Streater’s answer was a wolfish smile. “Then you’re coming with me.”
“…I need some now.”
“You can’t even wait till we’re in the car?”
“Streater, please.”
The blond man cupped his hand over his left ear. “Can’t hear you, chief.”
“For God’s sake, man. Please.”
“OK then.”
With the terrible proficiency of the expert, Streater rolled up the prince’s sleeve, tapped a vein and plunged in his syringe. A tiny pressure on the plunger, a murmur of ecstasy from Windsor and the thing was done, already easier than before, a little more seductively natural every time.
“Come on, then,” Streater said as the prince, now dazed and wide eyed, rebuttoned his shirt sleeve.
“Streater? I had a dream last night…”
“Yeah?”
“About a little boy and a gray cat.”
The blond man shrugged. “With this shit inside you,” he said, “with this gunk gumming up your veins — take it from me, that’s only the beginning.”
No one tried to stop them as they walked out of Clarence House, strolled into the staff parking lot and climbed inside Mr. Streater’s effluent-brown Vauxhall Nova. Dimly, the prince wondered why not a single person had lifted a finger to challenge them, why they had done nothing to save him from himself.
In fact, the incident of his departure had gone unnoticed. There was gossip promiscuously exchanged amongst the household servants, there was tittle-tattle in the scullery, idle talk amongst the grooms and scandal whispered in the ears of ladies’ maids — but remarkably not a single one of them ever went to the press about it. Although if you knew of the reprisals conducted in secret by the House of Windsor against those it considers disloyal this might not seem so surprising.
“Do you like it?” the blond man asked once Arthur was inside and staring vacantly through the windscreen, past the grime and squashed flies which the wipers had formed into protractor-neat curves and whorls.
“It’s a nice car,” Mr. Streater.”
“Now, that’s where you’re wrong.” Streater turned the key in the ignition and started, quite unnecessarily, to rev the engine. “This isn’t a car. It’s a pussy wagon.” He smirked. “I’ve lost count of the quim I’ve had in that seat you’re sitting in right now.”
Arthur flinched.
With ridiculous rapidity, they drove out of the parking lot, squealed down the length of the Mall and braked extravagantly before the gates, whose guardians, long inured to the whims and eccentricities of their employers, allowed them to pass without comment.
Streater wrestled the steering wheel toward the City. “Something the matter, chief? Something on your mind?”
The prince turned his heavy-lidded eyes toward his companion. “My wife, Mr. Streater. I think she…”
Streater had to coax him. “Yeah?”
“She and Mr. Silverman. I think they may be…”
“Yeah? What are they doing?”
Arthur screwed up his face. “I think they may be having” — his voice diminuendoed to a whisper — “…relations.”
“So they’re shagging?”
The prince gazed mournfully at him. “I think it’s just possible that may be the case, yes.”
“Unlucky, mate. Having your missus get schtupped by another bloke. But you’ve only got yourself to blame.”
“What do you mean?”
“What I mean, Your Royal Highness, is that you let her get away with too much shit. You gave her everything she wanted from the get-go so there was nothing left for you to bargain with. She got bored. Birds are like that.” Streater broke off to honk at a schoolgirl. His tongue darted out of his mouth to wet his lower lip. “Wouldn’t throw her out of bed for eating prawn crackers.” He wound down the window and bellowed a suggestion of staggering vulgarity.
The prince hardly seemed to notice. “Tell me, Mr. Streater,” he murmured. “And in this matter I should appreciate your candor. What would you suggest?”
“Treat ’em mean, mate. I’m not saying that’s an original thought, but that doesn’t make it any less true. Women like to know who’s boss. There’s a reason why blokes like me get ore pussy than we know what to do with, while blokes like you end up with your wife tupping around behind your back. You know what that is?”
Slowly, solemnly, the prince moved his head from side to side.
“It’s because you’re afraid of women and I’m not. I know how to play them and I know how to give them what they want. It’s a game, Arthur, and the sad thing — the bloody tragedy of it — is that blokes like you just never learnt the rules.”
“So am I to take it, Mr. Streater, that you’ve never been in love?”
In the kind of voice which made it very clear that he would answer no more questions on the subject: “Just once.”
On Shaftesbury Avenue, Streater swerved blithely into a bus lane and the prince inquired where they were going.
“Not far. I promise.”
“But I am to plant a tree today. The children are expecting me.”
“Sod the children!”
The prince just blinked. “What was that?”
“Sorry,” Mr. Streater muttered. “Sorry, mate. Didn’t mean to blurt that out.”
Streater brought the car to a halt just outside the bleak terminus of King’s Cross station in a space reserved for emergency vehicles, switched off the engine, yanked open the glove compartment, pulled out a ragged, faded baseball cap and passed it to the prince.
“What’s this?”
“It’s your disguise, chief.”
The prince was just becoming used to this unfamiliar thing perched on his head when the doors at the back of the car were flung open and a couple of fat men squeezed themselves inside, along with the smells of grease and roadkill.
One of them shuffled his bulk forward to stare at Arthur. “This him, then?” he said in a mockney growl. “Bugger me, he’s uglier than I expected.”
