Pastworld

by Ian Beck

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  Age: Indeterminate; early 20s at most.

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  Known Associates: An affiliation of beggars and petty thieves; a city-wide network colloquially called ‘the ragged men’. Mostly ex-convicts or street children kept and nurtured by the Fantom over a number of years. Exact numbers unknown. On numerous occasions Inspector Lestrade has requested forces from the cadet corps to deal with the ragged men problem in a single ‘surgical’ strike. Permission and funding to this date have been denied by the Buckland Corporation

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  Biography: The Fantom at once terrifies and uplifts the spirits of the lower populace. The Gawkers see him as an adjunct to all the other entertainments on offer, just another elaborate recreation managed by the Buckland Corporation. Sadly in this they are much deceived. The Fantom is now as unofficial as it is possible to get. Suffice it to say that he must always be approached with the utmost caution. He is protected by his ragged men; these are the key to finding and destroying him. They are for the most part organised as a series of cells, a force to protect and supply the Fantom.

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  Once the Fantom was content to carry out violent and showy bank robberies. This enabled him to both comfortably control and hide his empire. His later public appearances – those open street battles with rival criminals, those jumps to certain doom from roofs and towers, those resurrections, and those redistributions of wealth – are but the tip of a very large iceberg. He deals with those who try to find, thwart, or betray him with a vicious and mechanical psychotic violence. It is never enough for him to kill an enemy or perceived enemy. He also mutilates in emulation and parody perhaps of the famous Ripper of the East London murders. It is as if he were handing the Corporation a series of historically styled murders to add to the authenticity of their dream city.

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  Sgt Catchpole looked up from the notes. He felt at the back of the folder and pulled out an envelope sealed with a wax seal and stamped in red officious letters, Strictly Confidential. He broke open the seal. Inside was a typewritten fragment cut from a longer document.

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  SUBJECT: Dr Jack Mulhearn.

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  After initial Biology master’s degree trained in the USA at MIT and came back to London just before the financial crash. Sought employment from the Buckland Corporation after his tenure at the Bio-Med research institute was cancelled. Assisted Lucius Brown on various classified projects for Buckland Corp., including the haunted house initiative, seance and ghost manifestations and finally the Prometheus project, which was terminated by the Corporation after an accidental fire destroyed the experimental site. Missing since the fire and officially recorded as dead. He is actually believed to be living somewhere quietly and well hidden in the Pastworld complex, sheltering Subject B. There have been no official sightings and in any case his appearance is likely to be much changed after fire injuries etc. He was marked with a small security biometric tattoo on his inner right wrist, a mark shared by few but carrying high corporate significance.

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  Chapter 24

  Inspector Lestrade arrived at the head offices of the Buckland Corporation. The building stood close to the restored fruit and vegetable market at Covent Garden and had once been a club for actors and lawyers. He was shown into a magnificent first-floor room, with a desk at one end dominated by an antique globe of the world. The centre of the huge room was completely filled with an enormous scale model of Pastworld London. It was complete with toy airships on wires which hovered over the miniature buildings and streets. Mr Abel Buckland stood in an elaborate quilted dressing gown adjusting something on one of the model buildings. He looked up and smiled at the inspector.

  ‘I have this whole model running on a very fine and elaborate system of steam and clockwork,’ he said. ‘It even has its own underground railway running beneath it. If you look in the cutaway section you can see it all. The most perfect miniature clockwork imaginable. I want to put a big skydome over the model eventually, just like the real thing, right up to the ceiling in here. I’ll run it both night and day and show all the constellations seasonally just as they would appear.’

  Lestrade cleared his throat. ‘This is not a social visit, Abel. A severed head was retrieved from a girder on top of Tower 42, and Lucius Brown has been abducted. He was violently lifted in the street on his way to the Corporation Halloween Party. I need your permission to strike at the ragged men now.’

  Abel Buckland set a little airship moving on its wire across the city. ‘Your proposal for solving all of this is to kill all the ragged men?’

