by John
‘I think so,’ said Lakshmi.
‘I’m working on getting help to you, but we’ve got to bring that young man in before someone else does.’
28.
MEMORIES OF YOU
Muffled traffic noise and the distant wail of sirens seeped down to Rémy through the cracks in the tiles of the old evacuation tunnel. He glanced at his watch, a knock-off Tag Heuer that Sotto had given him for his sixteenth birthday: 10.28 a.m. Only a few minutes since he’d fallen. Time to get out of here.
The statue was directly above him, which meant straight ahead should get him to the crypt beneath St Martin in the Fields. Part of the crypt had been turned into a café and a bookshop beneath the church, but he knew from the Professor there was a way round that.
Rémy walked south, stooping slightly to avoid brushing the tunnel roof, his eyes gradually adjusting to the eerie darkness. Every few minutes, the walls shook as Tube trains hurtled along nearby. The odours of human waste no longer fazed him; he’d been homeless for too many weeks. He ignored the rustling of rats scampering up ahead and away from him in the shallow murky water too. After several minutes, he reached an iron ladder up to a grate in the tiled ceiling. The grate looked as if it hadn’t been used in a while. He tried it. Not surprisingly, it wouldn’t budge.
Rémy began to feel anxious. What if the overhead world caved in on him? What if he died like a rat in these sewers, never able to finish his mother’s quest? What if everything he’d done so far was for nothing?
He shimmied back down the ladder and paced up and down the tiny space, trying to bring his breathing under control. He knew that he’d have to return to Old Worm’s and search the place more thoroughly. The painting may not have been in the cabinet, but that didn’t mean it wasn’t in the shop. The tablet, still thrumming faintly around his neck, had been loud and clear on that.
Rémy set his guitar case down and popped it open. Inside, he’d accumulated ten one-pound coins and assorted other change, plus five ceramic guitar picks from a fellow street busker, an ex-soldier suffering from PTSD. The soldier had been so impressed with Rémy’s playing that he’d given him the picks. A photograph of his mother performing at the Royal Albert Hall with the Tulane University Ensemble lay among the change. At seventeen, Annie Dupree Rush had been the first black female to score a chair in the traditionally all-male group. Rémy sat back on his haunches against the wet tiles and stared at her, smiling behind her cello. His dad, a student from the London School of Economics, had been standing in the wings. After that concert Peter Rush decided he’d follow Annie Dupree’s music anywhere in the world.
Rémy wiped his eyes with the back of his hand.
Grow a pair, Rémy Dupree Rush!
He gently replaced the photograph. Grabbing the guitar picks, he climbed back up the iron ladder and wedged a pick under the corroded lock. He pushed another as far into the other side of the latch as he could reach. Then he climbed back down and picked up his harmonica. He’d never conjured twice in such a short time. There’d be more ill effects, but they’d be better than suffocating beneath the streets of London.
Rémy let an image centre in his mind. He concentrated the way his mother had shown him, transforming the image into sound waves, letting the music rise in his imagination. He inhaled and exhaled, then put his harmonica to his lips and played a few bars from the Stones’ ‘You Can’t Always Get What You Want’.
Seconds later, a loud concussive pop filled the chamber as the two picks expanded, blowing the lock off the rusted grate.
‘But if you try,’ grinned Rémy through his tears as he climbed.
29.
MI CASA ES TU CASA
Rémy ached for sleep and silence as he approached the abandoned rail tunnel near South Kensington Station. The tunnel with its shantytown of boxes, tarps and crates had been his home for the past three weeks. He’d always had music playing in his head, telling him stories, riffing with the sounds in the world around him, but he’d never wished for silence before. It was different now.
Please God, just for one night, peace and quiet.
The Professor’s tent stood under the tallest curve of the tunnel: a series of old blue construction tarps duct-taped together and held aloft with broom handles. It was furnished with an overstuffed armchair, an old-style primary-school desk, a cooler filled with whatever food and drink the Professor had managed to scavenge that day, a box of books and a bust of the philosopher Paracelsus. There was also a bicycle with a flat tyre and the Professor’s camp bed, neatly made up with army surplus blankets and a thin pillow. Rémy’s sleeping bag and backpack lay on the opposite side of the tent.
