Seventy-Seven Clocks

by Christopher Fowler

  Bryant sat back and pressed his eyes shut. What was happening to the Whitstables was also happening to them. The investigation had lost its way in internecine fighting. He would develop a practical appliance for May’s theory, but that meant first discounting his own. He began to compile a date list of events in the pagan winter battle of light and dark. The articles in Maggie’s books had been assembled from unreliable sources. Eventually, though, he was able to create a list of the most important dates.

  Bryant looked down on the lights of Camden, shining bright on to bare wet streets. If only he could step back to that winter’s night long ago, if only he could see what they saw. . . .

  He needed fresh air. As he slipped into his overcoat, his attention was drawn by the ragged patch beneath the window. Lost in thought, he examined the striated section of wall where the workmen had peeled away layers of paint, revealing their own inchoate glimpses of the past.

  37 / Whispering

  May knew he shouldn’t have asked if there were any problems. Everyone in the room had a hand raised.

  The Whitstable family had just set a new record for living together, and the strain of so many difficult people having to share with each other was beginning to manifest itself in a form of upmarket cabin fever. Pippa’s mother had collapsed upon hearing that her daughter had been attacked, and now remained under medical supervision in one of the bedrooms.

  As everyone was talking at once, May called for quiet by blowing the sports whistle he had strung around his neck, and pointed at Isobel Whitstable. ‘You have a question?’

  ‘Being cooped up like this is making me sick. The food is frightful, and we’re having to share bathrooms. How much longer do we have to stay here?’ There was an immediate hubbub of assent.

  ‘Until the danger to all of you has passed,’ replied May. ‘You saw what happened when Pippa ventured outside.’

  The noise level rose sharply, and he was forced to shout. ‘It’s come to my attention that some of you have been trying to speak to the press about your treatment here.’ The family had been giving bitter, sarcastic interviews about their treatment at the hands of the incompetent police. Several secret phone calls had been logged by the security team. ‘I’m afraid we’re going to have to stop that.’

  This was followed by a barrage of angry demands.

  ‘It sounds like you’re frightened of the papers putting their own investigators on the case,’ said Edith Whitstable, who was still being guarded by her twin grandsons. ‘We want whoever’s doing this run to earth. It’s irrelevant who catches him, just so long as someone does before there’s another death.’ Everyone seemed to agree on that point.

  ‘I feel the same way as you,’ said May, ‘but some of the journalists are showing a lack of responsibility in their hunt for a new angle. They might inadvertently reveal something to your enemies.’

  Before May could field any further questions, Sergeant Longbright entered the room. ‘Alison Hatfield is on the telephone for you. Do you want to take it?’

  May looked over at the unruly assembly of mothers, fathers, sons, grandmothers, daughters, and babies, all arguing across each other. ‘I’ll call her back. No, on second thoughts, let me take it.’

  The hallway outside was relatively quiet. He lifted the handset. ‘Alison, how are you?’

  ‘I’m fine. I hope I haven’t disturbed you, but you did say to call if anything—’

  ‘You did the right thing. What’s on your mind?’

  ‘I was going through the basement papers I brought home with me, and found some correspondence between James Makepeace Whitstable and one of the other members of the alliance. It’s mostly shipping arrangements, but he makes reference to the night of the signing, and states that a full account of the event was subsequently written up. He doesn’t say what in, unfortunately.’

  ‘You think he kept minutes?’

  ‘That’s what I wondered. All papers and personal effects pertaining to the guild eventually revert to the hall, many of them through bequests and donations. I was thinking of going to the office later. Do you want me to look for it while I’m there?’

  ‘Yes, if you don’t mind. I mean, it is a public holiday. You should be enjoying yourself.’

  ‘Oh, this is my way of enjoying myself. I can hardly hear you . . .’ By the sound of it, tempers were flaring in the lounge.

  ‘I have to go,’ said May. ‘Please, Alison, call me if you find anything.’

