“I don’t need the glibness,” TK said.
Wingfield rolled his eyes and sighed.
“I’ll have a watch put on the Great North Drain—there won’t be much traffic on it at this time of the year,” he said. “I’m calling all the other teams home.”
“What about your man Okeke Ortalo, Donald’s chauffeur? He’d be bound to know if Lawrence turned up.”
“I’ll contact him when the chance arises.”
“This is turning into a fucking messy business,” TK said. “As if I need this bloody hassle as the world falls apart.”
Chapter 18
Donald’s limousine returned to a house that was dark and silent—and not even locked. The house lights achieved but a wan orange. Neither Butler Campbell nor anyone else responded to tugs of the bell rope. The staff rooms in the basement spoke back in silence. The generator was cold and dead for the simple reason there were no servants to start it—hence the flat battery. Donald got the generator working and returned to the garage.
“My household staff have abandoned me,” he told Okeke.
It was astounding. Butler Campbell had served the family for thirty years, starting as a footman. Most of the rest of the staff had gathered at least a decade of service.
“I wouldn’t blame them for getting out while they can,” Okeke said.
“I expected better.”
“There’s talk a mob from Elephant and Castle will be in at first light.”
“Talk by whom?”
“Word gets through us lot faster than it does your lot, in my experience. Most of the folk out in the streets is probably ordinary folk getting back home.”
“You go home, then. Good luck.”
Okeke hesitated. However, Donald was already on his way to the Annex. After a long wait, Sarah-Kelly answered. She scowled at him, hugging a blanket about herself and peering about down the garden.
“There was someone lurking out here not half an hour ago. It scared the shit out of me,” she said.
“It will have been one of the staff. They’re afraid a mob will be in at dawn so they’ve gone back to their asylums—clean abandoned the house.”
“No. It wasn’t your staff, Donald. I don’t think your staff were padding about in socks with their boots knocking around their neck. I know that noise from when we did it last night. I saw this big guy in overalls through the window. He was up to no good.”
Donald pondered on this news. Break-ins were rare in this area, normally. However, tonight was not normal; the workers of town were on the roads fleeing home and his own house had been left unlocked. The scoundrel might still be inside.
“Come with me,” he said, drawing his Colt pistol. He led her back around to the front door, which he left wide open. Then he commenced a systematic and noisy room-to-room search, starting with the attic and working down to the staff quarters in the basement. He reasoned that any sensible intruder would quickly see the pattern and get out by the escape route on offer. The generator having taken effect, Donald now had proper lighting to work with. The search yielded no intruder. However, some person had been in the house. The shower in the master bedroom had been used, the razor and strop were missing, arrows from his boyhood bedroom had vanished and it was evident the kitchen had been selectively looted.
To begin with, Donald was furious at the violation, trivial though it was. The thought of some vile body having washed its filth in his shower particularly disgusted him. Sarah-Kelly was more pragmatic.
“You were lucky. Look at all the stuff they could have taken,” she said. “Those silver figures on the hall cabinet and those ivory miniatures. Think of all your wife’s jewellery—boxes and boxes of junk lying around right outside the shower.”
It was true enough. The pattern was that of an opportunist vagabond seeking the luxury of a clean body and a few safety features. A cut-throat razor and arrows would give life to a man scraping survival on the public drains. Such a character would have no need of Lavinia’s junk, although it was surprising he had not taken the pouch of common metal on the dressing table. The individual was now out on the dark streets, probably heading back to his natural habitat of the public drains, mind focused on the utter basics of life: shelter, clean water and food.
“Well he’s gone now anyway,” Donald said. “We’re truly on our own. Come on, I’ll make tea and sandwiches, you get a fire going in the library—it’s the cosiest room in the house.”
In the library, she got a small fire of kindling going, onto which she added coal lump by lump. With the central heating long cooled, the house was perishing such that they could see their own breath. She huddled around the steaming cup of tea.
