‘I’m sorry, Doc, I need your help again.’ His breath formed over the mouthpiece. ‘I hope I didn’t wake you.’
‘Oh, no chance of that. When you get to my age you sleep less. You don’t want to risk missing anything. I felt you might ring again, and made according arrangements. We’re going to be up all night.’
Thank God for that, he thought. ‘It’s a date—the 25th of July. Does that mean anything to you?’
‘Well, it could mean all sorts of things. It really depends on which year.’
He hoped the doctor would keep his answers succinct. After this call, he only had twenty pence left in telephone change and would have to rely entirely on the mobile. ‘St James’s Day,’ he prompted. ‘Ring any bells?’
‘No, not really. I have a Book of Days here, somewhere, perhaps that can—’
‘Doctor, I don’t have much time left on this phone. The clue says: “Pray remember the 25th of July”.’
‘That’s the whole thing?’
‘I’m afraid so.’
‘Pray remember—wait a minute, would you?’ There followed the sound of him setting the receiver down.
Shit, he thought, he’s wandered off to ask somebody else and I don’t have time for this. He heard the receiver being raised once more.
‘You’re in luck. I’ve brought in some friends. We’re all in different academic fields, we just meet informally in a group, for the fun of it really. I thought they might be useful—’
‘Doctor,’ he cautioned. ‘Time.’
‘Yes, sorry. There’s a tendency to ramble when one grows older. We think it was a street cry.’
‘What was?’
‘The “Pray remember” part, someone here says, hang on—’ Vince could hear someone speaking in the background.
‘Hello? Young man?’ A new voice now, the voice of a middle-aged woman. The doctor was putting his friends on the line for a chat, for God’s sake.
‘Yes, I’m here.’
‘I don’t know if this is of any help at all, but in Victorian times, if you couldn’t afford a pilgrimage to the shrine of St James on July the 25th, you built your own.’
‘Hang on a sec,’ said Vince, dropping his last coin into the phone slot. ‘Sorry.’
‘Are you still there? On St James’s Day the poor children collected pebbles, flowers, shells and bits of pottery, and built little grottoes. They’d sit beside them collecting coins in their caps, and they’d call out “Pray remember the grotto”. You heard the cry in the poorer parts of London as late as the 1920s. My grandmother can remember…’
Vince leaned out from the station alcove and peered back at the clubs tucked beneath the railway arches. The twisted rope of crimson letters jumped out of the gloom even at this distance. There must have been a hundred and fifty people queuing to get into The Grotto.
‘Young man? Can you hear me?’
‘Yes, I can, you’ve been a great help, thank you. And thank Doctor Masters for me.’
‘He says you must call whenever you need him, no matter how late it is. He suffers from insomnia. We all do.’
‘Thanks. I may well have to call again.’ The Grotto. Very funny. Another of the League’s little jokes. The club shared its name with one of the largest social organisations associated with the Freemasons. He returned the receiver to its perch and ran off towards the club.
—
Pam had followed her quarry to Cheyne Walk. This was quite the bravest and most foolhardy thing she had ever done. Behind her, the lights of Chelsea Bridge wavered in the falling snow, glittering in the icy river like the illuminations of an abandoned carnival. At the end of the street, the striding figure turned and crossed the junction into another road. She followed as quickly and quietly as she could. She was fairly certain that he had not spotted her; she had been careful to keep her distance for the last half hour.
Pam presumed they were moving parallel to the river, but within minutes she was lost in the labyrinth of neat little streets. The buildings here sported an air of wealthy discretion. It was the sort of area where Members of Parliament were caught for drunk driving after visiting their mistresses.
The figure before her suddenly left the street, pushing open a high gate of black wrought iron. She was surprised to see a tall gothic building with mullioned windows set back from the pavement beyond a grass-covered quadrangle. She caught the gate with her foot just before it shut and slipped inside. He was stamping the snow from his shoes on the steps of the main entrance, muttering to himself. She waited on the far side of the flagstone courtyard while he twisted the door-ring and vanished within.