  One of the Whitstable children was tugging at his trouser leg. ‘Come on, Mister Policeman,’ he said with a grin. ‘The mummies are trying to hit each other.’ Clenching his teeth and his fists, May strode back into the tantrum therapy centre formerly known as the front parlour.

  Alison Hatfield had fidgeted about in her apartment, unable to settle, before deciding to return to the lift in the foyer of the Watchmakers’ Company. It was exciting to know that the police were relying on her assistance. She was looking forward to seeing John May again. There was something intriguing and rather sad about him.

  The basement file rooms had been closed for so many years that those in charge of maintaining their order had now retired. She pulled the trellis door shut and as the lift descended she thought about the boxes stored beneath her. The Victorians were great note-takers, letter-writers, and diarists. It was likely that their documents were kept here, within the guild, and had simply been forgotten. Dead files were rarely examined, and mundane artefacts like balance sheets fell beyond the scope of interested historians.

  Her breath clouded across the beam of her pocket torch as she opened the lift door. The corridor ahead was in darkness. She had not asked for the emergency lighting to be turned on again, for fear of arousing suspicion. Any further documentary proof would lie in the room she had begun to explore with May. As she reached the door, she was surprised to find it partially open. She distinctly remembered locking it. She pushed it wide and shone her torch inside.

  Someone had definitely been down here. Chairs and boxes had been moved. Frowning, she crossed the floor and shone her torch into the first carton. This morning it had contained three tied packets of correspondence; now there were only two. Her shoes slipped on sheets of paper. She looked down to find that a number of letters had been dropped or tossed aside. She lifted the sheets and held them to the light. Apart from the caretaker, no one else knew she had been sifting through the documents. Who had been here?

  Her thoughts were interrupted by a light scuffling sound in the corridor outside. She scanned the torch beam across to the door, but saw nothing. She knew about the rats that came up from the river; she didn’t want to consider how many might have bred in the ancient cellars. She was about to resume her search when a feeling of unease prickled at the back of her neck.

  Alison was a practical woman, not given to easy fears, but she suddenly knew she was not alone. She lowered the torch beam to the floor and quietly made her way back across the room. As she did so, she sensed another human body.

  The darkness in the corridor was palpable. A slight breeze brushed her face. She began to walk slowly towards the goods lift, keeping the torchlight trained at her shoes.

  There was someone within feet of her, of that she was sure. She stared at the beam. A chill cloud was dissipating in the cone of light, the remnants of someone’s shallow breath. She took another step toward the lift, and another. The metal door stood less than three yards from her. Far below, the river drains faintly pounded, rushing through darkness.

  A scrape behind her as someone or something divorced itself from the wall. Unable to contain her panic for another moment, she ran to the lift with her arm outstretched, grabbing the brass handle and twisting it back, slamming the trellis open and forcing herself inside. As she pulled it shut she saw the bulky shape of a running man. A hand thrust itself through the diamondshaped gap in the bars, grabbing at her sweater. She screamed as she jabbed at it with the torch, but the fingers, groping for a purchase, seized her flesh and pulled. The tor
ch case was lightweight and plastic, and the batteries fell out as she thrashed at the invading limb.

  She hammered the floor buttons, and the lift jerked into life, slowly rising. The fist remained locked around her arm, gripping tightly. Her attacker was being raised from the floor, and had braced himself against the lowering ceiling. Far above, the lift mechanism began to whine as it strained to raise the cage.

  It was a stalemate: the lift could ascend no further, but her attacker could not recall it. Bending her knees abruptly, Allison lifted her legs from the floor. The move caught her assailant by surprise as the deadweight hit his arm. With a sickly crack his hand lost purchase on her sweater and the lift suddenly shot up.

  She slammed to the back of the lift, staying there until she reached the ground floor. The foyer was deserted. If he knew where the basement staircase was, he could be here in seconds. The porter wasn’t due back until tomorrow. Until then, the main door keys were in her purse, inside her desk. She had planned to double-lock the entrance upon leaving.

