‘John.’
Charnage’s eyes clouded for a moment. James realised he was scared of the woman. He wasn’t the one in charge here. She was.
Charnage walked over to her and the two of them had a quick whispered conversation. James couldn’t hear what they were saying. He was deafened by the blood roaring and whining in his ears. He closed his eyes and tried to cling on to sanity. It was no good. His whole body was shaking. The poison was spreading and there was nothing he could do about it.
There was no escaping it, no hiding from the fact that he was dying.
‘Go on.’ It was Charnage’s voice. It sounded painfully close and impossibly distant at the same time.
James opened his eyes, but couldn’t speak.
He tilted forward and his guts emptied in one great heave, showering the carpet and Charnage’s trouser legs. Gasping like a landed fish, he tried to draw fresh oxygen into his lungs, but the alcohol fumes were coming back up his gullet and shrouding his face in a foul mist.
Charnage wiped James’s face, but it wasn’t an act of kindness, it was so that he wouldn’t get dirty as he grabbed him again.
‘No,’ said James. ‘Please…’
‘What’s the matter?’ said Charnage. ‘Does this offend your sense of fair play? Are you upset that it’s not quite cricket?’
‘Please,’ said James. ‘I –’
But his words were drowned by gin.
19
A Volatile Substance
Dust. Darkness. A howling noise. His brain was being crushed. Black shapes swirling across his vision. A rushing sound in his ears. The stink of vomit. Bare bricks. The clatter of feet on an iron staircase. Voices arguing. Echoing. Hands digging into his ankles and armpits.
‘Watch out…’
A sudden flash of white light as his head hit a wall.
Laughter.
The creak of a door. Familiar wallpaper. A picture of a naked woman eating grapes. He had been here before. When was that…?
Fresh air. Cold air. Cutting like a knife. Waking him.
He was looking up at the sky. The Smith brothers had brought him out of the factory and into the yard. He sucked oxygen into his sore lungs. The clouds had gone. There were stars. They spun, a blur. He was disappearing down a giant plughole, spiralling round and round and round…
He passed out again.
He was dreaming. Confused thoughts swirled around in his head. Objects seemed to be rushing at him. He started to imagine that he was on Dutchman’s field playing cricket. The bowler was hurling balls down at him and they were bouncing up and thudding into him, his face, his chest, his body, his legs. Every part of his body was aching.
He wanted to cry out that it wasn’t fair, but he couldn’t speak.
He tried to concentrate. He had to hold back the chaos. He had to focus his mind. All he could see were clues and impossible crossword puzzles. Binary code spooling away into infinity. Fairburn dressed as a cowboy, a speech bubble coming from his mouth, ‘I know not everyone enjoys crosswords like you do. For instance, your messmate, the runner, must accept what he is and begin to mature.’
‘You’re right,’ James mumbled. ‘I hate crosswords.’
Solve all seven cryptic clues.
‘Solve them yourself…’
‘What’s he say?’
‘He’s rambling.’
He could hear the slap of water, and smell the rotting, fishy stench of the Thames.
He opened his eyes. The brothers were lowering him down a slippery, wooden ladder to a barge. He saw that they were in a large dock, choked with boats. A low yellow mist crawled across the water. Somewhere far off a ship’s horn gave a long, wailing moan.
James flopped like a rag doll as they dumped him face down on to the floor of the barge. There was an inch of freezing water in the bottom. It revived him for a moment. He rolled on to his back. Wolfgang and Ludwig were looking down at him. Ludwig’s skull face split into a grin.
‘Awake, are you, boysie?’ he said. ‘Good. This wouldn’t be no fun if you didn’t know what was happening.’
‘Get a move on,’ said Wolfgang. ‘You know I don’t like boats.’
‘It’s not my fault you never learnt to swim,’ said Ludwig.
‘Let’s just get this over with and get back to dry land.’
Wolfgang can’t swim. He doesn’t like boats.
