Disturbia

by Christopher Fowler

  ‘And quite rightly too,’ said Jason. ‘I’ll show you your elephant and castle in a minute. There’s an emergency exit up here. It isn’t alarmed or anything.’

  ‘How do you know?’ Vince struggled to keep up with him. For a man whose tabescent appearance suggested that he might keel over at any second, Mr Wentworth was surprisingly agile.

  ‘Listen, in my line of business you always make sure you know where the exits are, know what I’m saying? Here.’ He hammered a fist down on the steel exit bar before him and shoved back the great red fire door. A blast of icy air blew in over them, snowflakes satellising in the sudden square of light. ‘Blimey, fresh air in Nine Elms, there’s a novelty.’ He barked out a phlegmy cough, then held out his hand and hauled Vince onto the roof. ‘Come on, squire, you can do it.’

  Vince carefully levered himself onto the narrow concrete ledge that ran past the fire door. At his back an odd four-foot brick wall ran off into darkness. In front of him lay the sluggish ebbing river, and on its north bank the hazy floodlights of the Tate Gallery.

  ‘Follow my finger.’ He held his scrawny arm out, pointing across the yellow grid of the intersection to a battered edifice caught in the traffic’s crossfire. ‘Observe the name of the building,’ Jason instructed.

  Vince could vaguely make out some stone lettering around the edge of the first floor. ‘I can’t read it from here.’

  ‘Then look at the roof.’

  He found himself staring at a large gaudily painted stone elephant. On its back was a giant chesspiece, a rook. ‘That’s the other elephant and castle,’ he explained. ‘A boozer, a right old trouble-spot. People don’t notice the statue from the road, but from up here…’

  ‘Up to steel and stars,’ said Vince, puzzled. Just then, the bricks behind him started to vibrate ominously. He turned in alarm to see a great dark mass curving towards him with a rumble and a screech, and suddenly understood where they were. The club was hollowed out inside the structure of Vauxhall’s vast red-brick railway bridges, with its sweeping roof underneath the track.

  He looked back to see the moon momentarily clear the clouds. The arcing steel lines formed a night smile, silver in the drifting snow. It looked as if the railway line was launching its cargo to the stars. Moments later the track was gone, obliterated by endless thundering carriages on their way to the terminus at Waterloo.

  Chapter 30

  Inside the Hive

  ‘Are you just going to sit there and let him repeatedly flout the rules?’ asked Caton-James. ‘Because if that drug dealer he’s talking to starts putting two and two together, he could wreck everything.’

  ‘You’re joking, of course,’ said Sebastian. ‘We know all about him. He’s just a stupid junkie. He’s not in a position to help Vincent.’

  ‘Right, he’s so stupid he just worked out the answer to the last clue. I don’t understand you, Sebastian. He’s bound to find the next letter and read its contents now that they’re up on the roof together. You promised us Reynolds would be the only one to gain full knowledge of the challenge. After tonight no one else would know a thing, that was the beauty of it, you said. Instead he’s telling anyone who’ll listen. Now you have these—loose cannons—’

  ‘What do you want me to do?’ asked Sebastian quietly.

  ‘I want you to start behaving a little more like a general. We should be cleaning up our house. We need to get rid of the junkie,’ said Caton-James heatedly. ‘Show some balls about it. Our forefathers had to take care of their mistakes. When your own father set up the WBI—’

  A sub-zero glance from Sebastian told him he had over-stepped the mark. ‘I’m fully aware that my father’s plans for the WBI were not based on libertarian concerns.’

  ‘We have to tidy up as we go,’ Caton-James pleaded. ‘I can arrange it if you don’t want to.’

  ‘No, I’ll do it. Where’s Xavier Stevens now?’

  ‘You’ll have to ask Barwick.’

  ‘All right, but this is the last time I’m prepared to let outsiders interfere with the game,’ said Sebastian, draining his glass and setting it down. Caton-James scowled contemptuously as their leader made a great show of rising to his feet and heading for the stairs to the reading room.

