He was stumped. There were no libraries in the vicinity, and there was no point in trying to track down an open bookstore—besides, what could he look up? The events of that year, perhaps.
There was one person who could help him—Harold Masters. From where Vince stood, he could see a red call box on the next corner. The narrow street led down to the Thames, and was quite deserted. The air from the river was further chilled by the falling rain. Sebastian had no men posted around here. How could they see him make a call? He dug in his pocket and pulled Masters’s card from his wallet. He kept a phonecard somewhere. He checked again. The street was still empty. He loped to the call box and punched out the doctor’s home number. A woman answered.
‘Is Doctor Masters there, please?’ He stood with his back to the call box, watching the road. ‘Hi, Doctor Masters? This is Vince Reynolds, I met you outside the British Museum. You gave me some advice? And your number?’
‘Oh—um—’
‘Listen, I wouldn’t call like this but I really need your help.’
‘Is this to do with—what we were talking about?’
‘I’m afraid so, yes. Don’t ask me to explain. I seem to be involved in some kind of a game.’
‘Do be careful, for heaven’s sake. I told you they could be dangerous.’
‘I need help with a sort of clue thing, and don’t know who else to ask. What happened in London in the year 711?’
The doctor, who infinitely preferred academic conversations to mundane calls about train-times and dinner arrangements, perked up no end and gave the question careful thought. ‘711? It’s hard to say, just like that. The eighth century—that was before the country even had its first monarch.’
‘I just wondered if anything particular occurred in that year.’
‘I can’t just tell you off the top of my head, you know. This is not my area of expertise. Can you hold on while I grab a book?’
He came back after a moment. ‘Well, it was before the Great Slaughter.’
‘What was that?’
‘The Vikings attacked London, but that was in 842. St Paul’s Cathedral was already built, not as we know it now, of course…’
‘But is there nothing that’s—’
A shadow crossed his peripheral vision. There was a man standing behind him. A hand fell onto his shoulder. Vince dropped his fist on the connection, cutting the call.
‘Do you always go running off like that without apologising?’ asked the pasty-faced young man he had fallen on outside the theatre.
Vince was furious. ‘You moron!’ he shouted, ‘I’ve just cut him off!’
The young man threw up his hands. ‘Great, fine. First you parachute onto my back from the sky, then you swear at me and vanish, then when I find you again you bloody insult me. Are you in PR, by any chance?’
‘You don’t know what you’ve done,’ Vince said angrily, shoving him away and throwing the receiver down.
‘Tell me.’
‘That was a very important call!’
‘If you’re, like, so important, why haven’t you got a mobile phone? Answer that, then. Everyone else has. Why isn’t your e-mail faxing your voicemail?’ He rattled out sentences, as talkative as only the very skinny can be.
‘I didn’t say—never mind, just get away from me.’ Vince didn’t need this, wasn’t he under enough pressure already without—‘What now? What the fuck are you staring at?’
He was scrunching up his face, gurning a visual representation of intense thought. ‘What were you doing up there in the first place? Fringe performance, was it? Acrobatics?’
‘It’s none of your business.’ Vince swung his duffel bag onto his shoulder. ‘I can handle it.’ Sure I can, he thought.
‘Is that yours?’ He was pointing to the bottle of champagne standing on the shelf of the call box. ‘Just gonna leave it there? Don’t you want it?’
‘I don’t know how to say this politely but—’
The young man held up his hand. ‘There is no polite way, trust me, I hear it every day. “Fuck off.” “Get yourself a job.” “Earn a living.” “Just fuck off.” Don’t worry, I’m going. It’s a pity, because Crippen took a shine to you.’ He paused. ‘I just want to check one thing. You’re all right, you don’t need any help at all.’
‘No.’
‘You’re fine, then.’
‘Yes.’
‘ ’Cause street people look after each other.’
‘I am not a street—’
‘And you’re bleeding.’
‘Am I?’ He touched his face, and his fingers came away wet.
‘It’s a wicked cut. You need help? Life is short. Parks and paintings survive the centuries, not people. We’re here and gone. Make friends, man.’
