The Witches of Chiswick

by Robert Rankin

  “Then perhaps you’ll wish to tender your resignation. I have a form here; would you care to fill it out now?”

  “No,” said Will. “I’m the only winner of the cakes in my household. I have no wish to be unemployed.”

  “Then just do as you are told.” Mr Santos handed Will the Mark Rothko disc. “And Starling, for your own sake, do not speak of this to anyone. Do you understand?”

  “No,” said Will. “I don’t. Why?”

  “The integrity of the collection. It must not be compromised.”

  “Oh I see. So what will happen to the painting? Will it be cleaned and the offending wristwatch removed?”

  “The painting will probably be destroyed.”

  “What?” went Will. “But that’s outrageous!”

  “These matters are not for us to question.”

  “But sir, destroying such a work of genius because someone vandalised a tiny part of it – a tiny part that is not even visible to the naked eye – it’s ridiculous. It’s obscene.”

  Mr Santos smiled ruefully. “You really care about these things, don’t you, Starling?” he said.

  “So do you, sir,” said Will. “I know you do. When you talk to me about art, I can see how much you care.”

  “Well, it’s out of our hands now. Perhaps it won’t be destroyed. Let’s both hope for that, eh?”

  “Yes,” said Will. “All right. But Rothko? Do I really have to do Rothko?”

  “Not my decision.” Mr Santos raised his eyebrows. “Instructions from those on high. I’ll see what I can do to get you back on the Victorians. Just go to your desk and press on. Do you understand me?”

  “I understand you, sir,” said Will. “And thanks.”

  “Off you go now.”

  And off Will went.

  Will did Rothko all the morning, and Will really hated it. Whatever had been going on in the heads of twentieth-century folk. Admiring this kind of rubbish? A few splashes of colour on a colossal canvas: that was art, was it? No, in Will’s opinion, it was not. But Will was Will, and Will was young, and the young have very definite opinions about what they like and what they do not. Age blurs boundaries, broadens horizons, alters fixed opinions, but whether this is a good thing is anybody’s guess.

  By lunchtime Will had had his fill of 1960s abstract art and had made a momentous decision. Thoughts had been whirling about in his head all morning, dangerous thoughts, risky thoughts. The sort of thoughts that could get him into a great deal of trouble, should those thoughts be actualised into actions.

  “Come on then my lovely boy,” cooed Gladys. “Canteen time. Big pies on offer.” And she thrust out her abounding mammaries and winked coquettishly.

  “I’ll be up in a minute,” said Will. “I just have to finish this.”

  “I’ll wait for you, then,” said Gladys.

  “You’ll miss your place in the queue.”

  “I’ll see you up there then.”

  “Save me a seat,” called Will.

  Gladys departed and Will was left alone in the vast subterranean dome.

  Will did furtive glancings. He really was all alone. And he was troubled, yet excited. The dangerous thoughts of the morning which had brought him to his momentous decision were causing his hands to tremble. Will made fists of them, and then he removed the Rothko disc from the drive and subtituted another, one which he took from his pocket.

  The Fairy Feller’s Masterstroke once more filled Will’s screen. He tapped at keypads. Reference numbers appeared: the painting’s location in the art gallery’s archive. Will noted down these reference numbers onto the back of his left hand, below certain other reference numbers. He called up the building plan. The archive was housed on a sub-level almost directly beneath his feet. The first question was, how exactly to get there? Will traced the route, the staircases and corridors. It could be done. But then, getting to the archive was only a small part of the problem. Once he had reached and somehow entered it, would the painting still be there? Or would it have already been removed for destruction? And if it was still there, what then? Once he had got to it, if he could get to it, the big question was how to steal it. Because Will had become absolutely certain that this was the course of action he must take. And if he did manage to steal this painting, to save this painting, how was he going to get away with it?

