V 02 - Domino Men, The (12 page)

Jasper muttered something bitter under his breath, although I noticed that he never took his eyes off Steerforth.

Suddenly I remembered and glanced down at my watch.  “Damn.”

“What’s the matter?”

“You mean apart from my grandfather’s house burning down?”

Jasper nodded distractedly like this was the kind of thing which happened to him all the time.

I bundled up my coat.  “I’m late.”

“For what?”

“For a date.”  It was the first time all day I’d felt like smiling.

Before I could leave, Jasper grabbed my arm and held it tight.  “Come to the Eye first thing tomorrow.  The war hangs in the balance.”  He sank back in his seat and took a sip of his Baileys.  “You’d better go.  You don’t want to keep Abbey waiting.”

I dashed for the door and ran into the train station, grateful to be free.  Only later did it occur to me to wonder precisely how it was that Jasper knew her name.

She was waiting for me in Clapham, a part of the city whose façade of well-monied gentility only barely papered over its dirt and degradation.  When I emerged from the tube, a homeless man blundered past me, smelling strongly of feces.

Abbey stood outside the Picturehouse, traces of irritation marring her beautiful face.  I must have looked a real state, as when she saw me her expression changed immediately to one of sympathy and concern.  She fussed over me, smoothing my hair, brushing down my jacket, picking charred flakes from my lapels.  “What’s happened to you?  You stink of smoke.”

I wasn’t sure how much it was safe to tell her.  “I was at Granddad’s house.  There was an accident…  a fire.”

“Oh, you poor thing.”  She kissed me chastely on my forehead.  “You have been in the wars.”

“It’s complicated.”

“Listen, we’ve missed the film.  You’re knackered.  Let’s go back to the flat.”

I nodded my grateful assent.  “I’m so sorry about tonight.”

“It’s OK.”  She grinned.  “You’ll have to make it up to me.”

Three stops on the Northern line and we were home again.  Abbey made beans on toast and we sat together quietly, the atmosphere between us thick with the unspoken.

“How was work?” I asked at last.

“Same as usual,” she said.  “Bit boring.  Just a couple more rich people getting divorced.  I’m starting to think there’s got to be more to life.”

“I know what you mean.”

“Henry?”

“Hmm?”

“What’s happening to you?”

I hesitated.  “I can’t say.  I’d love to tell you but I really can’t.”

“If you ever need someone…”

“Thanks.”

She leant toward me and kissed me, long and lingeringly, on the lips.  I surprised myself by not being too tired to respond.

“Abbey?” I said as we lay stretched out on the sofa, our hands entwined, our arms clasped together in tentative embrace.  “What would you say…  what your reaction be if I were to tell you that a secret civil war has been waged in this country for years?  What if I said that a little department in the civil service has been fighting tooth and nail with the royal family since 1857?”

Abbey laughed.  “God, Henry.  You’re so different from the other blokes I’ve been out with.”

Granite-faced, I gazed back at her.

“Please tell me you’re joking.”

“Of course,” I said, despising myself for my cowardice and fear.  “Of course I am.  Just joking.”

Floating in amniotic fluid with only his trunks to protect his wrinkled modesty, Dedlock glowered at me from within his glass sarcophagus.  “You failed to retrieve anything of value from the house of your grandfather.  The old man’s journal is lost to the flames.”

“I’m afraid so, yes.”

As Dedlock paddled over to me, I was put in mind of a shark I had once seen at the aquarium on a half-term trip with Granddad.  Toothless and gray, it can’t have killed its own food for years and must have spent half a lifetime chewing on stale meat tossed into the water by its keepers, yet despite all this, it still had murder blazing in its eyes.  Looking at it through the glass, I knew that one chance was all it needed, one momentary slip on the part of its owners — and it would grab the opportunity to kill again, seize it with its withered gums and swallow it whole.

