Angelmaker

by Nick Harkaway

  “Mercer,” Polly Cradle says, “if you wouldn’t mind.”

  Mercer gets to his feet and goes outside, returning with a heavy glass jar or demijohn filled with reddish ooze.

  “Excellent,” Polly Cradle says. “Now that Mr. Titwhistle is here, you need have no scruples about speaking behind his back.” She indicates the ooze. “Although I fear it’s rather difficult to say in which direction he is facing.”

  Arvin Cummerbund stares at the jar. It cannot possibly be Rodney Titwhistle. These people would not do something so vile. He is almost certain of it. Yet Polly Cradle’s analysis was compelling. As are the instruments on the table before him.

  The silence is very thick as he thinks about that.

  “No,” Joe Spork says abruptly. “This isn’t me. It isn’t us.”

  Polly Cradle looks over at him.

  “This—” He gestures at the room. “This is them. Not us.”

  Polly Cradle nods. “Okay.”

  Joe puts down the dog and looks Arvin in the eye.

  “Arvin,” Joe Spork says, “the jar is full of giblets. I think that’s a grape. We’re not going to bleed you to death or put you through a woodchipper.”

  “Nor am I going to eat you,” Cecily Foalbury interjects, somewhat unreassuringly.

  “Quite,” Joe Spork continues, “although Abbie has put in a very strong bid that I should beat the shit out of you with a plank with salt on it for what happened to Griff.”

  “And I said I’d buy the plank,” adds Sister Harriet primly.

  “But Arvin, listen, seriously. You have to know that what’s going on is a disaster. I mean, a bloody nightmare. Look what you’ve got. The Ruskinites are monsters. They scare professional crooks, which sounds oh-so-clever until you remember that you’re supposed to be on the side of the angels. You’ve got torture camps in the shires; you’ve got imprisonment without trial. Vaughn Parry works for you! And don’t tell me the end justifies the means because it doesn’t. We never reach the end. All we ever get is means. That’s what we live with.

  “Unless Edie Banister was right and Shem Shem Tsien wants to bring the world to an end, in which case, see point one.”

  Arvin Cummerbund breathes deeply, in, out, in, out, and contemplates his soul. It occurs to him that Rodney Titwhistle’s search for truth, for knowing, is a curious thing when a man may hear truth spoken and recognise it, by any human measure, quite without doubt.

  “Could I have some of that tea?” he asks.

  “I’ll make some fresh,” Harriet Spork says. “Start talking.”

  Well. It would not be entirely inappropriate, in this situation, to bargain for his release with unimportant information. More than that, however, Arvin Cummerbund is finding it increasingly difficult to suppress a nagging unease that these people know more about what is actually going on than he does. Rodney has been taking the lead on the Angelmaker situation. Rodney is very astute and very ruthless. But if he has a failing, it is that he is so astute, and so ruthless, that he occasionally misses things which are muddled and human. So Arvin Cummerbund says:

  “What do you want to know?”

  “Who killed Billy Friend?” Polly Cradle says.

  Arvin had sort of forgotten about irritating, brash Billy in the interim, what with the business of trying to reclaim Britain’s supremacy in the world and collaborating with an insane cultist. Curious, now that he thinks about it, that those two should go together.

  “That was Sheamus,” he says, “or maybe one of the … Automata.” He sighs. “It was stupid, sending him. We just weren’t thinking properly. We thought he’d be more careful. More circumspect, because this is his focus. But it went the other way. He’s genuinely obsessed, you see, with truth and God and all that. Or I suppose you could be generous and say he believes. I think he had a moment of passion. Your friend was … shattered.” He remembers the panic when he heard, and Rodney Titwhistle’s calm acceptance: Our amanuensis has murdered, and that is bad, but we are protecting the nation. These things must be seen in their proper context.

  Joe peers at Arvin Cummerbund and wonders. “Sheamus,” the fat man keeps saying. Not “Shem Shem Tsien.” “Do you know what Sheamus plans to do with the Apprehension Engine, now that he has the calibration drum?”

  Arvin Cummerbund shakes his head. “He doesn’t have it. He’s very upset about that. He says he can’t switch the machine off unless he finds it.”

