The Watchmaker of Filigree Street

by Natasha Pulley

  ‘Mr Ito?’ he asked the ugly man.

  He looked up with robin-bright eyes. ‘Yes?’

  ‘My name is Nathaniel Steepleton, I live with Keita Mori. I don’t suppose he’s spoken to you today?’

  Ito’s expression closed. ‘What’s going to happen?’

  ‘Pardon?’

  ‘Why are you here?’ He had a delicate American accent.

  ‘I’m playing in the orchestra. But Mori is missing. Have you heard anything from—’

  ‘Is he supposed to be here?’

  ‘Yes?’

  Ito slipped through the space between the front row seats and steered Thaniel to the side. He was a tiny man, much smaller than Mori. ‘Then he sent you to do whatever he meant to here. Something must be going to happen tonight.’

  ‘No, nobody sent me. I’m playing the piano, that’s all.’

  ‘Who arranged for you to do that?’

  Thaniel opened his hands between them and had to clench them together tight to stifle the need to hit something. ‘Yes. He did.’

  ‘Indeed,’ said Ito. ‘Can you think of nothing … ?’

  ‘Oh, I don’t bloody know, he makes a toy and then I’m working for the Foreign Office, it’s not generally an obvious train of thought. Sorry,’ he added, more quietly.

  ‘No, it’s quite all right. My feelings toward Mr Mori exactly.’ Ito shook his head and cast a long look around the audience and the stage. ‘Well. You had best get back to your piano. Watch for anything … odd.’ He flicked a look up at Thaniel. ‘It is a pleasure to meet another trustee of the Mori Futures Preparation Society, of course,’ he said, with no pleasure whatever. ‘Although I had hoped I was an alumnus rather than an active member now.’

  ‘I thought you two were friends?’

  ‘Friends? I threw him out of Japan,’ Ito said. He drew his lower lip under his teeth to moisten it. Then, ‘He could have killed my wife, you see.’ There was a little silence. Thaniel couldn’t fill it. ‘Please excuse me,’ Ito added, and returned to his aides.

  When Thaniel sat down at the piano again, the oboe-player tapped him and said it was time to tune up. As the seaspray whine of tuning instruments sounded around the marquee, the audience stopped their rustling and settled. Sheet music clattered, and in the strings section, one of the rickety metal music stands collapsed and had to be repositioned. Thaniel watched the starry squeaks as somebody tightened the screw. The oboe-player touched his temple, looking faint. One of the violinists passed him a flask and smiled. It smelled of coffee. Could have killed my wife. No one asked him if he wanted anything or if he was all right. It was Mori who asked those things.

  Mr Sullivan sailed in and bowed to the audience, who clapped. Having rearranged his music, he waved at the orchestra and counted with his baton. Thaniel pushed his knee against the leg of the piano stool, trying distantly to think if anything seemed out of place, but nothing did. He didn’t look too hard. If Mori had left him here to see to whatever it was, it would make itself obvious before long.

  The operetta began and the actors swept on to the stage in glorious, floor-length kimono that made them seem to glide. He played watching the stage. Everything was just as it should be.

  Nothing happened throughout the first half, except when Yuki kicked at the line of costumes just at a solemn moment. He thought that there might be something when the audience dispersed to stretch and buy tea from Osei’s shop, but there was only the usual chatter, and an overlay of excitement, because the performance was going beautifully. He started to think that Ito was wrong and that there was no plan, and nothing would happen, but he was wary of the thought. The last time he had been convinced that nothing would happen was May, when he had nearly exploded.

  Ito was staying near the second row’s brazier instead of venturing out into the cold. One of the aides had been dispatched for tea. There was no sign of Mori.

  Already aching, his neck started to hurt, and he stood up to stretch. He paused when he saw what he thought was a police uniform near the stage, but it was only one of the actors in costume. Even so, it made him nervous. He wanted to hope that if he was missed and if they found him here, then having escaped in order to play for an operetta would be a benign enough thing for them to waive a real arrest, but he doubted it. He tried to feel around the idea of prison. The edges of it were too sharp to touch.