“Unacceptable, Henry.  You’re not filing paper anymore.  Every secret in that house is in ashes.  The only man who can help us is in a coma.  And now the House of Windsor is marshaling its forces against us.  It is only a matter of time before they make their move.”

I was flanked by Steerforth and Jasper, both of whom had remained strategically silent in the course of my thorough dressing-down.  Steerforth looked as though he hadn’t shaved that morning and appeared to be nursing a more than usually persistent hangover.  A volcanic pimple protruded from his chin.

“We’ve no other choice, sir,” he said.  “We all know it.”

When Dedlock turned to me, his eyes were glittering with a horrible facsimile of geniality.  “Henry Lamb?”

“Yes?”

“The time has come to tell you precisely why we are prosecuting this war — why the House of Windsor is the sworn enemy of this city.  The time has come to tell you the secret.”

Jasper touched my shoulder.  “Sorry.  I always liked your innocence.”

“You might want to sit down,” Dedlock said.  “People often find they lose the use of their legs when they hear the truth.  I would ask you also not to scream.  This is the city’s most profitable attraction and I’m loathe to scare our visitors away.”  He grinned again in that same ghastly parody of good humor.  “Now then,” he said, with what he probably thought of as an avuncular twinkle.  “Are we sitting comfortably?”

Stepping out of the pod, I walked swiftly through the mirage, past the queue of sightseers and toward the scrap of grass which backs onto the Eye.  There, I found myself an isolated corner and proceeded to be copiously sick.  When I was done, I straightened up, dabbed at my mouth with a tissue and began to worry about my breath.  A seagull landed at my feet and pecked inquisitively at the vomit.

Trying desperately not to consider the ramifications of what I’d been told, I stumbled to the river and stared dully down into its murky waters.

Someone strolled up beside me.  “They’ve told you, then?”

The speaker was an elderly woman, fragile with age but in possession of a certain geriatric poise which suggested that there was little she would not be willing to face down.

“I suppose you’ve come to sell me some double glazing?” I said.

A hint of a smile.  “Could I tempt you to a stroll?  We don’t have long.”

Wearily, I agreed, and together we walked along the riverbank, past tourists, buskers, tramps, office workers on an early lunch and truculent-looking kids on skateboards — all of them oblivious to the secret I had just been told, the truth that made a perverted joke of every one of their lives.

“Hits you rather hard, doesn’t it?” the old lady said, as though she was discussing nothing more alarming than a national shortage of buttered scones.  “You’ll get used to it.”

“Are you going to tell me who you are?”

“Unlike the rest of them, Henry, I’m going to do you the courtesy of telling you the name I was born with.”  She smiled.  “I am Miss Jane Morning.”

“Are you…  Did he…”  I gesticulated inarticulately toward the Eye.

“Before his defection to the BBC, your grandfather and I worked together at the Directorate for many years.”

“I never knew any of this.”

“There are less than two dozen men in all of England who know of the Directorate’s true purpose.  Your grandfather loved you dearly but, come now, he was hardly likely to entrust you with one of the best-kept secrets of British intelligence.”

“That’s why they need me, isn’t it?  Because of Granddad.”

Miss Morning nodded.  “The whereabouts of Estella is keeping the war in stalemate.  That was always your grandfather’s secret.  And with him gone” — she looked as though she wasn’t sure whether to laugh or cry — “well, as I believe the saying goes — all bets are off.”

“You’re not making a great deal of sense.  Not that anything seems to lately.”

“Concentrate, young man.  The hunt is on for Estella now.  Your grandfather knew this day would come and he planned for it.  But something’s gone wrong.  Certain forces have taken an interest in us and it is most unlikely that we shall survive their attention.”  She broke off.  “You seem frightened.”

“Of course I’m frightened.  I’m extremely frightened.  Probably close to terrified if I’m being honest.”

“That’s eminently sane of you.  But things are about to get a good deal worse.  If I know how Dedlock thinks — and I’m very much afraid that I do — then he’ll take you to see the prisoners tonight.”