  Her heels clicked rapidly across the marble floor, echoing in the dark stairways above. She was scared to look back. She could feel her heart bellowing in her chest. Behind her, the staircase door slammed open. She knew better than to waste another moment in the building. Without detouring to collect her coat or purse she ran from the entrance.

  The city streets were utterly deserted. This was Boxing Day, and there was not a soul to be seen.

  Her car was parked in the darkened narrow street behind the Goldsmiths’ Hall. There was no point in heading back there without her keys. She ran along the empty pavement in the direction of St Paul’s Cathedral. Behind her, a dark man dressed in an ankle-length raincoat emerged from the hall. She increased her speed, searching for traffic as she crossed the road.

  Behind, the figure gained speed, his unbuttoned coat beating about him, his damaged arm clearly causing him pain as he closed the gap between them with long loping strides.

  Boots hammered behind her as she lurched across the road ahead. The churchyard of St Paul’s was always kept open. She ran through the gates in the direction of the main entrance. There was bound to be someone at the door.

  As she fled up the steps of the cathedral he lunged out at her, but she had reached the doorway, and offered a prayer of thanks as she slipped inside.

  One of the wardens was switching off the lights.

  She halted, trying to catch her breath. ‘Father . . . there’s a man . . .’

  A young, bespectacled ecclesiast with thinning hair looked at her quizzically, unsure of the problem facing him.

  She tried again, aware of the figure looming behind her. ‘Someone is following me . . .’

  The warden looked beyond her to the waiting figure. ‘The service has finished. We’re closing for the night,’ he began.

  ‘But this is a church,’ Alison screamed suddenly. ‘You’re not supposed to close!’

  ‘I’m sorry, but you two will have to sort out your differences outside.’

  He thought they were having a lovers’ tiff! She looked around to see the raincoated figure striding quickly towards her.

  The warden stepped forward, shaking his head and raising his hands in front of him, refusing her entry. Ducking beneath his arm, she ran into the nave, expecting to find other clergymen ready to help her. There was no one in sight. Surely they didn’t entrust the safety of an entire building to one man?

  Scuffling footsteps made Alison turn in fright. Her pursuer had been apprehended by the warden, who was ineffectually attempting to hold him outside. Suddenly the raincoated figure struck the warden hard in the face with the flat of his good hand, knocking him down on to the tiled floor. The sound of the assault reverberated through the cathedral in a dull boom.

  He had stepped around the unconscious form and was moving fast towards her.

  A narrow opening in the right transept appeared in her vision. She took it without thinking and found herself in the steep stairway that led to the Whispering Gallery. She glanced back, only to find him right behind her.

  There was nowhere else to go.

  Up she ran, her heart hammering painfully, the hot blade of a stitch forming in her side. As he reached out again she kicked back with her spiked heel, connecting hard with his chest.

  She reached the gallery entrance. The chill stone balustrade curved away on either side. She intended to follow the path around, knowing that she would be able to see if he changed direction.

  The vast dome rose above them to create a giddying sense of space, its monochromatic paintings fearful and austere. St Paul’s was a gruesomely Christian church, a monument to the idea that redemption invoked awe, not comfort.

  He was panting hard as he came through the door. There was no time to put any distance between them. She stopped and looked back, but the dim exit sign above his head cast a shadow over his face.

  ‘What do you want from me?’ she called out.

  No reply came. He was breathing heavily, balancing lightly on the balls of his feet. He seemed disconnected from the pursuit, as though he hardly realized what he was doing.

  ‘I didn’t find out anything.’ She took a step back as he slowly approached. ‘I swear I was only trying to help. I can’t do you any harm—please, I don’t want to end up like the others.’

  The longer she talked, the more she felt she had a chance of being saved. But how? It was obvious that they were alone in the eerie vastness of the cathedral. There was no holy sanctuary for her here, only harsh judgement. He was beside her now. The touch of his hand was soft and almost reassuring.

  ‘Sorry, Lady. It’s not my fault.’

