V 02 - Domino Men, The (9 page)

“Sounds a bit heavy going.”

Barnaby reacted to this with barely checked fury, as though I’d just insulted his sister.  “You think I’m a driver?  Just a bloody cabbie?  Is that what you thought?”

I blurted out a ham-fisted retraction.  “I’m not sure what I meant.”

“Well, I know what you meant.  I know damn well what you meant.  Listen, before I was recruited by Dedlock’s outfit, I was a whole lot more than just a driver.”

“Oh, right.  Really?  What did you do?”

“I was professor of literature at one of this country’s foremost centers of excellence.  I was an acknowledged authority on fin de siècle peril fiction.  So I like to keep my hand in.  Big deal.  You got a problem with that?”

“Course not.”  Although taken aback by his belligerence, I was still determined to be civil, the importance of a sort of relentlessly cheerful politeness having been instilled in me by Granddad since the crib.  “So…”  I floundered about for a question.  “What made you give up academia for all this.”

“Wasn’t given a choice, was I?  Those greedy bastards framed me.  Got me thrown out of college on the most disgusting charges.  The whole business was completely trumped up.  There wasn’t an ounce of truth in any of it.  It was a wicked, stinking pack of lies.  You understand me, Lamb?  It was all invention.  The whole pernicious lot of it.  Do you hear what I’m saying?”

“Absolutely,” I said hastily.  “Without a doubt.”

After that, the rest of the journey went by in sullen silence, as we passed through Clapham, Brixton and on to central London via an unusually circuitous route.  Abruptly, we turned a corner and found ourselves in the taxi line at Waterloo station.

Barnaby exhaled noisily.  “You can get out and walk from here.”

In the shadow of the Eye, Mr. Jasper was waiting.  A queue of sightseers snaked around him on the pavement — disgorged passengers from those coaches already wallowing by the side of the street.

Strange that in the twenty-first century, the city’s greatest attraction should be a bird’s-eye view of itself.  For all its cocky futurism, there was something Victorian about the Eye.  It had a sense of permanence and antiquity, as though it had been there for decades, looking down upon London as it burgeoned and swelled.  It is easy to imagine the Elephant Man being taken aboard for a daytrip, staring awe-struck through the glass and wittering on about how terribly kind everyone had been to him.

“Good morning, Mr. Lamb,” Jasper can only have been a year or two my senior, yet he invariably spoke to me like I was a school leaver on work experience.  “Nice suit.”  This was said with heavy sarcasm but I mumbled thanks all the same.

“How do you like our driver?”

“I’m not sure I made the best first impression.”

“Barnaby takes a bit of getting used to.”

“I can imagine.”

“You’d better come up.  Dedlock is expecting you.”

The pod door was open and I saw the same gaggle of tourists inside as I’d seen on the previous Friday, but today they seemed weirdly frozen, calcified and motionless, like statues pointing toward sights they couldn’t  see.

“We don’t maintain the illusion twenty-four-seven,” Jasper murmured.  “These days we just can’t get the funding.”

Bolder than before, I stepped into the mirage and emerged to face the old man.  He had swum close to the glass of his tank and his pale fingers were pressed against the pane.

“Good morning,” he said.  “I trust you had a restful weekend.”

“Yes, thank you.”  My voice was trembling a little.  “But I’d appreciate some answers.”

“In good time.”  He swiveled toward my companion.  “Jasper?  Why haven’t you got your hat on?”

Jasper screwed his face up into a sulk.  “I had hoped you were joking.”

The old man struck the side of his tank and snarled.  “Put it on this instant.”

Huffily, Jasper reached into his suit pocket, pulled out a pink, neatly folded paper hat and placed it upon his head.

Dedlock gave him a steely look.  “That’s better.”  I got a gummy smile and noticed for the first time that the old man had few teeth left — and of those that remained, all were stumps, yellow, rotting and askew.  “We wanted you to feel at home,” he said.  “Happy birthday, Henry Lamb!”

I fought back the urge to laugh hysterically.

Dedlock flaunted his dental remnants again.  “Enjoy your birthday.  Celebrate your survival.  But pray you never have to suffer as many of the things as me.”

