by Guy Adams
"Poisoned!" he shouted at Walsingham, who was now shaking by the front door. "You?"
"I don't know what you mean…"
Ashe shook his head, flinging the bowl against the wall. No, not Walsingham, he would never endanger his wife. "Close the door," he told him, "tight. I don't want that bastard Kusang eavesdropping and neither do you."
No, Walsingham wouldn't have poisoned Haywood. To do that would risk endangering all of them – had endangered all of them – so that must have been Helen. So scared of the doctor in the party recognising her condition that she spiked his goddamned food. "Stupid bitch!" Ashe hissed, kicking at the wall.
He was close to snapping, couldn't believe the mess he'd wandered into. Petty, selfish, obsessive, hateful… the only two members of the party he might have had time for were dead due to the sickening attitudes of the rest of them.
"Where is she?" asked Walsingham.
Ashe charged at him, holding him up against the wall, his old arms only too up for the job now they had anger to fuel them. "Where you'll never find her unless you do exactly as I say," he spat, "understand me? Because you've fucked everything. Your wife most of all." He let go of him, Walsingham's face crumpling as he began to cry.
"Don't snivel," Ashe said, pulling the box from his pocket before thinking to glance at his watch. Just over twenty minutes left until his train… it would seem a lifetime if he was to spend it with Walsingham. "This box," he said, "is more dangerous than you could know." He rattled it in Walsingham's face. "It took your wife and only I can get her back."
Walsingham was predictably glassy-eyed at this. "But it's just…"
"It's not 'just' anything." Ashe pushed his face closer to Walsingham's. "Same deal as before, I need you to get Carruthers here – and no mention of any of this…"
Walsingham was shaking his head. Of course he was, whatever he told people about tonight it would have precious little to do with the truth.
"You get Carruthers here and you put this box in his hands… he'll be safe, Helen will be safe…" Oh how easily the lies come these days… "but only if you do it exactly as I tell you. Do you understand?"
"Of course," Walsingham took the box, "and your masters? You know, the government…"
Ashe had forgotten all about that little lie. He was a government man wasn't he? Occupied on weighty matters of state. "They will be suitably grateful that no mention of what you've done will leak out."
"And Helen will be safe?"
Oh one more, what the hell? Once you've started what use is stopping. "Safe and delivered back to you. But one mistake…"
"I won't make any mistakes."
"Better not, because if you do then not only will you be named as the murderer of Rhodes, Haywood and Kilworth but we'll make sure everyone knows you killed your wife too."
Walsingham's face crumpled then and the rest of him wasn't far behind. He slumped to the floor in tears, clutching the box. "I love her," he said, "that's all."
"Yeah," Ashe sighed, "tell it to the dead."
He drew back the bolt and walked outside. Kusang was predictably close, Ashe beckoned him over. "Haywood killed all of them," he told him, in a voice loud enough for Walsingham to still hear. "He brained Rhodes, shot Kilworth and Helen and very nearly saw to us too."
"The bodies?"
Ashe shook his head. "Leave them. There's nothing of worth to bury."
He walked down the steps, across the courtyard and out the front gate. Nothing could have made him look back.
13.
"It will find you," the Controller had said after handing Ashe the tickets. Ashe didn't doubt it, the House had miracles to spare. It couldn't come soon enough for his liking. Not just to get him out of the cold but also the whole mess he had left behind. He had known that these trips would end up bringing the worst out in him, how could they not? He was now the ultimate pragmatist, he would do whatever needed to be done, all in the name of that damned box. It made him want to retch.
Once he had got far enough away from the monastery, the landscape hiding it from view. He stopped walking and checked his watch.
"Come on then damn you," he called into the wind, kicking at the snow to keep his legs moving.
It burst out of the air as if tearing the night in half. Great waves of ice sprayed out from either side, like the curved wings of a bird in a child's drawing. Ashe couldn't bring himself to feel the least impressed, waiting for it to stop then climbing aboard and settling into an empty carriage. As the engine built up steam to pull out he lifted his gun out of his pocket and dumped it on the seat next to him. It was sticky with Major Kilworth's blood.
"Not even fired but still painted in death," Ashe whispered as the train shot away back towards the House.
14.
The warmer months brought a small thaw to the valley in which Dhuru lay. It also brought soldiers.
Roger Carruthers – the renowned explorer, essayist and gourmand – was nervous in the mixed company but the mystery of what lay ahead made him tolerate it. The English were no longer so welcome in Tibet, if there had ever been a time when they truly were. The Tibetan soldiers that approached from one side of the valley – just as he and his party approached from the other – might mean conflict. Not that he was a stranger to such unsteady political situations – in his travels he had seen three civil wars, an invasion and a slave's revolt – but the idea that the day might end in crossfire was both fearful and irritating. He hoped Nigel was alright. The tone of his letter had been brusque to say the least, not to mention enigmatic to the point of blatant obfuscation. Not like old Nigel, he had thought, not like old Nigel at all.
