V 02 - Domino Men, The (23 page)

The old lady gazed at me gravely and murmured:  “There’s no fool like an old fool.  By which yardstick, that old man’s a moron.  But why have you come to me with this?”

“I need to know what happened with Estella.”

Miss Morning tottered toward a colossal fang and rested on it for support as she released a long, rattling sigh.  “You’d better sit down,” she said at last.

I lowered myself onto a tiny wooden chair which looked as though it had been stolen from a classroom.

“Your grandfather loved Estella,” Miss Morning began.  “Adored her.  He was the only one who loved her for who she was and not simply for the contours of her figure.  But he let it happen to her just the same.”

I shuffled uncomfortably in my chair.

“At the end of the sixties, we were losing the war badly.  An entire division had just been wiped out on field exercises in the Malvern Hills.  Leviathan was coming and we had no means of stopping it.  Your grandfather grew desperate.  He started to consider the most extreme solutions.  Even this…  Against all advice and his own better judgment, on April fourth, 1967, he summoned the Prefects.  He told them everything.  Begged for their help.  They thought for a while — Hawker scratching his head, Boon sucking on a sherbet lemon — before they told him how to stop the beast.  All they wanted in return, the only thing they asked for…  Well, I’m sure they haven’t lost any time in telling you that.”

My stomach turned over and I thought of my father’s last, frantic moments of life, gasping for breath on the hard shoulder of a motorway.

“In exchange, the Prefects told your grandfather about the Process.”

“The Process?”

“You’ve heard the phrase before?”

“From the Prefects, yes.  And it was in Granddad’s journal.  Why?  What is it?”

“The Process is high science and low magic.  It bends time and compresses matter.”

“I’m afraid I haven’t the faintest idea what you’re talking about.  Your mouth is open and there are words coming out but I don’t know what any of them mean.”

Miss Morning sighed.  “The Process transforms a person into a vessel.  It turns them into a living prison, a jail to hold the monster.  We needed a volunteer.  Someone strong.  Someone physically tough.  They would require certain preparations…  incisions to the brain…  Then we were to take them to a place of power.”

“What do you mean?  A place of power?”

“An old site.  Somewhere charged up with psychic energy.  Marked out with certain signs and sigils.”

“And then what?”

“We had to make them bleed, Henry.  We had to slash their wrists and let the life dribble out of them.  Until they were empty.  Until they were hollowed out.”

“That’s murder.”

“No.  Not quite murder.  That was the art of it.”

“And you went along with this?”

“We had no choice.  Believe me.  Can you guess who they chose as the vessel?”

The answer was grotesquely obvious.  “Estella.”

Miss Morning gave a bleak twitch of her shoulders.  “Dedlock insisted on her.  So we went through with it.  The whole thing.”

“Where did it happen?” I asked.

“You don’t need to know about that.  I doubt you’d like the answer.”  She looked at me as though I was expected to figure something out, to make some leap of logic here.  I probably just looked blank.

Miss Morning went on.  “It was a night of dark miracles.  When we cut that woman’s wrists they healed right back up again.”

“Impossible, naturally.”

“Naturally.  But we saw it happen.  Your grandfather and I were both there.  Poor Estella — not quite human any more.  A medieval mind would say that what we did was cut out that woman’s soul.  Leviathan came to earth and we bound it in a jail of flesh and bone.  Like a genie in a bottle.  Like a spider in a jar.”  She seemed to shrink back at the memory.  “We made a prison cell from a human being.  I don’t expect that was right of us.  But there it is.  Estella was an empty shell of a woman once we were done.  The strain of keeping Leviathan inside her had shut down most of her motor functions.  She became sluggish, glazed, absent.  Two days later, I was babysitting out safe house at Mornington Crescent when the Prefects strolled through the door and announced that they wanted to turn themselves in.”

“Why?”

“They said their consciences had too much to bear.  They told me that they were ready to give themselves up.”

“You didn’t believe them?”

“Of course not.  They’re playing some larger game.  That chalk circle no more holds them than a shopping bag would restrain an ocelot.”

I frowned slightly at the metaphor.”