The pod shook as it began its ascent and when the man in the tank looked at me again, he was no longer smiling.  “Party’s over.  To business.”

“I’d like to know what you want with me.”  I spoke as calmly and precisely as I could.  “I’m nothing special.  I’m just a filing clerk.  I’ve got nothing to do with your civil war.”

“You’re quite correct.”

“Oh.”  I was faintly hurt by this.  “Am I?”

“There is nothing special about you, Henry Lamb.  Not remotely.  And yet your grandfather — he was remarkable.  I knew him very well.  For a time, we were even friends.”

“You and he?  Friends?”

“Certainly.  Indeed, it’s only because he held such inexplicable affection for you that you are summoned here at all.  I’m sure that this is how he wanted it to be.  When you work alongside someone for as long as we did, you get to know the way they think.  And I’ve little doubt that this is what he meant to happen.”

Certain peculiar suspicions were coalescing in my mind.  “Granddad was something to do with all this, wasn’t he?”

Dedlock and Jasper exchanged watchful glances.

“Was he…”  I trailed off, hardly daring to articulate the thought.  “Was he one of you?”

The old man gave a long, sober stare.  “There was a time, long ago, when I would have said he was the best of us.”

“Tell me more,” I said.  “Right now.”

Dedlock turned away and started to paddle over to the other side of his tank.  “We’re looking for a woman named Estella.  Find her and the war is at an end.  Your grandfather was the last man alive who knew where she was and I can only hope that he has done us the courtesy of leaving us a clue.  I need you to take Jasper to the hospital.”

“Why on earth—”

“This is a direct order.  Your generation may be a soft and feckless one but you are at least familiar with the concept of an order, yes?”

I said nothing.

“In good time, Henry Lamb, I’ll tell you whatever you want to know.  Until then — do your duty.”  And with this final exhortation, dolefully delivered, the old man turned his back upon us and gazed silently out across the sky.

When we arrived at the Machen Ward we were told that the old bastard was being washed — a ghastly, ghoulish sponge bath which I had no desire to witness.  Jasper and I retreated to the canteen, where we shared an awkward half hour with two lukewarm coffees and a rubbery BLT.

It was only then that I was finally able to persuade Mr. Jasper to listen.  During the journey from the Eye, punctuated by bursts of indiscriminate bitterness from our driver, he had sat in solemn silence, ignoring or rebuffing my every attempt at conversation.

“I need to ask you about the war,” I said, for what felt like the fifth or sixth time that day.

“Fire away,” Jasper said sardonically.

“The House of Windsor…  they’re the royal family, right?”

A yawn, a nod:  “Your point being?”

“It’s just that I never thought of them as particularly malevolent.  Slightly embarrassing, yes, a bit kooky, maybe, but—”

“They would see London in ruins.  They would see the city laid waste.”

“Why?  Why on earth would they want that?”

Jasper gave something approaching a sneer.  “Let’s hope you never have to find out.”

“Did you know him?” I asked.  “My grandfather?”

“Before my time.  Way before my time.”

“But you’ve heard of him?”

“He’s a legend in the Service.”

“Why couldn’t you come to see him on your own?  Why do you need me?”

“I tried.  But even incapacitated, your grandfather is potentially lethal.  He’s set up some kind of psychic boundary.  No one comes close unless he wants them to.”

“What?”

“The Directorate believes in magic, Henry.  It always has.”  Jasper pushed away his sandwich barely touched, prissy disdain flickering across his face.  “This plate’s dirty.”  He glanced about him at the café like he was battling to suppress a shudder.  “This whole place is filthy.  Crawling with disease.”

A nurse approached to tell us that we could see the patient now and we got to our feet, my companion more swiftly than I.  Mr. Jasper trotted into the ward and over to the prone figure of my father’s father with undisguised curiosity.

The old man’s eyes were closed, tubes emanated from pale nose and pale mouth, and he seemed weaker and more frail than ever.  I couldn’t discern a pulse.  I only had the word of his support machine that he was even alive at all.  Though we had yet to exchange a word, I had seem more of Granddad in the past week than I had for years.

