He stood by the gate and smoked a cigarette, trying to get up the nerve to go in. Here I am, a member of His Majesty’s Security Service, afraid of a row. But it was more than that. It wasn’t just one row; it was a succession, an unending line of rows. About the late hours he was working, how he didn’t talk to her, how he didn’t spend any time with his stepson, how every time she tried to organise a family outing he was ‘busy’. She knew he worked for the Service – he’d decided very early on in their relationship that he was going to tell her – but until Rupert came into his life he had been working more or less regular hours. Now there was no telling where he would be from one day to the next, or whether he would get home at all. It went without saying that his wife was not, and never would be, Perigee-cleared.
He finished his cigarette and flipped the end out into the street, where it landed in a little burst of sparks. One of the neighbours, out walking his dog, spotted this minor act of rebellion and sucked his teeth noisily as he went by.
Shaking his head, Jim walked up the path to the front door and offered his key to the lock. The key would not go into the lock. Thinking he’d inadvertently tried to use one of his other keys, Jim searched around his key ring until he found the right one, and tried again. Once more, the key refused to go into the lock.
Jim took out his phone and switched it on, and by the screen’s illumination he saw that the lock was brand shiny-new.
“AH, JIM, JIM,” Bevan sighed.
Jim sprawled on the sofa, feeling a weird heady mixture of abandonment and relief. He drank some of Bevan’s Scotch. “She must have done it after I left for work this morning,” he said.
From the comfort of her armchair, Bevan shook her head.
He had spent ten minutes trying to phone his wife, and the only response he had been able to get was a text reading ‘Fuck off.’ Then he had spent another twenty minutes trying to work out where to go for the night, on the theory that a night’s sleep would do everyone the world of good and he could sort this out in the morning.
Bevan lived in Shepperton, in a chaotic old house full of books and amateur oil paintings and threadbare furniture. There was a cat, an alarming-looking Persian named Guillaume, which had hissed and snarled at him when he first entered the house and then wandered off somewhere, but no Mr Professor Bevan. Jim closed his eyes and put his head back against the cushions and willed the sofa to consume him whole.
“You can stay here tonight, Jim,” Bevan told him. “On the sofa. But tomorrow you have to try and sort this out. She’s not allowed to lock you out of your own home.”
“There’s a very strong smell of garlic in this house,” Jim said without opening his eyes. “Garlic and... is that rosemary?”
“Jim.”
“I know.” He opened his eyes. “I know, Adele. I’m sorry. I’ll find a B&B to move into tomorrow.”
Her expression softened. “Here,” she said, getting up from her chair. “Let me show you something.” She went over to one of the floor-to-ceiling bookshelves and took a slim cloth-bound volume from it. She handed it over. “Something wonderful,” she said.
Jim looked at the title of the book. It seemed to be a guidebook to English and Scottish holiday spots around 1943, a series of black and white plates with short descriptions under them. He flipped through the pages, closed the book, then opened it again and stared at one picture in particular.
Bevan beamed. “To our knowledge, it’s the only existing photograph anywhere of the Community.”
He looked at the cover again. “Where did you find it?”
“Someone gave it to me. About thirty years ago. They said they’d got it from someone who had been to the Community. Or came from there. We never quite got to the bottom of it. That’s how I got into all this in the first place.” She shrugged. “For all I know, it’s fake. There’s no way to check, without going there.”
“Does Shaw know you have this?”
Bevan shook her head and went back to her chair. “Not yet, and I imagine she’s going to be quite upset when they find out I do.” She sat down and said, “In a way, I’m quite glad your missus locked you out, Jim. It gives us a chance to talk. You see, I’ve had an idea.”
6
“NO,” SAID SHAW. “Absolutely not. I can’t possibly sanction this.”
“We’re at a dead end with the Campus,” Bevan said. “It could be months before we can even go in there. We need to try something else.”
“What about the assassination attempt?” Shaw asked. “There are gigabytes of footage of the attack floating around online.”
“We’ve more or less discounted the idea of an assassination attempt,” Jim said, ignoring Bevan’s stirrings of protest. “And none of the available footage actually shows Rupert’s face. Most of it isn’t of very good quality anyway, truth be told. We believe he won’t be recognised.”
This time it was just the three of them, the original Committee, sitting in a quiet side-room at Northumberland Avenue. Very very dimly through the thick glass and thicker net curtains of the windows, Jim thought he heard a boat on the river sounding its horn.
Shaw was shaking her head again. “No,” she said. “No. What about these people Delahunty claimed to have spoken with? The Community conspiracy nuts. The ones who gave her the maps.”
“Gone to ground,” Jim answered. “If they ever existed.”
“If she had maps, they came from the Community,” Bevan said. “Or they were drawn by someone who had been there. We shouldn’t stop looking for them. But they could be anywhere. They’ve been under the radar for years. I’d never heard of them, and I’m the closest thing you had to an expert on the Community until Rupert arrived. We don’t know where to start looking, and we can’t wait. If Delahunty was right and the Xian Flu originated in the Campus, we need to know what they’re playing at, and we need to know it now.”
