The Seeker

by Martyn Taylor

  “Your daddy say if it is the right thing to do then do stop disturbing his rest and get on with it. I won’t tell you what your mammy say because I am a respectable woman and do not use such words.”

  Call opened his eyes and found himself looking at a tiny, elderly, well dressed, white haired West Indian lady leaning on her tricycle walker, glittering eyes staring at him over the top of her bottle bottom thick tortoiseshell and diamanté framed spectacles.

  Without knowing why he jumped to his feet and would have taken a couple of steps backwards but for the bench digging into the back of his calves. This was not a woman who would accept disrespect with equanimity, he knew that instinctively. She looked as though she knew exactly what was what, and why, and had a long history of knocking sense into thick, male heads.

  “I’m sorry if I startled you. I didn’t know I was talking out loud.”

  She laughed. It was a gesture that appeared to require her whole body to make. Her walker shook.

  “Young man, you could not startle me if you tried. At my age I am some long way beyond startlement.” She sat down on the bench as daintily as a bird perching on a branch and patted the wooden slats beside her, indicting he should resume sitting. He did as he was instructed. He did not imagine there were many men who would defy her, and none more than once.

  Call knew he was not a big man, just a little over average height and a little under average weight, but he felt like an elephant sitting next to a mouse. He doubted she was five feet tall and looked so delicately built she would have problems weighing six stones wet through.

  Nevertheless there was a feeling of solidity about her, of a permanence few had. There was a core to her that was immune to the passage of time and the exigencies of life.

  “I am Constant Goodweather,” she announced, folding her hands over a collapsible walking stick she had extracted from the shopping bag on her walker. “You do not need to tell me who you are, Robert Call. Your mammy and your daddy already told me who you are, what you are.”

  “My parents speak to you?” In the surprise at that information he felt he had missed something else Mrs Goodweather had said.

  “They would speak to you, boy, if you just sat quiet long enough to hear them. They worry about you so.”

  He felt a hand wrap itself around his heart and twist. Breathing was almost impossible. It was hard enough for him coping with the damage he had inflicted on his living family. Worrying his dead family was going several steps too far.

  Mrs Goodweather shook her head and wagged the index finger of her left hand in his face. He saw two gold bands on her ring finger, engagement and wedding rings. He wondered what manner of man Mr Goodweather might be. “They are not worried about that, Robert Call. They believe in you, always did and always will no matter how you convince yourself you disappoint them. And you need not concern yourself about Mr Goodweather. My Herbert is at peace.”

  “You visit him here, do you?”

  She laughed and clapped her hands. “Goodness me, no, Robert Call. Mr Goodweather is not dead. He is as alive and well as you or I, only he is back in Kingston playing dominoes with his disreputable friends and drinking far too much rum while I stay here and take care of business.”

  Call didn’t enquire what manner of business that might be. Some things men were not meant to know. “If he is not here, why do you come here?”

  Her laughter this time was derisive. “The dead talk a lot more sense than the living, believe you me, Mr Robert Call, a lot more sense.” She fished a silver flask out of her carrier, removed the top and took a good, long swig of whatever liquor was inside, smacking her lips before wiping them with a large, white linen handkerchief that materialised in her hand from up her right sleeve.

  She offered the flask to him, but he shook his head before the fumes caught in his throat, made breathing almost impossible and instantly brought tears to his eyes. She had not bought that at her local convenience store.

  “Thank you, but no. I do not drink while I’m working.”

  The flask disappeared back into the carrier and Mrs Goodweather’s eyes glittered just a little more brightly. “An admirable habit, Mr Call, admirable. I must admit that Mr Goodweather never subscribed to it, but admirable nonetheless.” He saw her glance momentarily at the carrier and almost heard her debating whether she could have another drink or whether it was still too early. Just before he observed that it was five o’clock somewhere she spoke again. “As for why I come here, well this place has one inestimable advantage over almost everywhere else, two in fact. It is quiet, Mr Call, and it is free, and nobody here expects me to do anything I do not wish to do.”

  A thought suddenly occurred to him. “You aren’t a witch, are you?”

  Her face was weathered in a smile and she reached over to tap his hand. Her skin was hot and dry, almost abrasive. “Oh dearie me, Lord bless us and keep us, Mr Call, no I am not. The Bible tells me to have nothing to do with such creatures. This is New Barnet, not New Orleans. I am just a God-fearing woman who can talk with the dead. There are some of them here who agree with me that you are a handsome young man, desirable even.”

  The idea of being considered ‘handsome’ – or ‘desirable’ – by dead people made him shiver, as did the notion he was young. Whatever he might be chronologically, spiritually he was a bent and weary old man. He patted her hand in his turn. “I do believe you are making fun of me, Mrs Goodweather.” Her expression did not change. She continued to look directly into his eyes, as though trying to see behind them. “You’re not a witch, but you talk with the dead and do not appear to have any difficulty with vampires.”