‘There’s nothing you can do, trust me.’
‘You don’t know that.’
Vince rooted about in his duffel bag for a notepad and pen, then wrote out what had been written on the League’s latest page. ‘All right, smartarse. Tell me what that means.’
The young man read it slowly, moving his lips. Made as if to speak. Crumpled his forehead deeper—three furrows. Closed his mouth, then opened it again.
‘Mr Pink,’ he said finally. ‘Telephones.’
‘What?’ Vince gave him a strange look.
‘You’ve asked the one person around here who can tell you. It’s one of those odd little stories you find about London. How do I know? Weird, huh? Sit down for a sec.’ He eased himself onto the sheltered step of a building and waved Vince down. ‘Many years ago, the LTE—’
‘The what?’
‘The London Telephone Exchange—was responsible for naming all of the city’s exchanges, and it had to come up with a name for the one at Golders Green. Its own name had been rejected because it was numerically identical to the first named automatic exchange, Holborn. The letters used to go around the dial in threes, so GOL and HOL were on the same fingerhole. A bloke called Mr Pink—sounds like a character from Reservoir Dogs, dunnit?—was the Deputy Director of the LTE. He rejected over fifty names, looking for the right one. Having a poetic turn of mind, he thought about the name Golders Green and translated it into the phrase ‘gold as green’. Then he asked himself, what makes gold, or yellow, turn green? The answer is blue. One of the brightest shades of blue he could think of came from a flower called the Speedwell. So that’s what he called the Golders Green telephone exchange.’
Vince was dumbfounded. ‘So you think this is a Golders Green telephone number, then?’
‘No,’ he replied. ‘The SPE of Speedwell only accounts for the first three digits, so with SPE 711 you’re still one digit short. But I tell you what—there’s a 7-Eleven in Golders Green High Street.’
Vince mentally slapped himself. ‘A 7-Eleven?’
‘That’s what it says here.’ He pointed to the pink price label on the champagne bottle. The answer had been in front of him all the time. ‘Maybe you’ll find what you’re looking for in the drinks cabinet there, eh?’
—
His name was Strangeways. He refused to reveal whether it was because he’d been inside it, or simply had them. If he had a real name, he did not encourage its use. He was twenty-two and badly needed a bath. He had been living on and off the streets of London since he was seventeen. How and why he came to be there were not questions he cared to answer. Indeed, he replied to every enquiry in such an elliptical fashion that after a few minutes Vince gave up. His speech bore the faint trace of a Newcastle accent. He was too thin for his considerable height, like an excessively watered daisy overreaching itself. His clothes marked the style of true street wear: practical black jeans, perilously tattered leather jacket, immense, warm and probably flea-filled navy-surplus overcoat. His head looked as if it had been shaved by Sweeney Todd during a party. A moderately fashionable goatee sprouted on his chin. These were the only outward signs of the man within.
Vince considered taking him into his confidence. He needed an ally, and S
trangeways looked moderately sane, alert, not entirely untrustworthy. It meant breaking the rules, though, unless he managed it surreptitiously. They were seated beside each other on the tube as it swayed through northbound tunnels on its way to Golders Green. Strangeways had flatly insisted on accompanying him, only to then borrow the price of the ticket and pocket the change.
Crippen the dog was on the opposite side of the carriage, snuffling around the shoes of an irritated businessman. Strangeways had smuggled the Jack Russell into the station inside his jacket, but Vince had insisted on him standing some distance away, further along the platform. There was a closed circuit monitoring system placed near the tunnel entrances, and even though he was unsure of the technical capabilities of such equipment, he had begun to suspect that the members of the League were somehow utilising the traffic cameras, so why not the ones in there? Some of the new trains had cameras in their carriages, but this was ancient Northern Line rolling stock, unfitted with modern technology. He was pretty sure they were safe for the time being.
‘So, do you do this a lot? Charging around town on treasure hunts?’