  ‘It’s not a game,’ he said under his breath. That was Sebastian’s trouble. He indulged his personal tastes to the detriment of the others. It was time he started looking to his laurels. There were others coming up behind him—faster, stronger men who had little interest in outdated games, and even less in fair play.

  —

  Pam could not breathe. The gag was not tied tightly, but it prevented her from taking air through her mouth, and her nose was becoming blocked. She signalled to Barwick, who finally noticed her discomfort, set down the SAS training manual Caton-James had given him to read and came over.

  ‘I can’t take it off,’ he whispered at her, pointing to the ceiling. ‘They’re upstairs. If you make a noise they’ll hear you and then we’ll both be in trouble.’

  Pam rolled her eyes pleadingly at him for a few minutes, enjoying his tortured indecision, then turned on the waterworks. That did the trick. Barwick slunk back to her and loosened the gag. He wasn’t too familiar with the ways of women. Pam was too smart to start yelling. She realised she was inside the hive, as it were, and that her shouts were only likely to bring her enemies.

  ‘Thank you for doing that,’ she told Barwick gratefully, ‘I couldn’t breathe. Sinuses. And my hands are going numb.’

  ‘I can’t untie your hands, you know that.’ He dragged his chair over to her and sat disconcertingly close, watching her face. He appeared genuinely concerned for her welfare, but she had no way of gauging his sincerity.

  ‘I’m not going to try and get away.’

  ‘I should hope not. Get me into trouble.’

  One look at his weak eyes told her he had absolutely no authority here. She had heard how his colleagues treated him. Her best hope was to use him to glean information. ‘Forgive me, I can’t help noticing,’ she said gently, ‘the others seem very hard on you. Why do you let them push you around so much?’

  ‘Oh, they’re not bad fellows really,’ he said, glancing nervously at the ceiling. In that moment she saw how frightened of them, and how desperate for their approval, he was. For the first time she began to wonder what they were really up to. This was far too elaborate to merely be some form of divertissement for bored aristos. She looked around at the reading-room floor, trying to see what they’d done with her shoulder bag. Her mobile phone was in it.

  ‘I don’t know your first name,’ she said, trying out what she hoped was a nervous smile.

  ‘I don’t tell many people.’ He looked at her shyly. ‘It’s Horace.’

  Christ, no wonder you keep it to yourself, she thought. She was a little insulted to have been left with the stooge of the gang, the traditional court-jester-butt-of-everyone’s-jokes that groups of men always seemed to designate. Clearly she was not deemed to be a major player in the night’s events. Well, she would find a way to change their minds about that. They were dealing with a professional business management trainee now.

  ‘Horace, could you get me a glass of water?’ she asked sweetly, thinking hard. ‘My mouth is really dry.’

  This constituted a major decision for Barwick, whose pained look presumably indicated some kind of tortured thought process involving responsibility within the power hierarchy. Eventually he left her side and brought a half-full plastic bottle of Evian from the table.

  ‘I got into trouble for buying this,’ he told her, removing the cap and allowing the water to run into her upturned mouth. ‘Sebastian was furious. He doesn’t allow plastic at the table. How’s that?’ He had tipped the bottle too high. Water splashed down her chin and dripped inside her blouse. He was staring hard at her wet throat. Perhaps he’d never been this close to a female before. He wasn’t doing too well now, she thought, not when you considered she was tied to a post.

  ‘Wh
y aren’t you upstairs with the others?’

  ‘They needed someone to guard you.’

  ‘And they always give you the crap jobs, don’t they?’

  ‘No, I like doing this, really. I can be useful to them.’

  But never really part of the team, she thought, just the dogsbody. She remembered in her business management classes how to search out the opposition leader and mark a rival, one on one. ‘How do they always know where Vince is?’ she asked, ‘if it’s not giving away trade secrets.’

  Barwick seemed quite happy to talk, almost desperately so. He rubbed his florid chops, thinking. ‘The League has friends everywhere,’ he explained. ‘We all went to university together. And we know lots of people, of course, through—the families,’ he added obscurely.

  ‘What about the traffic cameras? Vincent says you’ve been using them to keep tabs on him.’

