Cannonbridge

by Jonathan Barnes

At this torrent of crazed detail, at the peremptory behaviour of the driver and, above all, at his abandonment of Gabriela, Toby feels a terrific current of anger course through him, horribly jolting as an electric shock. “What,” he shouts, “is the meaning of all this?”

  But there is no time for anyone to reply. There is a loud bang very close by, the van lurches wildly to one side, careering wildly. All within are thrown violently about, like so many ants in a matchbox.

  And then there is another loud retort, another impact and Toby’s vision is suddenly smeared and fading. Filling up fast with blood.

  1892

  LEADENHALL STREET LONDON

  “FORGIVE ME, SIR,” says the rather dapper young fellow behind the desk, his hair glistening with unguent, his suit neatly pressed, his tie done up with a dandyish flourish. “But what did you say your name was?”

  “Abberline,” says our man, a little older since we met him last, a little greyer at the temples and rather stouter round the waist. “Mr Frederick Abberline.”

  “Abberline… Abberline…” At this, the neat young fellow makes rather a performance of searching his notebooks and ledgers and those copious piles of paper which bedeck his desk. This pantomime done with, he presents an expression of chilly mockdeference. “I’m afraid that we appear to have no record of you, sir.”

  “You wouldn’t do. I’m not expected. I’ve not made an appointment here.”

  “Dear dear.”

  “I suppose you could say that I’ve come here on a hunch.”

  The secretary or equerry or maître d’ or whatever he is purses his lips in scrupulous distaste. “Forgive me, sir, but I do believe that your name does seem distantly familiar to me, as of a faraway and rusted bell that tolls exhaustedly in the summer breeze. But not, I fancy, through any professional connection. Were you not once of the London constabulary?”

  “I was. Used to be Inspector. Now retired.”

  “And, forgive me if my recollection be faulty as I have a great deal, you understand, to occupy my time and to demand my attention, but you were not involved—nay, sir, were you not at the very forefront of those official investigations into that beastly business in Whitechapel a handful of years ago?”

  Abberline, who has become used to such identifications, simply nods once and issues a gruff “I was”.

  The lips of the man behind the desk form a pout of mocking sympathy. “Never did catch him, did you, sir?”

  “No.” Abberline smoothes back his side-whiskers, a gesture that, he has learnt, can sometimes succeed in quelling his frequent outbursts of temper. “We never did.”

  “A pity, sir,” says the young man with all the civilian’s ignorant relish for bloodshed and gore. “A great pity. For he must have been a madman, mustn’t he, sir? The things he did to those women. The awful degradations. The wicked glee that he took in their gutting.”

  Former Inspector Frederick Abberline draws himself up to his full, yet far from considerable, height, smoothes back his whiskers with entirely disproportionate force and says: “I always think it’s best, sir, for gentlemen who are no longer on the Force not to comment publicly or otherwise, on unresolved criminal matters and on those cases which remain, as we would say, ‘open’.”

  The younger man adopts an expression of serio-jocular sagacity. “Very proper of you, sir. And very correct of you to say so. Now…” His expression shifts back to one of watchful neutrality. “How might I be of assistance today?”

  “I would like to talk—or I would like to make an appointment to talk—to a man whom I have reason to believe works in this establishment.”

  “Oh yes, sir? And what is the name of this fortunate gentleman?”

  “Swaine-Taylor,” says Abberline carefully. “Daniel SwaineTaylor.”

  Momentarily, and almost imperceptibly, the young man flinches. Half a second later, his decorous façade is restored. “Might I ask, sir,” he says, “how you have come to have heard that name?”

  Abberline inclines his head in accession to the request. “I’ve a deal of time in my retirement, sir. A deal of time. Some of it I’ve spent in reading. Trying to better myself. Some of it, I freely admit, I’ve drunk away. And some of it I’ve spent, well, in a little extracurricular digging. A bit of amateur excavation. I saw your Mr Swaine-Taylor once. I’ve a nose for connexions. And so I traced him here, to this address.”