  Joe Spork glances at Polly Cradle. She meets his eyes: Yes, Joe. Follow that. Joe raises one index finger: point of information. “He does. The escape con worked and I bubbled. I told him outright where to find it.” He searches Arvin Cummerbund’s wide face. “But he hasn’t passed that information on to you.”

  “No.”

  “I believe I know why. Do you know who—what—he is?”

  “A monk. Obviously. A believer.”

  “No. Or, not exactly.” And to Arvin Cummerbund’s growing alarm, Joe outlines the history of Sheamus, Shem Shem Tsien and Vaughn Parry so far as he knows it, from Edie’s time to the fake escape from Happy Acres, and the more he speaks, the more sallow and sick Arvin Cummerbund appears.

  “I told Parry,” Joe says. “I worked it out, in that place. At the last minute, actually. I told him and then I realised he … wasn’t my friend. Because there was a moment when I thought the most wanted murderer in the country was my friend, or wanted to think so, because I was alone.”

  He laughs.

  Cummerbunds do not mist up. They are not in touch with their feminine sides. They do not emote. Nor do they yield to the sudden fear that they’ve been stitched up like a kipper and induced to conspire against the existence of mankind. They do not change allegiances or defect. On certain occasions, however, it may be as well to consider one’s position vis-à-vis the established lines of battle.

  Joe Spork opens his hands, palms up. Big hands. Thug’s hands, perhaps. Craftsman’s hands. Not liar’s hands. “So there you have it,” he says.

  Arvin swallows. “That’s … not ideal.”

  “No.”

  “No, I mean it’s very bad. They have a … an apparatus, at Sharrow House. We supplied the necessary materials and so on. It is supposed to control the bees. Bring them into line.”

  “Put the genie back in the bottle.”

  “Exactly. And give us access to the power source, possibly control the … truth aspect … of the whole thing. Not to mention keep a lid on our authorship of what has been a rather strained international incident. It’s rather hard to argue that the Russians can’t control their post-Soviet nuclear deterrent well enough if we … well. You see.”

  “Yes.”

  “But now,” Arvin Cummerbund admits, “I think maybe that isn’t quite what it will do. If Sheamus is Parry. If Parry is Shem Shem Tsien. If he has the calibration drum. If he has other plans, then … well, it’s … it’s not an area where other plans are a good idea.”

  A moment later, it is apparent that Arvin Cummerbund has turned his coat entirely. The prospect of the Opium Khan in charge of the Apprehension Engine is so ghastly that it frees his better nature from the grip of professional habit, in a transformation which Polly suspects is the fast version of what Edie Banister went through months before. Very shortly, Arvin is enthusiastically offering his testimony on the various crimes of the Legacy Board, somewhat disappointed to find that the Spork party is not considering a suit for damages in the foreseeable future. He is able to command via the telephone blueprints for Sharrow House itself, delivered by courier to the Pablum Club, and declares himself willing to get hold of anything else which might be of service. Arvin explains that a Cummerbund, having made up his mind to do something, does it whole.

  In earnest of which, appallingly, he abases himself before Abbie Watson and offers swathes of his own skin in replacement for Griff’s. Only the swift intervention of Polly Cradle prevents him from displaying a section of stomach he believes is particularly well-moisturised for her consideration, and Ab
bie, wide-eyed, assures him that this grisly act of contrition is unnecessary. Dr. von Bergen has pronounced all things good and Griff has no need of donor dermis.

  From the name “Sharrow House” and the address in a rather rich bit of south-west London, Joe Spork had concluded that the headquarters of the Ruskinites must be a cool, grey-white neoclassical effort with the air of a Dickensian legal firm and a brass plaque. In his mind, he had conceded—indeed, had looked forward to—a significant police presence, some reinforced glass, and all manner of interior security precautions like unto a foreign embassy in a hostile land. In other words, a building fundamentally intended as a dwelling which had been substantially adapted for use as a lair or secret base. Keyword: adapted—and in that adaptation, he had envisaged finding weaknesses. Gaps between the skirting board and the wall where a person of low moral fibre might reasonably pry open a board. Even holding the plans which Arvin Cummerbund provided and seeing that he was dealing with something rather different, Joe had cherished a dream of incompetence in his enemy’s precautions. He had with some confidence anticipated being able to gain entry via an unregarded loft space, to bribe a disaffected copper or blackmail an official, or, in extremis, simply blow the bloody doors off and make hay. Somewhere in the gamut of crime, from sneakthievery to bullion heisting, he had reckoned to find a technique of entry against which the Opium Khan and his minions had failed to guard. This is very much not that sort of house.

