by Kim Newman
Allie wasn’t sorry any of them were dead. If she was crying, it was for her father, for the chickens, for the vegetable garden.
‘I assume Goodwife Ames no longer has to worry about her cows being destroyed?’ Lytton asked.
The Reeve nodded, tightly.
‘I thought so.’
Draper ordered Gary Chilcot to gather the wounded and get them off Gosmore Farm.
‘Take the rubbish, too,’ Susan insisted, meaning the dead.
Chilcot, face painted with purple butterflies, was about to protest but Lytton still had the gun.
‘Squire Maskell bain’t givin’ out no more pay packets, Gary,’ the Reeve reminded him.
Chilcot thought about it and ordered the able-bodied to clear the farm of corpses.
* * *
Allie woke up well after dawn. It was a glorious spring day. The blood on the grass had soaked in and was invisible. But there were windows that needed mending.
She went outside and saw Lytton and Susan by the generator. It was humming into life. Lytton had oil on his hands.
In the daylight, Susan seemed ghost-like.
Allie understood what it must be like. To kill a man. Even a man like Squire Maskell. It was as if Susan had killed a part of herself. Allie would have to be careful with Susan, try to coax her back.
‘There,’ Lytton said. ‘Humming nicely.’
‘Thank you, Captain,’ said Susan.
Lytton’s eyes narrowed minutely. Maskell had called him Captain.
‘Thank you, Susan.’ He touched her cheek. ‘Thank you for everything.’
Allie ran up and hugged Lytton. He held her, too, not ferociously. She broke the embrace. Allie didn’t want him to leave. But he would.
The Norton was propped in the driveway, wheeled out beyond the open gate. He walked stiffly away from them and straddled the motorcycle. His leg wound was just a scratch.
Allie and Susan followed him to the gate. Allie felt Susan’s arm round her shoulders.
Lytton pulled on his gauntlets and curled his fingers round the handlebars. He didn’t wince.
‘You’re Captain James Lytton, aren’t you?’ Susan said.
There was a little hurt in his eyes. His frown-lines crinkled.
‘You’ve heard of me.’
‘Most people have. Most people don’t know how you could do what you did in the War.’
‘Sometimes you have a choice. Sometimes you don’t.’
Susan left Allie and slipped round the gate. She kissed Lytton. Not the way Lytton had kissed Janet Speke, like a slap, but slowly, awkwardly.
Allie was half-embarrassed, half-heartbroken.
‘Thank you, Captain Lytton,’ Susan said. ‘There will always be a breakfast for you at Gosmore Farm.’
‘I never did give you the ten shillings,’ he smiled.
Allie was crying again and didn’t know why. Susan let her fingers trail through Lytton’s hair and across his shoulder. She stood back.
He pulled down his goggles, then kicked the Norton into life and drove off.
Allie scrambled through the gate and ran after him. She kept up with him, lungs protesting, until the Village Oak, then sank, exhausted, by the kerb. Lytton turned on his saddle and waved, then was gone from her sight, headed out across the moors. She stayed, curled up under the oak, until she could no longer hear his engine.
THE MAN ON THE CLAPHAM OMNIBUS
Throat clogged with sulphurous filth, Orlando clung to a skinny lamp-post and coughed out his lungs. Stinging, liquid ropes hung from his mouth and nose; he shook them away, and wiped the last snail-tracks on his coat cuff. God Almighty knew, worse was on his clothes. The harder he ran, the more fog he inhaled, which forced him to stop and noisily purge his chest. It was as good as shouting ‘come on and get me’ to the conductors. There were three uniforms, and he did not doubt they wanted to do him harm, certainly grievous, probably fatal.
He looked up at the eye-blue lamp-flame, piss-green in the sick-yellow murk. His eyes smarted, and crossed when the fore horn of his too-large tricorn hat dipped into his vision. London fog wasn’t proper weather, but airborne industrial waste from the tanneries, factories and processing plants along the Thames. The famous pea-soup was so heavy with flammable by-products that spontaneous combustions of the atmosphere were common. When the yellow tide rose to the level of the burning gas-lamps, whole streets could go up in a swift puff of flame: cats burned hairless, faces blacked for music hall minstrel turns, buildings dusted with soot. Just now, that might be a mercy.