  The Inspector watched the little machine whirr for a moment, and then he said, ‘I have some photographs I think you should see.’ He walked over and tipped the photographs out among the bric-a-brac and toys on the desk.

  Buckland came and sat in his chair. He put on a pair of glasses and peered down at the pictures. He picked one up. ‘I suppose this is from one of those wretched little spy cameras,’ he said. ‘You’ll be asking me to approve a whole slew more of them in a moment if I know you.’

  ‘No, I won’t,’ said the Inspector. ‘Just look very carefully.’

  Buckland flicked through the pictures. He paused, studied one picture in particular, and then another.

  ‘So,’ Buckland said eventually, ‘it was not just Lucius then, but Jack as well.’

  ‘Oh yes, him as well, and they killed him, straight away.’

  ‘He was blinded then by the fire, or nearly by the look of it. Why didn’t he just come in, come back to us?’

  ‘He was protecting her.’

  ‘Our clever friend the Gentleman seems to have arranged it all somehow?’

  ‘It certainly looks that way.’

  ‘What are you doing about it?’ Buckland looked up, pale in the lamplight. He let the photograph fall to the desk.

  ‘I have two prongs. First I sent in a good man. He will be on the trail and will report to me on whatever he finds. He is looking for Lucius and the boy, Lucius Brown’s son. My other prong is the cadet corps, a crack team. Give me the word and we can sweep away the ragged men in an hour.’

  ‘And this man you have sent, he is reliable?’ Abel said, ignoring the Inspector’s request.

  ‘Perfectly reliable. Sergeant Catchpole is a romantic like you, and perhaps like I once was. He is someone very much in tune with the dream of this place, I assure you.’

  ‘Good, good. We must keep this dream alive at all costs. The dream is all.’ Buckland stared wistfully across the room at the huge whirring model, at its twinkling lights. ‘Find him, find the Gentleman. It’s been too long. I would save him if I could. And of course you must find her too, the girl. That goes without saying; it was never more important,’ he said. ‘The big demolition is planned as a real spectacular. The last of the wretched old modern buildings is scheduled to come down in a beautiful and contolled explosion. I want it all solved by then. That will be a good moment for your “solution” to the ragged men problem. Use your cadets by all means, but leave the Fantom; he is mine.’

  The Inspector said, ‘Well, it was all our fault in the first place. If we had listened to –’

  Buckland interrupted him. ‘What we did was in the interests of science and pure research, and that is that. We have nothing to reproach ourselves for. I feel no guilt, rather pride. Yes, Lestrade, pride.’

  The Inspector went to pick up the photographs, but Buckland stayed his hand. ‘No, leave them with me,’ he said. ‘Do you know that visitor and resident applications numbers are predicted to double in five years? We will have to open new induction centres, and commission a new fleet of airships. The past, with all its rough and ready crudity, its dirt and its rock-solid certainties, is going to mean so much to so many people in the future.’ He gestured at the huge twinkling model with wide open arms. ‘Find them, please, Lestrade. You and I are the only ones left who know the truth about them. Find them, and try your best to save them both.’

 
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  Chapter 25

  Catchpole hovered among the crowd near the rendezvous point for the bootleg murder tour at Spitalfields market. It was conveniently placed for the mortuary. Here there was a properly festive atmosphere. One of Pastworld’s regular Dickensian Christmas days, Catchpole thought. A group of early carol singers were gathered below the great porch of Christchurch, and Catchpole listened to them as the snow fell gently on the crowds. It was a pretty picture if you didn’t know any better.

  Catchpole observed that a line had formed behind a shifty-looking plump man dressed as a policeman. He was holding his truncheon up in the air. The policeman blew lightly on his whistle and started to talk to the group around him in a low insistent voice, a voice imparting confidential information, dark secrets. Catchpole was too far away to hear, but he knew the excited Gawkers were here to see all the gruesome evidence at a terrible murder scene.

  Catchpole strolled over, one hand behind his back, his face fixed and serious. The fake policeman watched him suspiciously as he approached. Catchpole quickly pulled a five-pound note out from his coat pocket, much more than the normal fee for an illicit murder tour. He slipped it to the constable, who tipped his helmet, as Catchpole joined the group.

