All true. It was also true that Ax’s conversion had been genuine, but he didn’t see why he had to discuss that.
‘Right so. There’s no Islamic problem. Ye know, I’ve never known a woman to really enjoy a ménage à trois. They put up with it if they have to, but they’re naturally monogamous. Are ye sure she’s happy?’
’Fergal.’ Mr Preston was beginning to lose patience. ‘I find it hard to believe that the Irish government sent you over here to investigate my sex life.’
‘Fock. I’m not working for the government.’
‘So who are you working for? The Dublin chapter of the CIA?’
Footsteps on the stairs. The cat, who had partly settled, roused again and stared at the door. Sage came in, Fiorinda close behind him. ‘Hi, Fergal,’ said Sage. ‘Sorry, Ax, we should have called. I had to haul Fiorinda out of the DETR.’
‘Environment, Transport and the Regions,’ said Ax to Fergal, politely. ‘The government department we mostly have to deal with. It’s okay, the stew’s taken no harm. I’ll put the couscous on to steam now.’
‘I’ll do it,’ said Fiorinda, quickly.
People who have a lot of pain and suppressed anger in them are often ‘tactless’: Ax had noticed this. As much as they want to please you, as much as they know they’re self-destructing, the totally unnecessary, needling comments will come tripping out. Fergal Kearney, poor devil, was well known for his terrible habit of saying the wrong thing. But there was something different going on this time. Even at the San the other night, Ax’d felt that Fergal was a man with a plan.
The Irishman ate sparingly, fortified himself with several glasses of red wine and continued to probe the weak spots, crudely but thoroughly. He was sounding them out, like a political refugee indeed: testing the ground.
He tried hard to make up to Fiorinda for his faux pas the other night, but she wasn’t having any. She hardly spoke, and disappeared to the kitchen at the slightest excuse. At last Fiorinda loaded the dishwasher (a very green dishwasher, but Ax refused to live without one), while the men moved to the couches by the stove, with a new bottle of wine. Giving Fergal Kearney spirits would be outright murder, but you had to accept that he needed his drug, in some form; beyond the point of no return.
‘So,’ said Ax, ‘did we pass? Now can you tell us who you’re working for?’
‘I told yer,’ said Fergal, ‘I’m working fer the Rock and Roll Reich, if yez’ll have me.’ He gave them his sweet, broken grin. ‘Be easy, I’m not planning to make a move on yer girlfriend. But I’ve fallen for her, that’s the truth, an’ I’ve parted company with the Playboys—don’t know if you heard. Me life’s near at an end. Why should I not follow the gleam? I’ve nothen’ better to do.’
He drank, and set the glass down. ‘You know, it’s a funny thing. The first time a doctor gave me a death sentence, I was terrible upset. I’d lie awake nights, grieving. Now it’s on me, and I can’t be focked to worry about it.’
This was chilling. Fergal was maybe ten, at most fifteen years older than they were themselves: and he was dying. They didn’t doubt it. Last summer he’d still seemed indestructible, now the marks of the last straight were unmistakable.
‘Okay,’ said Ax, after a moment. ‘That’s half the story. And the rest?’
‘Aye, the rest.’ The Irishman looked at Ax uneasily. ‘The tale is that you have no interest in conventional politics, Mr Preston. Fer your purposes you only need the culture, the lifestyle choices. Control the mob, and let the mob control the bastards in the suits. I hear ye have an army of yer own, and the polis eating out of your hand an’ all… An’ that’s all well and good, in your hands. Becuz you’re using this classic game plan (will I mention the Hitler word?) fer peace, and the preservation of all that’s good in the modern world. But there’s other people besides yourself that’s seeing this fockin’ cascade of disasters as a golden opportunity to change the rules—’
He broke off, and waited for Fiorinda to cross the room. Give the Irishman his due, he might be tactless but he knew that Fiorinda wasn’t just around to look decorative. She curled on the end of Ax and Sage’s couch (like the cat, ready to make herself scarce at a moment’s notice). Fergal nodded to himself, and looked hard at his glass, but did not touch it. Now it’s coming.
‘Mr Dictator, ye’ve got a problem.’
‘I have several,’ said Ax. ‘Could you be more specific?’