Pam waited a full five minutes before wobbling across the courtyard on her heels and standing before the bevelled iron ring. There was nothing she had covered in her business courses to account for this situation. She wished Vince was here. After a moment of hesitation she turned the handle and felt the door shift inwards, unlocked. Pushing it further open she saw a gloomy flagstone hall, a great oak staircase lined with unfurled flags—and half a dozen men in dinner jackets waiting for her to step inside.
Before she could back out, Barwick stepped forward and pushed the door shut.
‘I’m glad you finally decided to join us,’ said Sebastian. ‘We were freezing our parts off waiting for you to make up your bloody mind.’
Chapter 29
Steel and Stars
Vince knew he had one advantage over the League. He could talk to people out here in the queue beneath the freezing arches and get some honest answers. Sebastian and his pals had no street sense. They had made a mistake with this challenge, playing into his hands for once.
‘How big is this place?’ he asked a hypertense young black man in a fake-Armani jacket at the back of the line.
The young man bounced up and down on the balls of his feet, his face scrunched up in puzzlement.
‘Yah—what, man?’
‘How many bars are there inside?’
‘Bars? Lessee, now. Upstairs. Downstairs. Balcony. Dive-bar. Restaurant. Club Lounge. Chill-out Room. VIP Suite. Terrace.’
‘They’re all different?’
‘There’s four different entrances, man. They’re all numbered. This the third.’
…To Three of Four Doors…at least he was in the right line.
‘Sounds big.’
‘Different club nights. House. Garage. Jungle. Bhangra. Hardbag, Techno. Funk. Thrash metal. Trance-Dance. Retro. Pop. Jazz. Loungecore. Straight. Gay. Bi. Can hold three thousand people on a good night. Not at the rate these guys admitting us, though.’
‘They have a strict door policy?’
‘Strictest ever.’
Given the number of stabbings that occurred in such places, most of the clubs in the area were extremely choosy about whom they admitted. Vince was able to work his way further along the queue, jumping a few places by telling a complex but convincing lie about a lost jacket. When he reached the front, the doorman finally admitted him to a tiny foyer of sweating white-painted bricks, where he could decide Vince’s fate at leisure.
‘How much is it?’ asked Vince, digging into his duffel bag.
‘How much is what?’ the bouncer asked back, smiling quizzically. Music thudded heavily beneath their feet.
Oh, it’s going to be like that, he thought. Just what I need. ‘I’m meeting someone inside, actually.’
‘Only if you get in—actually.’ His smirk turned to a grin. ‘Where do you want to go?’
‘What’s at the top?’
‘You don’t want to go upstairs. Upstairs is rubber. You got any rubber?’
Vince shook his head. The bouncer persisted. ‘Latex? PVC? Padded vinyl? Nylon? Plastic? Spandex?’
‘ ’Fraid not.’
‘Yeah, well. Makes people sweat,’ he replied consolingly.
‘What’s downstairs?’
‘Twenty-two pounds fifty.’
‘That’s expensive.’
‘It includes the price of having your nipple
pierced.’
‘Just the one? There must be something else.’
‘Garage.’
‘I like garage music.’
‘No, it’s just a garage. Full of cross-dressers tonight.’
‘You mean angry—’
‘No, transvestites. I get muddled up, meself. It’s like stalactites and the ones that come up from the floor. You wouldn’t like it in there. A lot of bonding going on.’
‘How close?’
‘Very close. You’ll be better off in the alternative lounge, middle floor. Eight quid.’
Vince figured it was the minimum he’d get away with spending. He paid his money, had the back of his wrist branded with a purple day-glo stamp and stepped into darkness, slowly climbing beer-slick concrete steps to the centre of the building.
…The Challenge of the Crenellated Pachyderm…So he was looking for some kind of elephant? In here? The walls vibrated as a train rumbled past, seemingly through each of the crowded dance floors. He was hungry, thirsty and dead-dog-tired as he reached down to a red styrofoam sofa covered in cigarette burns and collapsed into it.
