The Somnambulist v-1

by Jonathan Barnes

  Above that noise, there came other, more welcome sounds: a persistent tap-tap, a metallic jingle and with it a series of fitful stammers, gasps and wheezes. Skimpole hung up his hat, and for the first time that day, he actually smiled. Limping toward him was a sandy-haired boy, eight or nine years old, sickly and pallid, his progress severely impeded both by the metal calipers which encircled and armored his legs like a homemade exoskeleton and by the two heavy wooden crutches on which he leant for support.

  “Dada!” he called plaintively, his voice shivery and hoarse from his exertions. He stopped short, have a pitifully feeble cough and, caught off balance for a moment, tottered uncertainly on his feet. The albino bent down to steady the child and kissed him tenderly on the forehead.

  “Hello,” he said gently. “Sorry I’m so late.” He removed his pince-nez from the tip of his nose and filed them away in his jacket pocket.

  “Missed you,” the boy murmured.

  “I’m home now,” his father said and rose cheerfully to his feet. “Hungry?”

  The boy laughed. “Yes! Yes! Yes!”

  Skimpole ruffled his hair affectionately and was about to head for the kitchen when, without warning, he was struck by a terrible wrench of pain in his innards, a blistering burst of agony flaring deep in his guts as the poison began to stir. He bit down hard on his tongue to stop himself from screaming, lost for a second in the most acute agony he had ever known. Mercifully, the sensation disappeared as quickly as it had arrived.

  He was in no doubt, of course, as to what it signified.

  Poleaxed by grief and fear, Mr. Skimpole surprised himself by weeping. Racked by noisy sobs, he stood in the hallway of his second-rate home, hot, shameful tears running down his face while his son gazed up at him in quiet bemusement all the while.

  Meyrick Owsley was pleased with himself. He had waited a long time for this, counting down the days and hours, hoping and praying that the moment would come. For months he had waited, and now, at last, the Fiend was condemned. Tonight was the last time he would ever see Barabbas alive.

  “Sir?”

  The killer slumped in the corner of his cell, elephantine, all but naked, luxuriating in his wickedness and sin. He had prized his stash of beauty from its hiding place in the wall and had spread before him a dozen or so of his favorite items — rings, coins and Moon’s tiepin amongst them. “Come in, won’t you?” he said, barely bothering to look up. “I was just admiring my collection. Flashes, little fragments of beauty in a world of misery and care.”

  Owsley looked disdainfully at the meager pile. “I’ll make sure they’re distributed to charity after your death.”

  “My death. Has it come already?”

  Owsley grinned. He seemed hungry suddenly, cruel, his mask of servility wrenched aside. “In a manner of speaking.”

  I fear I may not have been entirely honest about Mr. Owsley.

  Barabbas seemed not to notice the change in his disciple. “When?” he breathed.

  Owsley licked his lips. “Now.”

  The prisoner made no attempt to move away, but rather slouched further onto the floor. He scrabbled in front of him to gather his collection and clutched it to his heaving, blubbery chest. “It’s you, then?” he asked, although he already knew the answer.

  “Me,” Owsley snapped back. “It’s always been me.” He bent over the convict, malevolence boiling off him in ugly black waves. “You should have accepted our offer. You could have had lysium. Instead you chose this.”

  “I know my level,” Barabbas murmured. He added, almost conversationally: “Can I ask you something?”

  “I suppose.”

  “Why now? I had hoped to see how everything turns out.”

  “You ought never to have given him that book.”

  “Edward will work it out. His faculties are almost the equal of my own.”

  Owsley laughed. From his pocket he drew out a long, slender surgical knife, coolly vicious, precision-tooled for death. “Your punishment has been decided,” he snarled, relishing the drama of the moment. “And the sentence is death.”

  Barabbas yawned, waved a pudgy hand languidly. “Then get on with-” he began, but before he could finish, Owsley, his face convulsing with pleasure, plunged the knife deep into him. Barabbas gave a wet gasp. Owsley twisted the blade, pulled it loose, then thrust it in again. The fat man moaned and a trickle of blood emerged from his mouth like lava, staining his lips and teeth a murky scarlet, spattering messily down his chin.