‘It passes the time,’ Vince replied. ‘What do you do apart from wander the streets with a dog on a piece of string?’ He waved his hand at the terrier, which had its head in a dozing woman’s shopping basket. ‘And why does it always have to be string? What statement are you trying to make?’
‘The statement that I haven’t got any money,’ Strangeways said and shrugged. ‘I would have thought that was fucking obvious.’
‘Are you unambitious?’
‘No,’ he protested. ‘I have ambitions. They just haven’t been realised.’
‘Why, what do you want to be?’
‘Ideally, a shepherd. Actually, I could have got myself a graphics degree if I’d had the application.’
‘Applying yourself is a matter of—’
‘No, man, the form, I didn’t get the application form posted in time. I have immense artistic ability. What I don’t have is a job and somewhere to live.’
‘Why can’t you get a job?’
‘Are you kidding? There’s no call for illustrators any more. Everything’s comped together on Macs. I’m a fine artist. I don’t want to cobble adverts together. That’s for the computer generation, cheap labour that does what it’s told and to hell with artistry.’
‘There must be some—’ Crippen caught his eye. ‘Your dog.’ The Jack Russell had partially eaten a bar of soap and appeared to be frothing at the mouth.
‘I don’t know why he does that,’ said Strangeways, hauling the dog towards him and removing shreds of soapy paper from his canescent jaws. ‘People think he’s got rabies. I wouldn’t mind having a go at club flyers, CD art an’ stuff, but the competition’s too far ahead of me now. Listen, why are you doing this? It’s some kind of initiation test, is it?’
‘Yeah, sort of. I’m doing it because I have to.’
Perhaps it would be better to confide in him. Now, before they reached the next station. Deciding that communication was power, Vince attempted to outline his role in the evening’s events. Between Chalk Farm and Golders Green stations he described how he had come to be involved with such a group as the League of Prometheus. Telling a stranger eased the weight of the problem. Strangeways thought about it, scratching at his skinny goatee. He carefully realigned the folds of his overcoat and sat back. ‘Do you always do what people tell you to do?’
‘This is different, believe me.’ As they exited the station, Strangeways pondered the problem.
‘Run this by me again. Perhaps I’m being thick. Some nights I’ve got less brain cells than a footballer’s wedding, know what I mean? What are these people going to do if you don’t follow their instructions?’
‘I don’t know. Maybe nothing. They might just be trying to scare me, but I don’t want to take that risk.’
‘So they’re not going to—like, kill anyone, then.’
‘Erm, well, yes they are, if they’re not obeyed.’
‘Don’t you want to know how I knew about Speedwell? I mean, that’s like a one in a thousand chance, you asking me.’
‘Go on, then.’
‘It’s something all the older BT engineers know about. I trained as a telephone engineer for a while, but the work was so fucking boring. Just another branch of digital technology. I went back to the street. I’ve tried my hand at most things, but I always seem to be in the wrong place at the wrong time. I should have been training to use Photoshop on a graphics computer, and now I can’t afford to. Doesn’t that sort of thing ever happen to you?’
Vince smiled. ‘All the bloody time. Why do you live on the street?’
‘Why not? There’s no rhyme or reason to the world any more. Nothing is safe. Nothing is sure except that the rich will put out your ambitions by pissing on the fuse. Fuck ’em. Why not live according to the demands of each day?’
‘Because if everyone did that society would collapse.’
‘Stone me, you think it isn’t doing that already? Look around you. We’re living in the remnants of the past, like scavengers. All of us. A hundred years ago, that train we were just sitting on ran more efficiently than it does now. If we keep progressing at this rate, we’ll soon be back in the Stone Age. People sometimes call me a tramp, but I’m not a tramp, I’m just homeless. The street is my office. I’m on the phone, look.’ He pulled a mobile phone from his overcoat pocket and waved it at him. ‘That’s really all I need to conduct business.’
‘Business?’
‘A little buying and selling.’
‘Oh, right.’ Vince threw him a dubious look, deciding not to ask for details. ‘Is it charged up?’
‘Sure.’