  He would certainly be the Number One suspect. And he would certainly be caught. There was very little crime in the days after the days after tomorrow. This was not because there was nothing worth stealing any more: there always is, and always will be, things worth stealing. And if there are things worth stealing, they will be stolen.

  Will knew that the painting had to be worth millions. This would be the crime of the century.

  But it isn’t a crime, Will told himself. Destroying the painting was a crime, saving it was praiseworthy.

  And he did have a plan, and not just a plan, but one, if he could pull it off, that would allow him to escape undetected with the painting.

  Three security doors lay between Will and his goal, security doors to which he did not possess the access codes. Mr Santos possessed the access codes; he regularly visited the archive, although Will’s pleas that he might join him had so far met with refusal. Mr Santos had the codes on a card that he kept in the top pocket of his white work coat, the white work coat that he donned when visiting the archive, the white work coat that presently hung upon the back of the door in his office.

  Will removed the disc from his drive, popped it into his pocket and then removed himself to Mr Santos’s office. And so it came to pass that ten minutes later Will found himself standing in the archive of the Tate Gallery.

  The archive was a vast and brightly lit subterranean gallery that dwindled into hazy perspective. Will breathed in the air and sighed. The air smelled of art: of canvas and paint and varnish and veneer, smells all new to Will, smells all flavoured with the magic of a bygone age.

  To the left and the right of him, and for many, many metres beyond, stood tall metal racks, upon which hung …

  Art.

  High Art. The Art of the Victorians.

  Will took a deep breath. It was all a little too much for him to really be in the presence of all this. His knees were trembling, his mouth was dry. Will was scared. But for all this, he felt something, something that perhaps he’d never really felt before. He felt alive. He felt that he was on a mission. And it thrilled him greatly.

  The racks moved upon casters and Will slid one out at random, exposing the work of Dante Gabriel Rossetti, one of the great Pre-Raphaelites.

  Will found himself confronting Proserpine.

  He felt almost impelled to kneel.

  Will took another deep breath. He should so not be here. This was so bad.

  Will had the reference number of Mr Dadd’s painting penned on the back of his hand. And he also had a plan, which was a good plan – or would be, if it worked. Which it could only do if the iconoclasts who wanted to destroy the painting had not got to it first.

  Will slid the rack containing Rossetti’s Proserpine back into place and checked the writing on his hand.

  Aisle 33, rack 409, painting number five.

  Will went about his business.

  And he was all but on the point of completing his business when he heard the noise of a door being opened. And not just any door, but the very door that Will had entered by.

  “Oh damn,” said Will to himself. “But perhaps I should have expected it.” He edged quietly away and hid himself amongst the racks.

  “This way,” he heard a voice say.

  “Are you sure?” he heard another.

  “Well of course I’m sure.”

  “So you’ve been here before?”

  “Well, not here, but I’ve been to other places. I do know how to read a plan.”

  “Oh yes, of course you do.”

  These voices were young voices. And, to Will’s surprise, they were also female voices.

  “It
’s aisle 33, rack 409, painting number five,” said the first female voice. Will slipped a little further away.

  “And what are we to do with this painting?” asked the second female voice.

  “Burn it,” said the first voice. “Like we’ve done with the others.”

  “We should burn them all,” said the second voice. “Just to be sure. There are too many loose ends.”

  “They get fewer every day. All traces of the other past are being eradicated. There’s not much left. The Sisterhood is safe. The Sisterhood will remain in control.”

  Will cocked his head to one side. The Sisterhood? Would that be the Sisterhood of Sainsbury’s? It was the only Sisterhood Will had ever heard of. The voices were close now; Will pressed himself into the shadows. He could see the tops of their heads: a violet wig, decorated with plastic flowers, and a pink wig. Big wigs on big heads. Will ducked his own head and held his breath.

  “Here we are,” said the first voice. “Rack 409, slide it out.” Sounds of racks sliding reached Will.

  “Painting number five, fish it down.”

  “It’s a big one, we can’t burn it here. Where’s the anomaly, do you think?”

