Relics

by Tim Lebbon

  Only Lucy knew where she was.

  “Yeah,” the man said again, nodding, staring at Angela as he listened. “That’s the one. Okay, thought so. Thanks.” He disconnected, placed the phone on the table, and drank his glass of wine in one gulp. “Come on,” he said, standing to leave.

  “Where?”

  “You asked to see Fat Frederick, yes?”

  Angela could only nod, hearing the gangster’s name spoken aloud in her presence by someone who undoubtedly worked for him. In that moment, Vince’s link to Frederick Meloy was confirmed. Her heart sank. Maybe this was all too much for her, maybe she should just—

  “Word of advice, though. Never shorten his name,” he said without any trace of irony. “Follow me.” The man walked back toward the bar. He was huge but graceful, and carried himself well. Angela wondered how many people he might have killed.

  “I think I should—” she began, standing, edging toward the exit.

  The man stopped. “You’ve asked to see him now.” His voice was low and quiet, but just for a second the chatter across the bar seemed to subside.

  Angela suddenly craved daylight.

  * * *

  The sound of thunder was growing. It shook the ground and pressurised the air, driving a scream ahead of it, through the darkness. Rats squealed. His ears popped. The unmistakable smell of the Underground wafted over him—heat, electrics, the dust of ages and long-lost shadows.

  Vince kicked out with his right foot and then his left, driving his feet up, back and up again, and he felt them connect with the man’s stomach and chest. The man’s Ooph! rivaled the growing storm’s voice, and he staggered back, arms pinwheeling, toward greater darkness.

  The silver-haired woman with pigtails.

  A blade held low in each hand.

  A shadow moving, squirming against a wall, shifting slowly as if sleepy or faint. It had a face that he knew.

  Thunder became a roar, and the illuminated snake of a Tube train burst from the shadows a hundred meters away. It wasn’t slowing. Light spilled and danced along the unused and abandoned platform, and shadows danced with it.

  Vince looked at the woman he was fighting for, blinked slowly, and as he opened his eyes—

  —a face appeared above him.

  “Vince,” Lilou said, and yes, it was Lilou from his memory, as well.

  “I saved you,” he said, surfacing from the waking dream.

  “Yes. You’re remembering?”

  “Some. The Underground platform.” He frowned and held up his hands.

  “All the blood has gone now,” Lilou said.

  “No, it hasn’t.” He tried to sit up. His head pulsed, and he closed his eyes as pain followed. He felt her hands on his face.

  “You’re really not well enough to move,” she said. “You took a bad knock to the head.”

  “I should be in hospital.”

  “They’d find you and kill you.”

  “How long have I been here?” Vince asked. Life before seemed so very far away, almost like someone else’s memory. All but Angela. Angela was fresh, and he felt a deep, hollow yearning for her, as if he already knew he would never see her again.

  “She’s looking for you,” Lilou said. “We’ve tried to warn her off. A friend is following her, one of the few who can do so during the day without drawing attention, but she can’t intervene. She’s too weak, too unsure.”

  “Who?”

  “Like I said, a friend.”

  “So where is Angela? How much does she know? What’s she doing?” She’ll never understand, he thought, and he tried to imagine the sweet woman he loved hearing even a portion of the wider, more terrible truth. She was intelligent and open-minded, but how would she take the fact that he was a murderer?

  “She’s visiting Fat Frederick,” Lilou breathed, and Vince sat up straight, ignoring the pounding headache and grasping her arms.

  “You can’t let her!” he shouted. Tears blurred his vision at the agony, but he welcomed them. He deserved them.

  “There’s not much we can do to stop her,” Lilou said. “We’ll warn her again, but… she’s not the only one looking for you.”

  “No,” Vince said. “Of course not.”

  He had to go to her. That was obvious, his only course of action, and he could see that Lilou knew it, as well. She looked worried and sad. Even that expression made her beautiful.

  “I have to go to her,” he said.

  “I know you want to.”