Jasper pulled out what looked like a complicated tuning fork and pointed it at the old bastard’s body.  It beeped once, twice, three times, then made a drawn-out chittering sound.

I glared.  “What are you doing?”

Jasper, intent on his obscure task, didn’t even meet my gaze.  “I’m trying to ascertain if he really is in a coma.”

“Course he’s in a coma.”

“Your grandfather’s faked his own death at least twice before.  He’s a master of disguise.  In 1959 he penetrated Buckingham Palace in the company of an Armenian circus troupe disguised as a clown.  From sixty-one to sixty-four he lived undetected as a gillie at Balmoral.  In sixty-six he bankrupted the head of the House of Windsor’s Special Operations Unit in a high-stakes poker game at Monte Carlo.  So I think he’s more than capable of feigning a stroke, don’t you?”

“Not Granddad,” I stuttered.  “That doesn’t sound anything like my granddad.”

“Then you never knew him at all.”  Jasper slipped the device back into his pocket.  “But it’s real.”  He sounded disappointed.  “Probably the booze.”  He gazed into the distance, a look of quiet respect on his face.  When he spoke again, the effect was that of a humble supplicant offering prayers to his invisible deity.  “I’m with him now, sir…  I’m afraid it’s bad news…  Please.  Let’s not give up…  Very well.  Understood…  I’ll tell him.”  Briskly, he turned back to me.  “We’ll see you tomorrow, Mr. Lamb.”  He muttered something about enjoying the rest of my birthday and paced bad temperedly away.

“Is that it?” I shouted after him.  “What happens now?”

But Jasper left without looking back, strutting onward toward whatever fresh drama awaited him, and soon the ward was quiet again.

At a loss about what to do next, I sank back into the chair and sat alone for a while, the old man’s hand clasped in mine.  “Is it true?” I said.  “Is any of it true?”

Desperate for conversation, I called up Mum.

“How’s Gibraltar?” I asked.

No sooner had I spoken than the nurse appeared and waved me out of the room, like a farmer’s wife shooing chickens away from the petunias.  “No mobiles!  Ruins equipment.  No mobiles!”

Actually, Granddad’s machine had seemed completely unaffected, but, chastened and embarrassed, I did as I was told and took the conversation out into the corridor.

“It’s marvelous,” Mum was saying.  “Just marvelous.  Gordy’s been such a naughty boy.  We’re in this wonderful hotel.”  She broke off to speak to someone and I heard mention of my name.  I imagined her rolling her eyes, deftly miming exasperation.  Then she was back on the line.  “How are you?”

“Fine,” I said, then (discreetly):  “Got a promotion.”

“That’s wonderful.”

“I’m not a filing clerk anymore.”

“Good for you.”

“Never again.”

“Really, darling.  That’s fab.”

“Mum?”

“Yes?”

“Granddad was middle-aged before he joined the BBC, wasn’t he?  It was his second career.  What did he do before that?”

“Before the Beeb?”  She didn’t even try to keep the boredom from her voice.  “Some sort of civil servant, I think.  Nothing glamorous — though God knows he always acted like his shit smelt sweeter than ours.  Why?”

“No reason.”

“I’ve got to go, darling.  Gordy’s booked us a table somewhere.  He’s looking frightfully cross and tapping his watch.”

“Mum?” I said.  “I’ve been thinking a lot about Dad recently.”

An eternity of crackling.  The vinyl pops and hisses of long distance.

“I’m sorry, darling, it’s a terrible line.”

“I said I’ve been thinking about Dad.”

“Got to dash.  Gordy says the food’ll be fab.”

She hadn’t even remembered it was my birthday.

“Have a nice meal,” I muttered.  “Have fun.”

“Bye-bye, darling.”

And then, a tiny acknowledgment that she had, after all, heard what I’d said.  “Don’t brood, will you?”

The line went dead before I was able to reply.

I walked back into the ward and summoned up a contrite smile for the nurse.  “You were right,” I said, once the apologies were done.  “I think my granddad was in a war.”