  ‘Glad to have you with us, sir,’ the guide said quietly. Then to the line of excited Gawkers: ‘We can’t stand here all day chit-chatting, there’s murder afoot. This way now.’

  The group moved off in an orderly crocodile, the guide at the front, Catchpole a few paces behind him. The guide stopped near the pub on the corner and raised his truncheon again.

  ‘In a moment we shall all go through this public bar and out into the backyard. A man was found dead this morning. I am told that he had been beaten. He was also mutilated, cut open and the internal organs disturbed. It may well be the work of a madman, but if this is anything like some similar cases that have occurred over the years then he is a madman of some medical skill. No doubt you have all read about these cases and the criminal known as the Fantom. You will have seen the engravings in the newspapers, and on the Wanted posters, and perhaps even the pictures of the victims of his crimes? Of course that will be nothing like the sight that will greet us today. Be prepared to be shocked and disgusted. You must not touch anything nor disturb the site in any way.’ They were led into the noisy public bar.

  The pub had a low ceiling and the interior was stuffy and dark. The people crowded in the bar were for the most part men, dressed in dirty workclothes. One or two women sat on the benches around the walls, holding flagons of beer and laughing with the groups of the men. One of them called out ‘Happy Christmas’ to the Gawkers as they walked nervously through the bar.

  They all went out into a dingy little yard, where the festive snowfall had hardly penetrated. The light was squeezed between the back of the pub and the nearby spire of the great church, and although the little patch of sky that could be seen was a bright picture-book blue, by the time the light reached the yard it had somehow clocked in as grey and dismal.

  The group of Gawkers were formed up by the fake constable in a line against the far wall of the yard. Even on a cold frosted morning the bricks smelled of stale urine.

  Something was bunched up under a blanket against the outside wall of the yard. Catchpole, having paid the most, was at the front with the guide near the blanket. The other Gawkers settled into an expectant silence. This is what they had paid their money for, the real gruesome authentic thing.

  ‘This body, this poor individual,’ said the guide, ‘is more than likely another victim of the famous criminal known popularly as the Fantom.’

  With a flourish the constable pulled back the blanket.

  There was a sudden gasp from the Gawkers. Someone put their hand up to their mouth and stifled a scream, another turned away to face the back wall. The guide knelt down and tugged at the lifeless head which was twisted away towards the bricks. He pulled it up by the hair.

  ‘See here,’ he said, ‘you will notice that the throat is cut through so deeply as to almost sever the head from the body.’

  Catchpole watched the faces of the Gawkers as they craned forward for a better look. Although they seemed genuinely horrified, they kept looking. He turned his attention back to the guide. He was holding the head up, his gloved finger pointing at the gaping wound in the throat which flapped open like a second mouth, edged with dried blood. The victim on such a tour was usually some poor, worthless illicit, who somehow was supposed to deserve all he or she had got, or if the victim was female, a so-called common prostitute. The guide looked round the dismal yard, into the furthest corners where one or two of the more squeamish Gawkers had taken themselves. They stood staring, shocked and fearful, looking like trapped animals. The guide then laid the murder victim’s head down with some gentleness on to the cobbles. With another flourish he pulled the blanket down to reveal the hastily stitched up abdomen. Other Gawkers looked more alarmed now. One of them suddenly let out a piercing scream. At the same time there was a burst of laughter from inside the pub.

  Catchpole crouched down beside the body. He noticed the sticky trail of thick brownish red fluid which had seeped from under the blanket. It was dark and oily-looking and he could smell the telltale tang of iron, the iron of pooled blood, the iron in the soul. The body had been simply dumped on a murder tour site, an act of provocation that looked like nothing more than an advertisement for what the Fantom could do and get away with if he wished. Gawkers pressed against Catchpole and the guide, trying to get close. The guide held out his hand in a stop gesture, and motioned the group back again to the far wall.

  ‘Please, ladies and gentlemen,’ the guide said, ‘you are damaging the integrity of a crime scene, the clues are being trampled, and may be lost. Please stay well back.’