  “But you won’t let me.”

  “It’s not only me who won’t let you—and it’s not only yourself you’ll be putting in danger. The things you know, the places you’ve seen… we’re running out of places to hide.”

  “I’d never tell.”

  “And you’re not fit. You might collapse in the street, draw attention to yourself. You think they won’t torture you for information?”

  “I know they will,” he said, thinking of the big man and silver-haired woman, and what he had seen them doing. Brutality was their nature, and there were more where they had come from. “So you’re looking after me,” he said, lying down again. “Some milk would be nice. And something to eat.”

  “Of course,” Lilou said, standing and backing to the door. “Of course.”

  Vince closed his eyes and smiled. When he heard the door click shut he opened his eyes again.

  He might not have long.

  Angela had giggled as the two of them had taken turns trying to pick the lock on their back door. It was for a research paper she was writing, and she’d insisted that practical knowledge would give her writing an edge. He’d agreed. Already he’d been keeping secrets from her, and it was a talent he’d used more than once between then and now.

  He whipped off his belt and broke off the pin. Its end was naturally bent, but he was worried it might be too thick. The wider buckle part would be enough to put pressure on the barrel.

  He listened carefully at the door for a few moments before getting to work.

  * * *

  It was daylight. For some reason that surprised him.

  Vince paused for a moment with the door open a crack, looking through the window across the wide corridor and out over London, the city he’d once loved but was quickly growing to hate. From this height he could see far. If he had a powerful telescope, and knew where to look, he could zoom in on such dark secrets.

  Somewhere north and east, Angela was trying to meet with Fat Frederick. She must have been investigating his disappearance, putting her research to good use and perhaps indulging her ambition of becoming a detective. Perhaps she’d found his place in South Kensington.

  Those things in the bath, wrapped and ready for delivery.

  “I’m so sorry,” he whispered before he caught himself, squeezing his mouth closed and waiting for someone to arrive.

  But he was alone, it was quiet, and he ventured out into the corridor. He’d thought that Lilou had walked to the left—he couldn’t say why, perhaps a subconscious memory of hearing her footsteps through the thick walls—so he went right. Around a corner in the corridor he passed several closed doors. This was a functional place, not given to aesthetics, and he could not discern its purpose.

  It didn’t matter.

  Walking, moving, felt good. Going forward toward Angela felt better. Any trouble she might be in was down to him, and all those secrets he had kept from her.

  He wished he could have prevented himself from ever knowing them. Memories accompanied the pain when he blinked, the things he’d seen, the brutal murder he had perpetrated. It made no difference that the man had been trying to murder him.

  The corridor ended at a fire door, and he rested his hand on the handle for a few seconds, wondering whether it was alarmed. “Hiding in plain sight,” Lilou had said when he’d first seen past her to the illuminated London nightscape. In which case he might already be home free.

  He opened the fire door and started down the deep staircase. Three floors and six
flights below he nudged open a door and slipped into a carpeted corridor, decorated with tasteful prints and potted plants. He heard phones ringing and people talking, and smelled coffee and air conditioning. The quiet, busy hubbub of a large office.

  Walking along the corridor toward a bank of elevators, Vince tried to look as if he belonged.

  8

  “My friend tells me you’re looking for Vince. My friend’s name is Cliff. He looks like one, don’t you think? A cliff?”

  Fat Frederick sat behind a large oak desk, sipping tea from a delicate bone china cup and looking like a million dollars. Angela really hadn’t known what to expect. A fat, greasy-looking character, perhaps, with big rings on his fingers, jowls powdered with cocaine, and an ill-fitting suit because no decent suit could ever work for him. Bad skin, thin hair, a face etched with all the cruelties he had perpetrated or authorised. A man of the shadows, dwelling in them and relishing their dark touch.

  “Er… he’s big, yes,” Angela said, glancing at the man who’d brought her here. Standing in the doorway, he raised an eyebrow and smiled, and it lit his face. It was the first real expression he’d shown.

