The Invisible Code (34 page)

When the detectives arrived, they didn’t spot the accountant at first. As thin as a chopstick, dressed in a loose grey Jermyn Street suit that matched the brickwork, he blended perfectly into the surrounding terrace.

Almon stepped forward and placed a cold, bloodless hand in each of theirs.

‘I’ll introduce you as prospective members,’ he said. ‘That way I’ll be able to give you the tour. They can be spiky about who gets to see inside. We’re a most venerable institution. It’s said that to be accepted here you have to be a peer, a parliamentarian or a prick. Sadly we no longer have the ear of the government. It’s an old-boys’ network, and the boys are getting very old indeed. Many of London’s landowners were members but they’re dying off and being replaced by property developers.’

Almon led the way through a dun-coloured passageway
lined with sepia portraits of austere-looking lords and dusty busts of sour-faced duchesses.

‘What else can I tell you? Still no women allowed, of course. The house drink is still saltheen – that’s hot whisky and melted butter with spices, guaranteed to thicken the arteries. And of course we still have a resident black cat that gets served lunch before any of the members. That goes back to the days when the Devil was believed to adopt the form of a cat, making him the club’s oldest member and therefore the first to be served.’

He signed the detectives into the visitors’ book and led them to the library, a tall oval room buttressed with leather-bound volumes that appeared not to have been opened in two hundred years.

‘It’s said to be modelled on the library in the abbey at Melk,’ Almon explained. ‘Can’t see it myself. Upstairs are the meeting rooms, snoozers and bar: everything you fear about such a place – boarding-school food, brandy snifters and smelly old geezers bottom-trumpeting in wing-backed armchairs. It’s the sort of place where you’ll still hear a coloured chap referred to as a golliwog, although at least these days all racist claptrap is reprimanded by the management.’

‘Why does the Home Office still use the place, then?’ asked Bryant.

‘Habit, I suppose, and the fact that it’s a network, as rickety as it is. Oskar seems to like it.’ He led the way to the brass-fitted bar and called the barman over to plot drinks. Bryant looked around, wrinkling in complete disapproval. It seemed unlikely that anything nefarious had ever been planned by a handful of bibulous, bulbous-nosed aristos frittering away the last rents from their estates. ‘Anything at all unusual about the place?’ he asked.

‘Well, there are a few arcane rules. One states that no club member may ever resign, living or dead. Some
rot about the place collapsing if a woman ever sets foot inside the building, that sort of thing. But there was once a Hellfire club based here. The Duke of Wharton met here with his cronies. Young men gathered to discuss the existence of the Trinity. Questioning these things goes against the teachings of the Church, so it was said that the blasphemers were “raking the fires of hell”, hence the Rakes’ Club. In those days you could lead the most extraordinarily debauched private life and still command respect from your peers, who were, after all, peers of the realm. They weren’t subjected to rough music.’

‘What does that mean?’ asked May.

‘They exercised parliamentary privilege,’ said Almon. ‘Had they been commoners, acting as they did, they would have been tied to donkeys and driven through the streets to the noise of the public banging on saucepans.’

‘So there was no rough music here for miscreants.’

‘Not as such, but there
is
another meeting room.’ Almon tapped the side of his nose conspiratorially. ‘Sort of a club-within-a-club.’

‘Does Mr Kasavian use it?’ asked Bryant.

‘Yes, from time to time. It has a name: the Damned Crew, a traditional title going back to 1602, all loosely connected to the Gunpowder Plot. It’s actually a sub-club, with its own membership, initiation ceremonies and an annual subscription, operating separately inside the Rakes’.’

‘How do you qualify to become a member?’

‘Now that
is
a political network. You need to have worked for the government. It helps if you’ve displayed leadership qualities in the past and are committed to certain – ideologies. By that I mean it’s full of barking fascists.’

‘Is there any record kept of what goes on here? Meeting minutes, anything like that?’

‘Absolutely not. There wouldn’t be much point in
paying for an inner sanctum if it could be breached. You’re looking to take Oskar down, aren’t you?’ A dark and eager light appeared in Almon’s eyes.

‘We’re not at liberty to discuss—’ May began.

‘Yes,’ said Bryant. ‘Do you want to help?’

‘I might be able to,’ Almon replied. ‘When men become arrogant they start to make poor choices.’

‘Why would you help? Why now?’

‘We always have to watch our backs, Mr May. My wife informs me of rumours when they become too loud to ignore. One currently circulating is that I will be scapegoated for certain failures of nerve within the department.’

‘You mean there were things you didn’t want to go along with?’

‘The original members of the Damned Crew used their positions to get away with murder. I’m not saying we did anything quite that dramatic. I have no personal enmity towards Mr Kasavian. It would be a purely business arrangement between you and I.’

‘We’re not here to give your career a leg-up,’ May replied. ‘If you have something on your boss, it’s your duty to inform us.’

Almon knocked back his whisky and clearly thought devious thoughts. Bryant instinctively disliked him; the civil servant was weighing up his options in order to maximize their advantages, but was nervous about crossing into territory from which he could not return. ‘There is – a certain matter,’ he said finally. ‘It’s something he wouldn’t want uncovered. Something rather nasty. Let’s not talk in here. I can show you the clubroom used by the Damned Crew.’

Almon led the way back to the stairs, turned on the darkened landing beneath a bust of Landseer and withdrew a key from his pocket. Bryant looked for a door, but saw none.

