“Still collecting stamps?” the little man shouted, and stamped brutally down on Barnaby’s foot. This shouldn’t have hurt all that much but Barnaby winced, gasped and staggered backward, his arms windmilling uselessly in the air. Boon stamped down again whilst Hawker shouted out encouragement.
“Still collecting stamps, sir?”
“Still collecting stamps?”
The bigger of the two schoolboys grabbed the man by the ears and stretched them out. “Haven’t seen you for ears and ears!” He cackled and the ginger-haired one joined in.
“Ears and ears and ears!”
Pinioned to his seat in terrified fascination, the prince nonetheless found time to ensure the doors were really locked.
Outside, as Barnaby fell to his knees, the schoolboys were laughing.
One of them thrust his hand into his blazer pocket, tugged out a fistful of black, faintly volcanic-looking powder and flung the lot of it in Barnaby’s face. The man looked up in bafflement. His nose twitched cartoonishly for a second or so before he unleashed a gargantuan sneeze. Then another. Then, inevitably, another.
Barnaby mewled. “What have you done?”
The ginger-haired man released him, gave him a hearty slap on the back and bellowed: “Keep up, sir! It’s sneezy powder.
The other one snickered in complicity. “Wizard Wheeze!”
Barnaby was still sneezing. One of the schoolboys produced a grimy handkerchief and passed it to him. He clamped it to his face and sneezed and sneezed and sneezed. When the rag was taken from his face it was splattered with red.
“Please…,” he stammered. “Stop this…”
Blood had started to streak its way like lava from his nose, flowing across his lips, down his chin, dribbling onto the ground.
Hawker sniggered. “Why would we stop, sir, when we’re having such fun?”
Barnaby’s body had passed the point of total exhaustion and was barreling toward total shutdown. When he sneezed again,, a pink strip of gristle was borne out on a sea of snot. “What’s your plan?” he gasped, with helpless pleading in his eyes. “What is this leading toward?”
The schoolboys laughed. “Plan, sir?”
“Gosh, whatever makes you think we’ve got anything so hoity-toity as a plan?”
“This is our glory, sir!”
“Our bally glory!”
Then, with the Prefects cheering him on, Barnaby gave a final nasal eruption and toppled face-first onto the tarmac. He landed with the same crack a hardcover book makes when one bends it back too far and snaps the spine.
“Well, that sneezy powder certainly works, doesn’t it, Boon?”
“Jolly well does, old chum. Most efficacious.”
Boon turned toward the car. Arthur tried to slide further down into his seat but it was too late. The schoolboy grinned.
“Good evening to you, sir!”
Hawker looked across and raised his hand in salute. “What ho, Arthur!”
“Sorry we can’t stay for a powwow but we’re already running late.”
“’Fraid we’ve got to cut, old man.”
“See you anon, sir!”
“Tinkety-tonk!”
The schoolboys ran into the building and Arthur was left alone in the car with only a dead body cooling on the tarmac for company.
Seconds later, the door to the warehouse clanked open and Mr. Streater emerged, accompanied by the opening chords of some pop track or other.
“School’s out for summer…”
He stepped adroitly over the corpse and got into the car. “All right, chief?”
The prince wasn’t listening. “They killed him…,” he murmured.
Streater shrugged. “Looks like.”
“Your friends were useless. They vanished. They disappeared.”
“Who are you talking about. What friends?”
“The detectives. Virtue and Mercy.”
Streater smirked as he twisted the key in the ignition. “Never heard of them. I expect that’ll be the ampersand, squire. Hallucinations come as standard. They’re often personifications of whatever parts of yourself you keep repressed. I saw ballerinas, believe it or not. But I wouldn’t worry about it if I was you.” He reversed the car quickly on the tarmac, turned and headed swiftly out of Islington, toward home. “Whichever way you slice it — it’s all going according to plan.”
Chapter 22
It was the last night of the Diabolism Club. After what unraveled there, I don’t suppose anyone had the stomach to carry on. The building was demolished, the ground concreted over, and I understand that there are currently plans to build some kind of monument, a memorial or a tombstone, on the spot where Diabolism used to stand.
It happened two minutes after Hawker’s salute and sixty seconds after all the lights in the building had flickered off. When someone eventually managed to get a couple of them going again, it was already too late. The place had turned insane. Adults dressed as children were screaming, sobbing, trying to escape; hundreds of liquored-up revelers frightened for their lives were charging for the doors in a stampede born of mortal desperation. Every one of them was sneezing. There was a cacophony of nasal distress. The air was filled with saliva, snot and tears, with mucus, spit and foam.
I was the lucky one. Immediately after the lights had gone out and just before that black, volcanic dust had sprayed down from the sprinkler system, I felt a soft hand clamp itself over my mouth and another apply itself firmly to my back and steer me toward the exit, jostling nimbly through the mêlée.
Later, I learnt that fifty-four people were hospitalized just trying to reach the door.
“What happened?” I gasped, once we were outside and Barbara had taken her hand away from my mouth.
The Directorate’s hunter raised a hand in her usual semaphore for silence. The weedy bouncer was still standing there, petrified and helpless, as his club vomited up its clientele.