  She moved her bright pink paisley patterned silk scarf aside to reveal the heavily engraved silver crucifix at her throat. “You may believe I do not have any difficulties whatsoever with vampires, Mr Call. They, on the other hand, have difficulties with me; just as they do with you; just as they did with your father.

  “I was unaware there was another Seeker…”

  There was that laugh of hers again, dry, fragile, knowing. He found it a strangely invigorating sound. “Oh, the good Lord love you, Mr Call, I am not a Seeker, not burdened like you, but I do know what to do should any of the vermin be sufficiently stupid to approach me.” She took out the crucifix and held it in her hand. The body of it was a blade as long as her forearm and she appeared to have no difficulty wielding it. “I have accounted for more than one in my time, but no more than anyone with faith could do, if they took the right precautions.”

  It was his turn to laugh as she hid the crucifix, and they sat in companionable silence until she abruptly got to her feet and took a firm hold on her walker. “Time is to be used, Mr Call, not wasted. You know what you have to do. I suggest you go and do it.” She smiled at him and walked away. He watched her go until she turned out of his sight, when he got to his feet. He did, indeed, know what he had to do.

  Chapter Eight

  Riding the bus back into town, Call did his best to ignore the cosmopolitan crowd of fellow passengers that came and went, the distinctive aromas and languages. Instead, he took out and concentrated on the card he had taken from Cyrano’s room.

  It was thick, glossy black, embossed with the name ‘The Russia House’ in silver lettering that was close enough to Cyrillic to be nearly indecipherable. He had heard of The Russia House – who living in London these days could have escaped hearing of it? – but he had never been there.

  Nightclubs were not his natural scene, certainly not glitzy palaces where the drinks were mostly coloured water and cost more than he sometimes spent on food and drink in a week.

  Turning the card over in his hand did not give him a reassuring feeling, and the closer he got to the centre of town the less he wanted to go there, but nevertheless he changed buses and went west towards Kensington High Street. He was going to go into The Russia House that night and saw no reason to change his habit of carrying out a daytime reconnaissance of enemy territory. Forewarned was forearmed
.

  The six-storey terraced building didn’t look very different to the rest of the High Street, except everything about The Russia House seemed to be either black or dazzlingly bright in the arc lights on the roofline that would defy the darkness of the last days. Why were they on during the day? The bricks, in daylight, were the same ruddy orangey-pink as all the others in that architecturally controlled area. The windows looked the same as they had been when the terrace was built, but somehow the lights had turned them into mirrors.

  Nobody outside The Russia House could see anything on the inside, but those within could see out - like policemen gazing through a one way mirror into an interrogation room. There was something indefinably disturbing about The Russia House, even in daylight, and it was all Call could do to stop himself breaking into a run as he walked past on the other side of the road.

  He continued a long way past before crossing the High Street and walking back, taking the time to enjoy – if that was the correct term – a grossly overpriced, almost unbearably bitter cappuccino and a granola bar that tasted of sawdust at a pavement café, before going to the toilet inside where he turned his jacket inside out so that it was grey rather than blue and put a battered panama hat sporting an MCC egg and tomato, red and yellow band on his head.

  He turned north at the junction before The Russia House and down the alley that should be the access to the rear of the buildings on the High Street. He wouldn’t have wanted to make a delivery there in anything other than a very small van. It was a jumbled mess of poles and low slung cables, green refuse bins, walls topped with razor wire embedded in concrete and more CCTV cameras than some small cities. Like so much else in the city, the public facades of splendour hid private squalor. He had heard it said that, in London, you were never more than 18 feet from a rat. Making his seemingly nonchalant way down that chaotic, stinking alley, he was perfectly prepared to believe that.

  The rear of The Russia House appeared to be somewhat more heavily fortified than a military emplacement in hostile territory. There were thick metal bars at every window, with metal mesh behind the bars. The roofline was dotted with large spotlights, which also graced the walls at intervals.

  He needed little imagination to believe the downpipes were covered with slippery paint. Every visible ledge and window sill was razor wired. Even pigeons would think better of trying to land there. At ground level was a loading dock, complete with a metallic roller door that looked as though it would be proof against a rocket propelled grenade.

  There were three men standing on the dock, crop headed, wearing ill-fitting suits that did nothing to disguise the fact they were bruisers, private security. They were greedily drawing on cigarettes and very clearly ignoring everything in the world apart from their coarse, laughter filled gossip. Not for a second did Call imagine he was not observed, or that it would not be a very bad idea to double back and retrace his steps.

  There was just one way into The Russia House, and it would be the same way out. The front door.

  He thought of changing his appearance again and walking past again to take another look, just in case he had missed anything, but decided against it. He was not prepared to gamble on deceiving the goons on the loading dock. They might act like clowns but all appearances deceived, and he had to act as though they would note everyone who passed, particularly anyone who did not look familiar, anyone who looked as though they did not belong. So would the thug sitting in the camera control room, watching him as he went on his innocent way.

  They were all men to whom no-one was innocent, certainly not themselves. Even if he did discover anything, it would not be worth the risk of ending up in a cellar beneath The Russia House being questioned by someone not bound by the Geneva Conventions, much less the Police and Criminal Evidence Act.