  “Who cares. Fish it down; we’ll smash it up here and bag it.”

  “Fair enough.”

  Will heard further sounds, of stampings and tearings and breakings, and then of baggings-up, all accompanied by gleeful cries of triumph.

  “Job done,” said the first voice. “Let’s go and get lunch in the canteen.”

  The sounds of footfalls diminished. The sounds of the door opening and closing followed.

  Will emerged from the shadows. He took himself over to rack 409 and viewed the space where painting number five had hung.

  “A job well done,” said Will. “A job very well done.”

  Which might have appeared a rather odd thing for him to say, had it not been for the fact that Will held in his hands The Fairy Feller’s Masterstroke.

  And it did have to be said that he had rather enjoyed the sounds of the Rothko that he had substituted for Dadd’s masterpiece being stomped to smithereens and then bagged up.

  A large smile now appeared upon the face of Will Starling. And a sigh of relief escaped from his lips.

  “I no longer need to steal this painting,” said Will to himself. “All I have to do is hide it somewhere here, recatalogue it under a different name, and tell no one. Job done, I think.”

  And that was that really. Except of course that it wasn’t. For Will was now greatly intrigued: hugely, greatly intrigued. Why did the painting have to be destroyed? And what was this Sisterhood, that had the authority to come into the Tate’s archive and do the destroying? What kind of power did this Sisterhood have? And what was this business of “the other past”, all traces of which were being eradicated? Will was very hugely greatly intrigued. And as he had seemingly got away with saving the Dadd, well, why not try to find out what all this was really about?

  Will rehung the Dadd amongst some French Impressionists that he had previously checked on his screen. Assured that it would be safe there for the time being, he took himself off to the staff canteen.

  It was Will’s intention to get himself very close to the two female iconoclasts and listen in to their conversation, but sadly, this was not to be.

  Will joined the food queue, and Tim McGregor joined Will.

  “Hi, Will,” said Tim in a jovial fashion. “How are you doing?”

  “Very well, Tim,” said Will, taking up his tray and preparing to load it.

  “You look a bit hyper,” said Tim. “Not been up to anything naughty, I trust?”

  Will grinned at Tim. Tim was all of Will’s height, big of hair and beard and of a medium build that was neither fat nor thin. Tim was Will’s bestest friend. They’d been to corporate school together and remained close ever since. Tim, a gifted computer programmer, was presently in Forward Planning at the Tate; his influence had got Will his job.

  Tim was a practising Pagan – possibly, for all Will knew, the very last practising Pagan there was. Paganism had never really made it to the big time when it came to religions, and now even the big-time religions were nothing more than memory. Those that had not been absorbed and altered by corporate sponsorship had been consigned to the web pages of history: Hinduism, Buddhism, Islam, all had vanished from the Earth, along with The Church of Branson, The Church of Elvis, The Church of England, Knotee (a string-worshipping cult) and, most recently, Roman Catholicism.

  That the Church of Rome should have been dropped by its corporate sponsor had come as a bit of a shock to its millions of followers, and also to Will, who had been considering giving it a go because he’d heard that a lot of nice-looking girls of an easy-going disposition frequented its youth clubs.

  Tim had explained to Will that he, Tim, had been made privy to “certain sensitive information” regarding the Church of Rome losing its sponsorship, information, which came to him via “certain contacts in the know”.

  According to Tim’s contacts, a serious scandal centring upon St Peter’s of Rome had caused the sponsors to pull out.

  Will had listened wide-eyed and open-mouthed while Tim explained the situation. Apparently it was down to the many incorruptible bodies of the saints housed in the catacombs beneath St Peter’s, which were not altogether what they appeared. It had always been accepted by the Church of Rome that a would-be saint must have three attestable miracles to his (or her) account before his (or her) death. And upon later exhumation, the body must not have decayed: that is, it should remain inviolate and incorruptible.