The Professor sat behind the primary-school desk, writing. In the short time Rémy had known him, the Professor was always writing; and yet when Rémy stole a look it wasn’t writing like any he had ever seen, just lines and lines of repetitive numbers, patterns and glyphs. Rémy figured that, whatever the Professor was doing, it made perfect sense in his world.
‘Success?’ inquired the Professor without looking up.
‘No,’ said Rémy, setting his guitar case on the floor and flopping down in the armchair. He ran his hands across his shaved head, the growth prickling his palms.
‘I’ll need to go back and look more carefully some other time. I wish I knew what exactly I was looking for. I wish I’d known enough to help my mom with this search when she was alive. I wish—’
‘My boy, don’t punish yourself for what you could not have known. Those kinds of wishes are simply vanity disguised as regret. Now, tell me again what your mother told you.’
‘“Find the Moor and find the painting”,’ Rémy repeated wearily. ‘I’ve struck out with the painting and I’ve no idea what a Moor is, never mind where to find one.’
‘Well, I may be able to help with the Moor.’
The Professor unfolded his large body from behind the tiny desk and pulled out a map, the kind that hung in libraries and classrooms. He picked up a broken umbrella and used it as a pointer.
Despite the exhaustion in his bones, Rémy knew better than to doze off. If he insulted his eccentric host, he was pretty sure he’d be asked to leave – and then where would he go? He unlaced his boots for comfort, but kept them on. Footwear was as precious as gold among the homeless. It could never leave your feet.
‘In the Middle Ages through to the early fifteen hundreds,’ the Professor began, ‘many wealthy North African aristocrats migrated with their armies across the straits of Gibraltar, here and here.’ He pointed to southern Spain with the handle. ‘They established themselves in Granada and Cordoba in particular, building castles and palaces and many of the trade routes that eventually fuelled the economy in this part of the world.’
Rémy shifted his chair. ‘So Moors are from North Africa?’
‘Yes, by and large.’
‘Were these Moors Muslim?’
‘Many were. But Spain was a Catholic country. You have no doubt heard of the Spanish Inquisition?’
Rémy couldn’t help himself. ‘No one expects them, I can tell you that much.’
The Professor looked blank.
‘I would question that position,’ he said. ‘The Inquisitors were well known and feared at the time. Various royal decrees issued between 1492 and 1501 ordered many of the Moors to convert or leave Spain forever. The Inquisition ensured that those who claimed to have converted, did so in the proper fashion.’
Rémy stifled a yawn. He was so damn tired.
‘The Moors were known to be great philanthropists and supporters of the arts, especially music,’ the Professor continued. ‘One story in particular may be of interest to you. The story of a Moor and the most famous castrato of Renaissance Europe, Don Grigori de Cordoba.’
Rémy’s drooping eyes flew open. Castrato?
‘In the early part of the sixteenth century,’ said the Professor. ‘This castrato was celebrated in every theatre and court in Europe. For a long time, one of his main benefactors was
a Moor known as the Caliph of Cadiz.’
The excitement that had flared in Rémy’s heart died. This wasn’t the Moor his mother had told him to find. He needed someone in the twenty-first century.
‘Now,’ the Professor continued, oblivious to Rémy’s disappointment, ‘it’s a popular misconception that castrati have no testicles—’
‘I wouldn’t say popular,’ muttered Rémy.
‘—but it’s not entirely true. To keep their pristine voices at a high-octave range, young boys had the endocrine ducts to their testicles sliced, so that their testicles would shrivel up. A eunuch had his testicles removed entirely, usually for quite different reasons.’
Rémy’s empty stomach churned.
‘It is widely believed that the Moor and the castrato duelled over money and went their separate ways. The castrato withdrew from the opera at the peak of his career and the height of his fame to accept a position as composer and personal musician at the court of Cardinal Rafael Oscuro, one of the most infamous Inquisitors of the period.’
