“They were fresh yesterday. . . .”
“That was yesterday!”
We got dressed. Molly chose an impressive backless, shoulderless creation from the pocket dimension she kept in the back of my cupboard. I was never allowed to look into it, which made me suspect she kept other things there as well, apart from dresses, but I never asked. I chose a smart but nondescript three-piece suit, because I was going to have to enter the House of Commons in order to reach Under Parliament, and I didn’t want to stand out. Or be in any way memorable. I put on an old Etonian tie. Might come in handy. I waited until Molly was putting the last touches to her makeup in the dressing table mirror, and then tried a hopefully innocuous question.
It’s hard to keep a relationship going when there’s an argument in the room.
“We’ve got a good three hours until the Satanists’ little bash gets under way. Do we have to leave now?”
“I do,” said Molly. “You can hang around here if you want. I have somewhere to go first.”
“Where?”
“The Wulfshead Club. You are, of course, perfectly free to go and wake up all your council members, and make a full report, and listen to them discuss everything in great detail before finally authorising you to investigate the situation, but I am off. Right now. Things to see, people to do. It’s not that I don’t trust Isabella, you understand, or her fascinating friends and allies . . . but I’ll feel a lot better once I’ve confirmed their information through some friends and allies of my own. And that means a short, sharp visit to the Wulfshead.” She finally turned to look at me. “You can tag along if you like, while I pin people to the wall and ask them pointed questions; just don’t embarrass me. You can usually trust Isabella to tell you the truth, but you can’t always trust her to tell you everything. Forewarned is forearmed, and since we won’t be able to take any weapons into Under Parliament for fear of setting off all their alarms . . .”
“I’ll go as Shaman Bond,” I said, when she finally paused for breath. “He won’t seem out of place, either in the club or London Undertowen. People expect him to turn up anywhere. I’ve put a lot of work into establishing that reputation, for times like this. And people will say things to Shaman that they wouldn’t dream of discussing in front of a Drood.”
“Good,” said Molly, smiling for the first time. “I like Shaman. He’s good company.”
“But he’s me. . . .”
“Not always.”
“I can be good company. . . .”
“Stuffy,” said Molly airily. “Definitely stuffy.”
The Merlin Glass couldn’t take us directly to the infamous Wulfshead Club, semilegendary watering hole for all the really interesting and dangerous people on the fringes of reality . . . because the club’s defences wouldn’t allow it. So instead it dropped us off in a garbage-strewn back alley somewhere in the grubbier part of London’s Soho. Access points to the club are always changing, drifting back and forth across the seedier parts of London. The Wulfshead isn’t actually in the city; in fact, there are those who claim it isn’t even on Earth. As such. But you can access the club from selected very secret locations in every major city in the world. As long as you’re a member in good standing, of course.
The alley was full of uncertain shadows, a flat amber light sprawling across black garbage bags and the nastier sort of litter from the single streetlamp at the mouth of the alley. A cold wind was gusting, picking up a few leaves and playing with them, but not strong enough to move anything else. The tang of fresh urine was sharp in the air. Molly ignored it all, staring intently at one particular part of the bare brick wall that seemed no different from any other. She ignored the obscene graffiti, nodding slowly as her witchy Sight showed her the signs beneath the signs. She said the current passWord, and a great door of solid silver appeared in the wall before us. As though it had always been there, and we hadn’t noticed it till now. The dully gleaming metal was deeply etched with threats and warnings in angelic and demonic script, the disturbing characters sharp and clear, actually painful to merely human eyes. I stepped forward and pressed my left hand flat against the unnervingly warm metal, and the door swung slowly inwards. Attempting entry to the Wulfshead Club is never going to be easy, because if for any reason, good or bad, your name is no longer on the approved list, the door will bite your hand off. One of the many reasons the Wulfshead has never felt the need for a bouncer at the door.