  “Anything else?” Cliff asked.

  “No, we’re good here,” Fat Frederick said. “I’ll call if I need you.”

  Cliff nodded and closed the door gently behind him.

  “Good guy. Lost three aunties and seven cousins in the Haiti earthquake. Remember that?”

  Angela nodded.

  “Tragic.” The man took another sip of tea, then waved at a chair on her side of the desk. “Please.”

  Fat Frederick must have been over six feet tall and maybe two hundred pounds, most of it lean muscle. He looked fit and healthy, and could have been ten years either side of thirty-five. His right ankle rested casually on his left knee, and he leaned back in his chair, shirt pulled across his tight stomach and broad chest.

  He tapped his stomach, and Angela realised how much she’d been staring.

  “What’s in a name?” he said, chuckling. “Actually, I did used to be a fat bastard. Ten years ago I was… what, maybe five stone heavier? Then I discovered running. Really caught the bug. I did it at home to begin with, on a treadmill, because I didn’t want to be seen. Then I started going out at night with a head torch. When I got a bit fitter, I’d go out during the day. I like the parks, and sometimes I’ll drive out to the South Downs or somewhere else in the country. Places where no one knows me. It’s a real stress relief, running, you know?” Fat Frederick stared at her contemplatively. “You look fit.”

  “I run, too.”

  “Job like mine, it pays to be fit.” If he was inviting her to ask about his job—being a gangster, robbing security vans, skinning strippers—she left him disappointed.

  Fat Frederick stood and stretched. He wore a wedding ring, seemed very laid back, casual, almost dismissive. “Drink?”

  “Some water, please,” Angela said. He went to a drinks table and poured two glasses, and she couldn’t help staring. She’d spent so long reading about people like him, even considered coming to visit, hoping that an informal, anonymous interview would give her studies depth and weight. The SOCA couple had warned her off. Now she was here of her own accord, and although frightened and concerned for Vince, she was also excited.

  She looked around the room, taking everything in. It was small and nondescript, containing the desk, a couple of cabinets, a compact leather sofa, and three chairs in front of the desk. One wall was taken up with a large picture of a forest scene, misty and lit from within by a silvery light. It might have been a photograph blown up, or an intricate painting. On another wall were images of old London, the sort that could be bought in any tacky tourist shop.

  Hardly the refuge of a gangster. But then perhaps, even after all her study and research, her preconceptions were still gleaned from TV and the movies.

  He placed a glass on the desk in front of her and sat back down. She almost found herself liking him, but she remembered what the SOCA woman had told her. Remembered it well.

  There was a small button on the side of his desktop. A slight bulge on the belt at his hip. A fan of fine, spidery scars traced his left jawline, and the knuckles of his right hand were knotted and rough. She could never forget who and what he was.

  “I’m glad you’re looking for Vince,” Fat Frederick said, “because I am, too.” At that Angela’s blood ran cold. It must have shown on her face, the fear, because he waved a hand and shook his head.

  “We’re friends. Have been for a few years. Vince is very good at what he does—”

  “Which is what?” Angela snapped. The man blinked in surprise, and she felt a pulse of confidence. He wasn’t used to people interrupting him.

  Fat Frederick picked up a pen and opened a moleskin pad on his desk.

  “What’s your full name?”

  “Why?”

  “Because I’m asking.” It was spoken lightly, but she had no choice but to answer.

  “Angela Gough.”

  “Where are you from?”

  “Boston, originally. London’s my home now.”

  “Address?”

  She paused, then told him. He could find out anyway. If Vince was in that deep with him, he probably already knew.

  “Passport number?”

  “Why would you want that?”

  He shrugged, looking down at the pad. “Curiosity.”

  “I don’t know,” she said. “Who remembers their passport number?”

  “Right. No worries. Cliff will see you out. Come back in an hour.”

