Seventy-Seven Clocks

by Christopher Fowler

  He ran the tips of his fingers gently over her face. ‘Just relax and close your eyes. Think of times when you were happy, when you were young.’ She heard Charles’s voice softly seesawing in the distance, like the droning of bees in June. His tone was low and mellifluous. She felt calmer now, and clearer. She could see inside herself.

  She saw glimpses of a past she had long expelled from her mind. Bad behaviour at school. A teacher’s face, close, shouting. Gwen, furious, screaming. Something broken, blue china, water on a yellow rug, tears. Guests around a dinner table, staring at her. Wigmore Street in the rain. Alighting from a cab. Waiting in the therapist’s surgery.

  She opened her eyes and found him holding the blindfold.

  Suddenly alert, she sat up, moving her feet from the couch.

  The room was shifting beneath her. Disoriented, she put out a hand to steady herself. She rose and slipped on her shoes.

  ‘Wait, Geraldine, don’t leave—’

  But she had already managed to slip her arm into her coat sleeve, and was running from the room.

  ‘Sir, I fear you scared me far more than I scared you.’

  The face illuminated in the torchlight was old and Asian, thin and worn from a life of hard toil. Sparse grey hair straggled across a scarred bald dome. The man who stood before them was wearing a blue boiler suit, and looked like a maintenance engineer.

  ‘If you would care to step through to my office . . .’ The old man gestured to a small recessed door in the rear of the wall. Startled beyond speech, Bryant silently complied with his request.

  The antechamber beyond the room housing the astrolabe was fitted with an overhead light. A cheap desk and chair, filing cabinets, a stack of untended paperwork, a typewriter, a litter bin, a tea mug, a wall calendar with faded views of Norway.

  Then Bryant noticed that the calendar was over forty years out of date, and that the paperwork was thick with mildew.

  ‘You must excuse me, Sirs,’ the little Indian man said, clearing the paperwork to the back of the desk. ‘I have never had visitors before. My name is Mr Malcolm Rand, and it is my duty to tend to the equipment you see in the next room.’

  ‘How long have you been here?’ asked May.

  ‘At the guild, most of my life, Sir, since I graduated from my apprenticeship. I took over the tending of the machinery in 1957 from my father’s brother, God rest his soul.’

  ‘How do you get in here? You do go outside, don’t you?’

  ‘Of course, Sir. I have seen you several times before, for I am also the head of the maintenance staff here at the guildhall. I visit the equipment twice a day, once in the morning and once before I leave at night, to ensure that it is well oiled and able to continue functioning correctly.’

  Now May remembered seeing Rand beside the staircase on his first visit to the Watchmakers. ‘Does anyone else know about this?’ he asked.

  ‘No, Sir, and nobody must know. It is written into the rules of my employment. You are not supposed to be down here. I could lose my job.’

  ‘I’ll see to it that you don’t lose your job,’ promised May. ‘Have there been other custodians here before you?’

  ‘Most certainly. It is our duty to ensure that the equipment is never damaged.’

  ‘But it is already, man. Do you know what it does?’

  ‘Of course, Sir,’ Rand quietly replied. ‘It is the great Imperial Financial Machine. When it calculates that the profits and shares from the Watchmakers’ Company have been spread unwisely, or are falling into the wrong hands, it pinpoints the guilty party. When the financial loss reaches a certain level, the machine ascertains the culprit and transmits the person’s fiscal details to the appropriate authority in the outside world.’

  ‘Where to, though?’ asked Bryant. ‘How does it do it?’

  ‘The machine is electrically connected to the telephone system, Sir. I do not know where the messages go. Is there something wrong?’

  ‘Do you know what happens after the machine transmits each message?’ asked May.

  The custodian shook his head uncertainly, puzzled by the air of tension in the room.

  ‘It arranges the deaths of people in companies it has named.’

  ‘No, no. How is that possible?’ answered the shocked custodian. ‘It cannot be true.’

  ‘I’m afraid it is, old chap,’ said Bryant. ‘And I think Mr Charles Whitstable will be able to tell us all about it.’

  The detectives looked back toward the ticking astrolabe.