Almon stepped close to the wall and slid the brass key into what had appeared to be nothing more than a small stain on the wainscoting. The door had been painted to perfectly match the tobacco-coloured wall, and tipped inward to a narrow brick passage. ‘This runs behind the walls of the bar,’ said Almon softly. ‘It was used by the servants to deliver the meals, so that no one would have to run into them on the main staircase.’

The passage smelled sharply of rising damp. Bryant and May followed the civil servant to its end, where a second door was unlocked to reveal an elegant smoking room lined with books. Six maroon leather armchairs stood on a sea-green carpet. There was a large globe, which Bryant suspected of being a bar, and a small walnut dining table. In one corner the conversation from the drinkers on the other side of the wall could be clearly overheard.

‘I always assumed there were rooms like this in London, but I’ve hardly ever seen one,’ whispered Bryant, barely able to contain his enthusiasm as he headed for the bookshelves.

‘It’s not as cloak and dagger as it appears,’ said Almon. ‘Enter any large building that once had plenty of servants and you’ll always find rooms and passageways like these. The running of such houses depended on the efficiency and invisibility of the staff. We’d better be quick, Mr Bryant.’

Bryant forced himself to step away from the books. ‘What do you have on Kasavian that’s of practical use to us?’

‘Before he came to head up our department, Oskar was employed as head of security for a biochemical company outsourced by the DSTL at Porton Down.’

‘We know about that,’ said May. ‘It’s old news.’

‘How do you think he was able to step straight into a top position at the Home Office?’

‘You tell us.’

‘He knew how to keep a lid on things. He proved himself amply capable in his final months at Porton Down. There was a murder committed—’

‘It was Kasavian?’

Behind them, the passage door opened. Oskar Kasavian stepped into the room. If he was surprised to find the detectives in his private sanctuary, he managed not to show it. Bryant, on the other hand, reacted as if Dracula had just appeared at a crypt entrance. He instinctively wanted to look around for a crucifix.

‘Almon.’ Kasavian smiled. ‘I thought I might find you here. I do hope you’re not planning to breach club rules. Gentlemen, if you would excuse us for a few minutes, my colleague and I need to have a private conversation.’

Unable to argue for a reason to stay, Bryant allowed his partner to steer him from the room.

39

BLOODLINE

THE NONDESCRIPT JUNE
weather had fractured into chill drizzle and darkness. Pustular clouds reached down to infect the top floors of buildings, sheening slates and blackening brickwork. Even the glass towers of the Square Mile were dimmed and streaked with condensation, as if they no longer wished to expose their interiors to the sinister streets.

Maggie Armitage furled her umbrella and huddled in the doorway of the Peculiar Crimes Unit, waiting to be admitted. Something had been bothering her ever since her meeting with Bryant at Liverpool Street Station. The sensation had grown with the passing hours, until she could bear it no longer.

Last night she had used her Ouija board to contact Starbuck, an unruly Edwardian child she occasionally used as her contact to the spirit world. He had proven impossible, throwing tantrums, tossing cups and vases, yanking at the tablecloth and tearing open the curtains, alternately angered and hurt by her questions. When she came to, she found herself shaking with cold.

The spirits were disturbed.
She
was disturbed. Death
held no terrors for her; she had brushed against it too many times, but evil … now that was a different matter altogether. Just as she believed there were forces for good in the world, it had to follow that there were forces for harm.

Janice Longbright opened the door with a look of surprise. ‘We’ve never had you visit us before,’ she said. ‘Come on in before you get soaked through.’

‘I had to come,’ Maggie explained, bashing out the rain from her rainbow-wool hat. ‘They’re in danger, aren’t they?’

‘Someone sabotaged John’s car last night,’ said Longbright. ‘We think it was intended as a warning.’

‘I knew it. Are you brewing up? I’ll think more clearly with a cup of tea inside me. Bags will be fine. Arthur will be on the first floor, to the right.’

‘How did you know that?’

‘He has to be able to look down into the street. Can you show me?’

‘Of course.’ Longbright led the way to the detectives’ room. On the stairs they passed Jack Renfield. Maggie reeled, her spiritual sensitivity battered by unseen forces.

‘Wow,’ she said, staring after the broad-shouldered sergeant. ‘So you’re finally seeing somebody again.’

‘Jack?’ Beneath their Elizabeth Arden foundation, Longbright’s cheeks coloured. ‘We’re colleagues. Well, friends. Well – I don’t know, really.’

‘There’s a golden cord running between the two of you. I think he’ll be good for you, although …’

‘Although what?’

‘There’s something you have to discover about him first, a problem to solve. If you can surmount that, he’ll be the one to save you.’

Longbright was becoming annoyed by the white witch’s cryptic prognostications. Maggie reached Bryant’s doorway and peered in, breathing deeply. ‘Of course,’ she said quietly. ‘I knew it would be like this.’

Making herself comfortable in the green leather armchair while Longbright made tea, she took in her surroundings, studying the bindings of the books and folders, the chaotic spread of Eastern artefacts and Victorian bric-a-brac. She paid particular attention to a volume of Greek myths that lay on Bryant’s desk.

‘He knows more than he’s telling you,’ she told Longbright when the DS had returned with a tray. ‘He doesn’t want you to come to harm.’

‘I’m sorry, I’m not with you,’ Longbright admitted.

‘The Greeks. Pegasus was the offspring of Medusa. The horse sprouted from her severed head. It was a half-brother to Theseus.’

‘Nope, still nothing, I’m afraid.’ Talking with Maggie was confusing at the best of times, but Longbright feared the white witch was finally dropping off the conversational bandwidth.