  His voice was little more than an exhalation of air with the trace of an Eastern accent. Alison was so surprised that he had actually spoken that she failed to move as he suddenly seized her, his thick fingers snaking across her opening mouth. He was a powerful man, and effortlessly lifted her off the floor. She saw the bitter irony of facing death surrounded by the very history she had spent her life loving and trying to understand.

  She looked up into his brown eyes. There was no malice in them, just commitment to duty.

  ‘So very sorry,’ he whispered again in a tone of genuine regret. With a grunt, he hoisted her twisting body over the balcony and released it. With thrashing limbs and a throat stretched taut by the power of her scream, she plunged a full hundred feet to the floor below.

  Her last sight was of the unforgiving cathedral spinning above her, as the echo of her fall refracted back and forth between the tombs of sleeping saints.

  38 / Illumination

  Beneath the white traverse arches of the greenhouse were orchidaceous clusters of crimson and scarlet flowers: bougainvillea and beloperone, callistemon and strelitzea, surrounded by fan and sago palms, some of them over eight feet tall.

  ‘This was my great-grandfather James Makepeace Whitstable’s house, and these are the plants that he himself tended. Until recently they were like our family, deeply rooted, tough, surviving. Now they might outlive us all.’

  Charles had brought her here after dinner, the perfect place to sprawl in armchairs beneath the glass roof. During the course of the afternoon there had been endless questions about her upbringing and complex explanations of how the guild ran its businesses. He was a decisive man, a Mason, a figure of restless intensity, and had inexplicably chosen to admit her into his world. He had spoken about the supervision of Anglo-Indian exports, and it sounded incredibly, unbearably dull.

  Beyond the greenhouse a lurid sunset flooded the sky in a vermilion wash, mirrored in shimmering fields of frost. Charles had humanized himself by changing into blue jeans and a heavy green cotton sweater. During the course of the afternoon he had not smiled once. A number of times he had started at noises in the endless dark woods beyond the house. He appeared to be under a great amount of strain. Now, as he sat warming a brandy in his hands, he seemed on the verge of imparting a confidence.

  ‘I imagine it’s been
pretty dull for you today,’ he began, studying his glass. ‘Christmas and all that, you’d probably rather be with your friends, someone of your own age. I’m not used to having young people around. Our family was always old and big and inescapable.’

  ‘I just thought there would be others here.’

  ‘Normally there would be, but this year my visit is under extraordinary circumstances. My childhood memories are filled with decrepit relatives tottering about these rooms. As a kid I was always being scolded for disturbing my sleeping elders.’ He leaned back against the headrest, recalling his upbringing in the vast dusty house above them. ‘Our family—a blessing and a curse. Until recently we were only fighting to stay alive in business. Now look at us. What a sorry state we’re in. I suppose you’ve been following it all in the papers.’

  He looked across at her, his grey eyes eerily luminescent in the setting sun. He tasted his brandy and set it down. ‘You have a very strong-willed mother, Geraldine. I assume you’re aware of her ambitions.’

  ‘What makes you say that?’

  Charles studied his glass. ‘It’s Gwen who wants you to work for us.’

  ‘She had nothing to do with me coming here.’

  ‘I wondered if you had her ambitions.’ He gave a rare smile. ‘But no, you’re different. I can sense a certain antipathy toward your parents. I know you’re acting under your own volition. You must understand something about us, Geraldine.’ He gave a thin smile, no lips, no teeth. ‘The only way to effect an entry into the Whitstable family is to operate in its interests. The family always protects itself. Even if it means curtailing its own freedom.’

  He drained his glass. ‘It’s hard to explain one’s behaviour under threat. Mr Heath will continue to hold out against the unions, and that will be just the beginning. The world is waiting to move into London to pick its riches. There are dark times ahead, and only the strong will survive. Once we were the giants, the whip-wielders. Now we’re nothing compared to the mighty modern conglomerates. They are the new imperialists, not us. British Associated Tobacco is opening markets in the Far East. Coca-Cola is buying real estate.’ He pulled open a drawer in the small oak chest at his side and withdrew an engraved gold pocket watch, passing it over for inspection.