It was like a tiny candle being lit in the back of James’s mind. He stored the information away. Information was power. His uncle had told him that. Uncle Max, who had been a spy in the Great War. He had taught James that nobody could get the better of a Bond.
He had to fight. Fight to stay conscious. Fight the poison in his body. Fight these two killers.
He had to keep alive.
Ludwig knelt and pinched James’s cheeks together with one hand. Then shook his head viciously from side to side, rattling his teeth.
‘That’s right. You stay awake, now,’ he said. ‘I want to hear you beg for mercy as we put you over the side.’
‘Please,’ said Wolfgang tetchily. ‘Let’s get going.’
‘Cast off, then,’ said Ludwig standing up.
‘Can’t you do it? I might fall in.’
‘You’re useless, you are.’
‘It’s my knee, Ludo,’ said Wolfgang. ‘You know I’m unsteady on my knee, and carrying the brat hasn’t helped none.’
‘As usual,’ said Ludwig, ‘I have to do everything.’
In a moment James felt a throb and there was a chugging noise as the engine fired up. A cloud of diesel fumes filled the bottom of the barge and James felt a wave of nausea rising inside him. In a moment a gutful of stinging fluids punched up his gullet and hosed across the floor.
‘Sort that out!’ yelled Ludwig, and Wolfgang manhandled James to the side of the barge. Wolfgang quickly sat down again on the other side.
‘Keep an eye on him,’ said Ludwig. ‘We don’t want him going in here. We need to get out into Limehouse Reach where there’s no chance of him swimming ashore.’
James held on to the side of the barge. Being sick had cleared his mind a little further, but he was hurting badly. He had drunk enough alcohol to kill him. It was in his blood, being taken round to all his major organs. His liver, his kidneys, his brain…
He knew that his body was struggling to survive. If they got him into the fast-flowing water of the Thames he wouldn’t last a minute.
Keep your mind alert. Study your surroundings, James. Information is power.
He was on a motorised barge, made from rusted iron sections crudely riveted together. It was square-ended with high, flat sides. It wasn’t built for comfort or speed. It was an industrial vessel, used to cart stuff up and down the Thames.
Ludwig stood at the stern, holding the wheel. James watched as he slowly manoeuvred the barge out past the other boats moored in the dock, ten to twenty deep. There were so many boats here you could walk from one side of the dock to the other across their decks. The dock was enclosed, with warehouses on all sides, but there were no signs of life. It must be the dead of night.
James could see two Ludwigs now as his eyes slipped out of focus. He struggled to refocus, but it was like he was inside someone else’s body with no way of controlling it.
Concentrate, James. Think hard. Keep your mind alive.
If he ever got out of this alive he would still have to find Fairburn.
Solve all seven cryptic clues.
Your messmate, the runner, must accept what he is and begin to mature…
Why had Fairburn included him in his damned clues? How much simpler James’s life would have been if he’d never got involved in this whole mess.
And why hadn’t Fairburn used James’s name in the clue? Why had he just called him ‘your messmate, the runner’?
His name must be part of the answer…
Of course.
Bond. The word Bond…
He must accept what he is and begin to mature…
He opened his eyes just in time to see that they were passing very close to another boat. He snatched his hand away from the side of the barge before it was smashed against the other vessel.
He smiled. His reflexes were still working. He had a strong will to live. He mustn’t give up.
A vivid memory floated into his mind. Learning to sail with his father in the English Channel, their dinghy skipping over the choppy grey waters. He had enjoyed being with his father, who he never saw as much of as he would have liked. His father had been a very good sailor, and James remembered how safe he had always felt with him.
Not like these two, not like Wolfgang and Ludwig. They weren’t sailors. They were city men. Used to cobblestones and buildings and ground that didn’t shift under your feet.
The front of the barge bumped into another boat and James was thrown forward on to the floor.
‘Watch it,’ said Wolfgang, and Ludwig swore at him.