‘How well d’you know yer Prime Minister? Mr David Sale?’
Shit.
‘We have a working relationship,’ said Ax, sedately.
Fergal nodded, still with the air of someone weighing his words very carefully, hesitating over every step. ‘But yez don’t know him personally?’
‘I wouldn’t say he’s a personal friend. No.’
‘Did ye know he’s a smack addict?’
Sage grinned. ‘Yeah. He’s a vegetarian an’ all. We try to be broadminded.’
‘It’s not funny, Sage,’ said Fergal, reproachfully.
‘Addiction’s a big word,’ said Ax. ‘I know David’s using heroin a little; so do others. Personally, I don’t like it: but it’s not a guilty secret.’
‘Aye, well. What if I was to tell yez he was getting into something worse?’
Fergal reached for his bag, took out an envelope and drew from it several seven-by-ten monochrome prints. He laid them on the coffee table between the couches. A succession of images: groups of seemingly naked human figures, cavorting in a dark background. Closer shots of a white shape, a horse, on its knees, black blood gouting from its belly, and the most eager of the worshippers pressed around the killing. Some heads were circled and highlighted.
Ax picked up the prints, one after another. One of the enhanced headshots, full face, and profile, was clearly recognisable as the English Prime Minister.
‘What is this about?’
‘This is about the Celtics,’ said Fergal grimly. ‘The folks that used to call themselves “Ancient Britons”. There’s a lot of this caper goes on in Ireland now. The soft end of it, the pilgrimages to the High Places, the feasts and the bonfires: an’ even the Catholic hierarchy, fer what their fockin’ opinion’s worth, says it’s fine and dandy. Something we never really should have left behind. Maybe so An’ maybe ye’re going to tell me the English Cabinet is welcome to enjoy a Pagan ritual, along with a needle-full of Mother Comfort now and then. But however that may be, according to my information, yer Mr Sale has progressed to the harder stuff. Harder even than you see him here.’
‘What d’you mean by that?’
‘Magic.’
‘Real magic?’ said Sage, taking up the pictures and frowning at them.
‘I don’t know what yez understands by the term,’ said Fergal. ‘The blood-sacrifice would be real. An’ effective, in that it brings us closer to what they want, which is the Dark Ages. How real do yez want it?’
Pagan sacrifice was one the problems that kept Ax awake at nights. The Celtics insisted they had a right to practise their religion, and it was difficult for him to deny that right, while avoiding an open split—although the cruelty of the killings stuck in his throat. He had to leave it to the campground councils, he had to leave it to the hippies themselves to condemn the bloodthirsty extremists.
But it was definitely not okay for the PM to go cavorting around bonfires. Animal sacrifice was seriously illegal. The fact that it happened, the fact that there were secret networks, Countercultural and others, who gathered for these blood-daubed raves, was a national scandal. Thank God it couldn’t possibly be true. David Sale wouldn’t be such an idiot—
It doesn’t have to be true. My God.
‘Are you trying to tell me these are genuine pap-shots of the English Prime Minister at a so called “Celtic” animal sacrifice?’
‘Aye.’
‘Oh, give me a break!’ Ax dismissed the idea with a flick of his hand. ‘I can see just by looking at them that these images have been faked to hell. I don’t know who sol
d you this, but there’s nothing in it. This isn’t evidence!’
‘I niver said anything about evidence,’ said Fergal, with dignity. ‘I should think a public enquiry’s the last thing ye’d be wanting. I said a problem.’ He stared hard at the Triumvirate, as if still trying to decide if he could trust them. ‘I can’t tell yez how I got hold of these. I don’t precisely know where they came from, meself. But the pictures aren’t all. According to me informants, Mr Sale knows a place where it goes beyond killin’ animals, an’ I can tell yez the where and when.’
They stared back at him, straight-faced. ‘I don’t believe you,’ said Ax.
Fergal nodded. ‘Aye. I can understand that. An’ I understand how ye’ll feel about the messenger. But ye had to be told. I’m a mouthy old drunk, but everything I said the other night’s the truth. I have the greatest admiration for the Reich, and I’m not the only one. There’s a world out there, wanting to believe Ax Preston’s England isn’t going to collapse into a pile of shite—’
‘That’s nice to know.’