‘Hey, wake up, man.’ A cadaverous creature with cheese-and-onion-crisp breath was leaning over him. Vince had nodded off for a moment, and awoke with a start to be confronted by what appeared to be a Mott the Hoople–era hippie. He had hair extensions and cropped patches like bleached corn-stubble. ‘You look knackered.’
‘And you look like a dealer,’ Vince replied.
‘Who made you clairvoyant?’
‘Making sure the house is sorted for es and whizz, are you? I don’t want any.’
‘Hey, don’t be so aggressive, man. Gern, take your pick, every one’s a winner.’
He pulled open his black nylon bomber jacket to reveal an array of brown plastic medicine bottles fixed to buttons in the lining with rubber bands. ‘Doves, Hearts, Downs, Whippets, Jellies, Wobbly Eggs, Purple Screamers, Heebie Jeebies, Blue Poison, Black Death—’
Vince made a face. ‘Christ, they sound awful.’
‘Oh, I don’t know, it does you good to get out and have fun occasionally. I’m providing a service.’ He pulled a bottle from his jacket and held it out. ‘Here, they used to give these to injured soldiers just before they had amputations. Two quid apiece.’
‘That’s cheap.’
‘I mix them with something from my shed and pass the savings on to you.’
‘You got something to keep me up all night?’ He leaned out of the strobing lights and shielded his eyes. ‘Come here a second.’
The dealer realised his mistake and started to back away, but Vince caught him by the sleeve of his jacket and pulled. ‘Mr Wentworth? Jason? It is you! Christ, I can’t believe you’re doing this. You used to be our art teacher.’
The dealer moved sheepishly towards him. ‘I didn’t recognise you. Vincent Reynolds, isn’t it?’ He sat down beside him on the sofa. ‘How are you getting on? I hope your figure drawing’s improved.’
Vince was aghast. ‘You were going to get back to nature, go off and live in the Algarve. You said the light would be better for painting.’
‘Yeah, well, I went there for a while but it wasn’t like I thought it would be. All golf clubs and holiday parks. Really expensive. I ran out of money after six weeks. Teamed up with some bloke who was planning to open a beach disco, persuaded me to draw out all my savings to invest in it. Bastard only spunked out the first half of his dosh before clearing off. He was supposed to put in the same amount as me, only he never turned up to the bank when we went to secure the loan. The British embassy had to pay for me to get home. I’m married now. I’ve got responsibilities.’ He pulled a vial of white tablets from his coat pocket. ‘You still want something to keep you awake?’
‘Only if it works all night long.’ Vince wearily pulled himself up from the seat. ‘I’m on the search for the “Crenellated Pachyderm”. You can help me find it if you like, but don’t blame me if someone tries to kill you.’
—
‘It’s your go, Maggie,’ said Harold Masters. ‘Stop daydreaming.’
‘I can’t help thinking of that poor boy out there all by himself,’ said Mrs Armitage. The flame-haired occult specialist of Camden Town was not concentrating on her hand. ‘We should be doing something to help him.’
‘The best thing we can do is be on the other end of the telephone line when he calls,’ said Masters, checking his cards once more.
‘Perhaps we should ring the police.’ Mrs Armitage ran nervous fingers through the brightly varnished shell necklace that looped her neck. ‘Explain what’s going on. I have connections. I know people who could psychically assist them in their investigations.’
‘That would slow them down a bit,’ said Stanley Purbrick, a curator at the British Museum whose usual field of expertise was Victorian ornithology. He had no time for Maggie Armitage’s new age brand of vaguely holistic spiritualism. He was a rationalist, and a conspiracy theorist. He could find a conspiracy inside his morning cereal packet or behind the lateness of the train that bore him to work, and frequently did so. ‘They have no idea what goes on in this city. Besides, talk to the police and it stays on your files for ever. For God’s sake play your hand, Maggie, you’re driving us all mad.’
‘What files? They have files on us?’ Mrs Armitage distractedly laid out her cards in a hand that made so little sense it seemed impossible to imagine that she had been paying attention for the last half hour.
