“I remember almost everything.”
“Almost everything?”
“I can recollect some of the smallest details of Estella’s life. I can remember a great deal of the existence of poor Barbara. But I am more than either of them.”
The head of the Directorate looked afraid.
“Gentlemen, we’re wasting time.” Barbara paced briskly back to the center of the pod. “The Directorate had frittered away the last twenty-four hours. We should have the Prefects in custody by now.”
“Tell me,” Dedlock said in a little boy’s voice. “How do we find them?”
“The answer’s been staring you in the face. Any one of you could have worked it out for yourself.”
Most of us could no longer stand to look at her so we gazed dolefully at the floor or stared shamefacedly out of the window, like a line-up of new arrivals at the kind of penitentiary where they favor throwing away the key.
“Dedlock,” snapped Barbara. “Bring up a heat map of the city.”
“I don’t know what you mean.”
“We don’t have time for your game playing. Just do it. Say a ten-mile circumference from Whitehall.”
Dedlock’s fingers twitched in the water and behind him, miraculously, we saw the lines of London shimmer into existence, the streets and roads form themselves out of the fluid in some impossible liquid cartography. Overlaid upon the familiar landmarks were splashes of yellow and orange.
“A heat map’s no good,” Dedlock protested. “Everything has a signature.”
Barbara raised a hand to silence him. “The Prefects are creatures of fire and sulphur. Watch the screen. They will reveal themselves.”
Amidst the blurs of oranges and yellows, there appeared two jets of red.
Others in her position might have found it hard not to sound triumphant, but Barbara’s voice held no trace of vanity or conceit. “There. We have our men.”
“Somewhere in Islington,” Dedlock muttered. “I’ll get an exact grid reference.”
Barbara turned away from the tank and started dispensing orders. “Jasper — get Barnaby to meet us. I want to drive directly to the site. Henry and I are going in together.”
“Me?” I said, my guts clenching like a fist at the prospect of another confrontation with the Domino Men. “What on earth do you want me for? You look pretty capable yourself.”
“Oh, I’m immensely capable, Mr. Lamb, but for some reason these creatures have taken a shine to you.”
For a moment, Jasper looked at his creation almost doubtfully. “I’ll organize the jackboots. Get the place surrounded. We’ll take them by force.”
“Hawker and Boon cannot be stopped by conventional weaponry,” Barbara said. “How much more blood do you want on your hands before you learn that simple lesson?”
“Then what can stop them?”
The ghost of a smile appeared on Barbara’s impossibly perfect lips. “Miss Morning. How pleasant it is to be working alongside you again.”
The old lady squinted at Barbara. “I’m not sure precisely what you are, young lady. But you’re not Estella. You’re something new.”
“You know what I need. Get me the weapon.”
“I thought it was lost.”
“Then you were misinformed. The old man hid it in the safe house.”
Miss Morning smiled faintly. “Such a clever fellow in his own way.”
“Find it and bring it to me.”
Miss Morning nodded.
Starved of attention, the man in the tank beckoned Barbara back across the room. “I have the address. It’s somewhere on Upper Street. But where on earth could a couple of grown men dressed as schoolboys hide in Islington?”
“There’s a little place I know.”
“Is that so?”
“Yes, sir.”
“It’s good to have you back, Estella.”
“It’s good to be back, sir.”
“And so wonderful to see that everything’s been forgiven and forgotten.”
Barbara peered into the tank and the head of the Directorate shrank from her gaze. “That’s all in the past, sir.” She bared an unnaturally bright white set of teeth. “That’s water under the bridge.”
Mercifully, at that moment, the pod’s revolution was complete, and we were pushed back out into the freezing night air.
Barnaby was waiting. Barbara had climbed into the passenger seat and Jasper was clambering in the back when Miss Morning tapped me lightly on the shoulder.
“You need to call home. Tell Abbey I’m coming round.”
Exhausted from the battering of the past few days, my brain couldn’t really compute this information. “What?”