Shaw looked at the thin folder of notes before her again, a proposal so classified it couldn’t be committed to electronic media. She sighed. “He has to do it willingly,” she said. “I don’t want this coming back to us and somebody accusing us of forcing him into it.”
Bevan nodded. “Of course.”
Shaw thought about it some more. “Very well,” she said finally. “I’ll take this to the D-G. If she signs off on it, we go ahead. If not, we never discuss this again. Agreed?”
Bevan nodded. “Agreed.”
RUPERT LOOKED AT Challis’s photographs, the short piece of video he had shot, without changing expression. When he’d finished, he said, “I don’t understand.”
“These are pictures of the Campus,” Jim said. “We think something terrible has happened there.”
“It’s Winter,” Rupert said. “Why is it Winter there and Summer here? I thought we had the same seasons.”
“That’s not snow,” Jim told him, hating every word he said. “It’s ash. Fallout, we call it. The result of intense heat caused by very powerful explosions.”
Rupert stared blankly at the photographs again. “Explosions,” he said.
“Someone has deliberately destroyed the Campus,” said Jim. “We don’t know who, and we don’t know why. But the place is a wasteland. It’s dangerous even to go there at the moment. It might stay like that for years. Centuries.”
“Araminta...” Rupert said very quietly.
“If she survived the explosions... well, let’s hope she didn’t.”
Rupert turned his head and looked at him. “The Science Faculty,” he said. “They did this.”
“Maybe,” Jim said.
“They’d won,” he said. “They were in control.”
“Something went wrong. It could have been an accident. We don’t know.”
Rupert frowned. “I genuinely have no...” he began. He shook his head.
Jim sat forward and rested his forearms on his knees. “I really have no right to ask you this, old chap,” he said, “but we’ve come up with a bit of a plan. You can say no if you wish, but we’d like y
ou to help us.”
“Help you?”
“We have a book...”
1
ROWLAND THOUGHT IT was unlucky to meet someone twice in the same place. It was one of his lesser superstitions, something which might have manifested itself in a normal person as flicking spilled salt over the shoulder or not walking under ladders, but he knew a lot of people and I always wondered how he managed to keep track of where he had met whom.
In the course of our association, we had met at the British Museum, on the steps of St Paul’s, and any number of pubs and cafés. This week it was the fourteenth-floor restaurant of the St George’s Hotel on Langham Place.
I arrived at half past ten and the first thing I noticed was that the place was almost empty. The second thing I noticed was the immense floor-to-ceiling windows and a staggering view out over West London.
“I know,” Rowland’s voice said beside my shoulder. “I never realised this was here, either.”
I turned. “Don’t ever sneak up on me again, Rowland,” I told him.
He shrugged. “I just went for a piss,” he said. “Saw you getting out of the lift as I left the bog. Didn’t mean to startle you.” He smiled. “Coffee?”
There was a little area with easy chairs and coffee tables. Rowland led the way over to a table near the windows and put his briefcase down on a chair. “Won’t be a minute,” he said, and went off to find a waiter.
I stood at the window. Beyond the glass was an immense vista of buildings under a sky piled high with fluffy grey clouds.
“All right,” Rowland said. He took his briefcase off the chair and sat down. “Sit.”
I sat in the chair opposite him. Then I shifted the chair so the view wouldn’t distract me.
“Good week?” he asked.
“Not bad. You?”
“I’ve had better.” He put his briefcase on his knees and opened it. I’d never seen a briefcase in such poor condition. It looked as if it dated from the days of Lloyd George, and someone appeared to have been playing football with it on a regular basis ever since. It had been re-stitched several times without bothering to replace the previous stitching, so it looked kind of fluffy along the edges. “Did you find it?”
I took the envelope from my coat pocket and handed it to him. He stuck his finger under the flap and ripped it open. He turned the envelope upside down and a small hardback book dropped into his palm.
A waiter came up with a tray and proceeded to put a coffee pot, sugar bowl, milk-jug and two cups on the table. Rowland was busily examining the book, so I thanked the waiter and he went away with the briefest of disapproving glances.
“It’s in good nick as well,” Rowland said, paging carefully through the book.
I poured coffee for us. The sugar bowl was full of those big amber-coloured crystals that take an hour to dissolve. I put a spoonful of them into my cup and allowed myself a look at the view. Two big aeroplanes were descending towards Heathrow, sandwiched between the clouds and the buildings. A ray of sunshine broke through the clouds and swept across London like a searchlight. It was all I could do not to stare in awe.
“Tustin’s Where To Go In Wartime,” Rowland said, shaking his head. “Can you imagine they actually published a book like this?”
I nodded. Six months of being associated with Rowland had eliminated my capacity for surprise.
He favoured the book with a smile that someone else might have used for a kitten or a new-born child, then he looked at me with a concerned expression. “Was it expensive?”
“We were under budget,” I told him.