  47 / Chandler’s Wobble

  Rand had turned on a dim overhead bulb, and the brass machine beneath it shone darkly, a monstrously beautiful engine of death, the shadow of its metal limbs revolving elliptically below the swinging light. The clocks glittered, ticking faintly.

  ‘The mechanism rotates imperceptibly, marking off the calibrations as it moves. The marks correspond to the members of the family and their business associates,’ explained Rand. ‘Details of new companies entering the field are given to me by the lawyers, and I adjust and update the names accordingly.’

  He indicated several taped pieces of paper on the brass arms of the interior globes. ‘I would like to bring someone down here to etch the new names properly into the brass, as the original names have been, but it is against the rules of my employment.’ He pressed one of the peeling labels back in place with his thumb. Rand took great pride in his work, even if he failed to understand the lethal nature of it.

  ‘If it’s targeting the wrong people, something must have changed the settings,’ mused Bryant, wading around the astrolabe. ‘Have there been any roadworks carried out near the building recently?’

  ‘Oh, yes,’ said Rand, ‘very many. The city is changing fast. There is much building since the war. Last month developers demolished the old bank next door, and everything kept shaking. I thought it was an earthquake, but they don’t have them in this country.’

  ‘Then that’s it.’ Bryant ducked beneath the outer globe and carefully stood up inside the revolving mechanism. ‘What setting is this inner circle supposed to be on?’ he asked Rand. ‘Do you know offhand?’

  ‘Let me get my chart.’ He returned with a clipboard and yards of perforated paper, running his finger along a timetable line. ‘At the inner core, 162337.918. The number is located beside the bar nearest your left hand, right at the end.’

  Bryant dug out his reading glasses and checked the number. ‘It reads 162338.984. It’s out by just one notch, but the gears have magnified the error. The whole thing’s turned in on itself. A bad case of Chandler’s Wobble.’

  ‘What’s that?’ asked May.

  ‘It’s the movement in the earth’s axis of rotation. It causes the latitude to vary. That’s what’s happened here. The vibrations from the demolition have thrown the calibrations out. It’s made them incorrect by a single notch. The effect has been augmented through the device. The clocks no longer correspond, so the tontine is selecting the wrong people.’

  ‘I knew the blockage in the river drain was a problem,’ said Rand. ‘Every time it rains, the room gets a foot of water, and it takes hours to go down again. I wondered if it could cause a mechanical malfunction. This is an electrical device. It could be quite dangerous.’

  ‘It’s not that,’ said Bryant. ‘I’ll bet vibrations preceded each rainfall because the demolition crew was working to beat the rain. That’s why the calibrations matched the water levels.’

  ‘Come on out from there, Arthur,’ called May. ‘We have to find a way to turn this thing off.’

  ‘How on earth do we do that? Where does the electricity supply run from?’

  ‘We are not on the main circuit,’ answered Rand. ‘The supply here comes from an independent generator. The running costs are billed to the Watchmakers.’

  Bryant was still inside the device when one of the outer rings clicked another notch, causing an electric spark to crackle in the central housing of the machine. ‘The wiring duct goes straight down into the floor,’ h
e said. ‘We need to get this shut down before the twentyeighth.’

  ‘What’s the time now?’

  ‘Somewhere approaching midnight.’

  ‘Can’t you be more accurate, Arthur?’

  ‘Not really, no. I’m wearing a Timex.’

  May checked Rand’s wristwatch. ‘According to this one, we have about twelve minutes left in which to do something.’

  ‘Obviously the damned thing needs to be unplugged.’

  ‘It is not that simple.’ Rand sloshed through the water toward them. ‘There are a great many wires.’

  ‘Then we’ll have to jam it,’ May, picking up the sledgehammer he had leaned against the wall. ‘Arthur, you’ve finally got your chance to do some damage to the British aristocracy. Have a bash about with this.’

  He passed the hammer through to Bryant, who hefted it like a cricket bat, gauging its weight. ‘Not bad.’ He swung it against one of the inner brass rings with a reverberating thump. ‘The Victorians really built this thing to last,’ he said admiringly.