  The problem was that there is another order of dead person that does not rot in the grave. The vampire.

  And thus it was that many of the so-called saints interred beneath St Peter’s were in fact vampires. And these had, over the years, upon their many night-time forays in search of sustaining blood, managed to infect most of the clergy. And the infection had finally reached the Pope.

  “Hasn’t it ever occurred to you as suspicious,” Tim had said to Will, “how over the years Popes have lasted for so long and grown so very, very old? And how when they go out in public they are always inside Pope-mobiles with polarised glass windows or heavily shielded from sunlight beneath great big awnings and suchlike?”

  Will had scratched at his blondy head. “Not really,” he replied.

  “Well it’s true,” said Tim. “A team of Fearless Vampire Killers, a special division of the SAS trained for such action, abseiled down into St Peter’s and the Vatican and exterminated the lot of them: the Pope, the cardinals, monks and nuns and choirboys. Of course it wasn’t on the newscasts, but these things never are. Stuff like this happens all the time; it’s just that we never hear about it.”

  Will had shaken his head and shrugged. It sounded as good an explanation as any. Will wondered whether he might apply to join the SAS Vampire Division. It sounded like an exciting kind of job.

  “What are you doing at the weekend?” Tim asked.

  “Nothing much,” said Will, anxiously looking towards the now distant topknots of the female iconoclasts.

  “Fancy something a bit different?” Tim asked.

  “Not really bothered,” said Will, scooping random foodstuffs onto his tray.

  “You’ll love this, a dose of the old time travel.”

  “A dose of what?” Will ceased his foodstuff scoopings.

  “I’ve got some Retro,” whispered Tim. “Half a dozen tabs.”

  “That stuff’s illegal and it doesn’t really work, does it?”

  “Keep it down.” Tim fluttered his fingers. “It does work, you can really go back into the past with it. In your head.” Tim tapped at his temple. “It allows you to access ancestral memories. They are inside your head, you see. The memories of your father before you were conceived. And your grandfather too. Depends on how much Retro you take.”

  “And you really can access your father’s memories?”

  “They’re inside you
r head, cellular, part of your genetic code. You don’t just inherit your father’s looks and hair colour, you get his memories too. But you can’t access them without chemical assistance.”

  “I have my doubts about this,” said Will, helping himself to further foodstuffs. “Do you know anyone who’s actually taken Retro?”

  “Well, no,” said Tim.

  “And anyway, if my dad’s memories are in my head, I’d prefer that they stay somewhere hidden. I don’t want to know, thank you very much.”

  “But you’d find out about all his dirty doings. Imagine, you could remember how he shagged your mum and conceived you.”

  “What a hideous thought. No, thank you very much indeed.”

  “Please yourself,” said Tim. “But I’ve got six tabs. That’s three each. You could go back to your precious Victorian era.”

  “What?” said Will.

  “It’s all inside your head,” said Tim. “Or at least that’s the theory. I’m going to take the drug on Saturday night. If you’re not interested, I’ll let you know how I get on. But you’re missing out on something special, I’m telling you.”

  “I’ll give it some thought,” said Will. “But listen, can we talk later? There’s someone I have to see.”

  “Don’t go near them,” said Tim. “If they even suspect that you’re listening in to their conversation, you’ll be in real trouble.”

  “What?” said Will, all but dropping his tray. “What are you saying?”

  “I saw you,” whispered Tim. “Those corridors down to the archive are constantly scanned. My department takes care of that. I received a memo this morning that two dignitaries were coming to inspect the archive. I was to monitor them as far as the archive security door and then erase their images from the scanning program. And I did, but guess who I caught sneaking down the corridors before they did?”

  “Oh no,” said Will. “So I’m in big trouble?”

  “No trouble at all,” said Tim. “I erased you too. But don’t go near them. They’re big trouble.”

  “So who are they?”

  “So what were you doing in the archive?”

  “I can’t tell you that,” said Will.