The smile reappeared and he took to paging through the book again. I poked at my coffee with the spoon, but the sugar showed no signs of dissolving yet so I sat back and watched Rowland obsessing over his newest acquisition.
He was wearing a perfectly ordinary grey pinstriped business suit today, but he still managed to radiate an air of seediness. His shoulders were dusted with scurf, and what remained of his hair was plastered to his scalp with liberal quantities of Brylcreem. He’d had a shave this morning, which was unusual, but he hadn’t bothered to extend the shave below his jawline. There was a faint but persistent aura of mothballs and Scotch about him. It was hard to imagine that he had ever been a policeman, let alone – as he claimed – a Detective Chief Constable.
He looked at me. “What?”
I shook my head.
“Fine.” He scratched his head. “Expenses.”
I handed him the envelope containing my train tickets, taxi receipts and hotel bills, and he dropped it into his briefcase without bothering to look at it. “How much?”
“Five hundred and seventy-seven pounds and eighty-one pence.”
He blinked at me. “Are you sure?”
“Yes,” I said. “I am.”
“That’s a lot of money for a trip to Sleaford.”
“It is,” I agreed. “But the book wasn’t in Sleaford. It was in Sandwell.”
He looked nonplussed for a moment.
“It’s in the West Midlands,” I told him. “But I didn’t go directly there. Your friend in Sleaford sent me to Chesterfield, and his friend there sent me to Sandwell.”
Rowland still didn’t look convinced, but he shrugged. “Oh well, I suppose it all works out in the end.” He reached for his inside jacket pocket. “Shall we call it five hundred and seventy pounds?”
“Shall we call it five hundred and eighty?”
He smiled and took out his wallet. “Five hundred and seventy-five, for change?”
“What does that mean, for change?” I asked. “I’ve never understood what that means.”
He shook his head. “Buggered if I know.” He opened his wallet and looked down into it like a man taking a last look at his favourite child before they leave home forever. He took a wad of notes out and held them out to me. “That should be enough.”
I took the money and counted it. “It’s thirty quid short.”
Rowland shook his head again and gave me a twenty and a £10 coin. I put the money in my pocket and then we sat looking at each other.
Finally, he opened his briefcase, reached in, and took out a long buff envelope. “Three this time,” he said, putting it on the table and sliding it across to me. “I’ve got buyers for two of them already.”
“I want a bigger cut this time,” I said.
He blinked at me impassively. “Oh yes?”
Alison and I had been rehearsing this ever since I got back from Sandwell, but now the moment had come I felt my resolve waver. Rowland just sat there looking bemused and rather sad and vulnerable.
I said, “Look, Rowland, this job takes up a lot of my time. I could be using the time to do something else.”
He narrowed his eyes. “So, what, you’re doing me some kind of favour?” he asked.
“Virtually, for the money you pay me.”
Rowland sat back and rubbed his chin. “I’d have thought there’d be dozens of people who’d be glad of the money I pay you,” he mused.
“Possibly.” Alison had told me to threaten to quit, but somehow I couldn’t bring myself to do it. I had the sudden feeling that Rowland would accept my resignation and then just go off and recruit someone at the nearest Job Centre.
“You’re good, Tommy,” he said. “No doubt about that.” He half-turned in his chair and looked at the view. “Do you think I make a lot of money?”
“I think you probably do.” I knew for sure that he had three other people travelling around the country looking for rare books for his business. “I think you can probably afford to cut me in on a percentage of the sale price of the books I find for you.”
I actually saw him wince slightly. “Well,” he said. “That’s a new one, Tommy.” He turned away from the view and looked at me. “Tell you what,” he said, nodding at the envelope. “You go and find me those books, and we’ll talk about it when you get back.”
If Alison had been sitting beside me, she would have told me to get up and w
alk out. But she wasn’t sitting beside me. So I picked up the envelope and put it in my pocket.
2
I HAD MET Rowland through someone I met in a pub, which was as good a way of finding a job these days as any. Rowland looked for books on behalf of specialist bookshops and collectors. It was a basically peripatetic life, travelling the country from auction to closing down sale to bankruptcy clearance to car boot sale. There were those who painted the whole business with a sort of cloak-and-dagger veneer, shady deals in the car parks of out-of-town shopping centres, exchanges of plain brown envelopes, but really it was just grown men looking for books for other grown men. And it was a man’s life. There seemed to be very few women involved.
I spun this chap I met in the pub my patented hard-luck story – unable to get a job, girlfriend and landlord to support, drowning not waving – and he said he might know somebody who might need some help in his business, and so Rowland had come into my life.
It was not, when all was said and done, a terribly difficult business. Rowland got requests for specific volumes from clients, he passed the titles on to me, and I went to look for them. I was still relying mostly on Rowland’s contacts, but I was starting to build up my own too.
The trick was, Rowland and I were not the only people out there looking for rare books. Quite often there would be only one or two extant copies of a book, and the thing was to get in first, make the best offer to the seller, and get it back to the buyer before someone else came along with another copy. It didn’t pay enormously well, but it paid.
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