  Still alive, he whispered something to his disciple that even Owsley, in all the innumerable times he had rehearsed and played this scene out in his head, had not forseen.

  “Kiss me.”

  Owsley had never killed a man before. He felt overwhelmed by the power of it, caught up in the giddy thrill of his transformation, possessed by the sublime transgression of the deed. No doubt it was this which made him think he would be safe and assured of his invulnerability as he leant forward to kiss Barabbas full on the lips. Triumphant, drunk on his murder, he was about to pull away when he felt the dying man stir. With one vast hand, Barabbas held firm his erstwhile servant’s head; with the other he reached for his stash of beautiful things and pulled free Moon’s tiepin, sharpened and honed in anticipation of this inevitable moment. Owsley thrashed and flailed as, with his final flicker of strength, Barabbas brought the pin up to Owsley’s throat and dragged it pitilessly across, feeling the arteries snap with a series of satisfying pops. He closed his eyes as a torrent of blood gushed stickily onto his face. Meyrick Owsley tried to scream in rage, agonizing pain and frustration, but could succeed only in gurgling. Helpless, he fell onto his former master and they lay there a while in a macabre embrace — mutilated, ragged things, bound together for the underworld.

  Just before he died, Barabbas tried to whisper the name of the man he loved, an act which had always seemed to him to be appropriate before the end. Whenever he had imagined his death, he had always envisaged an attendant degree of pathos, for it to play out as the sort of strange and tragic scene which might inspire some artist to daub a study in scarlet or a poet to pen a mournful stanza or two. Much to his disappointment, as he lay choking on his own blood, his life dripping away from him with a terrible speed, he found himself too weakened even to speak.

  Consequently, the Fiend died silent.

  Merryweather and Moon found the Somnambulist in the first place they looked — the taproom of the Strangled Boy. The pub had withstood the worst of the fire, but across the street the theatre remained a blackened, burned-out husk, bleak testament to Moon’s failure.

  The conjuror bought his friend a pint of milk and asked, as politely as he could, why he had disappeared. The Somnambulist took out his chalkboard.

  SAW SPEIGHT

  “Speight?” Merryweather peered nosily over Moon’s shoulder. “The tramp?”

  The giant nodded.

  “How was he?” asked Moon, slightly bemused.

  SUIT

  “He was wearing a suit?” Moon asked carefully.

  SMART

  “Are you sure?”

  The Somnambulist nodded, evidently frustrated.

  BANK

  “He was outside a bank?” the inspector offered.

  The Somnambulist shook his head vigorously.

  “He works in a bank?” Moon asked, incredulous.

  The Somnambulist nodded gratefully.

  Merryweather snorted. “Preposterous.”

  CAMOUFLAGE

  “Camouflage?” Moon was about to ask the meaning of this when the faint cry of a paper boy floated in from outside.

  When he heard the headline, Moon dashed out of the pub and into the street.

  “Horrible Murder in Newgate!” the boy shouted again. “The Fiend Is Dead!”

  Moon seized a paper and riffled furiously through it. When his friends ran out to join him, the found him staring dully down at the newsprint, tears edging the corners of his eyes. Discreetly, they kept their distance. M
oon let the paper fall from his hands and drop onto the street, where it was trampled underfoot, sodden, torn and kicked away, another piece of city flotsam. Suddenly, acutely aware that forces of coincidence were marshaling themselves against him, Moon stood alone and silent. Then he surprised himself by laughing. There was no humor in the sound, no genuine mirth, but in the face of all that had happened it seemed to him by far the most logical reaction. To the impartial observer, of course, it may have appeared more like the act of a man whose sanity, like desert earth baked dry, has begun at long last to splinter and to crack.

  Through it all, the old man sleeps beneath the city.

  Some conscious part of him may be aware that things are changing in the streets above, that events are progressing toward their inevitable crisis. Perhaps he knows that he will soon have to stir from his slumber and face the waking world. But for now he remains mired in dreams.

