Feast and Famine

by Adrian Tchaikovsky

  “I thought your dad put it on the horses,” I said without thinking.

  “My father joined the statistics I was researching,” Walther said tightly. “Only in his case they found the body. He’d jumped into the Isis when he found out he was bankrupt. He’d written a note, they think, but he forgot to take it out of his pocket. He couldn’t even get that right.”

  “They killed him?” I said, agog.

  “No,” Walther told me gently. “They didn’t need to. He couldn’t live without it. Perhaps they thought I couldn’t either, but I did.”

  “So it’s personal.”

  “Oh yes.” Walther smiled again, as hard edged as I’d seen him. “And I’ve been keeping their file at the bottom of the stack, all this time. I’d never forgotten. I knew that the case would be handed back to me by someone, someone like Mr Vanderfell. It’s time.”

  “What do you want to do?”

  “I want to go pay the Club another visit. After all, we know where they live too. Coming?”

  *

  I am not at home in posh London, which is that bit around the west leg of the circle line with names like Kensington Something, and a whole load of other pieces of London Green Park way, or near where the lawyers hang out. London’s a strange one though. You get real rat holes right next to the high society. I worked out that I’d done a few jobs just down the road from the Dissipation Club.

  “We’re just going to walk in?” I asked him. “Just walk right in? What if they shoot us or something?”

  “They didn’t shoot me last time,” was Walther’s only logic. “Just about everything else, but not that.”

  I didn’t put into words my thought that they might save the shooting thing for people who called twice. Walther would just have told me that if I didn’t want to come I could wait outside. I’d already left a message behind, to be sent to a few friends if I didn’t call later to stop it, so they’d know where I’d gone. With a mob like this I wasn’t sure it would matter.

  The building was just like in the photo with the MP. The outside didn’t look so old, but it had been redone a lot, and I knew I’d see those big old beams and low ceilings inside, whatever the outside looked like. The grey stone arch read “THE DISPATION SOCIETY” just as I’d seen. I made some comment to Walther that they couldn’t spell worth a damn in those days and he gave me a funny look.

  The doorman met us. He was ex-army in neutral dress. He wasn’t got up in fringy epaulettes or in uniform, just a solid man in a long coat. I didn’t think he had a gun underneath, but that was probably because it would have spoiled the tailoring.

  He wasn’t going to let us in, and that would have been that. I didn’t reckon I could throw him around, and anyway, this was hardly the time or place for it. Then he said, “Messrs Cohen and Liupowiktz?” and he got my name right first time, which is rare. In Prison I was Loopy first off, and that went to Nutter after I knocked a few of them about. I tell my employers I’m Mr. Lupo. To Walther I’m Michael. I don’t hear my real name on a frequent basis.

  “Got it in one,” said Walther, and the doorman just stepped aside and let us up the steps. That scared me a lot. It’s just like the supernatural, that: the world working in ways it shouldn’t.

  We went in to their hall. It was a big old place all right, with a panelled wooden ceiling and walls, and coats of arms on some of the walls, painted on a long time ago in little, lots of them. The carpet was so thick you almost had to wade through it. There were huge leather armchairs and little tables. Two or three plumy old boys were sitting around smoking cigars. There was a waiter in a red jacket with a silver tray. He was also ex-army, my guess. Walther’s whites and my monkey suit got a good few disapproving looks, which was almost worth the price of admission.

  A waiter, a second ex-army waiter, came over and asked us if we’d like anything to drink, and that some Mister Hamley would be with us presently. Walther ordered a brandy and I said I’d have the same because I didn’t fancy ordering a pint somewhere as upper crust as this place. Walther took an armchair and actually looked quite at home. He got a Times from a third waiter and began to read the business pages. I went over to look at a wall that had something as commonplace as photos on it. There were a few cricket teams, looking like they hadn’t seen this side of the First World War, and there was a group of soldiers obviously about to be sent off into the middle of it. There were also some photographs of famous people. I saw some prime ministers there, and a few others I recognised. When Walther appeared at my elbow I said, “Look, Elvis!”

