The next barrier was the gate of Mayfair at Hyde Park Corner. The glory troops were of Guards to the People, the same glory trust securing Knightsbridge, so they did not delay him. He quick-marched up Park Lane. Hyde Park lay to one side and the towering beech hedges of sovereign palaces to the other. Just one last barrier: the gates of Bloomsbury at Marble Arch. This was the territory of General Wardian glory trust.
Presented with Donald’s passport, the desk sergeant called his officer over. This officer’s face was naggingly familiar. He was a team lieutenant in his mid-twenties, thick-set and bull necked, face beaten squint at rugby. Donald knew this type from his schooldays. Dumb for the scrum, the hero carried off stunned, never passed an exam in his life. The team lieutenant studied Donald’s papers. When he looked up, Donald recognised him instantly.
“Team Lieutenant Haighman!”
“Donald Aldingford I presume? Hardly dressed for the Land Court of Westminster.”
“It’s an odd job I’m on, I have to gather evidence from working people.” He leaned across to murmur in his ear. “It’s closer to the divorce court than the Land Court, if you know what I mean.”
Haighman gave a conspiratorial nod.
“Sounds tricky stuff. As for myself, I got drafted in to help deal with these bloody radicals. Our bosses are tearing their hair out because they can’t get clear instructions from City Hall. It’s like asking a cage of rabbits what to do about Mr Fox. They just lollop about nibbling carrots. I’ve never come across such useless people.”
This did not surprise Donald. All the councillors of the Central Enclave he had met were windbags. Trapped between the sovereigns and the industrial asylums, they would have no idea what to do.
This time it was Haighman who leaned across the counter.
“Let me give you some advice. Go straight home and stay home for the rest of the day. There’s going to be action in Bloomsbury, the kind of thing your brother Lawrence would relish, if you know what I mean.”
Donald did not know what he meant, so merely smiled and said thank you. After clearing the district gates, he made a detour to get his Colt 38 automatic from the house. When he approached Bloomsbury College, all appeared peaceful. The district had an almost deserted air about it, as was usual for a Saturday afternoon. However, he found the dingy lane outside Bloomsbury College was crowded with glory troopers from all of the big three trusts: General Wardian, Universal Parrier and Guards to the People. Donald’s first impression was that they had just come off-duty after breaking up some kind of riot. Some had bleeding or bruised faces, many had ripped pockets hanging down or tears in their trousers. None carried weapons.
The reception hall inside the National Party building had been turned into a dressing station. Two young women in white coats moved amongst scores of casualties laid on the floor or propped on benches around the walls. Some on the floor were serious cases. He saw one man with his face completely bandaged up, leaving just one eye peered out. Another was the colour of toothpaste, his right arm splinted with half a broom handle. Donald began to step through the casualties to reach the stairs when the roughneck Valentin and his two side-kicks appeared and confronted him.
“What are you doing here?”
“I have to see Vasco Banner.”
“He’s busy,” said Valentin. “You won’t get a meeting today. All hell’s broken loose with the glories whacking the Party down in Fulham. That’s where this lot have come from.” He gestured to the casualties all over the floor. “They got dragged here by all those guys outside.”
“You mean glory troops are fighting glory troops?”
“Correct.”
“How did they get here from Fulham?”
“Crashed through the district gates by force of numbers. Officers were screaming to open fire at what they called ‘a sewage of riff-raff and sub-humanity’. Their boys ignored them—no trooper is going to shoot blokes in the same uniform.”
So, it was civil war.
“I have a reliable warning General Wardian troops are going to attack this afternoon. They have guns and you don’t. You must evacuate,” Donald said.
Valentin stared at him.
“That’s exactly what I’ve been saying, only I can’t get nobody to listen. After that riot in Fulham they’re bound to hit us. We need guns, but…”
In the Central Enclave, it was a capital offense to bear a firearm without a licence.
Valentin led him up to the top floor. Banner’s office was packed with people in some kind of conference. Donald burst in the door, shoving bodies out of the way.
“You’ve got to evacuate. General Wardian is going to attack.”
The scene was like a hearing. A young man—a leading basic of General Wardian—sat on a chair before Banner’s desk. He jumped in shock at Donald’s breaking through the press of people. Banner was leaning forward, attentive, like a doctor recording a patient’s woes. Beside him sat Sarah-Kelly, her eyes glistening. On Banner’s other side were two stenographers, their stenotypes peeling out coils of paper ribbon. Banner lifted his jaw without looking up, frowning at the interruption.
“Get out.”
Valentin and his two pals emerged like walruses, the people pouring off them to either side.
“President, you have to listen to him.”
“Why?”
“He says General Wardian are going to hit us.”
“They won’t dare touch us here under the noses of their precious clientele. The glory trusts do what they like out of sight, as this brave young man is telling us—" He gestured to the young leading basic. “—but they can’t do things like that here in town before an audience.”