  It took six healthy strokes to dislodge a single section of one of the globes. As the metal band buckled and dropped, it jammed against the outer arms, seizing the rotational segments of the sphere firmly in place. One of the outer sections tried to move, but was prevented from doing so. The ticking suddenly stopped.

  ‘I’d get out of there, Arthur. There’s no telling what it might do when the pressure builds up.’ Even as May spoke, there was an agonized rasp of metal and the structure shuddered, attempting to shift once more, like tectonic plates pushing towards an earthquake. This time, however, the globe succeeded in moving a single notch. As Bryant clambered between the jammed sections, propping the sledgehammer between the rings, there was a loud click and the central mechanism emitted a series of cracking electrical sparks. Two of the clocks crashed to the floor.

  ‘It’s sending out orders,’ cried Rand. ‘That sound was the electrical connection being made.’

  ‘How many orders?’ asked Bryant, trying to untangle his scarf from the machine.

  ‘I don’t know,’ said Rand. ‘Two, ten, twenty, it’s hard to say.’

  ‘Isn’t there any way of checking, anything that we could—could somebody help me out of this damned contraption?’ Bryant was wrenching at his scarf, which had become threaded between the inner and outer globes. May ran over and tried to pull him free.

  ‘I know, wait a moment.’ Rand splashed back to his room, peered around the corner, and returned. ‘This transmission did not go overseas.’

  ‘How can you be sure?’ asked May.

  ‘Each signal is annotated according to its destination. This one has a London telephone code.’

  ‘John, it’s sending out another blasted death command.’ Bryant gave up wrestling with the scarf, looped it free of his neck and abandoned it to the astrolabe. A horizontal arm of the inner globe attempted to move forward, but was restrained by the scarf. There was a sulphurous pop and sizzle as something shorted out in the central housing.

  Bryant was just stepping free of the sphere when the cable-filled central core blew its ancient ceramic fuses and burst into flame. A second explosion followed as the electrical cables touched water.

  All three men started as a low voltage shot around their ankles.

  ‘The river will put out the fire,’ said Rand, pushing them back in the direction of his office. ‘I have never seen it this high before. You must hurry, you have no time to waste if you wish to stop the command from being fulfilled.’

  ‘We have to find out where the signals went,’ said Bryant.

  ‘Sometimes they go all around the world,’ said Rand. ‘Not just to India, or to people who owe debts to the guild, but to those who have gained from it in the past.’

  ‘It’s too late to stop the weapon being primed, but we can get to the targets first,’ said May as they climbed the stairs. ‘Luckily the whole family is still under one roof.’

  ‘No, it’s not. Christian Whitstable and his daughter are recuperating in the Royal Free Hospital,’ Bryant pointed out.

  ‘And Peggy Harmsworth’s still being cared for there too. I’ll go there; you take the house. I can drop you off on the way.’ The time was now twelve seventeen a.m.

  ‘Arthur, do you have your bleeper?’ asked May.

  Bryant patted his pockets. ‘Er, no, I must have dropped it.’

  ‘What do you do, sell them? We have to call out every unit we can rouse. I have no intention of going into this without backup.’

  Weary and wet, covered in spiderwebs and brick dust, the pair returned to the main hall. At the reception desk, May placed a call to Sergeant Longbright.

  ‘We need everyone you can get hold of,’ he explained. ‘Tell Raymond Land what I’ve just told you. You’ll have to explain that there’s no way of knowing how many assassinations we’re dealing with. I’m sure he’ll be thrilled to hear that. And I need you to bring in Charles Whitstable.’

  ‘But we already let him go.’

  ‘This time you can arrest him.’ He replaced the receiver. ‘Let’s get going,’ he told Bryant.

  ‘I’ve been trying to puzzle something out,’ said Bryant as he turned the Mini back towards King’s Cross.

  ‘I’d rather you concentrated on your driving,’ said May.

  ‘You must agree that Rand is only guilty of crime by association. He’s merely carrying out the duties he was employed to undertake.’

  ‘I suppose so,’ agreed May.

  ‘Then who on earth killed Alison Hatfield? She’s the only victim who couldn’t possibly have been targeted by the astrolabe. As Leo Marks pointed out, she was an outsider.’