Molly and I stepped quickly through the opening into dazzlingly bright light, pounding music, aggressively modernistic furniture and more good times and hard living than can usually be crammed into such limited time and space. The joint was jumping, and the place was packed. Let the good times roll, and the Devil take the hindmost. I eased my way through the crowd, Molly at my side, smiling and nodding. A lot of people smiled and nodded back; Shaman Bond and Molly Metcalf were familiar faces on the scene. Giant plasma screens covered the walls, showing intimate secrets of the rich and famous, while impossibly pretty girls wearing hardly any clothing danced madly on spotlit stages, and a group of seriously high bright young things danced on the ceiling.
Molly and I took up casual but watchful positions leaning against the bar at the far end of the club. They’ll serve you anything you ask for at the Wulfshead, from an atomic cocktail with a strontium 90 Perrier chaser, to a bracing glass of medicinal absinthe with a little parasol in it. I’ve seen people order drinks so volatile they had to be served in depleted uranium cups, and alcohol so potent it was served by a miniature tap-dancing pink elephant. Though admittedly, the night I saw that I’d had a few. . . . I ordered my usual bottle of Beck’s, and a Buck’s Fizz for Molly. She thinks the orange juice makes it healthy. There are always a dozen or so bartenders stationed up and down the length of the bar, all with the same face. I’ve never asked.
The usual crowd was in. Larry Oblivion, the dead detective, looking to make useful contacts and touting for business. He was drinking neat formaldehyde, with a crème de violette chaser to take the edge off his breath. He was quite happy to tell Molly that he didn’t know anything about a new satanic conspiracy, and didn’t want to. Having been murdered by his ex-partner, and then brought back to life as a zombie, he had more reason than most to be careful about the state of his soul. There’s nothing like having died to make you very thoughtful about the afterlife.
A fat, middle-aged and disturbingly hearty fellow in a Hawaiian shirt and grubby shorts waved cheerfully to Molly. He was drinking from a whiskey bottle with a nipple on the end, and scratching himself in an entirely too unself-conscious way. Molly moved over to join him, and I followed after. Neither of us wanted to get too close to him. He leered at Molly, and nodded briskly to me.
“Hail fellows well met, and all that crap. Trash, sir, at your service. It’s not my given name, you understand; I chose it. It’s real, it’s romantic, it’s . . . me. Trash: child prodigy, eccentric dancer, and necromancer-in-waiting to the court of St. James, the bastards. I understand you’re hot on the trail of a new satanic conspiracy. . . . Whatever happened to the old one, I wonder? People can’t be bothered to look after their conspiracies anymore. In my young day, you could expect a decent conspiracy to give you a good run for your money; be something you could hand down to your children and grandchildren. Not that I’ve ever been cursed with such. I would love to be of assistance, Molly, dear, but these days if it isn’t directly concerned with death and dying, I’m really not interested. Sex and death, you see; it’s all down to sex and death. Or if it isn’t, I don’t want to know. I could ask some recently departed if they know anything, but frankly I wouldn’t trust anything they have to say. The dead have their own strange ideas about what’s real and what isn’t. Either that, or they have a really weird sense of humour, and lie a lot. And they always have their own agenda.”
We moved on, leaving Trash to chat up an emo ghoul with far too many piercings. I spotted Jeremy Diego wistfully waving a folded banknote in the air as he tried to attract a barten
der’s attention. Some people can’t get served. Jeremy was a ghost finder from the Carnacki Institute, and it showed in his prematurely aged face and otherworldly eyes. A short and stocky chap in a battered suit and a jaunty fedora, and what appeared to be half his breakfast all down his front. He seemed pleased enough to see me, and nodded politely to Molly, but as always, if it didn’t involve ghosts, he didn’t have a clue.
“The word is,” he said, peering at us owlishly over the drink I’d bought him, “things are stirring in the afterworlds. Very powerful things. An awful lot of our psychics are looking into the future and coming back with spiritual shell shock. Something Bad is heading our way. Can’t get any of them to agree on what it might be, but then, that’s psychics for you. The one thing you can be sure of is that when we do find out what it is, we’re really not going to like it. Mark my word, young Shaman, there’ll be tears before bedtime. . . .”