  Somebody bumped into him. When he looked around, Mr Nakamura, the firework maker, ducked into one of his cringing bows.

  ‘I’m sorry … ’

  ‘Everything all right?’ said Thaniel, thinking he looked even more worried than usual, but that was perhaps only because the lines on his face were clearer in light than in the dimness in his workshop. He carried the strong smell of gunpowder with him, and he shuffled away from the nearest brazier.

  ‘Have you seen Yuki?’ he said in a small voice. He sounded like an old man. It wasn’t kind, but Thaniel felt a flash of impatience with him. He would have been going to nationalist meetings and picking fights with samurai too if he had had more of a dormouse than a father.

  ‘He’s around somewhere. Breaking things, I’d imagine.’

  ‘There are some packets missing from the workshop, I need them for the display later. He must have moved them … silly boy … ’

  Thaniel caught his shoulder. ‘What kind of packets?’

  ‘I only know the Japanese names. Chemicals,’ he said hopelessly. ‘For fireworks. For the fire. Oh, there he is. Yuki! Yuki, what have you done with the—’

  Yuki was at the edge of the stage, watching the audience. He usually stood with his arms folded, but they were by his sides now. He was holding a heavy revolver. Thaniel pulled Nakamura back by the belt of his kimono to a feebly surprised protest. It was time wasted, because Yuki had clicked back the safety catch. Nobody else heard. From within the circle of braziers, the boy was invisible.

  Thaniel tackled him and the gun went off. He had never been so close to a gunshot. The noise was like a lightning flash and for a moment he couldn’t hear anything except a high, familiar whine.

  As things came back into focus, silence filled the room. Nothing moved. Thaniel had his hand under the gun’s hammer, the sharp point sinking into his skin because Yuki was still holding the trigger down in an effort to hurt him enough to make him let go. It was all he could do; he wasn’t tall, and there was hardly any muscle across his shoulders.

  ‘Put it down,’ Thaniel said, beside the boy’s ear. Usually his Japanese escaped him the moment he was faced with a Japanese person who was not Mori, but it came as easily as English did now. ‘I don’t want to hurt you.’

  ‘I’ll kill you,’ Yuki said with a strange calm. ‘That man will destroy Japan.’

  ‘We can talk about that later, but this is not honourable. These people are musicians, they’ve done nothing. Look, Mr Ito has gone.’

  The boy looked to the side. Ito and his aides had melted away. Yuki went limp and Thaniel felt the sudden jerk of his ribs as he began to cry. The pressure on the hammer released. He skimmed the gun away from them. It skittered under the seats and came to rest when it bumped into a cello, where the small impact made the strings sing.

  Then there were other men, hauling Yuki up and pulling him outside. Someone was calling to the audience to leave as quickly as possible, although most of them didn’t need telling; the marquee was almost empty already. Thaniel stepped back, away from them all, and retrieved his coat from the piano stool. His hands were steady, though there was a red graze from the gun hammer. The Yard bomb, he realised, had spoiled him for fright. Having lived through that, an unhappy boy with a revolver was not frightening, though he should have been. As he shrugged into his coat, stiffly because his neck hurt again, he couldn’t help thinking that if there had been no chance he might have to save Ito today, he wouldn’t have lived through the fire at the Rising Sun.

  He turned to go, trying to construct a quiet way of getting back inside at home unseen, and walked straight into Mori.
/>   TWENTY-SIX

  Off to the west, the Kensington churches chimed half past six and tinged things briefly blue. Mori was standing awkwardly. His clothes looked as though somebody had dragged him through a coal mine. With a backward glance to where the violinists had found a beat constable, Thaniel hauled him round to the other side of the stage out of sight, more roughly than he meant to. It made Mori stumble. Something had happened to his ankle.

  ‘Where in God’s name have you been? Where’s Grace? Dolly Williamson is on the warpath, I was arrested—’

  ‘There is going to be an explosion,’ Mori said.

  ‘Good, then. Delighted to be involved. Am I going to be in this one, or is there some chance of watching it from further away?’ He checked himself when he saw Mori struggle with the sarcasm like the ambassador sometimes did. On the tail of the thought came a little spark of dismay. He had never known Mori have any trouble with English before. He looked exhausted. ‘Where is it?’ he corrected himself.