‘I was coming over to yez anyway. I wisht I hadn’t had to bring this. Or I wisht you had laughed in my face an’ said it was a pack of fockin’nonsense. But I see that’s not how it is. An’ now I’ll leave the matter.’ He stood up, delving in his pack again. ‘Didn’t bring me harp, I had a feelin’ no one would ask me to play. But here’s a present from Ireland. I couldn’t carry much,’ he added shyly. ‘I tried to think what yez’d really be missing.’ He put a gift-wrapped package beside the envelope and glanced diffidently at Fiorinda, who hadn’t said a word through the whole exchange. ‘Are they good to yez, these two? Jaysus, I hope they are.’
‘Oh yes,’ said the rock and roll brat, raising cool, merciless grey eyes. ‘They take me for walks, and I have my own bowl with my name on it and everything.’
Ax and Sage saw Fergal out. They came back and stood considering their babe. She seemed to be okay. ‘How about a guinea pig?’ said Sage to Ax.
‘People speak highly of those big furry spiders,’ said Ax. ‘Apparently they can be very companionable.’
‘Sorry.’
‘But what do you think of him?’ said Ax, sitting down again. ‘Truly?’
‘I think he’s genuine,’ said Fiorinda, at once. ‘He puts my back up, but I have to admit, I think he really wants to join your rock and roll band. I hope to God somebody’s using him to deliver loony disinformation, but I think Fergal himself is fine. Of course I could be wrong.’
‘You could be, but you’re not often. Well. Let’s see what we’ve got.’
He opened the parcel. They had three cans of Diet Coke, a cellophane package of black peppercorns, and a bottle of genuine, hundred per cent agave, Mexican tequila.
Of all the countries under the Internet Commissioners quarantine, in the wake of the Ivan/Lara virus disaster, the three nations of Mainland Britain had suffered most: and England worst of all, having neither Scotland’s connections with Scandinavia (where quarantine had already been lifted); or much benefit from the smuggling across the Irish sea. They’d lost not only e-commerce and financial services, but a crippling amount of foreign trade. It just wasn’t worthwhile fighting through the maze of data-quarantine regulations, for the privilege of doing business with the poverty-stricken English.
They laughed. The country was in more need of machine parts than peppercorns. But even after the news he’d brought, it was impossible not to be touched by Fergal’s bounty.
‘I don’t think we should decide anything until morning,’ said Fiorinda. ‘I’m going to practise. Soundproofing on or off?’
She often practised the piano late at night. It was the only way to find solid time, and she liked the echoing secrecy of those hours.
‘Off,’ said Sage.
‘Mind if we join you?’ asked Ax.
‘As long as you don’t talk.’
Fiorinda played Bach, rapidly and carefully, frequently taking a phrase apart, building it up again, obsessively smoothing out the kinks. Ax lay with his head in Sage’s lap, watching her hands in the pearly glow of ATP lamplight. The music room, which was still their spare bedroom (are we ever going to get that guest room sorted?) was Fiorinda’s territory. Her favourite dresses hung on the walls, her treasures were displayed: her guitars (including that awful old Martin); the red cowboy boots he’d bought her when they were first together. It wasn’t easy to give Fiorinda presents. Those orange trees on the terrace, a triumph for Sage…but something you gave her joins the elect in here, you know you’re doing well. Most of Ax’s guitars were still in Taunton. Will I ever move them up here? If I do, will Jordan see that as my final betrayal of the band?
Fiorinda was right. Wait, sleep on it.
But he kept hearing Fergal’s question again. No, Ax did not know David Sale. He’d sometimes felt a great respect for the man. It was David Sale who’d refused to panic, who’d let the Deconstruction Tour happen, without pouring petrol on the fire. Who had kept his head when Pigsty Liver was running riot, who had kept the regulars out of the fighting in Yorkshire. Who had created, let it be said, the situation that had brought Ax to power. But Ax had never wanted to be in Sale’s confidence, too much dirty water under that bridge. There was the question of how far he’d been involved in the Massacre Night conspiracy. There were other questions… Things Ax had preferred not to know.