As his party approached the monastery, Carruthers could see Nigel Walsingham appear at the main gate. "An eager welcome," he murmured to one of the soldiers that accompanied him, a fresh-faced fellow from Portsmouth that Carruthers had taken a liking to. The boy had the restless feet of an explorer in him, Carruthers had decided, and he had put it on himself to encourage the chap to wander as soon as the opportunity arose.
"Probably scared of the opposition, sir," the soldier replied, nodding towards the Tibetan soldiers who were now only a few yards away from the monastery themselves.
"Roger!" Walsingham shouted, "thank goodness! I've been going spare waiting for you to arrive."
"Well, rest easy now old chap," Carruthers replied, "though we may have a somewhat awkward clash of opinion with the locals forthcoming."
"Never mind that," Walsingham snapped, shoving a small wooden box into Carruthers' hands.
"What's this old chap?" Carruthers asked. "Not sure it's quite the time or place for…"
A gunshot rang out and the soldiers around him snapped their rifles to their shoulders just as the Tibetans, mere feet away did the same.
"Who fired?" shouted Carruthers. "Damn it! Who fired?"
It was too late to worry about the finer details of that, as one of the Tibetans, no doubt convinced that the English meant to shoot them down, fired his rifle.
One shot can almost be tolerated, when two have fired it will always bring more… both sides took their aim and pulled their triggers. Carruthers shouting in the middle of it, dropping to the ground where he appeared to vanish as if he had dived into water, not solid, Tibetan earth.
A little way up the mountain, Ashe – who had fired the first shot – watched Walsingham run back towards Dhuru Monastery, hands above his head, screaming impartiality all the way. Ashe pointed the barrel of his revolver at him, wondering if it might not be better if he just…
He put the gun away, quickly and with disgust. This is not who I am, he thought as he walked back into the mountains to catch his train.
PART THREE
Where People Go To Die (1)
1.
Miles ran along the platform, Carruthers striding alongside. Tom ambled behind. "Come on!" Miles shouted, "Or the bloody thing will leave without us."
"And that would be a real bummer," Tom mumbled.
Ghos
t passengers darted around them, performing that elaborate commuter dance designed to gain a few inches on your fellow passenger. Miles reached the tail-end of the train. A large sticker on the window announced that it was first class.
"Why not?" Miles said. "May as well grab every inch of illusory luxury we can."
"One would never travel another way," Carruthers assured him with a smile.
They climbed through the open door, Miles strolling along the aisle until he found an empty table. Carruthers wedged his pack on the baggage shelf and sat down with a contented sigh. Tom followed a few seconds later, slumping into the corner.
"I can see you're going to be great company," mumbled Miles. Tom pulled out a packet of cigarettes.
"Are those real?" Miles asked, changing his mind about Tom's value instantly.
Tom shook one into his mouth. "No, you're dreaming them."
"I mean: did they come from the real world?" Miles explained. "You didn't find them here?"
Tom shook his head, scooting the pack across the table to Miles with a flick of his fingers. Miles pulled out a slightly crooked cigarette with all the reverence of a holy relic, sniffing it and stroking it back into shape.
"You going to smoke it or fuck it?" Tom asked. He lit his own cigarette and held his flickering Zippo out to Miles.
"You have no idea how much I've been craving one since I got here," Miles explained. "I am a man of addictions."
Tom didn't reply to that, was too concerned he'd wind up on the subject of drink. He wasn't in the mood for a heart to heart. Wasn't in the mood for much more than climbing under the table and seeing if he could will himself out of existence. He offered the pack to Carruthers.
"No thank you," the explorer said. "An evening cigar is the limit of my tobacco needs."
"You don't know what you're missing," Miles enthused, huffing a cloud of smoke into the face of a phantom ticket inspector.
"Oh to be so easily pleased," Carruthers commented with a smile.
Tom stretched out on the double seat, letting his legs jut into the aisle.
"Listen," said Miles, feeling that they should build a relationship with the man, "if you want to talk about…"
"I don't."
"Okay, but, you know, if you did…"
"I don't."
"Fine."
Carruthers raised his eyebrow at Miles but wouldn't be drawn into the attempts at conversation. There was a loaded moment of silence, the sort that can reduce a guilty man to tears and confession. Try as he might, Miles couldn't bear it for long.
"So what do you do for a living?"
"Play piano."
"Oh! Cool… like in a band or something?"
"A bar."
"Right, and that keeps you in the essentials does it?"
"The essentials come free with the job, kind of why it suits me."