  ‘Over there. Nakamura’s shop.’

  ‘Better tell the police. They’ve already got Yuki, he’ll tell them where it is. Nakamura said he was missing chemicals.’

  ‘No,’ he said. ‘Mrs Steepleton is in Matsumoto’s flat, on the balcony, she’s waiting for the … the … fire, the hanabi—’

  ‘What?’ He looked up at the building and counted along to find Matsumoto’s balcony. It was the only flat with lights inside, but the doors were closed and nobody inside would have heard a shout. He dug his fingernails into Mori’s sleeve, wanting to shake him. ‘Never mind. Come on,’ he said. He pulled him toward the lamplit archway that led into Matsumoto’s section of the tall townhouse. ‘You did this, you can damn well see it through. What happened to Grace?’

  ‘I don’t know,’ Mori said, and there was something halting in the way he spoke. ‘She was on the underground. I saw her this morning, but someone … but I fell on the tracks and I think I did know who was there, but I can’t remember now. I should never have – but … I don’t think I knew she would come here.’

  ‘Just go and take apart the bomb before it explodes.’

  ‘I can’t. I can’t find it. It keeps … ’ He shook his head with frustration and swung his hand to and fro. ‘Moving,’ he said in Japanese.

  ‘What do you mean, moving?’

  He only shook his head, and then winced when his neck cracked.

  Thaniel frowned. ‘Did you say that you fell?’

  ‘In the tunnel.’ He looked lost. ‘I don’t know why I was there now. It took a long time to get out. And by then she was back on the … the … kisha.’

  Trains. ‘Mori, you’re forgetting words. Did you hit your head?’

  ‘No. I’m forgetting things I won’t hear again.’ He said it to the ground, and gave up on the English halfway. Because he was favouring his ankle, he was moving unevenly. ‘I can’t remember anything after five minutes from now.’

  Thaniel stopped. They were at the door in the rounded trapezium of light from the expensive lamps. The need to frighten him snuffed out under a cold, creeping frost of an understanding that something had gone wrong. He saw him properly for the first time. There were grazes on his hands, and two parallel dark marks on the inside forearms of his coat. They would have lined up if he put his hands out in front of himself. He had fallen across a railway track and landed almost flat.

  ‘Then you’re going to leave here now and let me fetch her,’ Thaniel said, and willed his English to come back.

  It didn’t. ‘I can’t. There has to be rain, otherwise the fire will … you will never make it away before the other buildings catch. Everything here is wooden. You’ve got it,’ he said, then took the rain vial from him when he didn’t understand.

  ‘How long is there?’ Thaniel asked.

  ‘Th–ree minutes.’

  ‘That’s enough,’ he said. Three minutes was enough to play a reasonable sonata. It was more than enough to go up to the top floor of the building and down again.

  Thaniel pushed open the elevator grille and was about to press the fifth lever when he saw that Mori wasn’t with him. He was looking at the top of the elevator. The ceiling was nothing but copper mesh, and through it, the darkness of the high shaft stretched up and up, striped with light from the upper floors. He came after that tiny lag, but he had clenched his hands so hard that he had cut his palms. As the lift hummed upward, he stood very still, looking at the floor so that he wouldn’t see the flashes of the other hallways they passed, or the gaping darkness above them. Thaniel pushed a handkerchief between his hands to soak up the blood. Mori watched him do it as though his hands belonged to someone else.

  ‘So, Grace and I will go down the stairs,’ Thaniel said. ‘You’ll need the elevator to get down again from the roof. We’ll meet you by the gates. Is it … going to be as big as the Yard?’

  Mori lifted his eyes. ‘I don’t know. I won’t see all of it.’

  ‘Don’t be stupid. You can get down in time, you’ll just have be quick. Look at me. You haven’t forgotten completely, it’s only hard to remember because it’s unlikely.’

  ‘Yes. Probably true. But I still can’t remember.’

  ‘Christ, your hands … ’

  ‘What happened to your face?’ he said quietly.

  ‘Just Lord Carrow.’