The other one thrust a cardboard container running with oil and slime under the nose of the heir to the throne.
“Golden arches?” he asked, bafflingly.
Arthur never learnt to tell these two apart. They seemed almost identical — both thick necked, both jowly and unshaven, dressed in grubby shirts, frayed jackets and stained raincoats. They both smelt the same, too — of the street, of bad money and of corruption.
“I’m Detective Chief Inspector George Virtue,” one of them said. “This fat wonker’s Detective Sergeant Vince Mercy.”
“What is the meaning of this?” asked the prince, only just keeping the incredulity from his voice.
“Little field trip,” one of them said. Virtue? Mercy? It was so difficult to tell. “Little bit of R ‘n’ R.”
“Just sit still,” Streater snapped, “we’re going inside in a bit.”
“You’re catching a train?” Arthur asked hopefully.
Streater looked as though he was about to remark that the prince should just wait and see when someone tapped on the windscreen, scurried round to the back of the car and, miraculously, crammed himself in beside the fat policemen.
The newcomer was sweaty and nervous, had graying hair (too long) and wore an embarrassing amount of gold jewelry. “Streater?” he said, and nodded toward the prince. “Who’s this? What’s he doing here?”
This question elicited a more than usually large grin from Streater. “This is Arthur Windsor. Arthur, this is-”
“Mr. X,” the man interrupted, suddenly frantic.
“For Christ’s sake. This is the next king of England. If you can’t be upfront with the Prince of Wales, who the hell can you be straight with?”
The man seemed embarrassed. “Of course. Sorry. I’m Peter.” He stuck out his hand, and instinctively, the prince shook it.
On the back seat, one of the policemen belched, and for a vile moment the smell of half-digested Big Mac lingered in the atmosphere.
&nbs
p; “Time to move,” Streater said, and opened the door, admitting a merciful blast of cold air.
Together, the five of them walked into the station.
“You’ve probably been wondering exactly what ampersand is…,” Streater said.
One of the fat men laughed. “Tasty!”
Streater went on as though the interruption had never happened. “Fact is, it’s a natural substance. Grows by itself under certain conditions. Peter here… what’s the word you’d use, Pete? He gathers it, he… harvests it for us.”
The gray-haired man flushed pink.
“But demand’s seriously outstripping supply. The kids are lapping it up so we’ve had to find a way to replicate. A mate of mine has a mate who knows a man who did time with a guy who’s shagging the sister of a bloke in France who’s tight with a sympathetic chemist. Result — ampersand manufactured by the ton. We’re off to meet our courier off the train.”
Detective Sergeant Vince Mercy slapped his hands together in glee. “New delivery! Fresh meat!”
Streater grinned. “Welcome to the real world.”
The blond man led them into the station and down the escalator to the Eurostar terminus, where they took up positions by the coffee shop. Arthur kept the baseball cap pulled down over his face but was strangely disappointed to find that not one member of the public so much as glanced at him.
Streater bought Peter and the prince a latte (oddly, not offering to do the same for the two policemen) and they all stood suckling at the plastic teats on their cups, trying not to look suspicious. One of the fat men jabbed Arthur in the ribs. “Has he told you how it’s done, guv?”
“I’m sorry?”
“This bird we’re meeting. She’ll be carrying the stuff inside her.”
“What do you mean?”
The other detective leered and Arthur was assaulted by a venting of his rancid breath. “Obliging little cow swallowed ampersand in a prophylactic. We’ll strain it out of her later.”
“That’s horrible.”
“That’s life, mate. We weren’t all born with a silver spoon up our jacksie.”
Streater looked up from his conversation with Peter. “Everything OK, chief? You seem worried.”
Arthur was stuttering his way into a reply when a train’s worth of people emerged from the exit gates, last amongst them a dark-haired woman just on the cusp of middle age.
“Here we go,” grunted one of the policemen. “I’d recognize that wiggle anywhere.”
Peter seemed even sweatier and more nervous than before. “No,” he muttered. “Something’s wrong.”
Streater shot the man a sharp look. “What?”
“Look at her. Something’s up.”
They all stared as the woman moved across the floor. It was as though she was drunk but trying her best to walk in a straight line, staggering under some appalling strain. As she drew closer, they saw that her skin had turned a violent shade of pink.
“Oh God.” Peter was whimpering. “Oh God.”
“What is it?” Streater snapped. “What’s happening?”
All the blood had drained from his face. “I think it’s split inside her. If she’s ingested that amount of raw ampersand… Christ knows what’ll happen to her.”
None of the men, not even the policemen, had any answer to this. They all just stood in silence and watched the inevitable unfold.
The woman staggered again, stumbled forward and lurched onto the ground. Arthur made a move to help but Streater grabbed his arm to hold him back.
A couple of customs staff had seen the woman fall and hurried over but it was already too late. Her face grew more florid, seeming to bloat and swell far beyond its natural size. Shiny, bulbous boils rose upon her face, and even from a few meters away, Arthur could see that they were filled with lurid pus, moving and squirming with some life of their own. Her body seemed wracked with a tremendous pressure from within, shuddering like a blocked water pipe after the taps have been left running. Once or twice, Arthur tried to turn away but failed to do so, morbidly riveted by the spectacle of it.