  ‘They operate on closed circuit systems, but they have feeds running from them to central monitor stations. The more important ones are dumped down onto IBM hard drives or CD-ROMs at peak hours. And the private infra-red cameras installed by shopping precincts, business developments and public buildings that have to monitor occupancy to comply with fire regulations can be downloaded into a number of West End video suites, where the tapes are collated within a digitalised computer system and stored as back-up copies. We have somebody monitoring your friend’s movements, following him from system to system, and he just ISDNs the appropriate monitor scenes from the suites up to St John Warner’s computer system. Simple, really, although the varying download times can sometimes cause surveillance discrepancies. That’s when we switch to video grabs taken from QuickTime footage on the Internet.’

  Oh God, a techno-nerd, she thought. ‘You like computers, do you?’

  ‘Oh yes, my chosen field, actually.’

  So that was why they’d made him an outcast. She was willing to bet that the others had all taken classical studies. Poor old Barwick had probably been forced to go to Oxford when he had really belonged in a technical college, happily constructing web-sites.

  ‘What’s going to happen to Vince? They’re not going to hurt him just because he wanted to write about your club, are they?’

  ‘Oh no, not at all, he’s in no real harm.’

  ‘I’d argue with that. He’s having a pretty tough time out there by all accounts. I’d be frightened out of my wits, not knowing who to trust.’

  ‘Frightened, yes, but not actually harmed,’ her guard explained. ‘Quite the reverse, actually—’

  ‘What do you mean?’

  ‘Well, he has to be all right for the morning.’

  ‘Why, what happens then?’

  Barwick froze, realising he had already said too much. Damn, the little prick had nearly given something away. And now there was somebody thumping down the stairs. She would have to wait until the two of them were alone again. But hey, if Vince could survive this night, so could she.

  Chapter 31

  The Escort

  ‘You were a good pupil, you know?’

  ‘Yeah, well, you were a good teacher. Really different, the way you saw things.’

  ‘I know. I must have been different to get in so much trouble, not sticking to the educational guidelines. All that “Anarchy in the UK” stuff when I was supposed to be showing you how to make pots. Over there, can you see it?’

  The letter was sealed in a clear plastic bag, taped to one of the sleepers on the railway track behind them. Wentworth vaulted the low wall and began stepping between the rails. ‘Don’t worry,’ he called back, ‘it’s nowhere near the third rail.’ For a sickening moment Vince remembered what had happened to the last person who had offered to collect a letter for him, and stepped forward to stop his former teacher, but it was too late. Wentworth had snapped the plastic packet free from the sleeper and was holding it up. ‘Want me to see what it says?’

  ‘Let’s wait until we get downstairs first.’ Vince held out a hand and helped his accomplice climb back over the wall. There was a mournful echo of metal as another freight train shunted closer.

  ‘What time do you make it?’ Wentworth resealed the fire-escape door behind them.

  ‘Seven minutes to two. Beat the deadline, thanks to you. I don’t think I can handle much more of this.’ His feet were hurting, and a shivery flu-bug sensation had settled in the pit of his stomach. He could not remember the last time he had eaten, or felt so desperately tired.

  ‘Let’s get you a cup of coffee,’ said Wentworth, pushing back the double doors leading to one of the club’s black-light chill-out areas. ‘I don’t know what you’ve got yourself into, but it sounds like you’ve some sorting out to do, some deciding in your head.’

  ‘I’m not so sure it’s a matter of choice. Christ, Jason, look at all the preparations they’ve made. I think I’m intended to see this through to the bitter end.’

  ‘Well,’ said Wentworth, confused, ‘remember you don’t have to do anything you don’t want to do, man.’ He dug sugar packets from the bowl on the bar and emptied three each into their coffees. ‘I mean, it’s elaborate, but it’s only a game, isn’t it? Here, you need plenty of glucose if you’re gonna take some of these. They’ll keep you awake until morning. Actually, you probably won’t sleep for about three days.’ He shook two of the white tablets he had taken from the vial in his jacket into a plastic teaspoon and stirred it into his ex-pupil’s drink.