  First, he is a young man again, in the company of friends, before any of them had been touched by life’s realities. Southey is with him — brave, dear Southey — at a time before his betrayal and their feuds. Their talk is earnest, too solemn, perhaps, but typical of the way they were.

  The old man sighs and stirs uncomfortably in his sleep, remembering happier times.

  The young men talk of their hopes and ambitions, of the great experiment. Southey speaks loftily of a brotherhood, of their plans to escape and perfect themselves.

  The dreamer sees himself talking fervently, fire blazing in his eyes, of poetry and metaphysics and the need for a better world.

  Susquehanna. The word surfaces without warning. It means nothing to him but he enjoys the sound of it, its pleasing rhythm. He repeats it to himself. Susquehanna.

  Then Edith emerges beside Southey, interrupting them with cake and wine, and the old man sees that the chasm between them is already widening. Sara brushes up against him and he is distracted. The dream shifts again.

  He is old now, his friendships withered like fruit on a rotten vine, the clear vision of his youth fogged and obscured by the compromises of age. He is a different man, gripped in the coils of penury and afflicted by an evil longing. Naked to the waist, his breeches pulled down below his knees, he sits straining over a privy, clenched and groaning, sick in the knowledge that he has afflicted this poisoning, this acrimony of the bowels, upon himself, that he is to blame for his condition. “My body is deranged,” he writes — his madness the product of a fondness for medicine, a folly, a treacherous lover in whose thrall he has been too long held tight. He mutters to himself as, humiliated, he sits and heaves and pushes.

  At last, he returns to the garret room in Highgate, to Gillman and the boy. Ned is there, not so young now. He holds out his hand. Feverish and dying, the old man takes it. He tells Gillman to leave them, and the doctor, respectful of his patient’s whims, obeys.

  Ned seems fearless of him now that death stares back through the old man’s eyes. He wants to tell the boy what he means to him, how the boy has brought him to life again and rekindled his dreams. Surprisingly, for one so voluble in life, he cannot find the words. He stutters awhile, then contents himself with clutching the proffered hand, but he is sure nonetheless that the boy — this special, chosen boy — knows. He has bequeathed to him a legacy. Ned is to be his successor, his champion. He squeezes his hand, blinks back a few final tears.

  Gasping in his sleep, shuffling uncomfortably on his iron cot, the dreamer knows the end is near.

  Perhaps, if he were aware of the passing of time, the exact chronology of his incarceration, he might care to know precisely how long he has left before he wakes.

  But I have faith in you. You’ll have worked it out by now, I’m sure.

  Four days. Four days before the dream ends, the old man wakes and the city falls.

  Chapter 14

  Professional pavement artists are a modern phenomenon. In London, they sprang into being only as the guardians of the city’s streets and thoroughfares began to favor the economy of tarmacadam over the quaint impracticality of cobblestones. By the time of Moon’s last case, the pitted, pot-holed character of the old city had given way to the flawless asphalt of the new century. Accordingly, the city had seen an unwelcome increase in vagrants and down-at- heel needies plying their trade as roadside artists. One especially pernicious breed had acquired the name screever, a title given to those alms-seekers little better than beggars, the type that had they not possessed the barest modicum of artistic ability would doubtless have been selling matches or accosting passers-by with an outstretched cap and a forlorn look.

  The day after Barabbas died, Mr. Dedlock was thrusting his way through the crowds which, quite without reason, had chosen this morning in particular to pack the streets of Limestone and block his path, all of them pushing and shoving and struggling like a Far Eastern football team jostling for drinks at the after-match bar. This must be a religious festival, he thought, some heathen public holiday or other which has resulted in this thoughtless and distracting inconvenience. By the time he reached the familiar shop front, he had to pause, sweaty and wheezing, to catch his breath. His triumphs on the rugby pitch were years behind him; that world belonged now to fitter, leaner, younger men.

  A screever sat a few paces from the butcher’s door. Unkempt to as almost grotesque degree, his artwork was chalked half-heartedly on the pavement before him. Dedlock strode past, determined not to give the man the merest flicker of acknowledgment, but as he glanced down at the screever’s handiwork, something stared back — a word which made him stop short in shock.