  “The popular singer?” he asked, as if he only vaguely knew who I meant.

  “No, Walther, the astronaut.” I seldom got short with Walther, but Elvis was worth it. “Was Elvis a member of the Dissipation Club?”

  “He was not, although he did perform here once,” said a new voice, and we both turned to see one of the old boys, or a new old boy. He was turned out in blazer and cravat, and what hair he had left was white, but he wasn’t so narrow in the shoulder at that. He had a moustache, and he could have sat for Agatha Christie as a retired Indian Army Colonel or whatever they are, who sometimes turn out to be the murderers. I looked into his eyes and decided that he could be the murderer quite easily.

  “Mr Harmondersly,” Walther said, only what he actually said was “Mr Hamley.” He showed me how it was written down later. I don’t think I’d have been able to treat the man as seriously if I knew he had a trick name. Walther said it in a weird way so you knew the other letters were in there somewhere.

  “Mr Cohen.” Mr Harmondersly was all polite, and he took us from the lounge into an office that was bigger than almost any room I’ve lived in. There was a great big desk and some brown old legal documents on the wall behind glass, and big bookshelves floor to ceiling behind Hardmondsly’s chair that were all full of books in the same binding, like you get in professors’ rooms. Harmondersly sat behind the desk, and we got seats before the desk, and even our seats were leather-upholstered and carved and everything. I had to remind myself that these were the bad guys.

  With defiance, Walther put his hat down on the big man’s desk.

  “It has been quite a while since you last visited us, Mr Cohen,” Mr Harmondersly said, with a pleasant smile. I knew he was the man Walther had spoken to before, who had ruined Walther’s life. “In a way I’m surprised we’ve not met sooner. To what do we owe the visit?”

  “I’ve been biding my time,” Walther said. “Doing my research.”

  “Admirable.” Mr Harmondsley nodded, and another butler that I hadn’t even seen gave us refills of our brandy before stepping out. “You’ll excuse me if I can’t give you long. I have a guest speaker due shortly.”

  “Speaking on what, might that be?” asked Walther, not to be outdone in the politeness.

  “Club business.” Harmondersly brushed him off. “When you sat before me eight years ago, Mr Cohen, in fact I may say when you confronted me before, you had some remarkable allegations. I could not but help admire your imagination. Are you here on some kindred business?”

  Walther reached into a pocket and pulled out a crumpled piece of paper, passing it wordlessly across the desk. Harmondersly unfolded it and read, without reaction.

  “What should I remark upon?” he asked.

  “The words are names, nine of them now,” Walther said. “The numbers are dates upon which these people disappeared. All these people are linked to the Dissipation Club. I can prove it. The documents that prove it are in a safe place, and people have instructions to pick them up unless I tell them not to.” Because this was pretty much what I’d done on this case, except for not having any documents or any idea what was going on, I felt proud of myself. Mr Harmondersly looked delighted, like Walther was a kid who’d been very clever at school.

  “And this evidence you have, you’ve brought copies of course.” He was not remotely bothered, and Walther was not bothered about that. The two of them were like old friends playing some kind of weird ga
me, or like spies from opposite sides. They understood the rules and I didn’t.

  Walther produced his copies obediently: news cuttings, photocopies, scribbled notes on torn sheets of paper. Harmondersly looked over them patiently, despite his having appointments. At the end he smiled at Walther.

  “Well I am surprised, Mr Cohen. I’m surprised that you took the time to find so much circumstance before darkening our door again. The Dissipation Club has a great many members who are newsworthy, and some of them have met unhappy ends. So have a great many people. It is a dangerous world.”

  “Not unhappy, unexplained,” Walther said. “These people have disappeared without trace. All of them. What would you say to that?”