"Right." Miles felt like an irate driver, stuck behind the wheel of a car with a flat battery. There was just no way of getting this conversation turning over. "I was in antiques." Tom gave a disinterested nod.
Miles decided to give up, Tom would either open up or he wouldn't. Carruthers had removed his battered journal from the hip pocket of his jacket and was contentedly making notes.
"What are you writing about?" Miles asked.
Carruthers smiled. He might have known that Miles would shift his attention to him.
"I am chronicling our trip," he said. "One never knows, on my return to the correct time and place there may be a book in it."
"Weird book," said Miles. "I'd read it."
He smoked the rest of his cigarette and watched the ghostly passengers fill the seats around them. A translucent woman fought to cram a holdall in the overhead rack, Miles stood up, meaning to help before remembering how pointless it would be. A pair of business men occupied the table across from them, dropping their briefcases onto the spare seats to dissuade anyone else from sitting down. Miles watched an elderly lady shuffle her way along the aisle. A small terrier in her arms matched her fur hat. She looked around at the empty seats, eyeing her fellow passengers with the sort of open disapproval ladies of a certain age reserve for absolutely everyone else in the world. She marched over to their table and sat directly on his lap.
"For fuck's sake," Miles moaned, shifting around inside the ethereal woman. Her little terrier stared at him and began to bark. "Little shit…" Miles involuntarily lashed out as the dog made to nip him on the nose. "The thing's not even real, how come it can see me?"
"Or sense you." Carruthers added, scribbling an excited note in the margin of his notebook.
"I'll put that pencil in you in a minute," Miles snapped, irritated. The dog continued to bark, the noise muted, one step removed from their reality, but loud enough to be annoying. The rest of the passengers clearly thought so too as, one by one, they began to complain. The elderly lady scrunched up her face and basked in her unpopularity. After a few moments – perhaps realising her position was untenable – she stood up and marched out of the carriage, the dog straining over her shoulder to continue barking at Miles.
"So," said Tom, removing another cigarette from the pack, "you're good with animals then?"
"Normally," Miles replied, "it's just illusory ones that don't like me."
"Fascinating isn't it?" asked Carruthers. "They're clearly not quite as illusory as we had imagined!"
"Fascinating." Tom choked off his lopsided curls inside a large flat cap he'd found at the station, yanking the brim down over his eyes. "I reckon I'll think about it quietly to myself." He slouched back, getting as comfortable as it was possible to be – which wasn't very – and sucked on his cigarette.
"Don't worry," said Carruthers, "from our experience the journey is unlikely to be long."
"Cool."
Carruthers looked baffled for a moment and then nodded. "Splendid, two travelling companions who speak an almost alien language to me, what fun we'll have."
Tom's lips curled into a smile around the tip of his cigarette. "Just chill daddy-o, everything's copacetic. You'll get the skinny on my jive talk after we've been groovin' a little."
"I can speak upwards of six languages," Carruthers sighed, "including classical Greek and Latin…"
"Oolcay orfay ouyay anmay," Tom chuckled.
Carruthers threw his hands in the air. "I give up!"
"Ytray otnay otay ebay ootay uchmay ofway anway assholeway." Miles said to Tom, not to be outdone in Pig Latin.
Tom gave another smile. "I'll try."
"Have you both gone completely mad?" Carruthers asked. "Am I suffering from some unfortunate mental condition that has rendered all speech utterly incomprehensible?"
"You should be so lucky," said Miles as the train began to slow down. The darkness outside the windows fell away revealing an old-fashioned street outside. It was night and the lights of one of the nearby buildings did their best to beat away the shadows with flashes of green and red.
"Rosie O'Grady's Goodtime Emporium," Carruthers read, looking at the sign. "Please tell me that's not what it sounds like."
"I doubt it somehow," Miles replied, lifting Carruthers bag down for him, "they don't tend to be quite as brazen in their advertising."
"In America," Carruthers replied, "one never knows."
They clambered off the train, concerned to discover it had come to a halt in the middle of the street. "I do hope nobody's watching…" said Carruthers, gesturing for the other two to be quick.
"If they are then Rosie's not doing her job," Tom replied.
"It's just a bar," said Miles, walking towards it.
"No such thing as 'just' a bar in my opinion," said Tom. "Let's wet our whistles shall we?"
"Shouldn't we figure out where we are first?" asked Carruthers
"Church Street," said Tom. "Read the signs, explorer boy."
He dashed inside, Miles and Carruthers having little choice but to follow.
2.
Inside the place was done out in a predictably retro style.
Miles found himself thinking of New Orleans Riverboats and clean-suited cowboys.
"Well," said Carruthers, "America hasn't changed much."
"It's retro," Miles explained, "designed to look older than it is."
"Then it seems I'm not the only one with misgivings about your brave new future."