His ears were rat-sharp, as well they might be. All too often he needed eight or nine senses to get out of scrapes like this. He listened for footsteps, the clank of ticket machines, the creak of boot- and strap-leather. The conductors might not be interested in a ninepenny fare to Streatham Hill, but they had the full London Transport kit. Now he thought of it, the gear was too new, too mint. And what were the chances of three random busmen being white? Next time he was tempted to rely on public transport, he would get a minicab and flip for the fare with his two-headed sovereign.
The conductors were near. He wondered if there were a manhole in the road nearby. If possible, he wanted to avoid the sewers.
The labyrinth below the city had its own particular dangers. Even this far south of Hampstead, the Black Swine ruled the tunnels. Their forefathers had gone underground two centuries back, and piggy generations had bred away from the light, subsisting on human ordure and carrion, developing fearsome tusks, wrought-iron hides and extra-sensitive snouts. Those eyeless pork-goliaths could fetch off a good-sized workman and render him to bones in minutes. It was rumoured they picked late-night drunks from platforms along the Jubilee Line Extension. Orlando was small enough to pass for a boy if a recruiting sergeant was about. His wrists and ankles twisted the wrong way, and his back had a kink that came whenever, as now, he was forced to exert himself. He was not up for a tussle with mutant man-killer pigs.
A shrill whistle cut through the fog. The first few notes of ‘Champagne Supernova’. Another whistle answered, further off, carrying on the tune, strangling the notes.
They were triangulating on him.
Orlando was determined not to be killed by Oasis fans. It would be too much bleeding embarrassment. Manchester was a spent force, still occupied by the Army of the South-East. Just after the reunification, he had been up North with a carpet-bag full of Abbey Road acetates, but few fortunes were to be made on the club scene for anyone with his accent.
He controlled his racking cough and stood still. He had taken care to practise the trick of slipping into the fog, becoming one with the night.
Ordinary bus conductors would never have found him. These fellows, however, had fog-skills of their own. Since the Civil War, a lot of dangerous people were milling in with the general citizenry.
Even before he saw the vaguest shape in the fog, a peaked cap and broad shoulders, Orlando heard footfalls. Good boots—too good for a ticket-puncher—on cobbles.
He thought of shinning up the lamp-post. If there was an overhanging roof, he might scramble up and down valleys of slick slates. Being small, light and crooked was an advantage up among the chimney pots.
But they were on him.
A long knife sliced across his coat, ripping the shirt-ruffle at his throat, cutting through the strap of his pannier-like satchel. Hands tore the satchel away from him. Nothing was in it he couldn’t afford to lose: a roll of snide cup tie tickets that’d pass in indifferent light, a bundle of French postcards manufactured in Romford, half of one of Bellamy’s pork pies, pirated wire recordings of the last two weeks’ worth of Mrs Dale’s Diary.
A hard face emerged from the gloom. One eye was clouded, yellow as the fog.
‘I didn’t see nothing,’ Orlando said.
‘Anything,’ the man corrected. ‘You didn’t see anything.’
Yellow-Eye didn’t speak like a busman. His tone was more like a wireless announcer, correct and superior.
Orlando nodded, agreeing with him.
But he had seen the man on the bus. And the conductor knew he had seen him, had recognised—as anyone would—the face, and was asking himself questions.
Orlando wished he could burn out that segment of his past, touch a lit cigarette to his memory of the face as he could if it were printed in a newspaper.
It was no use.
Hands took his arms. The other conductors.
He had a two-shot pistolet holstered in the small of his back, a pig-knife in his boot, brass-knucks in his coat pocket, a pepper spray in his trousers-pocket, a straight razor in the concealed partition of his satchel and a loop of cheesewire inside his hat. All useless now.
Hands frisked him, professionally. They found everything.
‘Evidently, we have a charming character on our hands,’ said Yellow-Eye. ‘His real paper is in the sufficiently outlandish name of Orlando Boldt, Esquire, but he feels the need to port far less convincing fall-backs in the names of Aloysius Stonecarver, Brendan Two Roses, and, ah, Righteous Pilgrim Furie. Makes things easier all round, I think. This singular fellow would appear to be an entire krewe of double-desperate men.’