Wolfgang was sitting on a narrow bench, gripping tightly to the side of the barge. He looked like he was holding on for dear life, even though they were only moving at a snail’s pace and the barge was so sturdily built that there was no danger of being sunk in any of Ludwig’s clumsy collisions.
James’s head lolled on to his chest and a black veil came down.
He was in another place. A safer place. He was with his father again.
They were returning to Hythe. His mother was waiting on the quayside. But James had forgotten one of the rules of sailing and was holding on to the side of the boat. As they came alongside the harbour they hit a rope buffer and his fingers had been crushed. He had howled and his father had told him off for being an ass.
His mother had hugged him and kissed him and fussed over him as if he had received a mortal wound. He had resented her hugs, and felt that she was mothering him like a little baby.
He would have given anything to have her here now, though, and feel her arms around him.
Don’t be a sap, James. She’s dead. They’re both dead. There’s nobody to hold your hand now. You’re going to have get through this by yourself. You’re on your own. So do something about it.
Accept what you are and begin to mature…
What was he?
Well, according to Fairburn’s letter, he was a runner.
Begin to mature?
Cryptic clues were never about what they appeared to be about, Pritpal had told him that. This clue had nothing to do with Bond himself. It was just using the letters of his name to make a new word.
BOND.
So. What if he took the beginning of the word mature?
Begin to mature gave him – M.
Bond must accept what he is and being to mature…
Yes. It was easy once you got the hang of it.
The word bond must accept the word runner and the letter m.
It was all making perfect sense.
All you had to do was put the letters R-U-N-N-E-R-M inside the letters B-O-N-D…
Brunnermond… borunnermnd… bonrunnermd…
Why had he ever thought he could solve it? Why had his useless drunken brain fooled him into thinking it knew what it was doing?
It was meaningless gibberish.
Another burst of nausea brought him back to reality. But his stomach was dry, and when his body heaved again there was nothing to throw up and he retched and gulped painfully, his stomach contracting as if there was a fist inside it opening and closing.
When the contractions had passed he sat up and looked around. Up ahead, there was a narrow gap between a large steamship and a coal barge, and past that was a clear stretch of water leading to the exit from the dock into the Thames.
The noise of the diesel rose a pitch and the barge speeded up.
‘Not too fast,’ said Wolfgang.
‘Oh, stop your moaning,’ said Ludwig. ‘I know what I’m doing.’
‘It’s dark, Ludo, and it’s dangerous,’ said Wolfgang. ‘We shouldn’t be out on the water at night. Look at this fog.’
Come on, James. You don’t have much of a chance, but if you can’t get your body working you’ve no chance at all.
He dropped on to his hands and knees. He was aware of the hard floor of the boat digging into him, but the pain sharpened his senses. He concentrated on it, it would keep him awake. If he could feel pain then he was still alive.
He began to crawl.
‘Where does he think he’s going?’ said Ludwig, but Wolfgang didn’t reply.
James inched painfully along the deck. A thin stream of sticky bile trickled from his mouth. He barely noticed it. He soon forgot where he was, or what he was doing, but he remembered enough to keep moving.
His head bumped into something. It was Ludwig’s leg. He looked up.
‘Get off,’ snapped Ludwig and he kicked him away. James fell back against the side of the barge and blacked out.
He felt his mother’s arms around him. She whispered something in his ear, which he couldn’t hear.
No. She wasn’t there. Don’t be fooled. Open your eyes and wake up.
He tried, but his eyelids were made of lead. They weighed a ton each. He had to use his fingers to drag them up.
The big coal barge was just ahead of them. Once they were through this last narrow gap Ludwig could go full speed ahead and James would have lost any chance of escape.
He looked at Wolfgang. He was still in the same position and hadn’t moved a muscle since he’d sat down. His back was rigid and hunched.
Ludwig was concentrating, staring ahead into the darkness, his mouth open, his tongue running along the broken ridge of his stubby brown teeth. He eased the throttle forward.
James toppled over and grabbed hold of Ludwig’s legs again, and again Ludwig kicked him away. James didn’t give up, though. He crawled back and this time Ludwig put his boot squarely in James’s face.