Rémy loved listening to the Professor’s stories, especially late at night when homesickness gripped his heart in a vice. But this lecture was pushing it after the day he’d had.
‘I’m sorry, Professor,’ he said, ‘but what has any of this got to do with finding the Moor my mom told me to find? That guy must have died 500 years ago!’
The Professor’s eyes were strangely dark. ‘Time is much more wibbly wobbly than you think.’
‘If it is, I’d like to wobble back at least a few months before any of this shit hit my fan.’
Rémy suddenly felt as if he had been plunged into a warm bath. His muscles, taut with fear and exhaustion, relaxed. His frustration fizzled. His headache faded, the sound from the pendant at his neck a distant thready hum. He looked at the Professor.
‘How do you do that?’
‘Do what?’ asked the Professor, opening a carton of partially eaten KFC he had retrieved from a nearby dumpster.
Rémy stood in front of the Professor.
‘My mom would calm me with her singing when I was little. I’d feel her lullabies in my head like a blanket wrapping my brain. You do the same thing, somehow.’
Rémy eyed his guitar and his backpack, in case he had to make a run for it.
‘You made me trust you the moment I met you. I’ve seen you do it to others. You can calm a rowdy crowd and persuade them to fill your hat with cash. And not just because your stories are good.’
‘What a curious thing to say,’ murmured the Professor. ‘Would you like a wing from this chicken in a box?’
Rémy ignored the offer. ‘I’ve spent my entire life around magical secrets,’ he said. ‘There’s something odd about you. If I should be worried, I’d like to know sooner rather than later.’
The Professor put the carton of chicken down and stared at the blue tarped wall of the tent.
‘I am… different,’ he said at last.
‘No kidding,’ said Rémy. It had been a hell of a journey from losing his mother in Chicago to a tent in London with a man who could control people with his mind. ‘Are you even a real professor?’
‘Perhaps not in the way you know. The one thing I have time for is reading. And libraries are the most hospitable environments for a person like me to pass my time. I have taken advantage of the best of the world’s libraries over the years, trying to understand who I am and what my destiny may be.’
‘And what have you discovered?’
The Professor switched his gaze back to Rémy. ‘That I am meant to use my special talents to help you,’ he said. ‘It was kismet that you and I ran into each other that day.’
Rémy weighed the situation up. He was so far removed from his old life and any semblance of a normal future he’d once imagined for himself. What did he have to lose?
‘OK. I’m happy to have your help,’ Rémy said.
The Professor nodded briskly. ‘We will make a start tomorrow.’
‘Will you tell me more about the Moor I have to find?’
‘I can do better than that. Tomorrow I will take you to see him.’
30.
STILL FREAKY
Later that evening, Rémy returned to Old Worm’s, waiting in the shadows at the end of the lane to be sure the shop was empty and the police were gone. The city was giving in to darkness, moonlight struggling to find its way between the buildings. Rémy was glad of the cover. He ducked round to the back of the shop, took out his penknife and jimmied the lock.
Someone had mopped the floor recently, the trail of the mop head still visible in places. Trying to ignore the increasing noise from the tablet around his neck, Rémy worked his way through the boxes and crates, emptying their contents on the floor, searching for canvases and paintings. He flicked through a selection of framed works stacked against one wall, many showing over-dressed young women playing harpsichords, men in austere outfits posing in front of mirrors or maps, and one or two landscapes with peasants chewing hay. Nothing resembled the painting he was tracking from his mother’s journal. As a precaution, he slipped his harmonica from its sleeve and tucked it into his pocket. No harm being prepared should he run into trouble again.
The tablet hummed more loudly in his head as he moved in front of the antique cabinet once again. It was still empty. He sighed, scanning the papered walls and low-hanging animal heads nearby. It was like looking for a needle in a haystack after the haystack had been eaten by a herd of cows. The painting could be anywhere.
Rémy wanted to scream, to punch someone. He squeezed his fists until his nails stabbed into his palms. He leaned against the wall opposite the cabinet, biting the insides of his cheeks, tasting his sorrow.