  ‘If this was just something to teach me a lesson,’ muttered Vince, barely hearing, ‘something to keep me in my place and provide them with amusement, they wouldn’t kill anyone, would they?’

  ‘People kill foxes for the sport of it.’

  ‘I mean, all it does is expose them to risk. Unless I win, of course. What happens then?’

  ‘I don’t know, man,’ said Wentworth, who was adept at shoring up nonsensical late-night conversations. ‘Who does, you know?’

  ‘They’ve planned for everything else. What will they do if I beat them at their own game?’ Vince stirred his coffee thoughtfully and drank. The chemical taste made him wince. He searched around for more sugar. ‘See, that’s what I don’t understand. Even if I fail one of the challenges and they try to have me killed, I could still have the manuscript published. I’m not bound by their rules. Sebastian knows that.’

  ‘Yeah. It sounds very complicated.’ Wentworth’s interest began to wane as he dug around in his pockets for a chunk of dope and started rolling himself a joint. ‘Sometimes you just have to go ahead and do, uh, what you have to do. You know?’

  ‘Okay, let me see what the game is offering this time. Pass over Pandora’s Box.’

  ‘What?’

  ‘The envelope.’

  Wentworth handed him the clear plastic packet. Inside, he found the usual single sheet of white vellum, folded twice.

  The Challenge of the Disgraced Wife

  ‘Oh death rock me to sleep

  Bring on my quiet rest

  Let pass my very guiltless ghost

  Out of my careful brest.’

  —May 19th 1536 at noon

  Lorraine

  Fylfot

  Pomme

  Botonne

  Moline

  Patte Fiche

  Fleury

  Aimee

  ‘For how myght sweetness ever hav be known

  For hym that never tastyd bitterness’

  Time Limit: 120 Minutes

  ‘Poetry’s not my strong point, either,’ said Wentworth, ordering himself a Glenfiddich to accompany his joint. Vince noticed that, as the club’s resident drug dealer, he didn’t have to pay for anything at the bar. So much for the club’s ostensible ‘no drugs’ policy.

  ‘I know the answer to the top part,’ said Vince. ‘It’s not poetry—at least, not intentionally. It’s very well known, though. Anne Boleyn’s last words, spoken on the morning of her execution on Tower Green, right in the middle of the Tower of London. Surely they don’t expect me to break into the place. I
t would be impossible to get in at this time of night, anyway. Nobody goes in or out after the Ceremony of the Keys takes place.’

  ‘I guess they want to make you try scaling the walls or something.’ Wentworth’s laugh became a hacking cough.

  ‘No,’ said Vince, ‘it’s not right. If they wanted to send me to the Bloody Tower, why not set the challenge earlier, while there was still a realistic chance of getting inside? Sebastian likes misdirecting me. This has to be somewhere else.’ He turned his attention to the second part. ‘I don’t have the faintest idea what those are. Painting techniques, regional languages, vintage wines, could be anything. I’ll have to call someone.’ But not from here. He needed to find somewhere a little less noisy.

  ‘So you’re gonna go back out there on the streets?’ He sucked hard at the joint. ‘London, man. All those centuries of civilisation, for what? We tried to raise ourselves to heaven, but something snapped and we just fell back to earth. We were in sight of the gods, now we’re grubbing about in the ruins. London. From a celestial city of dreams to an urban dystopia. That’s what it is now. Urban dystopia. Disturbia.’

  ‘Jason? You okay?’

  ‘Yeah. Fuck.’ He wiped his eyes. ‘Let me see that page.’ Vince handed him the letter. Wentworth studied it with his brow furrowed. He nodded slowly as he read, finally emitting a grunt of comprehension.

  ‘Well?’

  ‘Haven’t a fucking clue, man. It’s a puzzle of some kind, isn’t it?’

  Vince had forgotten how infuriating dopeheads could be. He made a mental note not to forget again.

  ‘Listen, I have a business transaction to conclude in the bar downstairs,’ said Wentworth, rising. ‘I’ll meet you outside in a few minutes, give you a hand with this. ’Cause you need someone with a clear head.’