by Mark Morris
I shook my head irritably. ‘You weren’t there. You didn’t see it.’
‘Can I see it now?’
I felt weirdly reluctant. Possessive even. ‘I thought you’d already seen it?’
‘I have, but only under glass. I never really paid much attention to it when I worked there.’
I hesitated for a couple of seconds longer without really knowing why – it wasn’t because I was afraid the heart might suddenly become a weapon again; at least, I don’t think so – and then I unzipped my jacket pocket. I reached in gingerly, as if afraid I might get bitten, and lifted out the heart, cupping it delicately in my hand, as if it was a living creature. When I placed it on the desk between us, Clover craned forward to examine it, her face wary.
‘Be careful,’ I said.
‘I am being careful.’
For a few seconds neither of us spoke, both of us staring at the heart.
‘Can I touch it?’ Clover asked finally.
I shrugged and she tentatively caressed the thing, her fingertips moving over the veins and bumps and protuberances. After a minute she got bolder and picked the heart up. I felt a stab of anxiety.
‘Watch it.’
‘Don’t worry. I’m not going to put it close to my face.’
She rolled it slowly from hand to hand, scrutinising it from all angles. ‘It looks like it’s carved from a solid lump of obsidian.’
I nodded and asked, ‘What are we going to do?’
She sighed and put the heart back on the desk. ‘Wait for further instructions, I suppose.’
‘And then what? I’m a murderer now. A hunted man.’
Clover frowned. ‘I don’t know. For now our options are limited. We don’t know who our contact is. And we don’t know who killed the men at the hotel, or why.’
‘I’m guessing whoever killed them wanted that,’ I said, nodding at the heart.
‘Which is our only trump card at the moment. The fact that we’ve got what everyone else seems to want.’
I snorted. ‘That’s hardly comforting. I feel like the bloke holding the meat while hungry lions close in on all sides. I wish I could just get rid of the thing and let whoever wants it fight it out between themselves.’
‘But where would that leave Kate?’ Clover said. ‘If the heart falls into the wrong hands…’
‘Do you think I haven’t thought about that?’
She looked away. ‘Sorry.’
I felt bad for having a go at her. Unless she was playing a devious game, none of this was her fault.
‘Me too,’ I said. ‘And you’re right. We need to sit tight and wait for email man to get back in touch. Once he finds out about the Japanese guys he’s bound to, isn’t he?’
Clover looked at me strangely.
‘What?’
‘I don’t really want to say it, but…’
‘But what?’
‘What if he thinks you killed them?’
For a minute I was stumped. My head was so messed up that that hadn’t occurred to me. At last I said, ‘He won’t.’
‘How do you know?’
‘Because why would I? What could I possibly gain from it? Besides, those guys had been torn apart. They didn’t even get a chance to fire their guns. I’m not Superman, Clover.’
‘You think whoever killed them is?’
I hesitated. I had already told her that the men had been ripped apart, that I’d found a hand still clutching a gun on the toilet seat, but I don’t think she had fully considered the implications. ‘I think whatever killed them… well, I don’t think it was human.’
She gave a nervous half-laugh. ‘What do you mean? That it was some kind of animal?’
I shrugged. ‘If it was, it would’ve had to have been something like a gorilla. But a bloody fast one. One that moved like lightning.’
She frowned, and almost tetchily said, ‘Come off it, Alex. Isn’t it more likely that the men were killed – shot maybe – and then chopped up? Maybe the hand was planted there as some kind of sick joke.’
I was sorely tempted by her theory, but I couldn’t shake the image of how the dead men’s flesh and bone had been twisted and torn.
‘You didn’t see them,’ I said. ‘Besides, I haven’t told you everything.’
‘Oh?’
‘I’ve a feeling I might have been followed back here by whatever killed those men.’
Her eyes widened. ‘What do you mean?’
I told her about the thing I’d seen outside, that had jumped across the alleyway from one roof to another.
‘But that’s impossible!’ she said. ‘The gap’s about… eight metres.’
I shrugged.
‘You must have seen a bird or something. Or a plane in the sky.’
I was about to reply when, faintly, we heard a crash from upstairs.
Our eyes met. I wondered if she was thinking the same thing as me: Here it comes.
The crash was followed by screams, shouts, a tinkle of breaking glass so faint it was like the sound of distant wind-chimes. Instinctively I snatched up the heart and zipped it back into my pocket.
‘Is there a back way out of here?’ I asked.
Clover circled the desk and ran to the door.
‘Clover!’ I snapped.
She yanked the door open. ‘I have to see what’s happening.’
‘I don’t think that’s a good idea—’
But she was already out the door and heading down the corridor. I hesitated a second, wondering whether to find my own way out of there, but even as the thought crossed my mind I knew there was no way I could abandon her. ‘Fuck,’ I said and gave chase.
I caught up with her unlocking the door into the club. From beyond came the sound of mayhem – people shouting and screaming, things breaking and falling over. I grabbed her hand as she reached for the door handle.