“I have it from the horse’s mouth there will be an action in Bloomsbury this afternoon,” Donald said. “An officer… oh Christ, it doesn’t really matter. You have to get the wounded to my house. I guarantee no bloody glory thugs will touch them there. Tell everyone else to scatter.” When Banner just sat there with one supercilious eyebrow cocked, Donald stepped forward. “If you won’t act, then I will.”
“Would you please remove this man, Mr Valentin?”
Donald shoved his way around the end of Banner’s desk, grabbed Sarah-Kelly under the arms and started hauling her towards the door into a scrum of earnest Party types gathering to object, shouting and prising his arms back. A voice enormous like a bark of thunder froze everybody. It was Banner. He jumped to his feet, sweating and grey with rage, his eyes flaming.
“Get him out of here Valentin—now!”
Donald was outside the cabin without his feet touching the ground. They put him down, all of them panting and trembling from adrenalin.
“That fucking idiot,” Donald said, straightening up. “Let’s get the wounded moved anyway.”
From the street, they heard a shout. A diesel engine snarled and an eerie, metallic singing echoed up and down the walls. Donald ran to the windows. Armoured cars and glory troops armed with sawn-off shotguns were flooding in from the main boulevard.
Donald flung an iron-framed chair through the panes of Banner’s office and yelled into the splintered hole: “Clear the hell out, it’s the glories!”. He could not believe how sluggish they were. Some crowded at the end of the cabin, peering down into the street with remote curiosity. Others stood watching the others peering down into the street. Only the leading basic took off like a scatting cat. Donald gripped Sarah-Kelly by the hand and with coos and urges drew her away from Banner.
“What about them?” asked Valentin, pointing at Banner’s crowded office.
“They’ve had their chances.”
He managed to get Sarah-Kelly down two of three flights before she yanked him to a halt.
“I’m not going with you.”
A racket like bull-whips lashing a sheet of brass, screams and pounding feet. Another burst from the brass-muncher, then a fusillade of crack-crack-cracking. Sawn-offs at work—repellent spray.
Donald
wrenched her down the last flight and threw her into a corridor. The base of the stairs was in full view of the reception hall. Glory troops were creeping in, cautious, spreading out, stepping amongst the patients.
Donald lay flat, peering around the base of the wall. An account-captain first class stooped, inserted the muzzle of his pistol into the mouth of a terrified young man on the floor and fired. The blast threw up a spray of blood and saliva, fouling the golden shield on his sleeve. Wounded men leaped up and dashed for the door, slamming into each other and getting shot down in the salvo that filled the hall with sparks and flashes.
Donald stretched his arm and fired at the account-captain’s head—and missed! The man stood shooting all about as if at a rabbit hunt, oblivious to the bullet’s wake inches from his face amid a cacophony of gunfire was so overwhelming that it was like silence. Donald aimed at the chest and fired again. The account-captain arched over backwards amidst the writhing bodies. The glory troops dropped flat.
He ran Sarah-Kelly off her feet, pulling her down the corridor to the end, kicking down the door into a lecture theatre. Shots down the corridor sprayed clouds of plaster from the far wall. He smashed out a window with a chair.
“Get out the window.”
She hesitated, deterred by shards of glass. Donald risked a sneak glance up the corridor and found it was clear. Another person was firing from the well of the steps. Well God bless you, whoever you are, we’d be dead ducks without you. Grabbing up another chair, he swept away the last of the shards and shouldered Sarah-Kelly out into the alley, followed landing beside her, folding her flat on the cobbles while he checked both ways. Far off, at the boulevard end, troopers stood silhouetted against the light, their backs to the alley. The other way, the view was blocked by an armoured car.
They rolled across the alley to a high brick wall, which he gave Sarah-Kelly a leg up over, shoving her boots high overhead without a clue where his strength came from. She made a thud like a dropped crate on the far side. He hoped to Christ she had not broken her ankles. As for getting himself over, he had to run at it across the alley and drag himself over by brute force.
They were in a concrete yard running along the back of a gloomy brick row. All the ground floor windows were barred. A sense of hopelessness closed in on Donald. Yells and shots already came from the broken window across the alley. Cascades of broken glass rang down, some pieces smacking around them. The windows of the top floor office had been shot out by a sweep of submachine gun fire. The tremendous voice thundered.
“Get out! Get out, you filth!”
Another burst of machine gun fire and the voice was silenced forever. A body ejected and hurtled down head first, the face gaping at the exact spot of cobbles into which it impacted with a vile crunching of bones. Another man came screaming down, then another. Glory troopers leaned through the windows, laughing. Donald and Sarah-Kelly grovelled against the base of the wall for its meagre cover. She tried to say something. He could not understand her. She shoved him flat and crawled over him as one rat passes over another. Boots clattering in the alley, just the other side of the wall. He heard jeers and snorts.
“Proper Icarus, he was,” one of them jeered.
Laughter.
Sarah-Kelly stood up, back flat on the wall, panting, easing her head forward to look back up to the top floor office that had been the core of the National Party. Without speaking, she darted forward and was gone into a passage barely a yard wide running between two blocks. Donald followed. At the far end, Sarah-Kelly kneeled down and Donald leaned over her, his chin touching the top of her head. The passage emerged into a street largely overgrown with bushes. There were even thickets of birch trees. The buildings opposite presented an unappealing façade of bricked-up windows three storeys high, topped by gutters laced with barbed wire. These would be the backs of private residences. Glory troops guarded both ends of the street. There was no way out.
