by Kim Newman
There was a gunshot, a fire-flash and a loud report. Fred’s eyes burned for a moment but he wasn’t hit. Someone else had taken a bullet.
In the momentary light, he’d seen things he didn’t believe. Uniformed creatures falling upon the Boys with human intellect and demon savagery. Doggo’s head a yard from his body, stringy bone and muscle unravelling between his neck and shoulders. On his chest squatted something with green wolf-eyes and a foot of lolling tongue.
Fred bolted and collided with someone.
‘Fucking hell,’ said Jaffa, gripping Fred’s arm.
They ran together, skinhead and copper, fleeing the other things. They made for a cold indraught of outside air.
Something came after them.
Jaffa pushed ahead and was first through the door.
None of the others was with them.
Fred stumbled out of the Emporium. They couldn’t have been inside more than fifteen minutes, but night had fallen. There was no light from the town, no yellow street lamps, no electric glow from homes up on the hill. The shapes of buildings were just discernible, but it was as if no one was home.
Jaffa turned to Fred, knife raised.
An orange tendril snaked out of the Emporium at chest height and brushed Jaffa’s head. It was like a squirt of living flame. The King Skin’s eyes widened and mouth opened, but the fire took hold inside his skull and poured out.
He was still recognisable, still alive. Fred ran away, encumbered by the heavy boots he wasn’t used to. Jaffa, a living candle, stumped after him. Fred vaulted the turnstile and looked back. Jaffa’s head was a pumpkin lantern, rushing forwards in the dark.
Fred tripped and fell to his knees, not believing what he saw.
‘Oi you,’ someone shouted, at Jaffa.
A man in uniform stood near Fred, shaking his fist. He had a tommy’s tin helmet, but wore blue cotton overalls. An armband bore the letters ARP. He was in his sixties, and had no chin to speak of, just a helmet strap under his lower lip.
Fred was near fainting.
The King Skin stopped, flame pluming six or seven feet above his head, and howled.
‘Oi you,’ the ARP man shouted again, ‘put that bloody light out!’
* * *
‘Then Jaffa was blown to one side, as if the wind had caught hold of his fire. He was pitched against the loose railings and went over the side, trailing orange and red flames. He hit the sea with a hiss. Then everything went completely black. When I woke, it was early in the morning. The bloke in the tin hat was gone. I hotfooted it for the station and got the first train back here.
‘There’s something not right in Seamouth.’
As he told his story, Fred concentrated on Euan Price’s cold eyes. The Detective Inspector asked few questions and took no notes. He didn’t interject exclamations of disbelief, or shout at him that he was a nutter or on drugs or just plain lying.
Yesterday, Constable Fred Regent had lived in a world with law and order. Now, there was only anarchy.
He sat at the desk in the interview room, feeling himself under the spotlight, cold cup of New Scotland Yard tea in front of him. Price sat opposite, listening. The strangers leaned on the sound-proofed walls, half in and half out of the light.
It disturbed him that Price could accept the horror story with such serious calm. Either his superior believed him, or the consultants were psychiatrists in disguise.
There were two of them, dressed like peacocks.
The woman was in her early twenties and could have been a model: seamless mane of red hair down to her waist; Italian mouth, painted silver; Viking cheekbones; unnaturally huge, green eyes. She wore a purple leather miniskirt and matching waistcoat with a blinding white roll-neck pullover and knee-length high-heeled white boots. Her only visible jewellery was an Egyptian-looking silver amulet with an inset emerald. A red scar-line cut through one fine eyebrow, a flaw to set off perfection.
The man was even more striking. He could have been anywhere between thirty and fifty. A coal-black mass of ringlets spilled onto his shoulders Charles II style, and he wore a pencil-line Fu Manchu moustache. His face was gaunt to the point of unhealthiness and dark enough to pass for a Sicilian or a Tuareg. Thin and tall and bony, he wore a fluorescent green velvet jacket with built-up lapels and collar, tight red Guardsman’s britches with a yellow stripe up the sides and stack-heeled, elastic-sided, banana-coloured boots. A multi-coloured explosion of a scarf was knotted round his neck, and his shirt was rippling mauve silk. He had several rings on each finger, a silver belt buckle in the shape of a demon face with a curved dagger thrust through its eyes, and a single gold hoop on his right ear.