‘Clover, wait.’
She tried to twist out of my grip. ‘Let me go.’
‘Listen to it out there,’ I said.
She swung to face me, her eyes wide. ‘Alex, it’s my club. My responsibility.’
I clenched my teeth in exasperation. ‘All right,’ I muttered. ‘I won’t stop you. But we need to be careful. Clover, look at me.’
There was anger on her face, but she did as I asked.
‘The likelihood is that whatever’s on the other side of this door killed the two guys at the hotel. That means that even though this is your club, you can’t just walk out there and start shouting the odds. So let’s not be reckless, okay? Let’s take this nice and slowly. Do you understand?’
She still looked angry and scared, but she gave a quick, sharp nod. ‘Yes.’
‘Okay,’ I said. ‘So let me go first. You stick close behind me.’
‘What are you?’ she asked. ‘My indestructible human shield?’
‘Hardly.’
As carefully as I could I opened the door. Just a crack at first, and then I pulled it wider. The first thing I saw was a man lying on his face a few metres to my left. He was motionless, but in the dim light it was hard to tell what had been done to him. I heard Clover gasp and knew she had seen him too.
‘Take it easy,’ I whispered.
I eased my way through the gap, Clover sticking close, like a shadow. Although the music was still thumping away, in the last minute all the other sounds we’d heard – the crashes and thuds and screams – had ceased.
Further to my left I could see that many of the optics behind the bar had been smashed, various coloured liquids dripping from the jagged remains of the upturned bottles. There was no sign of Robin the barman, or anyone else for that matter – no one upright and moving, at any rate. From where we were standing in the doorway, partly sheltered by the stairs to our right, I could see three other bodies. One belonged to the fat man in the light blue suit who had been talking to Clover earlier. He was spreadeagled on the floor like a cartoon drunk, his head propped against the bottom of the bar. There was a dark, lumpy smear on the gl
assy surface above his head, and for a few seconds I was puzzled by the fact that he appeared to be wearing shades which had partly melted and dribbled down his face, before realising that his eyes had been gouged out and the empty sockets were leaking tears of blood.
I looked away from the fat man and focused on the other two bodies, both men, sprawled in awkward positions as if they’d been felled while running. At first I wondered whether they had been shot and then I saw that what I’d taken to be a bunch of dark clothing on and beside the belly of one of the men were his innards. He’d been gutted.
I was about to suggest to Clover that we go back through the door and lock it behind us when she gave a squeal of shock. I looked to my right and saw a squat figure appear round the bottom of the staircase and come blundering towards us. I tensed, ready to defend myself, and then realised it was Mary. At first I couldn’t see what was wrong with her, apart from the fact that her eyes were bulging and her mouth was open in a silent scream. I noticed she had something around her neck, something that appeared to be part thick grey muffler and part… what? In the dimness I could make out what looked like the cannibalised innards of an old clock: cogs and spools and little brass levers all working against one another.
What the hell could it be? A collar of some kind? A torture device? Whatever it was, it was wound tightly around her neck and those parts that weren’t mechanical seemed to be made of some strange, glistening material. I stepped forward with the notion of aiding Mary in some way, and that was when the collar came alive. It whirred and slithered, and a portion of it reared up behind Mary’s head.
Clover screamed.
The thing had the face of a grey-skinned baby. But one that had been nightmarishly modified, stretched over some kind of circular brass frame and held in place with metal pins as long as my own fingers. It had black, gleaming orbs instead of eyes and its plump grey lips were peeled back to reveal not gums and a tongue, but a whirring, clicking mass of minuscule clockwork components. The body of the thing was eel-like, but as thick as my arm and several times longer. As it tightened its coils around Mary’s throat, she dropped to her knees. Her hands came up and scrabbled weakly at the creature’s glistening grey flesh. Her face was purple now, the whites of her eyes filling with dark spots as the blood vessels burst. Her mouth was all tongue, which stuck out between her lips, so bloated with blood it looked almost black.
Although the thought of getting close to the thing disgusted and terrified me, I couldn’t just stand there and watch Mary die. I stepped forward, but as soon as I reached out the creature’s ‘neck’ flexed and its head shot forward like a striking snake. I snatched my hand back, horrified as a double row of jagged metallic teeth concertinaed out on an extendable jaw made of fused bone and metal, and clacked together on empty air that a split second earlier had been occupied by my fingers.
‘Fuck!’ I shouted. ‘I need a weapon!’
Clover was pressed against me, fingers digging into my arm tightly enough to leave bruises. Her voice was a thin shriek. ‘Use the heart!’
‘How?’
‘I don’t know! Just try it!’
I dug into my jacket pocket and pulled out the heart. Despite what had happened earlier the idea of using it as a weapon seemed ludicrous. I held it up, pointing it at the creature. But as I waited for something to happen, I heard a horrible crack, and the life went out of Mary’s swollen face, her eyes rolling back in her head. Clover screamed, ‘No!’ as Mary’s body spasmed and went limp. The heart continued to sit there in my palm like a lump of useless black stone as the eel-creature slackened its grip on poor Mary’s throat and her body hit the floor like a spud-filled sack.