  ‘How come he’s allowed close?’ one Gawker called out pointing at Catchpole.

  ‘He paid more,’ said the guide matter-of-factly.

  Catchpole looked down at the neat gash in the blind man’s throat. He felt suddenly nauseous and very hot despite the snowfall. It was rare now for anyone from the Outside to see the result of savage violence of this sort. This was a very dead, very sad person, as real and as dead as that head left on the ruins of Tower 42. Catchpole’s whole bearing changed, now he was a modern professional police detective. He elbowed the guide aside and produced his warrant card and held it close to the guide’s face.

  ‘Get them out,’ Catchpole said under his breath. ‘I’m sealing this crime scene now, take them somewhere else, go on quickly.’ The guide whispered, ‘Bastard copper,’ and then said loudly, ‘Ladies and gentlemen, this visit will have to be cancelled at once, I’m afraid.’

  The guide ushered the complaining Gawkers back through the dark and noisy pub. They were confused. Some offered to pay more or started to demand a turn to look at the body. The guide silenced them and at the mention of ‘an unfortunate official police interest’ the Gawkers dispersed, grumbling, into the surrounding crowd.

  Catchpole replaced the blanket and walked back through the dismal pub. He found a bobby on routine patrol outside. He showed his warrant card, and the bobby saluted him.

  ‘Go for an ambulance,’ Catchpole said, ‘at once, please.’ The constable set off.

  Catchpole did not have to wait long. A horse ambulance arrived in minutes. Two uniformed men climbed out of the back, they carried a stretcher with them as they crossed over to the pub. A crowd soon gathered outside the pub in Commercial Street. More police arrived to empty the pub and form a line barring entry. A muffin man walked straight through the line of policemen, as if they weren’t even there.

  Catchpole turned his back on the Gawkers. What he had seen had indeed been horrible; he wouldn’t wish it on anyone. The thought that this was one of the reasons that some Gawkers visited Pastworld in the first place made him feel disgusted. He tried not to think of his churning stomach. The police emerged from the pub along with a stretcher with the covered body on it. A path was
cleared through the groups of Gawkers. For a moment he looked at the empty place where some children had been playing snowballs. They were all busy now watching the ambulance as it crossed the piazza in a flurry of snow.

  Catchpole looked around at the crowd. The ghoulish Gawkers had all but melted away. The rest of the street was on the move, bustling and busy, hurrying about their business. All except one, a lone woman stood motionless on the busy pavement. Everything and everyone flowed past her but she stayed still like a statue. She seemed to be scanning the street. It looked as if she were waiting for someone. Catchpole, curious, walked over to her.

  ‘Takes me back to my own childhood,’ he said, indicating the boys back at their snowball fight, and speaking in what he hoped was a friendly voice, ‘except that there never was this much snow and it was never so clean.’

  The woman turned to him with a distracted face. She wore a wide battered hat in black felt, and had a spotted fur tippet tucked round her throat. The fur around her neck suddenly moved, a spotted leg stretched out and the head of a cat emerged and looked at him.

  ‘Down then, Kitty,’ said the woman. The cat jumped down on the end of a black leash and rubbed itself against her legs.

  ‘A very tame animal,’ Catchpole said.

  ‘What happened in there?’ she asked. ‘Did they find someone? Was it a man or a woman?’ She gestured at the pub with her gloved hand.

  ‘As a matter of fact it was a man,’ said Catchpole.

  ‘Can you describe him for me?’ she asked. ‘Only it’s really very urgent, you see.’

  Catchpole spoke quietly. ‘He was a shabby man, seemed to have almost no teeth, and very pale eyes, most likely blind.’

  The woman looked down at her spotted cat. ‘Oh no,’ she said. ‘I fear I might know who it is. I have been looking out for him for a few days now.’

  She bent down and scooped up her little spotted cat in her arms. She buried her face in its fur for an instant, and then she raised herself to her full height. She spoke to the cat. ‘I fear it’s Jack, Kitty, isn’t it? Poor old Jack.’