  ‘I think you’ll find there are other custodians who know about the system, apart from Mr Rand,’ said May. ‘And I don’t suppose they’re all so agreeably disposed. Maybe they realized she was interfering in the guild’s business, and arranged to have her punished.’

  ‘There has to be at least one other overseer,’ said Bryant. ‘Whoever was appointed the task of eliminating Christian and Deborah Whitstable must have had help getting that damned tiger into their house. There are others around. Their ancestor seems like a man who would have covered every option. I’m willing to bet we’ve had spies following us since the day this began. I woke one in the cellar of Bella Whitstable’s house. Jerry Gates was warned off by another at the Savoy Theatre. They’re probably just paid help. The machine telegraphs assassins. Replacing the Savoy barber in order to kill the Major took careful planning. And getting close enough to William Whitstable to slip him the bomb took great skill. If their deaths hadn’t been filled with such baroque flourishes we may never have come to pin the blame on James Makepeace Whitstable.’

  ‘You think James Whitstable planned the details of his rivals’ deaths?’

  ‘Certainly,’ said Bryant, stamping experimentally on his accelerator. ‘That’s why no modern methods of execution were employed. The murders were designed to strike fear into competitors.’

  ‘It makes you wonder how James Whitstable’s conscience could have allowed him to set this up.’ May looked through the windscreen and blanched. ‘Mind that bus, Arthur.’

  ‘I suppose he thought he was more Christian than the rest,’ replied his partner. ‘Think of the times in which he lived. He honestly believed that his family was more worthy of preservation than others.’

  ‘Er, do you want me to drive?’

  The little car swerved across into the next lane to avoid a pair of cyclists riding abreast, then accelerated through amber lights.

  ‘He behaved no differently from our missionaries,’ continued Bryant, ‘smashing up the religious artefacts of one civilization to replace them with our own idols. I’m sure half of England still thinks that their religion is better than anyone else’s.’

  ‘I hate to ask,’ said May, ‘but can’t you go any faster?’

  ‘We’re doing over sixty and running the reds, which isn’t bad for Gray’s Inn Road in the pouring rai
n, considering I’ve only got one windscreen wiper and bald tyres and I can’t see out of the rearview mirror.’

  The little Mini cut across the five-way intersection at King’s Cross, causing a truck to slew sideways across the road, shedding its load as it ploughed into the safety barrier.

  They had just reached Chalk Farm Tube station when they noticed the rain-haloed streetlights flickering further up Haverstock Hill. A moment later the lights went out, and the entire roadway ahead was plunged into darkness.

  ‘We were warned this would happen,’ said May. ‘The Electricity Board is conserving energy because of the strikes. They’ve started pulling the plugs on whole areas of London.’

  ‘Oh, that’s wonderful,’ snapped Bryant. ‘We’ve gone full circle. They’ve got the night on their side at last.’

  48 / Bringing Back the Day

  ‘You bitch, you knew all along.’

  ‘Geraldine, whatever else you may think, I am still your mother, and you have no right—no right at all— to talk to me that way.’

  They were facing each other across the parlour like a pair of evenly matched actresses in a stage melodrama. Gwen was even poised with a whisky in one hand. God only knew where Jack was, presumably sulking in his study, still smarting from his daughter’s success with Charles Whitstable.

  Jerry was operating on pure adrenaline. With the past suddenly clear to her, it seemed that her life had been building to this moment. ‘You always knew,’ she seethed.

  ‘This is quite uncalled for.’ Gwen threw back the Scotch and reached for the decanter with an unsteady hand. ‘I don’t know why you’re behaving like this.’

  ‘I was convinced I was ill, abnormal, incurable, and all the time it wasn’t me at all.’ Jerry took a step forward. She feared she might rush at her mother if she moved any closer. ‘He said he wanted a daughter. You farmed me out to him. I remember it all now, so you don’t have to pretend any more. I used to arrive with you at his apartment. It was you who took me, not Jack. You left me there. That’s when he started the hypnotherapy, gently putting me to sleep. Did he ever tell you what he did?’