‘What on earth have you been keeping there, you silly woman?’ Purbrick tossed his cards aside in disgust. ‘If you’d spent less time arguing about spontaneous combustion and more remembering what cards you were holding we could have finished playing ages ago. These are spades. Those are clubs. Christ on a bike.’
Harold Masters and his wife were used to this sort of behaviour. Virtually every meeting of the Insomnia Squad featured a card game disrupted by the most arcane arguments imaginable, but the five of them continued to meet, which, he supposed, proved that they still had something in common.
‘I can’t concentrate,’ said Mrs Armitage, walking to the window and staring down into the darkened street. ‘That poor boy needs spiritual fortification.’
‘So do I,’ said Purbrick. ‘Harold, I seem to recall that you have a decent twelve-year-old malt whisky over there, don’t you?’
‘I might have,’ Masters replied carefully. Once the last member of their group arrived and got his hands on it, the bottle would be lost. ‘Jane, have a look in the sideboard and give our guests a drink.’ His wife gave him a gentle knowing smile as she crossed the room.
‘So it’s agreed,’ said Masters. ‘Mr Reynolds needs our help, and I for one don’t think it’s cheating. After all, the League has at least twelve members working against him, and we are only five.’
‘Four at the moment,’ Mrs Armitage pointed out.
‘The least we can do is stay up with the poor fellow until dawn,’ said Masters, ‘and try to guide him through. What are you doing?’
The occultist pulled something from the unruly red mop of her hair and set it down before her. ‘It’s a divining rod.’
‘It’s a pencil.’
‘You can use anything so long as the wood is right.’
‘I don’t see how that helps us at all,’ complained Purbrick. ‘What use is that?’
‘I use it to write with,’ she explained. ‘Harold, why don’t you start by telling us everything you know about these people? Perhaps we can do something more positive than just sitting beside the phone.’
—
Pam watched in annoyance as they argued around her.
‘What I don’t understand,’ Caton-James complained, ‘is why you couldn’t find some ordinary rope.’
‘How many people do you know who can lay their hands on a coil of rope at short notice?’ shouted St John Warner. ‘It’s all very well for you to say “tie her up” as if it was the most natural thing in the world to do. You don’t even carry a penknif
e on you.’
‘I’m not a fucking Boy Scout. If I have any dirty work to do, I’ll get someone congenitally stupid to do it for me, right, Barwick?’
Barwick gave them both a long hard stare as he knotted Pam’s hands behind her back. In the absence of rope he had been forced to make do with an old 16mm print of Carousel someone had once borrowed from the BFI and not returned. Knotting strips of plastic proved problematic, though, and Pam had complained that it was cutting into her wrists right up until Sebastian gagged her with his handkerchief and the end of a roll of parcel tape.
They arranged her astride a bentwood chair with her arms tied around the central supporting column of the reading room. Still clad in her navy-blue suit and faux-pearls, she looked like a flight attendant getting into bondage.
‘What are we going to do with her, anyway?’ asked Caton-James. ‘She can’t stay here.’
‘She can for the remainder of the night,’ said Sebastian. ‘She was helping the enemy.’ He looked over at Pam, who was glaring at them in forced silence. ‘I think she’s putting gypsy curses on us all. It makes one wonder if all unattractive women are really witches.’ Pam threw him a look that almost struck him dead.
‘I think we should go upstairs and check the subject’s progress on the big monitor. We’re wasting time down here.’ St John Warner made for the spiral wooden staircase in the corner.
‘For once I agree with you,’ said Sebastian. ‘Barwick, you stay here and guard.’
‘Good dog,’ said St John Warner, barking and laughing as they trooped upstairs, leaving the miserable student with his captive.
—
‘My first thought was the Elephant and Castle,’ Vince explained as they climbed towards the roof. Below them, the cacophony of several different sound systems competed for dancers in different parts of the warren-like building. ‘Crenellations are those dips in battlements that troops fire from, so Pachyderm Castle—it seemed a reasonable assumption. But the instructions brought me here instead.’
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