“Who are these prisoners?” I asked.  “How do they know who I am?”

“You don’t want me to say their names.  Not out loud.  Not in public.”

“Why on earth not?”

“Names have power.  Theirs more than most.  I warn you, Henry.  They’ll lie to you.  If they ever tell the truth, it will be to twist it to their own purposes.  Don’t take a single wicked word they say on trust.  They are chaos incarnate.  They delight in destruction for its own sake.  And nothing is sweeter to them than the corruption of an innocent soul.”

“I don’t know what you’re talking about.”

“Then I fear you may have to discover it for yourself.”  Miss Morning snapped open her handbag and passed me a discreet square of card.  “Call me when you need me.  And you
will
need me.”

“Can’t you tell me more?”

“Not today.”

“Why?”

“Because if you knew everything, I doubt you’d find the strength to carry on.”

Although this sentence might look a little theatrical on paper, I should point out that it was delivered in a tone which was remarkably calm and matter-of-fact.

“There is one more thing,” she said.

“Yes?”

“I have his cat.  It found its way to me.”  A sad smile.  “As, in your own way, have you.”  Then she gave me a good crisp nod goodbye and walked into the crowd.

If I thought it would do any good, I’d tell you the secret now.  I’d write it down and damn the consequences.  But I can’t see what help that would be.  I don’t see how laying before you those terrible truths about the House of Windsor, their insane treachery and their secret lusts, would serve any useful purpose save to infuse your nightmares with clammy and crepuscular dread.

I stood motionless, my mind whirling with impossibilities.  Then — bathos.

“Henry?  Is that you?”

Someone chunky stood in front of me, a sandwich engorged with cheese and pickle clasped half-eaten in her hands.

“Barbara!”  I mustered a wonky kind of smile.  “How are you?”

“Mustn’t grumble.  But how are you?  How’s life in” — she lowered her voice in serio-comic reverence — “the new department?”

I gulped back a bitter laugh, wondering what kind of cover story she’d been fed.  “It’s…  challenging.”

Barbara grunted and took a noisy bite of her sandwich but seemed to have nothing further to add to the conversation.

“How’s Peter?” I asked.

“He’s fine,” she said between mouthfuls.  “Keeps talking to me about all the gigs he’s going to.”

I rolled my eyes and we shared a moment of exasperated collusion.

“Actually,” Barbara chomped on, “I had a phone call from one of your colleagues.  Mr. Jasper.  Remember?  He introduced himself when he came into the office.  Tallish man.  Lovely skin.”

I don’t think she noticed me flinch at the mention of the name.  What the hell was Jasper doing calling Barbara?

“He’s taking me out to dinner,” she said in answer to my unspoken question.  Then, with a small crescendo of pride:  “We’re getting pizza.”

I couldn’t think of anything to say.

“He seems really nice.”  For an instant, she sounded like a very small girl.  “He is nice, isn’t he?”

“He’s interesting,” I said.  “Oh, he’s full of surprises.”

Barbara looked at her watch.  “Better go.  Nice seeing you again.”

“And you,” I said politely, meaninglessly, as Barbara lumbered away, leaving me to watch the surge of strangers, wondering if any of them had the dimmest notion of how brittle the world really was.

My landlady and I sat in front of the television in an exploratory embrace, Abbey trying her best to get comfortable with my arm around her, me struggling against that nausea which had settled in my stomach ever since I’d been told the truth about the war.

Abbey had remarked on my pallor but I had admitted only to being worn and exhausted from my new job.  I’d not forgotten Mr. Dedlock’s threats.

So as not to hurt her feelings, I was wearing the lemon-colored sweater which she’d given me for my birthday.

She was channel hopping.  “Poor bastard,” she said as she came to rest on BBC1.

I forced myself to focus on the screen.  “Who?”

“Prince Arthur,” she said, as the crinkled Prince of Wales moped dolefully across the screen.  “Sixty today and still no closer to being king.  No wonder he looks so flipping miserable.”