  He told himself that he might be tarring these guys with the unearned brush of being Russian Mafia, but it was better to be safe and alive than sorry and dead. Instead of turning back he walked on and went home, going straight to his bed to get some sleep in preparation for what was going to be a demanding night.

  It was not quite dark when his internal alarm clock roused him. He showered, shaved and dressed himself in his best suit. It might not be Armani but it was smart and had the advantage of being cut so he could carry his pair of large, very sharp blades hidden within it, the better to part vampire heads from vampire shoulders when push came to shove. He would have preferred to wear combat boots or, better still, running shoes, but seeing as the invitation he didn’t have said ‘Dress Smart’ he made do with highly polished, black patent leather dancing pumps.

  He ignored the looks he got on the Underground. There was no point doing anything else. If a man took offence to every glance or unheard remark that came his way in London there was a choice of locations for him to end up – Bedlam, Brixton or an early grave.

  The cabbie he hailed to take him to The Russia House looked at him askance as it was only a couple of hundred yards from the tube station, but he had to accept the fare, it not being south of the river. His expression improved when Call gave him a tenner when he got out and walked away without asking for change.

  The queue outside The Russia House was long and exotic, even for a Tuesday night, with paparazzi scuttling up and down in search of anyone almost famous, swarming around any car that pulled up outside the front doors.

  Call joined the end, and within seconds was uncomfortably aware that he was the singleton amongst a crowd of couples and groups. Oh well, there was nothing he could do about that now. He had reached about twenty from the door when a powder-blue baby Bentley stopped beside him and Roxane exited, dressed to the nines and embracing him with a cry of ‘Darling!’

  He returned the air kiss to both cheeks and allowed her to slip his arm through his, aware that she might look like a delicate flower that would blow away in the breeze but was in reality very much stronger than him.

  The doormen were imposingly tall, darkly bearded men wearing scarlet and black Cossack uniforms. Bandoliers of cartridges crossed their chests. Were the cartridges in them real? Were the guns at their side real? Who knew? The knouts dangling on black leather thongs from their wrists certainly were.

  Their mystery and hints of unaccountable violence only added to the reputation of The Russia House, which was that of a place where anything and everything could happen, and probably did, in the secret rooms into which only the chosen were admitted, and they were sworn to secrecy on pain of never being readmitted. Legions of journalists had tried to gain entry to those rooms, it was said. None had succeeded. This only added to the glamour.

  Standing at the top of the steps, just inside the doorway, was a bald headed man with a black spade of a beard. Even though it was dark he wore mirrored aviator shades, two fingers in the face of fashion. He was dressed in a long, black robe that brushed the floor at his feet.

  A double row of silver buttons ran down the front, each button decorated with an embossed double headed Romanoff eagle bearing the symbols of the Tsar’s holy power in its claws. He was not much less than two metres tall and he would cut an impressive figure even if his bald head were not covered with tattoos, which could – from the right or wrong perspective – seem to come to life, writhing and changing into forms that may be obscene or threatening or both at the same time. He was the ‘owner’ of The Russian House. His word was law there. If anyone questioned it they kept their questions to themselves.

  He called himself ‘Rasputin’, joking that it was he because had known the great man, that he had pulled the monk the river. There was just the slightest suggestion that it was no joke despite him needing to be more than a century old for that to be true. There were even whispers he was the preacher himself, but nobody really gave them any credibility, not really.

  Beside Rasputin stood two men only slightly shorter than him. Both were dressed in expensive suits with open collared white silk shirts beneath. They both had their hair cut slightly longer than a prison crop, and the
ir eyes were hooded, like hawks.

  They had the air of Russia’s nouveau riche about them, men who were in the army or the security services when the USSR imploded and had used their contacts and their ruthlessness to acquire wealth in the aftermath.

  Nobody asked too many questions about such men, because anyone who did had a strong chance of dying very quickly. Their names were Valery Orloff and Ilya Kirilenko. They were the public face of The Russian House, the men whose names were on all the documents, whose signatures were on all the cheques.

  Valery and Ilya knew their place. It was to the side of Rasputin, and half a step behind. Their eyes roved everywhere, watching for only they know what, just like the goons Call had seen at the back of The Russia House that afternoon.

  Chapter Nine

  Call and Roxane waited until their turn came to enter the club, when they were ushered inside by the Cossacks.

  They went through the rotating glass door, giving their tickets to a demurely dressed if very tall young woman just inside the door and entered a glass marble cavern of a foyer that reached right up to the darkness of the roof void, six storeys above. A pharaoh or a Caesar might have paused a moment to wonder whether the extravagance might be too much.

  Chandeliers depended from high above, light sparkling and reflecting and refracting through crystal. There were silver and gold symbols sprinkled on the walls that looked as though they might have some vaguely cabalistic, occult significance that nobody could quite determine any more. Call felt Roxane hug his arm more tightly as she looked around.