And then there was Monkton Farley, the famous consulting detective, leaning very casually against the bar in his immaculately cut suit, elegant cuffs and brightly polished brogues. He had the usual small crowd of admirers set out before him, listening eagerly to his tale of the Case of the Unnatural Progression. Luckily he’d almost finished, because we’d never get anything out of him until he had. We waited for the crowd to finish applauding, and then pushed our way through to the front. He looked down his long nose at me, over his flute of pink champagne, but had better sense than to try that with Molly, and so gave her a wintry smile.
“Satanic conspiracy?” he drawled, in that aristocratic tone I knew for a fact he wasn’t entitled to. “Haven’t heard a thing. Been very busy, you know. Nothing succeeds like success, and all that. Only just got back from the wilds of rural Somerset. God, I despise the countryside. It’s so . . . uncivilised.”
Molly and I split up after that, so we could cover more ground. I worked the club with my usual practiced charm, asking a discreet question or two here and there, and reading between the lines of what I was told; but when I joined up with Molly again neither of us had much to show for our efforts. There was a general feeling among the club regulars that there was definitely Something in the air, but no one knew anything for sure. And when I did come right out with it, and asked if anyone had heard anything about a new satanic conspiracy, most people laughed at me. A satanic conspiracy? Oh, my dear, that’s so last century. . . .
And then, while Molly and I were refreshing ourselves with several new drinks, I spotted a familiar if somewhat unexpected face. Philip MacAlpine was one of the old-time spies, who spent his whole adult life in the treacherous trenches of espionage and double-dealing. He was supposed to have done good work with my uncle James and uncle Jack back in the day, but now, at the end of his career, he was only a minor functionary at MI-13, helping to keep the lid on things the public wasn’t supposed to know about. He’d tried to kill me on more than one occasion, but I did my best not to take it personally.
He was looking old and tired, so I decided to cheer him up with my company. He took one look at me advancing on him and tried to run. But I’d already sent Molly ahead of me to block his way. He looked back and forth, and his shoulders slumped. I smiled at him, and he grunted back. Anyone would have thought he wasn’t pleased to see me.
“Not pleased to see me, Philip?” I said brightly.
“I used to have a career!” he snapped. “I used to have prospects, and an office with a window! And then you happened to me.”
“Shouldn’t have tried to kill me then,” I said reasonably.
“I shouldn’t have failed,” said MacAlpine, pouting. “I told them there was no point in trying to go head-to-head with a Drood field agent, but no; no one ever listens to me. Even though I’ve got more field experience than half my superiors put together, these days. The departments aren’t what they were. I used to swan around Eastern Europe in a cool car, with all the latest weaponry, making trouble in all the right places . . . and now I have to fill in forms in triplicate just to go to the toilet. I blame the end of the Cold War. They knew how to play the game. . . . Now it’s all fanatics and religious head cases with no sense of humour, who wouldn’t understand the rules of the game if you tattooed them on their foreheads.”
“I heard you’d found a new niche for yourself at MI-13,” said Molly. “Cracking down on unregistered aliens from other dimensions . . .”
“MI-13 is still a force to be reckoned with,” MacAlpine said quickly. “Droods don’t have all the answers. There’s still plenty for us to do.”
I nodded, only half listening to what he was saying. A strange sense of déjà vu was raising all the hairs on the back of my neck. The last time I’d talked with Philip MacAlpine, it had been at the Winter Hall, in Limbo. I still remembered that conversation, but he didn’t, because he wasn’t really there. Or was he? It was hard to be sure about anything that had happened in that strange other place. I wondered, if I were to remind him of what he said there, would he remember? I decided it was better not to ask. I cut into his ramblings about how his life hadn’t worked out the way it should have, and fixed him with a hard stare.
“You owe me, MacAlpine. You, MI-13 and this whole country. I saved the crown jewels from being stolen.”
MacAlpine sniffed moistly. “All right. Say you did. Even though officially that never happened, and don’t you forget it. What do you want, a medal? I could probably get you a nice illuminated scroll, signed by Her Majesty.”