  “Really, sir? How very resourceful of you. Nonetheless, your investigations must surely have been incomplete for I regret to have to inform you that Mr Swaine-Taylor who was, in point of fact, for many years our Principal, passed away at Christmas.”

  “Then he’s dead?” Abberline’s voice makes his disappointment clear.

  “He is, sir. As a doornail.”

  Suddenly, and with a vigour that surprises even the old copper himself, the right fist of Frederick Abberline is brought down hard on the desk before him and his words emerge in a cracked roar which speaks of half a decade’s frustration and fury. “Are you lying to me, boy?”

  “No.” The young man speaks almost in a whimper, all cockiness fled in an instant. “No, sir. I assure you. I am not.”

  Abberline masters himself once again and steps back. The sidewhiskers are pressed firmly into place. “Sorry,” he murmurs. “I should not have…”

  “No need.” The other man sounds almost short of breath. “No apology necessary.”

  Abberline sighs. “How did he die?”

  “Peacefully, sir. And in his bed. Or…”

  “Yes?”

  “At least that was what we were told.”

  “Hmm.”

  “I’m sorry, sir. I know nothing more. Now, if there’s nothing else…”

  “There is, as it happens.”

  “Yes?”

  “One final question.”

  “Go on, Mr Abberline, please.”

  “What is this place? What happens here?”

  The person at the desk seems relieved at this enquiry. “Why, we are a bank, sir.”

  “A bank?”

  “A new kind of bank, sir. And we do business only with the very best. The very cream.”

  “A bank, you say?” asks the old Inspector wonderingly.

  “Indeed, sir. One might even say the bank. Now, if those are all the questions for today?”

  Abberline nods and agrees that this is so and shakes the other man’s hand in additional, unspoken apology and steps away, out of the building and back out onto the street.

  Here he pauses for a moment and looks up with a policeman’s eye for detail at the edifice from which he has just emerged—a rich, expensive, City palace, built of dark stone. There is a bronze plaque affixed, gleaming, to the door. The name upon it means nothing to him yet as he stands in that thoroughfare, surrounded by the sounds of conversation and footsteps and hoof beats upon tarmacadam, he feels, without understanding entirely why, greatly troubled in his mind.

  He draws in a breath, smoothes back his whiskers and reads the plaque again.

  ‘REYNOLDS’ it says in tall black letters. Only that and nothing else.

  With an inexplicable solemnity and sadness, as if something crucial has only narrowly eluded him, Abberline turns dolefully, walks away and lets London claim him once more.

  NOW

  TOBY JUDD MUST have lost consciousness for a minute or two—the darkness punctured by an oneiric glimpse, of a plaque, a bronze plaque, gleaming in the sunlight—for when he opens his eyes again it is to an altered scene of the utmost brutality. The van has come to a halt. The glass of its windscreen has been smashed and cold Scottish wind is blowing through the shattered space. His vision is smeary, he realises, for his eyes are filled with liquid. He wipes them clean as best he can and realises that the substance in question is his own blood.

  He winces, still coming to. There is a sound nearby, like the screech of a seabird in panicked flight. It takes him a moment to comprehend what it is that he is hearing—the lunatic keening cry of the Blessborough sister.<
br />
  In pain ( my head, he thinks dimly, something has been done to my head), he levers himself out of his seat and away from the van, leaving the madwoman behind him.

  He sees where they are—an empty, narrow, rural lane. Ahead of them is a black Saab. Vaguely, as if from another life, he recollects having seen it before, on the street outside his home, back in Ashbury. Now it is on the grass verge a few feet away.

  Evidently, he has awoken in time to witness the finish of a long awaited confrontation. Neither of the players, lost in their private drama, seem to be paying him any attention.

  There is Jenny Blessborough with her hands in the air like she’s under arrest. There, standing opposite her, a revolver in an outstretched hand, is the man from before, from the hotel; he who was chewing a toffee whilst brandishing a knife, the man who, with Gabriela…

  Toby’s thoughts are cut short when the man, in clear, clipped tones, says to his prisoner: “Tell me. I am interested. Did you really think that your survival for so long was due to your own ingenuity? Jenny, love, you were permitted to escape. You were allowed to live…”

  The woman looks defiant, facing down the man with the gun with a salty resilience which Toby very much doubts that he would ever have been able to muster in such a scenario. Yet, for all of that, there is exhaustion in her too, a dreadful sort of readiness. “Then why?” she spits.