Barbara snapped: “Call the emergency services. Tel them they have a disaster.” The man nodded stupidly and obeyed.
Whilst I did my best to calm a young woman whose nose had already started to spurt blood, Barbara, brisk and unflappable, spoke into her earpiece.
“Sir?”
The voice of Mr. Dedlock echoed in my head. “I trust you have good news.” He paused. “What is that rumpus?”
Barbara’s was a calm, still voice amongst the chaos. “The Prefects appear to have sprayed everyone inside the building with some sort of sneezing powder, sir.”
“Why on earth would they want to do that?”
“Why do little boys do anything, sir? For fun. For larks.”
“Where are those knobble-kneed bastards now?”
Barbara took out her PDA. “I can see them, sir. We can track them.”
“Then get after them!”
“People are dying here,” I said.
The old man was incensed. “If you don’t do your job, this city as we know it will cease to exist.”
“I’ll get the car,” said Barbara. “We’ll bring them in.”
“Do it.” A final snarl from Dedlock, then merciful silence in my head.
Barbara ran out of sight to get the car before I could think of anything to say.
I did my best to soothe the girl in my arms, tried to staunch the blood, told her to breathe deeply and think about not sneezing. After a while, it seemed to calm her, so I did what I could for some of the other victims until, at last, a fleet of ambulances blared onto the scene. I was easing a man whose body was close to rupturing into the arms of a paramedic when Barbara pulled me roughly to my feet. Her trench coat was back, billowing about her in the breeze.
“We’re leaving. Now.”
“But these people—”
“There’s nothing you can do for them.”
“Where’s the car? Where’s Barnaby? Where’s Jasper?”
The car is burning. Barnaby’s dead. And Jasper’s gone.”
Already, I was growing accustomed to Barbara�
�s delivery of bad news — catastrophe snapped out in telegraphic monosyllables. “Burning? Dead? Gone?” I asked, but she was already running. I left the paramedics to do their job and sprinted after her. “Barbara!”
She pelted on, ignoring me. There was a crackling in my ear and I heard the voice of Dedlock. “What’s happening?”
“Barbara: “We’re tracking them.”
“You mean you’ve let them get away?”
“The club’s in chaos. It masked their escape.”
Dedlock snapped some final, bitter instruction and broke the connection. The two of us dashed into the darkness of the city. Soon my breathing was ragged and I had an agonizing stitch in my side but Barbara, sprinting into the distance, appeared quite unaffected. I was about to lose sight of her completely when she gave a yelp of frustration.
When I caught up, she had stopped short and was staring at her PDA in furious disbelief.
I panted. “What’s happened?”
She struck the machine hard. “They’ve vanished.”
“What?”
“Disappeared. Dropped off the map.” Her shoulders sagged at the news and for a second or two I thought I caught a glimpse of the real Barbara, trapped behind that immaculate façade. “They’re playing with us.”
Once I had sufficiently recaptured my breath to form whole sentences again, I said: “You saved me. I ought to thank you.”
“No need.”
“How come you weren’t affected? By the sneezing powder?”
“My respiratory system is vastly superior to yours. I can go three hours without having to draw breath.”
“Remarkable,” I said, even now incredulous. “And Mr. Jasper did all this just by giving you a pill?”
Barbara nodded. “Despite his considerable personal failings, Jasper is the most brilliant chemist of his generation. The Directorate takes only the best. The prodigies. The wunderkinder.” Her eyes passed over me as though she’d suddenly remembered something. “And you, of course, Henry.”
She walked on.
“Where are we going?”
“We’re tracking the Domino Men. We’re following their spoor.”
“But we’ve lost them! This is pointless.”
Unspeaking, she strode ahead.
The long night had turned into early morning and the first glimmerings of dawn had just begun to dilute the grayness of the sky when we chanced upon a side street filled with parked taxis clustered around an all-night café like piglets at a teat. We had been walking for what felt like hours and I suggested to Barbara that we at least take the opportunity to get a coffee. I had even begun to wonder whether she required sustenance at all in the traditional human sense, so I was surprised when she quickly concurred with something approaching gratitude in her voice.
I’d rolled down my trousers and ditched the old school tie so that when we walked inside, I looked normal again — or at least able to pass for it. The place was filled with cab drivers amongst whom there appeared to be little or no camaraderie. They sat in their ones or twos, morosely clasping plastic cups, scanning the sports pages of yesterday’s newspapers or gazing dead eyed at the smeary blankness of the Formica table tops. Even the appearance of Barbara in their midst occasioned little more than a rustling of tabloids, a weary leer and a single, pathetic wolf-whistle which shriveled into nothing after my companion’s gaze flicked across the culprit. I got us a couple of coffees and we sat together at a table by the window.
“Do you remember when I started at the office?” she said, after we’d both swallowed a mouthful of what turned out to be surprisingly decent coffee.
All of a sudden, her voice sounded different and I experience a stab of hope. “Barbara?”
A brief flash of a smile. “Barbara’s always here, Henry. Even if it doesn’t seem that way. But I asked you a question. Do you remember my first day?”