The woman was still shaking. A keening, piteous moan escaped her as a crowd began to gather, impotent yet transfixed.
At the end, Arthur’s view was mercifully obscured, but he heard the sound she made when she died. One could hardly miss it — it was the hearty impact of a water balloon on a summer’s day — and he saw the aftermath, too, the spreading pool of bubblegum pink which crept along the station floor, staining the stone with ampersand.
Peter was retching into his handkerchief. Virtue and Mercy were shaking their heads in grim disbelief. But Mr. Streater only smirked. “Just goes to show,” he said. “Turns out you really can have too much of a good thing.”
And he smiled his secret smile.
Chapter 20
Often, late at night, when I can’t get to sleep, I wonder how Jasper did it.
I don’t suppose he even found it difficult. Something like that… it would get to me. It would prey on my mind. But Jasper? It never seemed to bother him in the slightest.
You’ve probably already guessed who he phoned the moment he left me at the Eye. And you can imagine how he sweet-talked her into coming out for lunch. Somewhere posh, he would have said, somewhere swanky. My treat. And the girl, already flattered by his attentions, by the gentlemanly way in which he had conducted himself and the evident sincerity of his intentions, would have been helpless at the invitation.
Later, after it was done, Jasper told me that he had never laid a finger on her. But we know the truth. We know what kind of man he was. We know he wouldn’t have been able to stop himself.
You’ll have to forgive me if I sound bitter. Given my condition, I actually harbor surprisingly little resentment, but there’s something about this part of my story which never fails to enrage me. Something also in the fact that if I’d just been that little bit sharper, that tiny bit more alert, I might have been able to stop it completely.
So Jasper called her up, asked her out for an early lunch and she agreed. She would have scavenged some makeup from her colleagues and spent an eternity in the ladies’ before coming to meet him, her heart pitter-patting at the prospect of another unburdened by baggage, kinks of hang-ups. Jasper would have been waiting punctually outside the office and taken her to a restaurant which he knew should impress her but which he would never dream of visiting in the normal way. It had to be somewhere no one knew him. It had to be somewhere he wouldn’t be recognized.
He would have listened to her chatter as the wine arrived, asked about the office gossip, nodded politely on hearing that her boss had called in sick that morning and pantomimed interest when she told him about the fat woman in the basement. He would even have put up with her gauche flirtations during the starter, and it would only have been when she left the table to powder her nose that he would finally have made his move.
To a man like him, it probably didn’t even feel like a moral decision. A circular silver pill dropped discreetly into her drink. It would have effervesced briefly, then dissolved, and by the time Barbara came back to the table she would never have guessed that anything had transpired at all.
But it’s the thought of what must have happened next, once the meal was over and the pill had set itself to work — it’s that and the terrible betrayal it represents which, as I write, makes me sick to my stomach.
At the time all this was happening, I was ushering Abbey into the Machen Ward and presenting her to the pitiful shadow of my grandfather. The place seemed quieter than ever. The bed opposite Granddad, occupied the last time I’d visited by a portly bald man whose face had been covered almost entirely with burst blood vessels, lay conspicuously empty.
We found a couple of chairs and lowered ourselves down beside him.
“Granddad,” I said. “I’d like you to meet Abbey. My girlfriend.”
I turned to check that the description of her was OK to find my landlady staring at the old bastard in disbelief. “I kn
ow him,” she said.
“What?”
“I know him,” she said again.
“You can’t. That’s impossible.”
“Henry, I’ve met him before.”
“When?”
“Through the real estate agent. He was the man who sold me the flat.”
She told me too much and in too much detail for me ever to believe that she had imagined it or that she was making the whole thing up. She told me how they’d met when she’d looked around the property for the first time, how they’d hit it off straightaway, even if (and there are no surprises here) she was unable to shake the suspicion that the old man was flirting with her. She’d told him a bit about her life, how she was looking to buy her first home and that she might take in a lodger to make the mortgage. Apparently, Granddad had said that he’d taken a liking to her, and in the end he accepted her offer even though it was considerably less than others he received.
It was like he had chosen her. That was how Abbey put it. It was as though he had singled her out.
“What’s going on?” Abbey asked once she had finished.
I didn’t have an answer for her but in the end I managed a shrug and a lopsided smile all the same. “Listen,” I said, “I know an absolutely dreadful cafe just down the corridor. Can I buy you lunch?”
As I watched Abbey take delicate, surgical stabs at a puny bowl of salad, I decided that I had to ask her again.
You’ll probably think this is bizarre, given the mystery of my grandfather, given that people had started dying, that society was tumbling down around us and that there were a couple of mass-murderers on the loose who actually had a nickname for me. You’ll probably argue that I should have been concentrating more on the war and less on some imbroglio in my love life. But, then what do you know? You weren’t there.
“Abbey,” I asked as she speared an anemic tomato. “I want you to tell me who Joe is.”
The tomato bounded away from her fork. Abbey looked angry enough to snap the cutlery in two.
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