  He shrugs. “To see if you might be worthy.” He seems to allow himself a bitter smile. “But we’ve got someone better now. Someone much better suited.”

  Without warning, as if he has simply grown bored of the conversation, he presses the trigger, there is a loud retort and the woman crumples at once to the ground, something trickling from her scalp. The man only grunts once in satisfaction. Toby cannot help himself—he shouts out in horror and shock.

  The man turns to Toby and, with the gun now directed at the academic, walks towards him. He is limping, Toby notices. There’s a stain by his left knee and he wonders, with a thrill of guilty pride, if Gabriela had managed to wound this monster before the end.

  “Good evening, Dr Judd,” he says. “My name is Mr Keen. Your presence is required in London.”

  Toby struggles, and fails, to stop his voice from quavering. “By whom? And why? Why, for God’s sake?”

  “It’ll be explained. Beyond my pay grade, I’m afraid.”

  “And if I won’t go?”

  Keen sighs. “All of a sudden, I’m not feeling all that patient anymore.”

  There is a wild shriek from the ruined van.

  Keep quiet, Toby thinks. Alix, for your own sake, stay silent.

  Mr Keen smiles. “I’ve not forgotten her, doctor. Never fear. Now we’re going to step over to my very nice car. It’s the black Saab over there. And we’re going to do it without any fuss. You understand me?”

  He limps closer and places the gun at Toby’s temple. Still warm, he thinks. Metal still warm against my skin.

  “You’ve really no choice so let’s not prolong this, shall we? You wouldn’t want me to do to you what I had to do to your girlfriend in the end?”

  “And what,” Toby snarls, “was that?”

  “Oh, let’s just say that no human being could have survived it. Out of the question. Walk this way, please.”

  Backed all the while by cries and whimpers from the van, Toby allows himself to be guided towards the Saab where he is pushed down into the passenger seat, the weapon hard against his temple. Just before he is pushed down into place, just before the door slams shut, he shouts, at the top of his voice: “Run, Alix! Run!”

  At this, three things happen—Mr Keen frowns mildly, the screaming from the van ceases abruptly and the revolver is slammed hard into the side of Judd’s head.

  He will always tell himself later that he cannot remember much of what follows. In truth, despite his concussion, he will recollect it all as a series of snapshots in hideously pin-sharp detail—him being strapped in by Keen; the killer getting into the car; the locking of the doors and the starting of the engine; the drive away; the sight of a wild-haired figure crawling free from the van and starting, with all the speed and vigour of desperate insanity, to run; Keen’s cool pursuit; their effortless catching of her; the pale, panicked face of Alix Blessborough; her piteous scream; her arms before her face; her final peal of terror; the disappearance beneath the car; her surrender to the tyres and the metal; the awful double bump that follows; the certainty of her extinction.

  And then, after all of this is past and the long drive commences, the man with the gun places a bud in each ear. A smile flickers about his lips and he delivers the somehow sickening request, spoken as though nothing at all of significance has occurred, as though they were just old friends out for an afternoon drive, accompanied by the rustle of a small plastic packet and spoken lightly, almost drolly: “Would you care for a toffee, Dr Judd?”

  1894

  HEADQUARTERS OF THE ORDER OF THE MOON-BORN CAMDEN TOWN

  “MY DEAR,” SAYS Mrs Constance Wilde to her particular friend, Miss Georgina Lavenham, as they descend the exterior steps towards the basement of a house in a district that is far from respectable, “are you sure that this will be quite safe?”

  “Oh, certainly, certainly,” retorts Miss Lavenham, a thin-faced and haughty woman of indeterminate middle-age who adopts at almost all times an expression of studied boredom, as if daring the world to provide her with amusement and diversion. “Well, almost certainly. But then a little risk gives spice to the venture, don’t you think? Otherwise, what would be the point of it all? I certainly feel in need of novelty now that the Golden Dawn stands revealed as so disappointingly milk and water an organisation.”