As he listened to Fred’s story, he played with a wide-brimmed fedora that matched his jacket, slipping long fingers in and out of a speckled snakeskin band. He looked as if he’d be equally happy on the foredeck of a pirate ship or in a coffee bar on the King’s Road.
The contrast with Euan Price in his Marks & Sparks mac was vivid. Whoever these consultants were, they were not with the police.
Though they were the sort he had been taught at Hendon to regard as suspicious, Fred had a warm feeling from these two. They might dress strangely, but did not look at him as if they thought he were a maniac. As he went through it all, starting with his undercover job but concentrating on the happenings at Seamouth Pier, the woman nodded in sympathy and understanding. The man’s violet eyes seemed to glint with tiny fireflies.
Fred had expected to be dismissed as a madman.
After the story was done, Price made introductions.
‘Constable Regent,’ he said, ‘this is Mr Richard Jeperson.’
The man fluttered a hand and curved his thin lips into a smile. As his frilly mauve cuff flapped, Fred caught sight of tiny blue marks on his wrist. Some sort of tattoo.
‘I represent the Diogenes Club,’ Jeperson drawled, voice rich and deep as a BBC announcer. ‘A branch of government you won’t have heard of. Now you have heard of it, you’ll probably be required to sign the Official Secrets Act in blood. Our speciality is affairs like this, matters in which conventional methods of policing or diplomacy or defence come up short. I gather you are still reeling from the revelation that the world is not what you once thought it was.’
Had the man read his mind?
‘You can take some comfort from the fact that the Diogenes Club, which is a very old institution, has always known a little of the true state of things. There has often been someone like me on the lists of HM Government, a private individual with a public office, retained for circumstances like this.’
‘This has happened before?’ Fred asked.
‘Not this, precisely. But things like this, certainly. Impossible obtrusions into the mundane. Vanessa and I have pursued several of these tricky bits of business to more or less satisfactory conclusions.’
The woman – Vanessa – smiled. Her teeth were dazzling.
‘With your help, we shall see what we can do here,’ said Jeperson.
‘With my help?’
A spasm of panic gripped him.
‘You’re detailed to work with Mr Jeperson,’ Price told him. ‘Out of uniform.’
‘Topping,’ Jeperson said, holding out his hand.
Fred stood up and shook Jeperson’s hand, feeling the smoothness of his rings and the leather of his palm. This was a man who had done hard outdoor work.
Looking down, he noticed the blue marks again. A row of numbers.
‘We should probably take a spin down to the coast,’ Jeperson said. ‘Take a look at Seamouth.’
Fred was suddenly cold again.
‘It’ll be fun to go to the seaside.’
* * *
It didn’t take detective work to deduce which of the vehicles in the New Scotland Yard car park belonged to Richard Jeperson. It was a silver-grey Rolls-Royce the size of a speed-boat, bonnet shaped like a cathedral nave, body streamlined to break land speed records.
Fred whistled.
‘It’s a ShadowShark, you know,’ Jeperson said, running his fingers across the Rolls-Royce Spirit of Ecstasy hood ornament. ‘They only made five. I have three.’
Parked among the panda cars and civilian Minis, the car was a lion in a herd of deer.
‘Hop in the back, Fred,’ Jeperson said with easy familiarity, opening the rear door. Fred slipped onto soft black leather and inhaled luxury. Two fresh roses were propped in sconces. Jeperson slid beside him while Vanessa got into the driver’s seat. Fred was surprised the man let anyone else drive his precious car.
‘Vanessa’d win Brooklands if they’d let her enter,’ said Jeperson. ‘She can drive anything.’
‘I’m learning to fly a jump jet,’ she said, over her shoulder. ‘Perk of the position.’
The engine purred and she manoeuvred the ShadowShark out of the car park. Fred doubted if he’d be as blithe handling such a powerful (and expensive) car.
‘Don’t hurry,’ Jeperson told her. ‘I want to stop for a pub lunch on the way. Have a spot of rumination.’
* * *
Vanessa headed for the road to the South Coast, cruising through the thinning traffic. Fred found himself relaxing, enjoying the head-turns of other motorists. Jeperson obviously didn’t believe in blending in with the crowd.