  Sharrow House is—and has always been—a castle, or a keep.

  On the open upper deck of a London tourist bus making a loop around London’s grand gardens, Joe Spork wears a Gore-Tex coat with a waterproof rain-cape, and across his back is a rucksack in the pattern of the Danish flag. He has fended off a gregarious Dutch couple intent on sharing their bag of sunflower seeds and pine kernels (the husband addressed him with a generous bellow of “Would you like to eat my nuts?”) and leaned on Polly’s shoulder through the interminable lecture on King Edward and Mrs. Simpson. They have seen Hampton Court and Kew, and now the bus, in the grey rain and orange-purple twilight, is crawling past Sharrow House.

  “On our left,” the woman with the yellow umbrella says, “we see the Sharrow estate. Normally we like to go in there and feed the ducks and admire the remarkable blend of architectural styles”—this last as if announcing a death—“which is the result of the various changes in ownership of Sharrow House over the centuries. As you may know, Sharrow is one of London’s defensive structures, dating from the time of Henry VIII. During the Cromwellian period, it was besieged twice, but never captured.” Murmurs of approval from the bus. That’s the sort of behaviour one looks for in a castle—unless, of course, one wants to break into it.

  Through Joe’s field glasses, Sharrow House is high and strange, with a single very tall spire in the centre, an abrupt Romantic fancy leaping from a sixteenth-century hall. On the plans, this looks like a bullseye. From here it has the feel of a spear, or a warning sign.

  All around the main house, the later additions spread out, Victorian red brick and white stucco, even something a little Frank Lloyd Wright on one side of the roof, a floating wood-and-glass observatory—but all of them are sealed and solid, and Joe recognises the ethos of the Ruskinites, the real ones. Sharrow House has the same integrity and integration of design he saw in the Lovelace, the same strength. It has real defence in depth, too—a surrounding wall, guard posts, even a proper moat: a slick, greenish expanse clear two hundred feet wide, with a single narrow causeway leading to the main gate. Towards the back, there’s an ancient fortified box—consequence of a brief incarnation as an ack-ack command post during the Blitz—and a short stretch of rail leading to a blank wall; what used to be the castle’s ammunition dump. The lecture burbles on. “The House is presently the headquarters of a monastic order who specialise in church architecture and the care of orphans and the mentally ill, but these days those functions take place in purpose-built facilities elsewhere.”

  Joe keeps his face carefully blank, recalling the white room. Yes. Purpose-built indeed. He watches a pair of shrouded figures shuffle across the grass, their steps slow and just a little wrong. Polly Cradle’s hand tightens on his shoulder, and he realises he has hissed, not a music-hall hiss, but an expulsion of air through clenched teeth. Everyone looks at him.

  “Sorry,” he says, as Danish as he knows how, “I have windiness.”

  The guide smiles flatly and gets back to her script. “Unlike so many of Henry’s buildings it was never used to house inconvenient wives or desired mistresses, but it remains one of the capital’s most interesting undiscovered buildings. I do advise you to come back some time when it isn’t closed and take the tour.”

  “Why is it closed?” the dapper little man in the second row of the bus says, from beneath one of those rather surgical-looking plastic macs.

  “Cleaning,” the umbrella woman says briefly.

  “Cleaning?”

  “Yes. You’d think we could just go in anyway, wouldn’t you, but apparently … Health and Safety.” Even the Japanese party at the back are familiar with this so-British obsession. Everyone laughs.

  As Joe watches, a woman, likely a housekeeper, leans from a window to throw something tubular and offal-ish into the moat; oily ripples abruptly transform into boiling, frothing spume.

  Joe Spork takes the binoculars from his face and stares at Polly Cradle.

  “Yes,” she says, “I saw it, too.”

  “Piranhas? In London?”