‘Keep it up, buster,’ he said and giggled. ‘This is fun.’ He shoved hard. James was thrown several feet along the barge and he landed heavily on his side.
He felt something digging into him.
The jar. The jar of potassium he had taken from Charnage’s storeroom.
He slipped his hand into his pocket and felt the cool, hard glass. His hand stung painfully. The jar was leaking and it had burnt his skin. He forced himself not to let go, using the pain to shock him awake.
As they came up alongside the steamship the noise of the engine intensified, bouncing back off its flat metal sides.
James got to his knees and faced Ludwig.
‘Oh, look who it is,’ said Ludwig. ‘Young Sherlock Holmes!’
‘Have this,’ said James, and in one movement he took the bottle from his pocket and hurled it at the wheelhouse.
He wasn’t sure what effect, if anything, it would have, but he hoped it would be dramatic enough to cause a diversion.
As it turned out the effect was spectacular.
The potassium had been too long in the bottle and had grown unstable. The percussion as it hit the wheelhouse caused it to explode with a shocking bang and a blinding violet flash, sending shards of glass in every direction. Then, as the volatile contents of the jar hit the water in the bottom of the barge, they burst into flame, filling the air with a cloud of gas.
Ludwig yelled, and fell sideways, spinning the wheel.
The barge swerved, out of control, and broadsided the coal barge. Wolfgang screamed and threw himself out of his seat on to the floor, clutching his hand and shrieking in agony. The last thing James saw before he fell over the side was the ghastly mess the collision had made: all four fingers of Wolfgang’s left hand had been severed at the root.
James was sinking. He could see nothing, and when he tried to swim to the surface his head bumped against something hard. He realised that he was under the barge. He frantically pulled himself to the side. His face broke the surface and he took in air. He couldn’t feel anything now. His body was numb. He knew, though, that if he didn’t get out of the water quickly he would
die.
He could hear Ludwig.
‘Shut up!’ he shouted at his brother. ‘Where’s he gone?’
‘Help me,’ whimpered Wolfgang. ‘Oh, God, help me.’
Ludwig killed the engine and the barge drifted.
‘What the bloody hell’s the matter with you?’ he said.
‘My fingers,’ said Wolfgang. ‘Oh, God, my fingers.’
‘Show me… Oh, sweet Jesus…’
James pushed off from the barge and swam the few feet to where the steamship’s anchor chain slanted down into the murky water. He took hold of it and held on, shivering, his mind reeling. Everything was dimming, as if he was looking down a long tunnel, the end of which was gradually receding.
He could still hear the brothers.
‘Help me, Ludo.’
‘I can’t. This bloody stuff’s burning everywhere. I can’t put it out. And we’ve lost the brat. Where is he? Where’s he gone?’
‘Leave him,’ sobbed Wolfgang. ‘He fell in. That was the plan. He’s drowned. Leave him and help me. I need a doctor. Help me, Ludo…’
Ludwig put the barge into reverse and backed away. Soon all James could see was an eerie violet glow in the mist and all he could hear were the wails and screams coming from Wolfgang.
He let go of the chain and swam on. Every couple of feet he dipped beneath the surface and he desperately tried not to swallow any water, but at last he got past the ship and clambered on to a wooden wharf. He flopped to the ground and lay there as if dead, meaningless words spinning in his head, lulling him to sleep…
Brunnermond… borunnermnd… bonrunnermd…
If he fell asleep he would never wake.
Get up.
He struggled to his feet and swayed for a moment, trying not to fall over. Then he did the hardest thing he had ever had to do in his life. He put one foot in front of the other and started walking.
The next few hours were a blur. He could only remember brief snatches.
His first memory was of trying to get out of the docks. But wherever he tried he was stopped. By gates or warehouses or high walls. In the end a dock policeman found him and took him to his hut. He sat him by a stove and went to make a phone call.
Double or Die Page 19