‘I know my rights,’ said Orlando.
‘I’m sure you do, Goodman Boldt. As should all public-spirited citizens.’
Orlando thought fast, but got nowhere: he had to pretend to be stupider than he was, stupider than his captors knew him to be, to go along with the game in the hope a hole would turn up, a hole he could slip through. Away from these three, he knew where to go, who to see. If he made a big enough noise, he’d save his life, make such a fuss that he would himself become insignificant. Then, other folk could do the threatening, fighting, wounding and dying.
‘I want a brief,’ he spluttered. ‘I can explain.’
Yellow-Eye laughed, nastily. ‘I’m not a policeman, I’m a bus conductor.’
‘And I’ve got three arses,’ Orlando replied.
He knew Yellow-Eye would hit him and that he’d be good at it, know where to land the blow. Orlando clenched his gut and closed his thighs, but the conductor chopped him across the throat.
His adam’s apple crunched and he spouted phlegmy spittle over Yellow-Eye’s uniform chest. He doubled over, all his weight dragging off-balance the conductor who had his arms pinned.
The knife was there again, at his face.
‘Three against one,’ said a new voice. ‘Scarcely sporting.’
The new man spoke like Yellow-Eye, precisely and with an officer’s command. Maybe it was the shaking his skull had just had, but to Orlando the man sounded like deliverance, voice resounding off the stones of the nearest buildings.
The third conductor, the one who had searched him, took a pistol out of his change-bag and there was a shot.
Orlando’s sensitive ears rang.
The shot had come not from the third conductor, who was looking surprised, a splash of blood dead-square in his chest, but from the new man. A swirl of the fog had combusted from the spark and Orlando saw a black-browed face lit yellow as by a stage magician’s flare. He didn’t know the man personally, but recognised him. During the Civil War, his face had been famous, often appearing in the illustrated press. There were ballads and broadsheets about his deeds. These last few years, the face was less often seen than the name heard.
Lytton. Captain James Lytton.
He had made some hard choices. Orlando understood Lytton hadn’t turned up to collect his medals at the War’s end. The rumour mill had him out West somewhere, camping with the hippies at Glastonbury or communing with Arthur at Tintagel.
Now he was here, somewhere just North of Clapham Common, an avenger with a pistol. Orlando made a poor maiden in distress, but this was still like a cover engraving of any number of Andy McNab’s Ninepenny Marvel. The ruffians, the victim, the gunman emerging from the fog. It was the sort of situation Orlando associated with Dr Shade, the penumbral outlaw adventurer whom the editors of the Halfpenny Wonder and Union Jack Weekly had sworn was real. The scene lacked only a faithful hound.
Conductor-in-chief Yellow-Eye made a motion to slit Orlando’s throat and get it over with. Lytton fired again, and the knife-hand vanished into red, gritty mist that went all over Orlando’s face and shirt. The blade blasted into the distance, and clattered against a wall.
Yellow-Eye didn’t make a sound, though the blood was squeezed out of his lips and into his eyes. With his left (remaining) hand, he reached behind his back, for a holster. Lytton didn’t bother with a warning shot, and put his next ball in the man’s head, settling his clouded eye problem once and for all. For a heartbeat, Orlando thought even that wouldn’t stop the artist formerly known as Yellow-Eye, now liable to be tagged briefly as Red-Socket. The conductor-in-chief jerked backward, but continued to draw his own pistol, bringing it round, aiming the long barrel generally at the Captain. Then he crumpled.
The third conductor still had a grip on Orlando’s arms. He swivelled and held Orlando up, using him as a shield.
Lytton stepped forward, gun raised. The fog seemed to part to make way for him. A tall man, he wore a long motorcyclist’s coat and a broad-brimmed hat. His bootfalls were heavy. His eyes glinted, even through the fog.
The surviving conductor backed away, dragging Orlando, but collided with the lamp-post. He dropped Orlando and scarpered into the fog.
Orlando twisted as he fell, jamming his hands against cobbles, feeling the impact in his wrists and elbows. He sat, and found Lytton knelt over him.
‘Nothing broken?’ the Captain asked, like a doctor. His long-barrelled six-shot revolver was still drawn and cocked.
Orlando checked himself and shook his head. He wasn’t really in much worse shape than usual.