  “That it is also a mysterious world, wherein our ability to uncover answers is oft-times unequal to nature’s ability to obscure them, Mr Cohen. I understand that you have built a cottage industry on the uncovering of problematic answers, and so I appreciate that this revelation may be difficult for you, but it is true nonetheless. We live in imperfect times. We always have.” I cannot believe how polite he was, saying this. Posh people have a special politeness they use to insult people.

  “What do you think the press would make of this, Mr Harmondersly?” Walther demanded.

  “Do you really think this is the sort of story that any newspaper would be interested in running?” Harmondersly enquired. The implication was unsaid, but I could hear it hanging there. Of the three of us in that room, it wasn’t Walther or me who had the phone numbers of Press Barons in our address books.

  “Ah, well,” said Walther, sounding deflated.

  “Did you have anything else to accuse us of, while you are here, Mr Cohen?” asked Mr Harmondersly.

  Walther looked at his accumulated evidence, made a couple of half-hearted gestures towards it. It had been so thoroughly and briefly dismissed that I was amazed to see the material still physically there. He looked utterly thrown, having prompted no reaction at all from his enemy. Hardmondersly smiled, just the kindly old man. I would have thought Walther was completely off his mark, if he hadn’t just then tipped me the wink.

  “Come on Michael,” he said, “Let’s go.” He stood, and I went ahead of him, looking angry and disruptive. Harmondersly went with me, and I turned suddenly in the doorway and ran my brandy into him. It went all over his shirt and blazer and probably caused more property damage than I would if I set fire to my room, and to top it all I dropped the glass so that it broke against the wall, rather than hitting the morass carpet. Harmondersly looked aghast, and I looked mortified, and Walther did what he needed.

  I have no idea what he set up but when we were three steps out of the office a fire alarm went off. There were no sprinklers, and suddenly old men were jumping out of armchairs, looking for buckets of sand. Harmondersly put us into the hands of one of the bouncer-waiters and made himself scarce into his office and we were almost out onto the street when Walther declared “My hat!”

  He ducked under the waiter’s arm and I got in the way enough that he could shoot back after Harmondersly. The waiter hared off after him, but he was coming out with his hat even before the man had reached the doorway, and without Harmondersly feeling his collar.

  When we were out on the street he kept his hangdog look, but gave me another wink out of the corner of his eye.

  *

  We found a pub a good ten streets away and it was all I could do, on that walk, not to shake it out of him. As it was he waited until we had two pints on the table before he told me.

  “Simple things. They can lean on the press and they can ruin families and they can make even rich people disappear, but the simple things work, like a match when the power’s gone. When I got the fire alarms going Harmondersly was back into his office, why?”

  “Because there’s valuable stuff in there he wanted to save.”

  “Close enough,” Walther allowed. “And when I went in there, what did I find?”

  There was no answer to that, so I waited it out. He was brimming over with it and I didn’t have to wait long.

  “Not Mr Harmondersly, for starters,” he told me. “But better than that. Rich people and their plush carpets, Michael. You don’t have to be a Red Indian to read the tracks. Mr Harmondersly was indeed going to check on something precious but, whatever it was, it wasn’t in his office. The shelves behind his desk open out. You could see where the pile had been smoothed over, a neat little quarter circle.”

  “Leading to what?”

  “I don’t know,” Walther told me, “But I’m going to find out. We’re going back.”

  “Now?”

  He shook his head. “I think we’ve exhausted the subtle approach. Next time we’re back with a vengeance, and we’ll find our own way without the guided tour. A frontal assault, Michael.”

  “We’re going to break in?”

  “In one.”

  I thought about this. It was nothing that we hadn’t done before, individually or together and for reasons investigative and criminal. It was just that a top London gents’ club was a bit out of my league.

  “Security systems,” I said. “And probably they have staff on site at night, if there really is something there worth protecting.”

  “If?” Walther asked. He was genuinely hurt. “Michael, if you don’t believe that there’s something there, you have no business coming with me.” And, right after, “If you don’t think there’s something funny going on, what do you think is? Vanderfell and the others just walked into the river on a bender?”