  “So it would appear.”

  “You are absolutely fucking kidding me,” says Joshua Joseph Spork.

  Polly Cradle dials a number on her phone. “Yes, hello, it’s Linda here at Sharrow House? Yes, we’re ready now, could you—thank you.”

  A moment later, a London taxi chugs towards the gates. Joe looks on with a slightly guilty frown. Before the cab is even on the causeway, it is surrounded by black-clad monks and soldiers, and the driver is on his knees in the gravel, and then flat on his face.

  “Oh,” says the umbrella lady hurriedly. “Well, there we are: British armed forces are using the maintenance work for training. A round of applause, please.”

  Everyone claps. The taxi driver lies in the dirt.

  Joe winces. “We’re not getting in that way.”

  A conversation with Arvin Cummerbund does not produce any better news: Arvin is painfully eager to continue his atonement, but has never been inside Sharrow House. The Legacy Board has a hands-off relationship with its religious subcontractor; a laissez-faire, light-touch management ethos. In other words, Arvin now acknowledges, Rodney Titwhistle and his political masters prefer not to know what the Ruskinites do. Sharrow House is like a giant blind spot in the vision of British officialdom, and the Legacy Board is specifically charged with making sure it does not become obnoxiously obvious—or, if it ever should, that it be absolutely clear that any crimes were committed without the knowledge of the government: a sad lack of oversight, but not actual complicity. Lessons will be learned, of course.

  In an old brewery basement under the Thames, declared unsafe in 1975 by a surveyor on Mathew’s payroll and hence forever vacant, Joe Spork sits on a three-legged stool and stares at the blueprints as if by sheer intensity he can force them to reveal what he needs. He inhales copier solvent and warm paper, and scowls, shifting his legs.

  At his feet is the Thompson gun in its trombone case. He does not look at it, but the heavy metal haunts him. He can see himself firing it, riding the percussive blasts, but he cannot see what good it will do. He cannot shoot down the Opium Khan’s gates. He cannot kill the Apprehension Engine, or erase the calibration drum, from three miles away. Before he can do anything, he needs to get inside.

  Joe kicks back and stands in the semi-darkness, swinging his arms in a circle like a sportsman working out a cramp. Casting around, he finds the tube the blueprints came in, a plastic thing like a length of pipe, and, rolling them back into it, slings it over his shoulder. The lamp abov
e the table makes a circle of light and warmth. Reluctantly, he turns his face away from it, and walks into the darkness of the Tosher’s Beat.

  Joe Spork loves the Beat. He loves the toshers themselves, weird, dry-suited moonmen that they are. He loves the whole place for its cosy closeness and its quiet, for the soaring majesty of the cisterns and vaults. And most of the time he does not think about what it is: a vast, subterranean webwork mostly below the water table, bits of which flood from floor to ceiling in winter and spring. The toshers wear those suits for a reason.

  He crawls on his stomach along a dry clay pipe, and tries to ignore the high-tide mark seven inches above his head. He can smell it all around: water which has been and gone, and water which is in the adjoining pipes, water welling up through the floor. He tries to forget, as well, that he will have to do this journey again in reverse, including the tight corner five minutes back which nearly snagged him for ever. He just pushes on towards Sharrow House, glancing from time to time at the compass which was in the side pocket of Mathew’s gangster kit.

  This is the last easy way into Sharrow House: up through the floors and the pipes, catch Shem Shem Tsien in his bath and blow his machine to slag before anyone even knows what’s happening. Home in time for tea and medals and a speedy exit to a non-extradition-treaty nation with nice views.

  He isn’t doing this entirely blind: the toshers have marked the pipe as traversable: long yellow streaks of enamel paint along the entryway to indicate that you can do it and it will take you somewhere but it’s not a great deal of fun. Green paint is better, blue better still. Red paint means no-go.

  The pipe opens out into a shallow basin with a low roof. It’s like being on the inside of a sandwich. All around the walls are other pipes, some large, some small, emptying into this same room. He’s about to cross into the next section when he hears a shout. He turns, and sees three toshers waving. He waves back, Night Market style.

  “It’s no-go,” the nearest one says as they reach him. “We’re changing the tag now.”