‘A sort of uncle of mine lives in Seamouth,’ Jeperson said. ‘Brigadier-General Sir Giles Gallant. We’ll have to look him up. He sat on the Ruling Cabal with Geoffrey Jeperson.’
‘Your father?’ Fred asked.
Jeperson’s eyes were unreadable.
‘Adoptive,’ he said. ‘Picked me out. In the War.’
‘And this Sir Giles?’
‘Also with our mob, I’m afraid. Diogenes Club. At least, he was once. Retired now. You’ll find, now you know to look, that we pop up all over the board. Unless I very much miss my guess, Sir Giles will know something about your End of the Pier Show. He’s too sharp to live near an incident like this jaunt without feeling tingles in the cobweb. We’ll probably set up camp at his house.’
Everything since the events on the pier seemed unreal. Only now that he was on the road back to Seamouth did Fred realise quite how the usual pattern of his life had been broken. He had been handed over into the care of this odd stranger, almost palmed off on the man. What disturbed him most was that Jeperson actually seemed to know what was going on, to accept the insanity without question, without even registering shock or disbelief.
It would be easy to be afraid.
‘What about the Seamouth police?’ Fred asked.
‘Tell you what, I don’t think we’ll trouble them until we have to. I like to keep my involvement with the authorities limited to a few enlightened souls like Euan Price. Too many plods have the habit of not seeing what they don’t want to. No offence, Constable Regent. Your mob like to tie up neat little parcels and sometimes all we can give them is a dirty great mess.’
If he shut his eyes for a moment, Fred saw what the gun-flash had shown him on the pier. A hellish scene, impossible to understand, hideously vivid. Real, and yet…
‘What was the first thing?’ Jeperson asked, quickly. ‘The first thing that told you things weren’t in whack. Don’t think, answer.’
‘Careless Talk Costs Lives,’ he said, just seeing it.
‘And Loose Lips Sink Ships.’
‘It was a poster. An old one, from the War. But it wasn’t old, faded. It had been put up recently.’
‘Bingo, an apport!’
‘What’s an apport?’
‘Something which shouldn’t done ought to be there but bloody well just is. Mediums often materialise the fellahs, but this isn’t like that. Nothing consciously evoked. This came with the house, like wallpaper.’
‘I thought there might be an exhibition.’
‘There’s always that possibility. Prosaic, but nonetheless not out of the question.’ Jeperson seemed a little disappointed. ‘Any funny smell? Ozone?’
‘Just the sea.’
‘The sea, my dear Fred, is not in the “just the” category. It’s the oldest living thing on the planet. It abides, it shifts, it shrinks, it grows, it senses, it hints.’
They were out in the country now, bombing through winding lanes at ninety. Fred gripped the armrest on the door, reacting to the rush.
‘We have a dispensation,’ Jeperson explained. ‘Speed limits do not apply to us. We take great risks for our country, so the least the Queen can do is exempt us from a few of the pettier regulations that bind the rest of her subjects. With Vanessa at the wheel, we needn’t worry about accidents.’
They took a blind corner at speed. The road ahead was clear.
‘She has second sight, poor love.’
* * *
The country pub where Jeperson had hoped to lunch was gone, knocked down and replaced by a Jolly Glutton. Fred had been in these places before; they were popping up beside motorways and A roads all over the country. Everything was brand new but already tarnished. A big cartoon Friar Tuck was the place’s mascot and the struggling waitresses were dressed as monkettes, with hooded robes and miniskirts. The fare was flat pies and crinkle-shaped chips, hot enough to disguise the lack of taste, and tea worse than the stuff served at the Yard out of a machine.
Jeperson was disappointed, but decided to sample the place anyway.
As he looked at his Jolly Fare, the man from the Diogenes Club slumped in dejection. He lifted a sprig of plastic parsley from his wriggly chips and dropped it into the full tin ashtray on the Formica-topped table.
‘What’s the world coming to?’ he asked, eyes liquid with pain.
The Jolly Glutton catered to shabby couples with extremely loud children. In the next booth, a knot of youths with Jaffa haircuts messed around with the plastic tomatoes of ketchup, and tried to get their hands up the waitresses’ skirts.
‘I wonder what happened to the regulars? Did they find another pub somewhere? With decent beer and proper food? Or did the fat Friar have them hanged in the forest to silence their poor plaints?’