Lytton nodded towards the two dead men.
‘I’d heard the Lord Mayor Elect took a tough line on fare dodgers, but this seems excessive.’
Whistles sounded, nearby. The sort that never failed to scrape Orlando’s nerves. Police whistles.
‘It’d probably be for the best if we moved on,’ Lytton said.
Orlando agreed with him.
* * *
One of the Lord Mayor Elect’s most popular campaign promises was revision of draconian licensing laws that had come as a relief in the latter stages of the Civil War. Even pubs forced to close at half past ten of an evening had been welcomed after a spell of brutally enforced temperance. Lord Protector John Minor, desperately trying to sustain the coalition, had committed himself to the experiment to gain the support of one of the more obnoxious Puritan factions. Actually, Prohibition had been a magic time for Orlando; touting for the shebeens that mushroomed into existence, he’d been in the gravy. The stew of ill-advised moral heavy-handedness had thrown up more than a few black economy millionaires.
Until the Assembly passed the new raft of London laws, every street in the city still had its illegal after-hours grogshop or lock-in, but all were wary of new faces. It’d probably be an even worse idea to show himself where he was known. The conductor who had fled knew Orlando’s name and too many of his Sunday best aliases. Yellow-Eye had sneered at his forged papers, but they were of the highest quality. The conductor-in-chief must have had an eye for snide, a skill hardly picked up to cope with a wave of counterfeit bus passes. He had every reason to believe the people the conductors worked for could get the word out faster than a town crier or a Newgate pamphleteer.
So hiding in a boozer was out. And a fancy house—of which there were several within easy distance—was a worse idea. Drunks might be too sozzled to remember to sell you out, but a tart always sniffed potential profit and had no concept of loyalty. Orlando’s Mum, who worked under the nom de slut of Fifi la Française, had repeatedly informed on his Dad, who went by the slightly too-giveaway handle Burglar Bill Boldt, sending him away to Pentonville for long stretches to pocket the escalating reward money. She even nagged the old man to go for quality blags so the Judas purse on him would swell enough to be worth the claiming. They w
ere retired to Hove now; Mum was still at it, grassing on Dad for fiddling his pension claims.
Orlando and Lytton walked across Clapham Common, wading through a knee-high fog pool that soaked trouser-cuffs and would eventually eat through boots.
Where to go?
Orlando’s crib in Streatham would be blown. The Captain was newly arrived in the city, and had yet to secure lodgings for the night.
It was best to keep walking.
He volunteered no explanation of the contretemps with the conductors. The Captain must be wondering if he had not intervened on the wrong side. Orlando could make no claim to good character and his assailants were uniforms, deporting themselves as if empowered to give him a hard time.
That face. The man on the bus.
Orlando still didn’t have an idea what the business was all about, but knew it was momentous.
Police whistles shrilled again, in the distance. There were disturbances at the edge of the Common. With luck, the peelers would turn up enough citizens unwilling to explain their presence to keep them busy until morning.
A gent in a natty cutaway coat hobbled past at top speed, trews around his knees, dickybird waving like a broken spigot, shrieking in what Orlando recognised as Welsh. Taffs were all cracked, from coal dust and lava bread. Without discussion, Lytton and Orlando stopped walking and stepped close to tall bushes, swirling fog cloaking around them. A whistle sounded close by, and a fat plod galumphed past, nipplehead hat wobbling, truncheon out at the ready. He gained on the Welshman and launched himself with a roar, bearing his quarry into the thick of the fog.
Beyond their sight, a severe beating took place. By the sound of it, more constables pitched up to help the queer-bashing. One lovingly whistled the theme to Dixon of Dock Green to cover yelps and thumps. The bastards always did that. Anyone who thought community coppers were really like George Dixon on the wireless was in for a nasty surprise. The Lord Mayor Elect had promised yet another inquiry into corruption at the Met, and word on the street was that he might actually mean it.
The hapless perv was dragged off by the rozzers, whining ‘don’t you know who I am, boyos?’ between truncheon-taps. Then, the commotion was over. The fog was thick all around, and they were far enough from gas-light for yellow to seem sludgy grey. In a natural hollow, Orlando and Lytton were surrounded by bushes: a fine site for an assignation or an assassination.