“Of course.”
“You were kind to me. You showed me the file room, that sweaty woman in the basement. You introduced me to Peter Hickey-Brown.”
I pushed aside my memories of everything which had happened since then — from my grandfather’s collapse to the carnage at Diabolism — and I ventured a smile. “God, that man’s a prat. Do you remember — he tried to impress you by naming all the gigs he goes to?”
Barbara tried to laugh at the memory. It was a painful thing to hear. A forced rasp, a throaty hiss, a mechanical chatter.
“I’m glad you remember,” I said softly.
“It’s strange.” She sipped her coffee. “There are parts of Barbara’s life I can recall so clearly. Her father — my father — taking me to church on Christmas Eve. Midnight mass. The way his hand felt in mine. But I can’t remember if Barbara ever kissed anyone. I can’t remember what happened to her after she went to lunch with Mr. Jasper.”
“I’m so sorry.”
“I don’t know how I can explain this to you. Somehow my memories are so infused with those of the woman they call Estella. She had such a life, Henry. She’d avert national disaster and scarcely blink. But I’m not either of them now. Not fully Estella. Nor fully Barbara.”
I gazed at her, partly in admiration, partly in fear. “Jasper seems to think you’re some kind of superhuman.”
She snorted. “You know what I think I am?” she asked. “Honestly?”
“Go on.”
“I think I’m a cul-de-sac. I think I’m a dead end.” She got to her feet. “And I think I need to try to pee.”
As Barbara walked into the back of the café I suddenly remembered something. I fumbled for my phone and punched out a text message to Abbey.
So sorry. Been a horrible night.
Can’t wait to see you again.
I pressed send although I didn’t expect a reply for several hours.
Barbara returned from the bathroom. I tried to draw her back into a discussion of the transformation which had overtaken her but it seemed that our moment of intimacy had melted away as quickly as it had arrived. She asked if I’d like another coffee. I said yes, and whilst she was ordering at the counter my phone shuddered in my pocket to announce the arrival of a recent text message.
So glad you’re ok. Can’t wait to see you too.
Sorry I didn’t tell you about Joe.
I missed you holding me tonight.
Then, best of all, the letter X repeated three times.
“Girlfriend?” Barbara asked, setting another coffee in front of me.
“Maybe,” I said. “Not sure, to be honest.”
“Is it the girl we met? I mean — that Barbara met. Your landlady?”
I nodded.
“Have a little happiness together, Henry. Grab it while you still can. You’re lucky.” Barbara stretched herself out felinely. “I know that’s not for me.”
“Surely,” I said, “looking like you do…”
She just stared ahead. “You know that they fought over me…”
“Who fought over you?”
“Dedlock and your grandfather. I can’t quite recall the details. Not yet. But I know that there was a struggle. Backstabbing. Treachery. Nothing changes. Jasper wanted me, too. He tried to touch me.”
“Jasper?”
“I say only that he tried, Henry. He made the attempt. That’s all you need to know.”
“And Barnaby? What about him?”
“Barnaby’s dead,” she said flatly. “They killed him.”
“Who?”
Rather disgustedly, she spat into her coffee. “You know their names.”
Suddenly, mercifully, Barbara’s PDA bleeped for attention. She seized it and grinned. Two small spots of black had reappeared on the screen.
“Gotcha.”
I felt a paroxysm of fear. “Where are they?”
“Oh, very good.” Barbara laughed, and this time it sounded almost natural. But there was no happiness in her laugh, no genuine mirth. “Very droll.”
“Barbara,” I said softly. “Where are the Prefects?”
B the time we got to the Civil Service Archive Unit, it was almost nine o’clock and a stream of gray-faced men and women was slouching despairingly into work. The safety officer, Philip Statham, walked straight past and didn’t even recognize me.
Barbara was outlining the situation to Dedlock. His voice crackled in our ears. “What are they doing in there? What the hell are they doing?”
“I think this is it, sir,” Barbara said. “I think they’re here to find Estella.”
“You know something?”
“Nothing concrete. Just ghosts.”
Engrossed in their conversation, I slowly became aware that someone was shouting my name.
“Henry!” Miss Morning was walking along the pavement toward us, clutching a carrier bag. Strangely, she appeared to be smiling.
The croak of Dedlock in my head: “Who is it?”
Barbara told him.
“What does she want?” he spat.
Miss Morning reached us, still brandishing her plastic bag like she’d won it at bingo. “Tell that unhappy old man that I have our salvation in this bag. Are the Domino Men inside?”
“Yes,” we said, pretty much simultaneously.
“Thought so.”
I asked her why.
“You think your job was an accident, Henry? You think anything in your whole life has been left to chance?” She took the carrier bag out from under her arm. There was something heavy inside which she unwrapped with the reverential care of a priest opening a fresh delivery of wafers. “Your grandfather built this.”
What was in the carrier bag was an impossibility. Shaped like a revolver and constructed with perfect intricacy, it was formed entirely of glass, glinting in the early morning sun, the product of a technology so far out of step with contemporary thought that it almost qualified as science fiction.
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