  “Something’s going on,” I admitted. “Something that gets rich people killed, that they don’t want other people to know about.”

  “And you’d guess?”

  I thought about that as well, and I gave it enough time that Walther got a second round in. “Two things,” I said. “One, it’s some rich man’s whorehouse, kids or something, and every so often it goes so far that one of them gets squeamish. So they rub him out and cover it up.”

  Walther nodded.

  “Two,” I went on, “It’s some rich man’s sports thing, fighting or hunting or something, maybe even hunting people, extreme bloodsports. Only it’s dangerous and sometimes the hunters get killed.”

  Another nod.

  “I don’t think it’s our usual,” I said, which was stupid, as our usual was everyone else’s unusual. “Spooks and stuff, I mean. It’s the rich, and they’re doing something so bad that they actually have to cover it up, but it’s just the rich.”

  Another nod. “And?” Walther said.

  “And I’m in,” I told him. “I’m with you.”

  “Good,” he said. “Call Hawker. I have a plan.”

  *

  What happened was this: at about two in the morning one Thursday, when even London is mostly off the streets outside the commercial district, someone lobbed a brick through one of the windows of the Dissipation Club. In fact what they did was lob a brick into the windows, with force. As the windows were a bit better than windows normally are, the brick ended up stuck there.

  The Club’s minder was at the door straight away, with a murderous look in his eye. He came out as soon as he’d finished unlocking the door, which took a while. He heard shouting as he did so, a woman’s voice. When he got out he was met by an off-duty policewoman who’d just seen the culprits. She showed him her ID and everything. It turns out that these two blokes, a big one and a little one in a white hat, had just run away when she challenged them. When she mentioned the white hat the minder wanted to know as much as she could tell him. She obliged, going into considerable detail.

  Meanwhile, Walther and I just walked in behind him, quiet as you like, into the silent lounge of the Dissipation Club. Hawker can be very distracting.

  She wouldn’t hold the man for long, so we made hotfoot to Harmondersly’s office where Walther reckoned this secret door was. The carpet made sneaking about a piece of cake, frankly. The lounge and the office were still lit. I got the impression they didn’t ca
re much about the electric bill.

  We could hear Hawker finishing up even as Walther started to search for the catch. I couldn’t see anything, just a big bookshelf. Walther’s hands passed over the bindings as though he was just looking for a good read.

  “I think he’s coming back,” I whispered. I couldn’t hear Hawker talking any more.

  Walther grinned at me, and I knew he’d found it already and was just mucking me around. He tugged a book at door handle height that looked a bit wooden now I saw it. A moment later the middle shelves swung out towards us, revealing darkness, and some stairs that went right down and around, and steep. We stepped in, as quiet as we could, and pulled it gently closed after us.

  If the minder had thought to check, then we’d have had to throw him down those stairs or something. The plan was vague on that point. I’m guessing they didn’t pick their nightwatch for imagination. No doubt he poked about in the office and just ducked out. Perhaps he didn’t even know that part of the bookshelf was an exit.

  We clicked our torches on. There were no lights at all down here, no switches and no fittings. The stairway spiralled down, stone-lined, looking old, the ceiling black from soot. The air from below was just like cold breath. We looked at each other. Walther was still grinning.

  “I’ll bet the Blitz didn’t touch this,” he said. “I’ll bet the Great Fire didn’t touch this.” He went down the stairs faster than recommended, skidding a few times, torch beam waving wildly but always catching himself.

  We went down four turns before it came out in a vaulted chamber, low-ceilinged and made up of a net of arches, rows and rows of pillars that made the stone above us a complicated lattice of crosses and squares. The stone here was mostly red, said my torch, but the arches were picked out in pale. My torch found a neat stack of boxes and crates at one end, and the biggest wine rack I ever saw.

  “What now?” I asked. “What are you expecting?”

  “I’m not expecting anything,” Walther told me. Even whispering, the space did odd things with the echoes.