At the artshow in Trafalgar Square, he’d seen the PM with a shiny group of fashionable Greens, expensively dressed in the latest ‘Celtic’ style. David Sale with the identical, bright-eyed, eager grin, same as Ax remembered from the Think Tank days: the Prime Minister and the Home Secretary thrilled at themselves for hanging out with rebel rockstars, dirty dangerous brutes like Pigsty, but we love taking risks: how cool are we? Oh, shit.
He’d brought Fergal’s pap-shots to the music room, not meaning to look at them again, but… He sat up and studied the images: turned them over and found handwritten notes. Dates, locations. He pushed back his hair, rubbing his temples with calloused fingertips.
‘I’m going to try and send a couple of faxes. I won’t be long.’
Fiorinda went on playing, stubbornly, but in the end was forced to stop, turn her head and meet the gaze, blue and accusing. Sage had his hands in his pockets. He was wearing the masks less and less but the hands must still be hidden, if at all possible. One long leg crossed over the other, a sickle-shaped indentation by the left corner of his mouth, picked out very clearly by the lamplight. He will be fifty, she thought, with a shock. He will be this big, thin, middle-aged bloke, extremely used to getting his own way.
‘What?’
‘Fee, can you still do that trick of yours, with fire?’
Fiorinda’s grandmother practised witchcraft. Sage had accidentally discovered (or been allowed to discover, he wasn’t sure which), that Fiorinda could do some strange things herself. She’d made it clear that he was not allowed to tell anyone. Not even Ax.
‘You mean like this?’
She held out her right hand, palm upwards. A dot like molten copper appeared, quivered on her skin, and then a vivid leaf-shaped flame was there. He even thought he could feel the heat. But the brain loves to be fooled.
‘Is that an illusion?’
She moved her hand so the flame connected with the corner of a sheet of music lying on top of the piano.
The illusion continued to convince his senses.
‘Oh, Fiorinda—’
She resumed playing, having crushed the miniature blaze between her fingers. A wisp of smoke and the smell of scorched paper remained.
‘Look. You’ve had genetic engineering that means you can pump out energy from your fingertips, enough to light a room or boil an egg. Ax has a chip in his head that means he can tell me all the postcodes in Billericay, and what the Ministry of Defence plans to do in the event of a nerve gas strike on Coventry, without pausing for thought. Don’t talk to me about weird. I have unusual abilities that I was born with: I know about them and I’ve dec
ided what to do, which is bury them. What’s the difference? I don’t see a difference. I don’t know why you’re raising the subject. I don’t see how what I can do has any connection with so-called “Celtic” animal sacrifices.’
The word Fergal used was magic, he thought.
‘Of course not. Never said there was. You have to tell Ax, that’s all.’
‘Yes, okay, but not now,’ Fiorinda temporised, cunningly. ‘Not right now. Let’s get over David and the blood-cult thing. Then I’ll tell him. As soon as there’s a good moment. Honest.’
FOUR
The Grove
Two weeks after Fergal’s visit to Brixton, Fiorinda was in the dead centre of England, on the border between Leicestershire and Derbyshire: on her way to an extra date on the Festival Season’s royal progress, and taking a side trip to inspect a derelict property for the Volunteer Initiative.
The weather had changed. The sky was baking blue, heavy with heat and silence. She climbed a flight of mossy steps, from the fishponds lost in reeds and rushes to a weed-smothered rose-terrace. Neglect, but no crumbling ruins: how strange that seemed, and yet seven years is not such a long time. She sat on the top step, her back to the apricot-tiled, ambling façade of the old house. It was here, she told herself, feeling nothing.
This is where it began
Roxane Smith came up the steps and sat beside her, arranging the summer version of hir trademark flowing garments.
‘What were you expecting to find?’ s/he asked. ‘Ghosts? It’s a pity the country around this charming lost domain is still soul-free potato fields as far as the eye can see, same at it was in Rufus’s day. But we must feed ourselves.’
‘Nothing. I wanted to see it again, that’s all. Since we were passing.’
‘Hmm… Is the manor still your father’s property?’
They hadn’t broken in, the gates at the road were falling apart, but the visit was unofficial. Time enough to trace the owners of an empty property if they decided the place looked useful for something or other.
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