  “Where’s Vince? I’m looking for him. I need to find him, and I’m worried, and I know… I know your… reputation…”

  His expression remained calm, casual. “Like I told you, I don’t know where he is. I need to find him, too. That’s why I want you to come back in an hour. We can talk about him some more, and I might even show you something.”

  A smashed bottle? A dumpster?

  “I’m sure you’ll have enough time in an hour to tell some friends where you are, yes?” Fat Frederick said.

  “You don’t mean him harm?” she asked, and it almost sounded like pleading.

  “Why would I harm him? Vince is one of my very best men.” Fat Frederick, nothing like his name, stood and raised his hand toward the door. “An hour. There’s a good coffee shop called You For Coffee, two streets over. You can wait there, if you like.”

  Angela stood and left, closing the door behind her.

  Out in the hallway she started shaking, and when Cliff opened the door at the end of the short corridor, she had to hold onto the wall as she walked toward it. Inside The Slaughterhouse Bar once again, the tide of voices washed over her, the scent of smoke and alcohol, the laughter and good cheer. A young man was sitting on the stage, guitar propped on his knee. While he tuned and fussed with a music stand, a few jokey comments were fired his way. He responded with a smile.

  None of this did anything to drown her fear.

  “See you soon,” Cliff said as she headed for the exit. She felt his eyes on her back.

  * * *

  “Vince is one of my very best men.”

  She tried to imagine the man she loved doing bad things, and once her mind started down that route there was no turning it back. As she negotiated her way through streets thronged with pedestrians on their way home from work or to the pub, she saw Vince punching someone in the face, pressing a sawed-off shotgun against a car window, holding down a woman while Fat Frederick slashed across her stomach with a smashed bottle. She imagined him touching her hand as they watched a DVD together, kissing her naked hip just where she liked it, singing in the shower.

  The man she loved, doing things she could not understand.

  “…one of my very best men.”

  Her phone buzzed in her pocket, startling her. Lucy. She answered and was assaulted with a verbal barrage.

  “What the fuck are you doing at a place like that in fucking Soho you bloody idiot?
”

  “Hi, Lucy.”

  “Just what the fucking fuck?”

  “The fuck is that I’ve found out a bit about Vince.”

  “You’ve found him?”

  “Well, not yet, no.” She glanced around, just one of dozens of people talking on their phones as they walked the busy streets. She didn’t feel watched, but maybe the sensation was simply becoming familiar.

  “Someone just phoned me,” Lucy said. “Asking about you. A guy, didn’t recognise him. I told him to jog on.”

  “That was quick,” Angela said. That was what this hour was all about. They were researching her, and already they’d found out who her best friend was and her phone number. By the end of the hour they’d know the colour of her underwear and her first pet’s name. “Yeah, he’s going to help me look for Vince,” she said.

  “Yeah, right. Then why ask me about you?”

  Angela bit her lip and edged into a doorway, watching the street pass her by.

  “What’s going on?” Lucy pressed. “What have you found out?”

  “Not sure yet. There’s a trail, I’m just not sure I’m following it properly. But I’ve discovered that Vince was… freelance, I guess.” Freelance. Scouting and buying commercial property as a cover—and in the meantime he was one of a London gangster’s best men, and he had an apartment where he kept weird old dusty things wrapped up in his bath.

  Blinking, she saw that single dead eye staring at her, as if willing her to believe.

  “This isn’t a college project, you know,” Lucy said.

  “I know that.”

  “You sound weird.”

  “I’m fine, really. Can I come by tonight? I’ll tell you more then, honest.”

  “Sure. Max is out playing squash. I’ll buy wine. Good?”

  “Yeah,” Angela said, and it did sound good. All but the bit where she’d have to tell Lucy about what was going on. She wasn’t sure that sounded good at all.

  They said goodbye, and just as she started along the street her phone rang again. It was her mother.

  “Mom?” Angela was instantly worried. She didn’t like this feeling, that someone was trawling through her life and taking what they wanted—names, loves, details. It was intrusive. Abusive.