Jeperson knitted his brows, and concentrated.
Suddenly, Fred smelled beer, heard the clink of glasses, the soft grumble of rural accents, saw the comforting smoky gloom of the snug. Then, it was all snatched away.
‘What did you just do?’ he asked Jeperson.
‘Sorry,’ Jeperson said. ‘Didn’t mean to impose. It’s a nasty little knack sometimes. Call it wishful thinking.’
‘I knew what you were seeing.’
Jeperson shrugged, but the tiny glints in his eyes were not apologetic. Fred had a sense of the man’s power.
‘I don’t fancy the one with the tash,’ a voice said, ‘but ’er with the legs’d do for a shag.’
It was the skinheads in the next booth. They were propped up on the table and seats, leaning over the partition, looking down at Vanessa, who was sitting opposite Fred and Jeperson.
‘Bloody hippie,’ said the kid who had spoken. His left eye twitched. ‘Hair like a girl’s.’
Jeperson looked at the skin almost with pity.
‘You should have seen this place the way it was,’ he said. ‘It was a comfort in a cold world.’
The skin didn’t understand.
‘What are you doing with this pouf?’ Twitch asked Fred.
For a moment, he was confused. Then he remembered what his head looked like.
‘I’m taking your girlfriend,’ Twitch said.
Fred didn’t know whether the skin meant Vanessa or Jeperson.
Twitch, who was smaller and duller than Jaffa, put his hand on Vanessa’s neck, lifting aside her hair.
Jeperson nodded, almost imperceptibly, to the girl.
Vanessa reached up, swiftly, and took Twitch’s ear in a firm grip. She pulled him off his perch and slammed his face into her plate of uneaten chips.
‘You can look but you better not touch,’ she whispered into his red ear.
Twitch’s friends, an older bloke with a Rupert scarf and a wide-shouldered hul
k, were astonished.
Vanessa pushed Twitch off the table and dropped him on the chessboard-tiled floor. He had maggot-shaped mashed chips all over his face.
Everyone in the Jolly Glutton was paying attention.
Twitch pulled out a sharpened screwdriver but Jeperson stepped on his wrist, bringing down a blocky yellow heel on crunching bones. The pig-sticker rolled away.
‘I’ll have that,’ Jeperson said, picking up the homemade shank with distaste. ‘Nasty thing.’
Fred was penned into the booth – these bolted-down plastic chairs and tables were traps – but Vanessa stood up and slipped out. All her movements were effortless; she wasn’t just made for show.
‘I’d advise you to pick up your friend and get back to your delicious fare,’ Jeperson said to Rupert Scarf and Shoulders. ‘My associate doesn’t want to hurt you.’
The two skins looked Vanessa up and down, and made a mistake.
Shoulders clumped forward, big hands out, and was on the floor before Fred could work out what Vanessa had done to him. She seemed to have stuck her fingers into his throat and sternum, making a cattle prod of her hand. Shoulders made a lot of noise about going down and rolled over Twitch, groaning that he was crippled.
Rupert Scarf spread his hands and backed away. The message had got through.
Shoulders, still moaning, got up on his hands and knees, snarled and made another grab at Vanessa. She whirled like a ballet dancer and stuck the white point of her boot into his ear, lifting him off the floor for a moment and laying him flat out. Her hair spun round with her and fell perfectly into place. She was smiling slightly, but didn’t seem to feel the strain.
Rupert Scarf pulled Twitch up, and together they picked up Shoulders.
‘You’re a dead dolly-mixture,’ Twitch said, retreating.
Vanessa smiled, eyebrows raised.
The skins left the restaurant. All the other customers, and the waitresses, applauded. Vanessa took a bow.
‘Three more friends for life,’ she said.
* * *
They continued by B roads. After the Jolly Glutton, Jeperson slumped into a fugue of despair. He said nothing, but his mood was heavy. Fred was beginning to sense that the man from the Diogenes Club was remarkably open. A changeable personality, he felt things so deeply that there was an overspill from his head, which washed onto anyone around him. Just now, Fred was lapped by the waters of Jeperson’s gloom. It was the loss of his beloved country pub as much as the encounter with the yobs, maybe the loss of his beloved country.