“So much for the clientele,” Donald said bitterly, looking along the deserted roof tops. The shooting had not drawn one rabbit from all those burrows. He crawled forward to survey the buildings along their side of the street. They were college buildings, all shuttered up for the weekend.
“We’ll have to hide in the street and get away after dark.”
Donald kept urging her to crawl on further. They could still hear yells and boots from the far end of the passage. The cover out on the street was less than he had hoped, due to footpaths amongst the bushes. However, dusk was falling. They reached a kind of natural nest in a clump of birch trees and lay amongst the boles. Donald supposed a low animal like a vole or a field rat must feel like this, cringing on the ground. He put his arms around Sarah-Kelly, resting his face against the back of her head and uttered a long sigh. He was spent. His head ached and he felt sick. Sarah-Kelly turned around and hugged him, pressing her face against his shoulder.
The glories had made their point—they had shot the Party through the brains. Might had proved right.
*
They lay under the birch trees long into the evening, until the cold seeped into their bones and they shivered no matter how tightly they clutched each other. Music wafted over the rooftops from the private houses—it sounded like Haydn. The shriek of fighting cats made them both jump. He pushed his face under Sarah-Kelly’s hair, wishing, oh so wishing they were in bed, not freezing on these fucking damp weeds.
“It’s time to go, take your boots off. Tie the laces and hang them round your neck. Keep hold of my belt,” he said.
At the top of the street, the boulevard was a dark chasm. Normally there would be oil lamps hanging over gates. This night, there was nothing. It felt like a shunned place. Every rabbit around here knew what had happened and every one of them was cowering in their burrow.
They cleared the immediate area, silent in socks, without seeing or hearing anything. The distance to his own house was only a few hundred yards. Out of caution, he took an indirect route, checking for any followers and waiting for fifteen minutes near the lane to his house before leading the last stretch to the iron gate of his garden. He was on his own land but he was not safe. He had, after all, shot a senior glory officer.
*
“We’ve got to get out to North Kensington basin,” Donald said.
Sarah-Kelly shook her head.
“No way am I ever going back to that place.”
“Do you want to die here? I shot an account-captain first class. General Wardian won’t rest until they’ve tracked down who did it. They know two people shot back at them. I’m 99% certain they killed the other one.”
But Sarah-Kelly shook her head, with an absolute finality.
“I am not going back, Donald.”
“I can deal with Bartram, if that’s what’s bothering you.”
“Maybe. You’re far tougher than I thought you were, I’ll give you that.” Her smile faded. “But what about Nightminster?”
Donald knew that clarity of thought during the next ten minutes was a matter of life and death. Five people knew Donald Aldingford had been at Bloomsbury College. One was in his arms. Banner was dead. That left Valentin and his two side-kicks.
“What kind of guys are Valentin and his two chums?”
“Dead sound. I reckon they got away. They were behind us on the stairs and then they took off at the first floor to get out some other way. When I stopped and tried to say that, you pushed me down the stairs towards the shooting.”
Donald did not remember that, although it was true Valentin and his two pals had not come down the last flight of steps, which meant they could not have seen him shoot the account-captain. There had been some other guy shooting too, who had covered Donald and Sarah-Kelly when they fled down the corridor and escaped through the window of a lecture theatre. The situation was actually quite simple; if General Wardian had learned who shot their account-captain, they would have been waiting here at the house with an arrest squad. The reality was, they did not kn
ow. If they did not know now, that closed the matter. There was no way they could find out in the future—Donald was hardly going to volunteer the information himself after all. Should there ever be any question, TK would step in and hush it up. If there lingered any real danger, it came from within his own head in the form of conscience.
He lay back in his bed, drawing Sarah-Kelly closer, feeling her head on his chest and her arms under his. It surprised him how certainly he knew his conscience would never trouble him over shooting that bastard account-captain. There are some things that do not require the proof of time. He pulled the blankets around them. It was cold now, hours after the boiler had been damped for the night. Their boots stuck out the bottom of the rolled-up intimacy that plunged into anaesthetic sleep, until the rising insistence of knuckles upon the bedroom door finally retrieved Donald from its depths.
“What is it?”
Butler Campbell stepped around the door. His shock faded to a sour-egg expression of disgust. Sarah-Kelly lifted her head and peered through a curtain of blonde hair.
“Oh God, not him,” she groaned.
Donald jumped on the moment.
“Full breakfasts for two please, Jonathan.”
After the endurance test of breakfast, Donald wrapped an arm around Sarah-Kelly and nestled her upstairs into his study, where he sat her down and took a seat right opposite, so they were virtually knee to knee.
“I can’t stand these people with their eyes all over me, judging and despising. Can’t you get rid of them?” she said.
Sovereigns of the Collapse Book 1 Page 20