and equipped. Not a high proportion of the SHADE budget went on forensics. In fact, Dr Wing’s specialty was almost bottom of the list of priorities here. Her responsibilities consisted largely of autopsying officers who had been killed in the line of duty and analysing Sunless spoor at the sites of rogue nests to determine if the number of occupants tallied with the number of Sunless dusted. Signs of her lack of full employment were all around, from the countless magazines scattered over the work surfaces to the World Of Warcraft game that ran almost nonstop on her computer. When she worked, she worked diligently, but opportunities to do so were infrequent.