“Just tell her I’m on my way.”
“OK… Why are you going to my flat?”
“That flat isn’t your flat. It’s a Directorate safe house.”
“What?”
“Henry, it’s where we carried out the Process. Its’ where we cut poor Estella. Don’t act so surprised. Why else do you think your granddad was so keen for you to live there?”
The window at the front of the car whirred down. “Henry,” Barbara said quietly — although this new softness in her tone made me feel more afraid of her than any shout or scream would have done. “Get in the car.”
“You have to go,” Miss Morning said. “I’ll explain later.”
For a second, I hesitated. Then I heard Barbara’s cool, clear vice (“Time is of the essence, Henry”) and I climbed in beside Jasper. Miss Morning slammed shut the door and as the car drove away, she mouthed something at me. A single word. I couldn’t quite make it out, but now, looking back on it as the days of my life almost certainly dwindle into single digits, I’m certain I know what it was.
“Sorry.”
Jasper was fidgeting, interlocking his fingers, touching the end of his nose, fiddling with his chair, periodically clearing his throat and then, growing bored with the rest, poking me in the ribs.
“Isn't she wonderful?” He nodded toward the front, where Barbara was giving our driver directions in the dispassionate tones of a satellite navigation system.
“Why did it have to be Barbara?” I hissed. “Why did you have to choose her?”
“She was perfect, Mr. Lamb. Just perfect.”
Swallowing my disgust, I took out my mobile and stabbed in Abbey’s number.
Barbara swiveled around, suddenly suspicious. “Who are you calling?”
“My landlady.”
“Make it quick, then.”
As it happened, I only got her voicemail.. “Hi, Abbey,” I said, almost in a whisper, acutely aware that the others were listening. “Listen, I know this might sound a bit odd but I’ve got a friend coming round to the flat. Is there any chance you could be there for her? Help her out with anything she needs. I can’t explain. But it’s really important. Anyway, I’ll call you later. And…” I couldn’t begin to articulate what I wanted to say. “I’m thinking about you a lot.” I broke the connection.
Jasper, still buoyant from his triumph, started smirking knowingly at me, but I ignored him and took to staring moodily out of the window.
We moved into the city and were passing a department store, open late for Christmas shopping, festooned with fluorescent Santas, blinking baubles, and Day-Glo snowmen, when Barbara suddenly said: “Pull over here.”
“Why?” Barnaby asked.
A hint of a smile. Or perhaps just a trick of the light. “We’re going to need costumes.”
At the far end of Upper Street, sandwiched between the kind of newsagent that makes most of its money from the magazines on its top shelf and a place which will sell you fried chicken at four o’clock in the morning, there was a nightclub called Diabolism.
Its name was a vestigial piece of pretension from an old proprietor who had nurtured plans to take the place upmarket. Unlike him, his successors knew their market.
Once a week, every week, the club hosted an event called Skool Daze, which, with its mel
ange of cheap alcohol, hoped for promiscuity and chemically induced good humor, seemed no different from any other evening at Diabolism — except for a single innovation. In an attempt to recapture the carefree sybaritism of their adolescence, everyone who came through the door had to be dressed in an approximation of school uniform.
So you see now why Barbara insisted that we stop to pick up costumes.
It should go without saying that she looked extraordinary. She had picked out a skirt which displayed an impressive amount of leg and a blouse which, generously unbuttoned, revealed the aerodynamics of her cleavage. She was gorgeous — ravishingly, ridiculously so — yet I felt not a flicker of desire for her. The more time I spent in her company, the less real she seemed, as though she wasn’t quite there, more like a fantasy come to strange half-life instead of a real woman. It was only when I caught occasional glimpses of the Barbara I knew, in the way that she moved or a sudden dimpling of her cheeks, that I remembered the essential tragedy of the woman.