“You owe me,” I said, and something in my voice made him look away for a moment. “You owe me, and I want a favour. Right now, with a ribbon on it. Nothing too difficult. I need to get into Under Parliament, and for that I need access to the outer lobby of the House of Commons. Now, I could force my way in, but that would make more trouble than it was worth, for both of us. So I want you to supply Molly and me with two MI-13 security passes. One day only, of course. Do it now, Philip. Or watch me turn seriously crotchety.”
He growled and muttered for a while, but his heart wasn’t in it. He took out his mobile phone and moved away so he could talk in private. Though he needn’t have bothered; over the blasting music and the sheer bedlam of raised voices, we’d had to shout at each other to be heard anyway. Molly glared after him.
“Never trusted him. Shifty little scrote. You really think he’s going to help us? He hates your guts!”
“Possibly,” I said calmly. “But he’s far too much the professional to let that get in the way of doing business. He may not want to help me now, but his superiors will. They owe the Droods, and they know it, and they’ll be glad to get off this easily. What are a couple of passes to them? They hand the things out like party favours these days.”
MacAlpine put his phone away and came back to join us, looking even more sour than before, if that was possible. “All right, it’s arranged. Two security passes will be waiting for you at the entrance to the House of Commons: a full pass for Shaman Bond, and a backup pass for one other.”
“One other?” Molly said ominously. “The powerful and legendary wild witch of the woods is one other?”
“If I put your real name on the pass, they’d never let you in,” said MacAlpine. “Your reputation precedes you.”
“Yes,” said Molly, not displeased. “It does tend to.”
MacAlpine made a point of turning his full attention to me. “The passes will get you into the outer lobby, but no farther. Don’t push your luck. And getting into Under Parliament is strictly your business.”
“No problem,” I said cheerfully.
“I really didn’t like the way you said that,” MacAlpine said sadly.
“Good,” I said.
“It’s not supposed to be easy to get into Under Parliament!” snapped MacAlpine. “Or London Undertowen! Because that’s where you’re really going, isn’t it?”
I considered him thoughtfully. There had been something in his voice. . . . “What have you heard, Philip?”
He smiled at me for the first time. “That maybe . .
. there’s something worse than Droods in the world now.”
Molly and I left the Wulfshead Club by the back door, and emerged into a shabby side street in Westminster. The streetlights were sharp and bright, there was hardly anyone about, and only the very best kinds of cars rolled smoothly past. Molly and I strolled along arm in arm, allowing our hearing to recover from the deafening noise of the club. It wasn’t a long walk to the House of Commons. I didn’t even bother trying the Merlin Glass; both Houses of Parliament are all but buried under overlapping layers of defences and protections, laid down over the centuries. The establishment has always looked after itself, first and foremost. Bring an object of power like the Merlin Glass anywhere near Parliament, and every SAS combat sorcerer in the army would teleport in, loaded for bear and ready to commit extreme violence against anything that moved. So Molly and I strolled along, taking the pretty route, killing time till one a.m.
We stopped off along the way at a pub called the Floating Voter. The pub sign showed the actual voter, floating facedown in the Thames. They’re not exactly subtle around Westminster. It was definitely down-market, as pubs went, and this one went pretty far, but it had the benefit of being the local watering hole for all the political hacks, all the reporters and researchers and hangers-on that accumulate around Parliament like flies round a dead dog. Print reporters, of course; the television people were a more refined breed, with their own upmarket dives to hang around in. And the researchers here were really only glorified runners, making sure their respective MPs had all the information they needed, so they wouldn’t disgrace themselves every time they opened their mouths. Heaven forfend that they might have an opinion of their own, not thoroughly tested in advance by market research. It was a hard, thankless and never-ending job, but it was often the only way into the game for people who didn’t have the right family or party connections. And there’s never been any shortage of people who want to get close to power without the trial of actually getting elected. The Floating Voter was where all these people came to vent their anger as they wet their whistles, and let off steam about what idiots their masters were, and all the other people who were holding them back.
For Heaven's Eyes Only sh-5 Page 25