“The world has fallen apart since the Bloomsbury attack,” Donald said. “The glories have vanished. They’re probably terrified of being lynched on sight. I suspect there may be some mobbing in the outer areas of the Enclave tomorrow.”
“What are you going to do?”
“In the morning, I’ll make an appointment to see TK. He needs someone who can contact the decapitated corpse of the National Party and get dialogue started before this mess gets completely out of hand.” He leaned towards her. “I’ll need your help. There won’t be anyone else with our combined contacts and expertise.”
Sarah-Kelly blew on her tea, eyeing him cautiously.
“Aren’t you forgetting something?” she said.
“No. At least, I don’t think so.”
“What about your wife?”
“You and I have to convince TK we’re too useful for her to screw things up. She’ll be told to shut her damned face and let me have a decent share of my daughters.”
Sarah-Kelly smiled and patted his shoulders.
“You’re quite the warrior when you get wound up about things. I still think there’s a problem,” she said.
“You’re too good at seeing problems.”
“Nightminster.”
“What’s he going to bloody do? You can’t stand the guy and that’s the end of the matter.”
They sat for a time in silence. The coals popped and hissed in the grate. Their faces began to glow. Perhaps that was it—the glowing heat. Did he edge to her, or she to him? Her blonde hair brushed his cheek. He kissed her mouth. They fell sideways, arms sweeping around each other. He rolled on his back and eased her gently on top of him, while staring up at the ceiling, taken off guard by how suddenly this intimacy had happened. He kissed the top of her head. She uttered a murmur and grabbed the dorsal muscles of his chest. He was conscious of how heavy she was compared to Lavinia’s fine-boned courtly form, or Tanya’s, or the other furtive make-dos who had been his intimacy since… For a very long time. Anger at the wasted years swept over him. In truth, he had forgotten what it was like to hold a woman he really loved.
“What’s wrong?” Sarah-Kelly asked. She raised her face to look at him virtually nose-to-nose. “It’s not your arms that are supposed to get stiff.”
Donald did not answer. He frowned, trying to gather the words, in this moment when he was not interested in words.
“Is it your wife you’re worried about?”
This time Donald laughed. Sarah-Kelly had to duck against his shoulder to avoid the blast. A memory had come to mind from his days at college. Some cronies and he were drinking in a cheap pub, being served by an attractive, tough young woman rather like Sarah-Kelly. One crony was foolish enough to prod the cleft of her backside—and blood splattered from a broken nose. They had to carry him out half-stunned to find a doctor.
“I would give my treasury for Lavinia to see us now,” he said.
He looked directly into her eyes. He pulled her closer and kissed her deeply. There was an even more burning satisfaction than love as he fumbled with the toggles of her overalls, to Sarah-Kelly’s giggles as she rolled on her back. Their act of love was the ultimate defiance. Together they waved two fingers in the face of the whole bloody arrogant sovereign caste.
> Afterwards, they trembled arm in arm and then melted away. Donald fell asleep for some while, getting awoken by the cold creeping up his legs. The fire had died down.
“My feet are cold,” Sarah-Kelly said, as she felt him stir.
The library carpet was no place to continue the night. With just his dress shirt on, he carried her up the stairs to the master bedroom, where he laid her on the bed. She smiled up at him, running her hand over his muscular arms and shoulders.
“You’re quite the man of surprises,” she said, smiling.
At this moment, Donald almost got into bed beside her. It was the peace that stopped him, for in that peace he heard the rumble of the generator. He had forgotten to switch it off. Swearing under his breath, he pulled on his pants and slippers and descended through the biting cold house to the Engine Room, where he silenced the machine. Back upstairs, he was almost through the bedroom door when he stopped dead, reversed and went into his study. On the writing mat of his desk lay a sealed letter. He had not noticed it earlier during the search of the house, having been rapt to the danger of lethal assault at the flick of a light switch. Butler Campbell must have left the letter before bailing out. Perhaps in his mind, there was a good reason for leaving the house open and deserted. Donald broke the seal and spread the letter flat, perplexed by the slanting, cramped scrawl of the writing. It certainly had not been left by Butler Campbell. As he read into it, the message completely stormed his mind, like trying to gain control over a stampede of wild horses. It was from his brother. Lawrence had escaped from the Night and Fog. The charges against him were false. He sought help to clear his name and return to a useful place in society. To avoid the risk of being trapped in the Central Enclave, he hoped to gain asylum with Sarah-Kelly’s family at North Kensington basin. He apologised for the terrible writing, it was four months since he had last written so much as his own name. Donald read through the letter twice, conscious of his heartbeat visibly shaking his body.