I’m rambling, of course, doing my best to avoid having to describe how Jasper and I climbed reluctantly into our little outfits, our shirts and striped ties. I couldn’t find shorts to fit me so I had to make do with rolling my trousers up above my knees. Actually, it was a look that Jasper almost pulled off, even if he did resemble the kind of kid who always came top of the class in mental arithmetic. I just looked ridiculous.
We left Barnaby in the car, engrossed in Peril Fiction and the Yellow Movement: The Fallible Narrator in the Lives of Sexton Blake. The photograph on the back cover was a younger version of our driver, uncharacteristically clean shaven, quietly pleased with himself, full of expectation for the future.
“I might have a sniff around in a bit,” he said, glancing up from his book. “See if there’s any sign of the enemy.”
I wish now that I’d said something to him. Thanked him, perhaps, for giving us a lift. Shaken his hand or something. Told him to let the bitterness go and enjoy what little was left of his life. But how could I have guessed? How could I have known that I was never going to see him again?
We strode over to the club. There was a ridiculously weedy bouncer at the door, sporting a little spiv’s moustache like no one had bothered to tell him that the Blitz was over and we didn’t have rationing anymore. He smirked at Barbara as she walked past and nodded brusquely at me, but just as Jasper was about to strut through, he held out his arm to stop him.
“Sorry, sir. Couples only.”
Jasper looked at him in astonishment. “What did you say?”
“Couples only. That’s the rules. Makes it a level playing field, you see.”
“Just let me through,” Jasper said, and tried to push his way past. All I can say about the struggle that ensued is that the bouncer must have been very much more forceful than he appeared.
“OK.” Jasper stood back, put his hand in his pocket and produced a twenty-pound note. “Would this help change your mind?”
“Rules is rules,” the bouncer said sententiously.
“Fine.” Jasper dragged out another twenty-pound note. “How about this?”
The mustachioed man just shook his head.
“Brilliant,” Jasper snapped. “London’s only honest bouncer. Listen here,” he said, and I could see he was on the cusp of losing his temper. “Right now, inside your club, there are a couple of creatures who’d think nothing of making every woman in this city a widow just because they’re bored. Now, for God’s sake, let me pass.”
“No offense, sir. And I don’t mean to be rude. But would you mind awfully buggering off?”
I’d been watching this performance with no small amount of amusement, but when I turned to look at Barbara there was nothing but stern professionalism on her face.
“Mr. Jasper,” she said. “We can’t afford to waste time to here. See if you can gain access with another party. Henry and I must go inside.”
Jasper whined, “You could disable this man with a twitch of your wrist.”
“I don’t want to draw attention to us,” she said.
“You can’t leave me out here.” He contemplated his pale, almost hairless legs and shivered. “Not like this.”
Barbara gave him a look of sardonic dismissal, turned her back and vanished into the club. As I followed, she spoke quickly into her earpiece. “We’re at the club, sir. Near the targets. We’re going dark.”
Dedlock’s voice in both our ears. “Understood. And good luck.”
At the door, we both paid ten pounds to a woman who sat slouched on a stool chewing gum, who then grudgingly invited us inside.
Diabolism turned out the be a large concrete space packed with several hundred people swelling and roiling in an ocean of sweaty desperation. There seemed to be a vaguely festive theme, and I recognized the song which was making the floor thump and quiver as a dance remix of Earth, Wind and Fire’s “Boogie Wonderland,” which had climbed alarmingly close to the top of the chart that year. There were firemen’s poles fixed around the room, about which the uninhibited could cavort. It was the kind of place that served Bacardi Breezer by the pint, and I’m afraid I hated it on sight.
Every single person was dressed the same. They were literally in uniform. Tiny skirts, ties draped suggestively around bare necks, scarves knotted round heads like bandanas. The club insisted the minimum age of entry was eighteen and I can confirm that everyone present appeared very comfortably over that limit. A good many, in fact, looked as though they had not seen eighteen for several decades, a fact unflatteringly revealed at intervals when the strobe lighting illuminated their faces, accentuating every crease and wrinkle, each pockmark and pimple. The floor sucked at my feet and for the first time in years I felt again the bilious fear of adolescence, the hideous terror of being expected to dance.