“Your granddad quit the service and took Estella with him.  He went home to your grandmother and a couple of days later, Estella disappeared.  He would never tell us where he hid her, even under the severest provocation.  The Directorate has men who specialize in persuasion but your grandfather never spoke about it.  Not once.  So you see why they need to find Estella so badly.  She’s not the key to the war.  She is the war.”

Miss Morning and I stared uneasily at one another across the curve of a clay tumor.

M phone shivered in my pocket.  “Excuse me,” I said as I retrieved it, terrified at what news it might bring.

It was Mr. Dedlock.  Our conversation was brief and almost entirely one-sided.

“What did he say?” the old lady asked as soon as I was done.  “Spit it out.”

“Dedlock has agreed to their terms.”  My voice was trembling despite my attempts at moderation.  “The Prefects will be moved tomorrow.”

Miss Morning looked at me sadly and turned away.  “Then I think it’s time you went home and enjoyed what little time you have left, because, believe me, everything’s about got to hell.”  I got the impression that, in Miss Morning’s world, this constituted fruity language indeed, reserved for use only in the very teeth of catastrophe.

I was rummaging through my jacket pockets, trying to locate my key, when the door to our little flat in Tooting Bec was shoved open and Abbey stood before me in her dressing gown, her hair still damp from the shower, her pinkish face scrubbed clean of cosmetics, smelling all over of caramel-scented moisturizer.

“I was worried.”

“I’m fine.”  I walked inside, shut the door, locked it, drew across the chain.  “Had to work late, that’s all.”  I shrugged off my coat and hung it on the hook.

“Are you cross with me?”

“Why would I be cross with you?”  I glimpsed bare flesh beneath the dressing gown.  She seemed fragile, doll-like, and I had never before felt a more irresistible compulsion to embrace her.

“I just thought that after what happened last night…”  She was chewing on her lower lip.  “After what
didn’t
happen…”

I took her in my arms, clasped her close and kissed her on the lips, not caring about the consequences, not worrying for once if I might make a prat of myself.

“Henry?” she asked tremblingly once our lips had finally parted and my hand had begun to slip unthinkingly downward.

Silently, I led her to my bedroom, where, as gently as I could, I slipped away that gown, brushed my fingers across her breasts, dropped to my knees and began to kiss every part of her.

Lying in warm-skinned intimacy, we had just begun to drift into a doze when the grouchy buzz of the bell wrenched us back into the real world.  Abbey snuffed her disapproval but I disentangled myself, pulled on T-shirt and boxers, and plodded to the door, acutely aware than the evening’s pleasures were already evaporating into history.  The bell jangled again and as I reached for the handle, I wondered whether an unexpected ring at the door after midnight had ever, in the whole history of the world, been a herald of good news.

It was Jasper, giddily energetic, like a child high on tartrazine.

“I think it’s a mistake,” he said, stepping into my home uninvited.

I rubbed at my eyes.  “Don’t know what you’re talking about.:

“You haven’t heard?”

“Heard what?”

“The Prefects are being moved tonight.”

“That can’t be right.  Mr. Dedlock was quite specific.”

“Misdirection.  Either that or he’s changed his mind.  You’d better get your clothes on.”  Jasper was ignoring me.  Abbey had emerged from the bedroom and stood blinking in the corridor’s electric light, her modesty shielded only by a set of artfully positioned towels.

Jasper smirked.  “You must be Henry’s landlady.”

Abbey shot me a look made up in equal parts of bewilderment, irritation and accusation.

“So sorry to barge in like this,” Mr. Jasper went on.  “Though I’ve actually been interrupted myself.  Just in the middle of squiring young Barbara around town.  Wonderful girl.  So clean…”  He smiled dreamily.  “I’ll give you two a moment, shall I?”

I steered Abbey back into the bedroom, where I apologized profusely, dressed, thrust a comb through my hair and tried to prepare for a night out with Dedlock, with Hawker and with Boon.

“Could you distract him for a minute?” I asked once I was fully clothed.  “Just get him talking.  I need to make a private call.”

“Why?” Abbey asked.  “Who the hell are you phoning?”

“Please.  No questions.”

“One day, Henry, you’re going to have to tell me everything.”

“I promise.  But for now…?”