Jesus, Mom, why did you wait so long to tell me your secret? I could have shared the burden.
The tablet was screaming now, burning hot against his skin. A floorboard creaked above him. The front door chimed. Someone was entering the shop. Yanking his hoodie over his head and turning the collar of his jacket up, Rémy slid soundlessly out of the rear door, back the way he had come. He jogged to the end of the lane in the growing dusk and headed across the Strand, dodging traffic and pedestrians. Keeping his head low to avoid CCTV cameras and eagle-eyed police, he failed to notice Lakshmi Misra following close behind him.
31.
SCALDING TEA AND BURNING QUESTIONS
If Hector Donet had to drink one more cup of weak, milky, police department tea without a side of chocolate digestive biscuits, he’d die. He was absolutely sure of it. Really die. His blood sugar was as low and his nerves were as frayed as a flag in a storm. That Indian copper had dragged him to the police station this afternoon to give an official report. Stupid bitch was digging, and digging too deeply was dangerous. He’d missed his lunch and his dinner because of her.
Hector had known the young man was a Conjuror as soon as he’d walked through the door. Perhaps if old Wendy hadn’t screamed bloody murder at the sight of a black kid with a harmonica, panic might have been averted. She was becoming a liability in her old age, but her custom was valuable and her connections to be feared. At least she could be relied on not to show her face in a police station any time soon.
Given his regular caffeine and blood sugar fixes yesterday when he needed them most, Hector might have been willing to share an intriguing titbit or two with the police to keep them happy but throw them off the real trail. Instead, he had muttered, mumbled, huffed and puffed and stayed with the script. Yes, the shop’s owner was an absentee landlord. He certainly had never met him. No, he didn’t think the other staff had either. He was foreign, from the Costa Brava or Majorca or somewhere like that. Topless beaches there, and all that sort of European stuff. Would you want to hang around an old shop in London if you had all that Spanish sun? Might he have a cuppa? Black, please. There were three clerks and two security guards who helped with transporting their imports and exports. Yes, he was quite sure none of them had actually ever met the proprietor. Thanks, love,
that’ll hit the spot. Nice and hot. Yes, of course, he got paid. Would you bloody well work for nothing? In British Pound Sterling, thank you very much. None of that European Monopoly money. He would accept nothing else. His cheque was deposited regular as clockwork into his building society account. No, he had no idea from what bank in Spain. That was the whole point of direct deposit, wasn’t it, you never had to set foot in a bank? Bloody thieves, all of them, anyway. No. Never seen the young ruffian before. Why was he not in school or working? What’s the world coming to, when a busker can bring out the police in such force, but when someone steals a pint of milk from his front steps there’s never one in the neighbourhood? Damn jewel thieves have everyone’s knickers in a twist, looking twice at anything unusual in the area. Whoops, clumsy me, spilling scalding hot tea on you lass. That will blister something rotten.
He could still hear the yelp of pain from the girl he’d burned with the tea as he strode down the street towards the shop, checking to see if anyone was following. He was still concerned about the Indian copper – sharp as a tack, that one.
It was too bad Don Grigori had not been able to neutralize the boy in Chicago as planned. Instead, he’d had to return to the painting to recover from his injuries. And now it appeared the boy had somehow tracked Don Grigori back here. What a cock-up!
Hector scanned the street one more time as he approached the shop, keys in hand. No sign of Miss Nosy Parker. Just the usual evening crowds on their way to the theatres and clubs.
Locking the front door behind him, he headed towards the back of the shop. Then he stopped dead at the sight of a man grinning down at him from the balcony.
‘How did you get in here?’
‘You forgot to secure your fire escape. Naughty naughty.’ Lafferty adjusted his navy pea coat and fiddled with a penny whistle from South Africa worth about fifty pounds.
‘Don’t touch the merchandise, Lafferty, for—’ Hector snatched the penny whistle from Lafferty’s big hands, cleaned the reed inside the whistle with a soft brush and wiped the outside with a dry cloth. He set it under the counter where he had left it.