As Earth, Wind and Fire segued into Europop, Barbara took me by the hand and hoiked me through the crowd toward the bar, where she fetched me a drink in a plastic cup. When we spoke we had to shout in order to be heard.
“Eee shred shred tout!”
“What?” I yelled.
She leant close to my left ear and shouted: “We should spread out!”
I nodded in response and, clutching my drink, walked away from her, slaloming between gyrating couples.
It turned out to be easier than I could have hoped. A few minutes later I saw them, recognizing them at once from the backs of their heads, two men sipping cocktails at the bar, one burly and ginger-headed, the other slim and dark. I looked around for Barbara but she had already disappeared into the crowd, and I knew that if I were to go for back-up now I could lose the Domino Men all over again and we’d have to start from scratch. So (I think not unheroically) I did the only other thing I could. I walked up behind Boon, intending to administer a brisk tap on his shoulder, but as I was almost upon him a tubby redhead dressed for hockey practice blundered my way and I tripped forward, slapping the Prefect hard on the back of his head.
When the little man turned to face me I saw immediately that he was not Boon. Nor was his companion — a tall pugilistic-looking man with an interesting scar on his left cheek — Hawker. Both appeared incensed.
I tried a weak smile and mouthed a “sorry” but neither of these improbable clubbers seemed swayed by my contrition. The smaller one grabbed my shirt and yanked me close enough to smell the beer on his breath.
“Sorry!” I shouted again. “Thought you were someone else.”
The ginger-haired man pinched my nose between his forefinger and thumb and forced me up on tiptoe. I squeezed shut my eyes in expectation of a thorough pummeling when my nose was suddenly released and I was able to place both feet flat on the ground. The men were pointing at me and laughing. I couldn’t quite hear what they were saying but I could guess.
Don’t blame me… Blame Grandpa!
Not for the first time, I felt a warm surge of gratitude for Worse Things Happen at Sea.
Somebody else seized my hand and I was dragged away from my admirers. Ba
rbara’s face was close to mine and she was shouting. “Henry! Stop clowning about!”
She gave me a look which, if not actually outright contemptuous, at least bedded down somewhere in the lower reaches of derision. She strode back into the crowd and I was about to do the same when I felt an angry buzzing in my left pocket. I pulled out my phone and tried to answer, but conversation proved hopeless and I was forced in the end to retreat to a stall in the gents’, where the music at least subsided to a tectonic rumble.
“Hello?” I said for what must have been the sixth or seventh time in a row.”
“It’s Abbey.” She sounded infuriated.
“Sorry. Couldn’t hear you out there.”
“Henry, your friend’s turning the flat upside down. She’s been in our bedrooms. She’s chucked half the fridge out onto the floor. She’s in the corridor right now, tapping on the walls to see if they’re hollow. What the hell’s going on?”
I swallowed hard. “I know it must seem strange. But, please, let Miss Morning do whatever she needs. I’ll make it up to you. I promise.”
Abbey still sounded profoundly irritated but I thought I could detect at least the beginnings of a thaw. “Listen, about our conversation earlier. About Joe. I want you to know that I don’t have any feelings for him anymore.” It was obvious that this wasn’t easy for her to say. “I’m not on the rebound.”
“Thanks,” I said. “Thank you for saying that.” Someone blundered into the toilet, bringing the antic roar of the dance floor with him.
“Where are you anyway? I thought you were working late.”
“I’m at a club.”
“You’re where?” The thaw was retreating now and a new ice age had begun.
“In a club,” I repeated. “Diabolism.” Adding quickly: “It’s for work.”
“Well, who are you there with?”
“Just a colleague,” I said, trying to sound meek and innocent.
Abbey’s voice seethed with barely suppressed fury. “And what’s her name?”
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