Abbey plastered on a hostess smile and we went back together into the sitting room, where Jasper was flicking through a magazine and swigging briskly from a bottle of water.  He tapped his watch.

“Two minutes,” I said.  “Just got to go to the bathroom.”

As I left, I heard Abbey talking, trying her best to distract him.  “Lovely to meet a colleague of Henry’s.  Now tell me, ’cause I’ve always wondered…  What is it you do exactly?”

I flushed the toilet and crouched beside the bowl, partly to disguise the sound of my voice, partly to fox any listening devices which might have been hidden nearby.  It didn’t occur to me at the time to question how naturally I’d taken to such precautions.

I took out my mobile phone and dialed a number which must have rung a dozen times before it was answered.

“It’s Henry,” I hissed.  “Sorry to wake you.”

Miss Morning sounded older now, as though she’d aged ten years since I’d left her.  “I was not sleeping, Mr. Lamb.  Just too afraid to answer.”

“They’re moving the Prefects tonight.”

No reply.

“Miss Morning?  I said, they’re moving the Prefects tonight.”

A heavy sigh.  “Then I assume you’ve made a will.  I trust you’ve set your affairs in order  I hope you’ve prepared yourself for the worst.”

He never slept with her, of course.  As guarantors for the truth, we think it our duty to make that absolutely clear.  Naturally, he would have liked to have done so, but we can assure you that he never laid so much as a finger on any part of her.  In fact, unless something remarkable happens in the next few days, the miserable man will die a virgin.

At around the time that Mr. Jasper was standing on Henry’s doorstep, the heir to the throne of England awoke with a wretched headache, an urgent need to urinate and a terrible hunger gnawing at his soul.

He had no idea how he had ended up in bed, no recollection of staggering along the corridor, of peeling off his clothes and falling onto the mattress, no memory at all, in fact, since he was last in the ballroom, taking tea with Mr. Streater.

Streater.  If the prince was certain of just one thing then it was this:  he needed to see that man again.  Only Streater would understand.  Only Streater could make the world tolerable again.  Only Streater could ease the craving, the black desire, the burning need.

The extremities of his body tingling with pins and needles, the prince swung himself out of bed and wrapped himself in his dressing gown.  Every noise seemed too loud, every light intolerably bright.  He used the telephone by his bed to make two calls — the first to Mr. Silverman, the second to his wife.  Both, he was told, were unavailable.

In the end the prince had to wake an underbutler named Peter Thorogood to ask the only question which seemed to matter to him anymore.

“Where is Mr. Streater?”

Although Peter Thorogood thought that the prince appeared out of sorts, he politely pretended not to notice and simply directed him to the room which Streater had commandeered upon his arrival at Clarence House.

However, once the prince had left (Arthur was adamant that he did not wish to be escorted), Peter Thorogood telephoned his superior, a butler called Gilbert Copplestone, to inform him that the master was acting erratically, that his speech was garbled and his gait had become eccentric.  Copplestone conveyed these fears to the head of the household, Mr. Hamish Turberville, who then telephoned the prince’s permanent secretary, Galloway Pratt, who called Kingsley Stratton, his contact at the palace, who spoke to his lover, a lady-in-waiting named Eloise Clow.  Four hours later, the Queen herself had heard the news about the behavior of her only son.  The message which she sent back was alarmingly simple.

Everything is proceeding according to plan.

As Arthur weaved his way down the corridors of Clarence House, he saw what had descended outside — a thick fog, a pea-souper — and it is a measure of his increasing instability that he pondered at length whether the weather was real or a trick of his mind.

It turned out that Mr. Streater was staying in an unusually unassuming wing of the house, halfway down a corridor of single rooms traditionally designated as quarters for chauffeurs and scullery staff.  Exhaling asthmatically with relief, Arthur knocked at the door and waited.

When the sharp-faced man opened up, he was fully dressed and beaming.  “All right, chief?”

“Let me in.”

Streater stepped back and watched the heir to the throne totter inside.  The room was almost monastic — bare white walls, cheap furniture, a single bed with its duvet rumpled and distressed.  There were no books, keepsakes or mementoes, nothing to suggest any life beyond the palace, with just one exception — a framed photograph of a young woman, a pretty brunette in skinny jeans.