Lawrence was the intruder. His brother had been inside the house, showered, taken some weapons useful to a desperate man and departed without even knowing he had missed Sarah-Kelly by the thickness of a pane of glass.
Donald struggled to decide on what to do. There was no way of knowing how Lawrence’s escape would complicate negotiations between the Ultramarine Guild and TK—probably a great deal. Donald was not even sure it was wise to inform TK, at least, not now with the threat of a mass uprising. A basic rule of survival is, don’t bring the boss problems. TK was not going to want a bloody mess like this on his plate when he had the safety of his citizens to worry about.
The best course seemed to be to secure the house and join Lawrence with the Newman family to wait out the crisis. The more he thought about the idea, the more it appealed. If a mob did penetrate Bloomsbury, there would be no escape for those who stayed. Whereas, North Kensington basin would not be a target and had its own defence forces. It was even possible Nightminster would keep Lawrence safe at the Value System pig farm whilst TK concluded business with the ultramarines. The process might stretch out for weeks.
The trouble with this damned thinking was that it burst new shoots. At the very least, they had to go out to North Kensington basin and make Lawrence aware TK was working hard on his behalf. As a brother, Donald had that duty, irrespective of any other matters. The prospect of the meeting did not excite him. It would be a reunion stilted by questions neither dared ask.
As for Marcia and Cynthia, he could be confident they would be safe under the watch of Marcus-John Krossington. In contrast, he was anything but confident about seeing them again. Anguishing though it was to face it, his daughters were beyond his reach, probably for many months, possibly for a lot longer than that. Just for a moment, his imagination glimpsed forward to his fifties, watching his girls as grown-up young ladies in the arms of clever scions of the Krossington clan, ignoring him as beneath their dignity. He stamped out the terrible scene with a clench of rage, forcing himself on to practical imperatives.
There was his treasury in the vault under the house. It contained slightly more than six thousand ounces of gold, forty-five thousand ounces of silver and a number of paintings sealed inside a durable, totally water-tight heirloom skin called polythene. The vault had a steel door half an inch thick and the walls were surrounded by earth. No mob could endanger the contents. Even if the house burned to the ground overhead, the treasury would survive. The safest thing he could do was leave his fortune behind, counter-intuitive though that appeared.
Donald marched through to the bedroom to find Sarah-Kelly snoozing. He shook her awake.
“Get dressed. Lawrence is out at North Kensington basin.”
He threw clothes at her and repeated the message.
“What?” she mumbled. He laid the letter before her. She frowned at it, blinking the sleep from her eyes. When the truth sank in, she sat on the edge of the bed, subdued and thoughtful. Donald sat beside her. Neither looked at the other, nor said anything for perhaps a full minute. Finally, Donald said:
“TK is going to give him a cushy number out on the Lands of Krossington. He’ll have a nice new life ticking boxes for promotion to account-captain. I’m sure he’ll be very happy.” He added: “And we needn’t have anything more to do with him.”
Sarah-Kelly still said nothing. She fidgeted with a fold of sheet, twisting it into a tight knot.
“Are you worried about what he’ll think of us?” he asked.
“A bit—I don’t know. I don’t suppose he would expect me to wait. I wouldn’t expect that of him.”
Donald felt a knot in his stomach much like the fold of sheet Sarah-Kelly was twisting.
“Get dressed,” he said. “I’ll get the house shuttered and locked up.”