‘Can I use it?’ Vince thanked him and punched in Louie’s number. Inspired by Strangeways’s rebellious attitude, he had decided to dispense with the League’s rule forbidding telephone contact. Louie’s answering machine picked up the call. Damn.
‘There’s the 7-Eleven.’ Strangeways pointed over the rainswept road.
Chapter 23
To the Tropics
Across the city, teenagers hung around outside 7-Elevens in a state of expectant stasis, as if waiting to receive news of world-changing events, but the most that ever happened was a small exchange of drugs and money, a scuffle when the pubs turned out. Vince squeezed between two ominous youths sheltering beneath the awning and walked to the rear of the store. Strangeways remained outside with the dog. Crippen had been hawking up chunks of Imperial Leather ever since they left the tube station.
He found it easily enough, a small rectangular envelope sealed inside a misted plastic Jiffy-bag, taped behind the heavy plastic strips of the drinks cabinet. It made a thwuuuup noise as he removed it, and he was aware of the Chinese clerk behind the counter watching him in the convex mirror above the magazine racks. He purchased a suspicion-killing carton of orange juice and some nutrition-packed pepperoni sticks.
‘So what’s in it?’ Strangeways tried to snatch the envelope from him as he emerged from the store.
‘Move away from me, someone will see you.’
‘There’s no one around but kids, for God’s sake. You’re paranoid.’
‘With good reason.’ He pointed up at the traffic cameras on the corners of the buildings. ‘Do you know who’s watching? I don’t.’
‘Open the damned envelope.’
‘Let’s get off the main street.’
They turned left and walked into a quiet side road filled with pebble-dashed bay-fronted houses, stopping beneath the spattering aureole of a streetlamp. Vince tore the envelope from its plastic cover and ripped open its flap. Inside was the usual single page of chemically treated vellum. He unfolded it and stared with a puzzled frown. At the top was the stated time allowance of an hour, and the title of the challenge:
The Challenge of an Exotic Childhood
‘Yeah, and? Well, what else does it say?’
‘Nothing.’
‘Wha
t do you mean, nothing?’
‘See for yourself.’ He passed the page to Strangeways. The rest of it was blank but for a large round blot of ink in the centre.
‘What do you suppose that’s meant to be?’ Strangeways rubbed at the patch with his forefinger, then examined the tip. ‘Plain black ink. Stains. Beauty spot. No, black spot.’
‘Like an Accident Black Spot? How would we know which one? I remember seeing the signs when I was a kid. Do they still have them?’
‘Shagged if I know. I’d like to help you out, but I don’t think it’s a telephone question. That’s my specialist subject fucked. Check the envelope. There must be something else.’
Vince slid his hand back into the envelope. His fingers touched something gritty at the bottom. Carefully he turned it upside down and collected the residue. ‘Crystals of some kind. Looks like salt.’
‘Don’t.’ He pushed Vince’s finger away from his tongue. ‘Let me test it. If it’s some kind of a drug I’ll know.’ He licked the tip of his finger and touched it to the sprinkle of white in the palm of his hand. Vince watched as he tasted the crystals and laughed. ‘You’re right, it’s just plain rock salt. You know, sea salt. I don’t get it. It’s not a very good clue, is it? If that’s the best they can come up with I’m most unimpressed.’
Vince looked up at the sky. From here, high above London’s bright centre, the clouds had broken and he could see an abyss of stars. The air was clearing now, but the temperature was dropping fast. A ghost-galleon of a cloud rolled lazily towards the moon, its hull illuminated by the city lights. The wind was rising.
‘Sebastian’s losing his touch,’ he said finally, taking the page back and crackling it into his pocket. ‘I know where this is. Too easy.’
‘Look who’s cocky all of a sudden.’ Strangeways was crouching by his dog, feeding it a pepperoni stick. ‘Can we play too, or don’t you need us any more?’
That’s what Sebastian’s doing, thought Vince, sitting in the warm somewhere playing a game. He looked back at the dog. ‘I guess you can come along. I may need someone who can get their head around the mindset of a juvenile.’
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