  He closed his fingers over Thaniel’s to stop him chasing the blood that had pooled again along the lines of his palms. ‘Be careful with yourself. Please. She will make you much less than you should be, if you aren’t careful. I don’t mean you won’t be happy. But you will be small.’

  ‘Don’t … ’

  The elevator stopped. Thaniel swallowed hard and opened the grille again, and flicked the last lever for the roof, so that Mori wouldn’t have to. ‘I’ll see you soon,’ he promised.

  The elevator disappeared upward. Mori had closed his eyes.

  Thaniel shoved open Matsumoto’s door. It banged against the wall, and in the doorway that led out to the balcony, Grace spun around. She was waiting, he realised, to see if the fireworks would start. The balcony was at the wrong angle for her to have seen what had happened by the pagoda, only the general commotion. She was wearing Thaniel’s clothes, holding his coat closed across her chest against the cold that had seeped into the unheated room. The grate was dark.

  ‘Thaniel, what—’

  ‘There’s a bomb somewhere in here. Yuki tried to kill a Japanese minister, he just shot at him and this must be his failsafe. Stairs, quickly, Mori’s got the elevator. Come on!’

  ‘What do you mean—’

  ‘Now!’ he shouted at her. He couldn’t speak and keep count internally at the same time, but the elevator had taken at least a minute. He pulled her out and down the corridor. Five floors: thirteen, fifteen steps between each, probably. The staircase was wooden when he found it, creaking and old, and the heels of their boots thumped hollowly in the empty space that must have been beneath the steep risers.

  He slowed, because he could hear something peculiar. It was coming from inside the elevator shaft, a skitter of something smooth and steel against the wall, moving irregularly. It wasn’t anything much larger than a rat, because its colour was pale and thin, a watery blue that deepened as it moved further and further down the shaft. There came a greenish slither as it slid down the counterweight’s steel cord, as if the thing had managed to hold on. The shade of it was familiar. It made him think of the tide, and the way the salt water thinned at the edges of incoming waves and grasped the pebbles.

  ‘Thaniel?’

  He lost the sound over the noise of their own steps. ‘Did you see anyone else in here on the way up? There weren’t any lights, but—’

  ‘No, everyone was at the operetta.’

  When they reached the ground floor, he ran back from the building to see up to the roof, and realised with a sick feeling that Mori was still there. The lamps on Kensington High Street cast an orange glow behind the chimneys, just enough to silhouette him.
>
  ‘Mori!’ he shouted. ‘Now is not the time to be afraid of heights! Come down!’

  His heart was loud in his ears from running on the stairs. Grace was already nearer the pagoda than to them. A small wind ruffled the paper lanterns around the empty stage, and the sheet music still clamped into place on the stands. Everyone else had gone. It had been more than three minutes, he was sure of it; still no explosion and still no sign. ‘Climb down to the balcony, you can come down the scaffolding, it looks—’

  Something plinked. It was a neat little noise, the same watery shade as whatever had been falling down the elevator shaft. A strange sigh billowed from the firework shop, and then flames that burst outward. Thaniel was thrown backwards, but as he fell, he saw the blast race up the shaft – he could see the flashes through the windows as it moved upward – and Mori turned around on the roof, looking toward where the explosion would emerge first. It tossed him backwards too, off the edge of the roof. Then he was lost in the smoke. So was Thaniel. It was deep and dense, and strobe flashes of different colours flared somewhere deep in the heart of it, not sound, he realised, but fireworks. The back of his head cracked against the ground. Embers helixed red above him. He didn’t think that he was hurt, but part of him remained sceptical, and was unsurprised when everything faded to an endless grey. From a long way off he heard thunder.

  TWENTY-SEVEN

  Thaniel opened his eyes. There was a ceiling above him, and part of a window. Creaking footsteps walked by. He sat up. It was a hospital ward. He had never been inside a hospital before. It smelled of fearsome disinfectant. Across the far end, two nurses scrubbed the floor on their hands and knees. Stiff, he twisted his head from one side to the other. It must have been a quiet day. The beds around his were empty. Beside him, Grace was slouched in a stiff wooden chair, watching him over a science journal.