“I’m not going back to the basin.”
“It won’t kill you.”
“Don’t challenge me, Donald—I’m not going back. Not after the way they treated me.”
“Then wait in the customs house and I’ll go in and get him.”
“Why do we have to go now? He’ll still be there tomorrow. It’s dark and freezing out there.” She leaned heavily on him. Her warm body was enormously tempting.
“It’s foolhardy to stay here,” he said. “There’s nothing to stop a mob getting in this far—if it did, there’d be no way out.”
“Then let’s go out to Brent Cross. We’ll stay with Theresa. She’s my old chum from school I’ve been staying with. You can go and see Lawrence tomorrow.”
“Right,” Donald said, jumping up. “That’s what we’ll do.”
*
The lane from the house out to the main boulevard was so dark they had to feel their way along the garden wall holding hands. They moved silently in socks, boots hung about their necks by the laces. Where the lane emerged onto the boulevard, they paused in the cover of a tree, gathering the situation. A slim moon provided a touch of grey light, although much of the boulevard was black in shadow. Donald could only see four figures—definitely male and large—up to their waists in shadow clustered about a faint red glow. They seemed to be examining a sheaf of documents and murmuring together. Another little group shifted past heading north towards the radiance of the frontier gatehouse of Bloomsbury at Euston Road, visible a quarter mile away. It was a mix of women in hoods and a couple of escorting men. Some inner caution kept Donald focused on that huddle of four large men. They seemed to be wearing berets. If so, then they must be glory troopers. One of them turned and walked right at Donald, who instinctively edged back behind the bole of the plane tree. Boots softly padding on gravel, the figure crept past into the shadows of the lane, the high brick walls amplifying the sound. Donald and Sarah-Kelly remained silent and still in the shadow of the tree. Its shadow was only slightly wider than they were. They could not move without the three other men seeing them.
The figure padded back into view, there was a brief murmuring, now all four filed into the lane.
“What are they bloody up to?” Sarah-Kelly murmured.
“Wait behind that next tree up the boulevard. I’ll go and find out.”
“Shouldn’t we stay together?”
“It would be too confusing in the darkness. Don’t worry, I’ll be careful—and I do have this.”
“This” being the Colt 38 pistol. He glided back down the lane, holding his boots against his chest to stop them scraping the wall. The lane was a dead end, which made Donald highly cautious about any signs of the return of the four troopers. He stopped just before a neighbour’s gate, as the moonlight shone across the lane through its bars. From here he could see the first floor and roof of his own house above the garden wall. Minutes passed and nothing happened. How long should he wait? Should he risk crossing the band of moonlight to check the rest of the lane? His instincts jangled danger. He stayed where he was, Colt at the ready, safety catch off.
The lights of his bedroom sprang on, bathing him in light. Donald had left all the first-floor curtains open so that the house would appear occupied in daylight. He ducked instinctively and leaped across into the shadow of the opposite wall. Now he could not see anything, only listen. A window slid up and a hoarse whisper called to those below:
“There’s no one here. Zilch. No servants, no Aldingford.”
“Right, take any obvious stuff like jewels and coins, make it look like it was done in a tearing rush.”
Donald pocketed the Colt, unhitched the boots from around his neck and stretched up on absolute tip-toes. He was just tall enough to get his fingers amongst the broken glass on top of the wall and haul himself up to peek into his garden. Three men in camouflage overalls, all armed with pistols, all wearing pale blue berets. He let himself down and hastened out to pick up Sarah-Kelly and get her running hard up the middle of the boulevard north towards the bright salvation of the frontier gates. He snatched glances back and ignored the fright from his toes at the expectation of whacking into some obstruction in the dark. Sarah-Kelly was sensible enough just to run and not waste time asking questions. He could see the frontier gates were deserted before they got to them. He hustled Sarah-Kelly through the deadly pool of light and on to safety in the gloom of Euston Road.
Sovereigns of the Collapse Book 1 Page 23