  Dedlock

  Wrinkling his nose at the smell, the gentleman in question stared down at the screever. “Do I know you?”

  “Danger,” the beggar hissed. “Danger.”

  “Danger? What danger?”

  “Danger.”

  “Dedlock gave him a haughty stare. “You’re drunk.”

  “Don’t you know me, sir?”

  Dedlock snorted dismissively and was about to walk away when something about the creature drew his eye, something uncomfortably familiar. He peered closer. “Grischenko? Is that you?”

  The screever nodded, a little sheepishly.

  “What the devil are you doing here?”

  “Danger,” he repeated solemnly. “Danger.”

  “So you said.”

  “Danger.”

  Deadlock rolled his eyes. “Wipe that muck off your face and come with me. Whatever it is, you might as well tell me inside.”

  The tramp stumbled to his feet and followed Dedlock as he swaggered into the building. Inside, Mr. Skimpole was already seated and waiting at the round table, fretful and restive. Given the albino’s permanently pasty complexion it was difficult to tell, but Dedlock thought he looked especially sickly today.

  At the entrance of his colleague, Skimpole waved away a group of Civil Servants dressed as Chinamen who had been clustering around him, anxiously proffering reports to be read, letters to be signed, schemes and plots to be initialed. “Who’s this?” he asked, looking suspiciously toward the screever, his voice filled with the vexed tenor of a man whose pet dog has just dragged a small woodland creature into the drawing room, dead but still bleeding.

  “This is Mr. Grishchenko,” Dedlock said, and the man nodded distractedly in greeting. He seemed jittery and furtive and kept looking about him as though terrified of some unseen menace lurking just beyond the borders of his vision.

  “One of yours?” Skimpole asked witheringly.

  The scarred man was unapologetic. “One of mine.”

  “Who?”

  Dedlock lowered his voice to an absurd stage whisper: “He’s our ‘in’ with the Russians. A double.”

  “What in God’s name is he doing here? After the Slattery fiasco I’d have hoped you might be more wary about this kind of thing.”

  “I think he has information for us.” Dedlock pointed to a chair and barked: “Sit down.” Grischenko, still whimpering, his vagabond disguise only partially rem
oved, did as he was told.

  “Why are you here?” Dedlock snapped. “Why that ludicrous disguise?”

  Grischenko spoke carefully. His English was slow and thickly accented, his vocabulary antiquated and fussy. “I have to warn you,” he began. “I come here in this most brilliant disguise because the men who track me, they are dangerous. Most probably they watch us even now. I could not allow myself to be seen as Grischenko. You understand?”

  Dedlock crossed his arms. “You’re quite safe here, I assure you. And I suspect Mr. Skimpole and myself are more than a match for anything your people might care to throw at us.”

  “No, no,” Grischenko suddenly seemed animated. “Of course, I understand that my fellow countrymen would not alarm men so courageous as yourselves. But I am not followed by my own people. Not Russian. No, sir, these men you do not know, though I think you are aware of their activities. They are powerful, sirs. Very powerful. They have long been plotting against the city. You know to whom I refer now, I fancy?”

  “Perhaps,” Skimpole said evenly.

  “We’ve heard rumors,” Dedlock admitted, blunter than his partner. “We’d be grateful for any information you might be able to offer. The Directorate is a powerful ally. We can guarantee your safety. Who are these people? What do they call themselves?”

  “They have no name, sir, but I believe that they are quite without scruple. They hired the Irish Slattery to stop you. He failed, I know, but they will not hesitate to try again. They will not stop until the Directorate is defeated and dead.”

  “How do you know this?”

  “Mr. Dedlock,” the Russian hissed. “I know because they have tried to turn me.”

  “You?”

  “Me,” Grischenko repeated, a hint of pride in his voice. “I resisted, of course. I threw their filthy offer back in their faces. I am a man of principle.”

  “But of course.”

  “There is more.”

  Dedlock gestured for him to continue.