  “Indeed,” says Constance, who is, in fact, not entirely sure that she agrees with that assessment. “I dare say we shall see what we shall see.”

  The two ladies are to form part of a larger party—twenty-one in total, eleven men and ten women. Constance and Georgina are the last to arrive, stepping unhurriedly down through a rather dirty door and into the hallway beyond, at the end of which they are just able to glimpse the temple, empty at the moment but shortly to be filled. There are two antechambers to that larger space and it is into the second of these that the ladies walk.

  “I always find this part so tiresome,” opines Miss Lavenham. “It is all so very cumbersome and unwieldy, this dressing up. Your husband is quite right—I’ve always said so—in his beliefs concerning the impracticality of women’s dress.”

  Constance, who prefers at present not to dwell upon her husband’s opinions concerning the removal of clothing, only murmurs some inconsequential reply, too low for us to hear.

  The two women disappear into the second of those little rooms which abut the temple. We shall not follow them there. It would not be proper. Instead we will wait until they emerge again, their old, elaborate attire gone now, replaced by floor-length robes, made, fetchingly, of material that is coloured a deep shade of damson. The others are with them, all dressed identically and, a quorum having evidently been formed, they all file politely inside, quite as if they are returning to their seats for a performance at the Haymarket following a pleasant interval spent in discussion of the first act and in the consumption of some surprisingly tolerable wine.

  Who are they, these men and women who choose to spend their afternoon in this subterranean place, dressed as though they are adherents to the most ungodly and inexplicable of creeds?

  Why, they are you. They are me. They are our neighbours, our friends, our brothers and sisters, our tailors, our barbers, our brokers and bookmakers and librarians and grooms. They are, in short, wholly unremarkable. Any one of them you might pass daily upon the street for years and never once have the slightest cause to suspect him or her of possessing so profound an interest in the shadow side of life nor that they, with such frequency, expend their free time in the exploration of the occult. Not a single individual would you mark down as being, in private, a magician.

  The wa
lls of the temple are lined with purple cloth. Chairs are laid out in two parallel lines, one for either sex. Before these are sigils of curious design chalked upon the flagstones and before this, at the head of the room, is a kind of altar, carved from some manner of black stone and projecting a most unpleasant sort of aura.

  How little I should like to touch it, thinks Constance as she and Miss Lavenham take their seats which are on the very first row of chairs—how little in fact do I care to be in this room at all. There is, of course, no natural light here. The place is lit only by candlelight, a thing that makes the shadows loom and shudder at the edges of one’s vision.

  “The scene is prettily enough done,” admits Miss Lavenham to her companion. Constance nods.

  “And I hear they provide a worthwhile spread at the end of it. The devilled kidneys alone are, I gather, sufficient as to justify the cost of membership.”

  Constance is about to reply to this improbable claim when a hush falls upon the room and a figure dressed in robes of a lighter hue than the rest, a young man of barely twenty, already running to fat, proceeds with pompous self-importance up the central aisle.

  Lavenham rolls her eyes. “Alexander,” she says in a stage whisper, “the budding ham.”

  Constance places a finger to her lips, rather grateful for the opportunity to shush the older woman.

  The man reaches the head of the room, makes some peculiar motions around his neck and chest and turns with a conjurer’s flourish to face the congregation.

  “Greetings,” he says, “my dear ones. My seekers after truth. My pilgrims, my apostles—those who hunger for knowledge and enlightenment.”

  Miss Lavenham clicks tongue against mouth. “At this rate, he’ll be reading us one of his poems before we’re done.”

  The man glares towards the front row and, raising his voice a little, continues. “Friends,” he says, “we are gathered here today to perform a ritual which, if my calculations are correct, will allow us to commune with one of those creatures whom our forefathers named ‘demons’ which dwell beyond the veil, in a plane of reality far beyond our own. Today we are pioneers, piercing the skin of the waking world and venturing into that which lies above and beyond. Who amongst you are with me?”