Uncoiling itself from her neck, the eel-creature reared up like a cobra, its grotesque baby-face weaving from side to side. I backed up, almost treading on Clover’s toes, ushering her towards the partly open door from which we had emerged. As we retreated, Clover’s breaths rapid with the distress of what she had seen, something moved over by the stage. Keeping the eel-thing in my peripheral vision, I glanced in that direction.
Clover whimpered as something unfolded from the stage. Bathed in spotlights, which blazed from above and below, it gave the impression it was rising from an effulgent sea. Squinting, I initially thought that it was some kind of vast bird. And then, as it extended to its full height and stepped forward to stand at the front of the stage, like a diver perched on the edge of a diving board, I realised it was a man.
It was not a normal man, though. He was impossibly tall and thin, a ragged overcoat hanging from his bony shoulders like the wings of a gigantic bat. His head was long and white and narrow and completely bald, and he was wearing rimless round spectacles – either that or his eyes were nothing but pale, reflective discs.
At first I thought his mouth was tiny and thin-lipped, but then he smiled, and the smile split his face like a widening vertical wound. It stretched and stretched, and grew redder and redder, and as it did so he slowly raised his arms, like a conductor poised to begin a concert performance.
Immediately the arms began to grow, to elongate, to stretch towards us. I heard a clicking and a whirring as they did so, and then I saw the tips of his long, pale fingers peel back like the opening petals of a flower. I watched with horror and astonishment as syringes, each one tipped with a hypodermic needle, emerged from the holes of the fingers of his left hand, a succession of scalpels and drills from the fingers of his right. The syringes were transparent, and filled with a cloudy fluid. I even saw a bead of liquid at the tip of one of the needles catch the light and glitter like a tiny jewel.
Then Clover was screaming my name and wrenching my arm, pointing upwards. I looked up and was appalled to see that I had been so distracted by the man on the stage that I had failed to register his army of freaks, which were now slithering and buzzing and clacking towards us. It was a nightmare conglomeration of flesh and machinery, the heads and limbs and viscera of children and animals intermingled with components that appeared to have been gleaned from Victorian engines and time-pieces and weaponry.
There was something that looked like a large mechanical beetle, albeit with the dangling limbs of a small child, chugging through the air towards us, leaking a trail of oily vapour; there was a stubby, brass-coloured cannon-like device that swooped and darted through the air, propelled by the white, outstretched wings of an owl; there was a clicking, spider-like contraption with the face of a mewling cat that scuttled sideways along the wall, defying gravity; there was a limbless girl in a glass bell jar who rolled and lurched towards us on a complex lash-up of pipes and pulleys and caterpillar tracks.
So fascinating and hideous was this advancing parade of horrors that I might have stood, gaping, and allowed them to overwhelm us if Clover had not grabbed me by the collar and wrenched me backwards. A split second later a dozen or so metallic needles buried themselves in the wall beside my head. Startled, I realised that all of the advancing creatures were armed in some way. Even now weaponry of one sort or another – nozzles and tubes and whirling blades – was shunting into place, powering up, swivelling in our direction.
Stumbling and almost falling over one another, Clover and I threw ourselves back through the door and slammed it behind us. Clover locked it while I shoved the heart back in my pocket.
‘Where now?’ I yelled, my heart racing with adrenaline, my limbs tingling with shock, my thoughts jagged with sheer disbelief at what I had seen.
She led me back along the corridor, past her office and into a room on the left. It was nothing but a poky storeroom, stacked with boxes across which was laid a thick swag of faded blue curtain. Against the far wall leaned a set of stepladders, an old ironing board and half a dozen fold-up chairs. I looked around for a hidden door but couldn’t see one. I even looked up at the ceiling, searching for a skylight.
‘What—’ I started to say, but Clover, bent almost double, barged me aside. Off-balance, I stumbled, throwing up my hands to stop myself crashing into the wall. I t
wisted angrily, to see that Clover was dragging aside a rug I’d been standing on. Underneath was a trapdoor with an iron ring set into a circular groove so that it was flush with the floor. She dug her fingers under the ring and heaved and the trapdoor started to open. I rushed forward to help, shoving the trapdoor all the way up until the folding hinge that supported it had snapped into place.
Cold air wafted up from the opening, accompanied by a dank smell like mouldering stone and old farts. I saw a square shaft inset with rusty but solid-looking rungs. After a few metres the shaft was swallowed by darkness.
Kneeling, I peered into the shaft and saw white splinters of light reflecting on black moving water far below. I could hear it too – a rushing sound so faint it was like a gentle breeze through dry grass.
‘What is this?’ I asked.
‘Escape tunnel.’
I blinked at her. ‘Handy.’
‘In the late seventies this place was owned by a friend of Benny’s. George Lancaster?’
She said the name as though I might have heard of him. I shrugged.
‘He had a lot of enemies, so he had this installed for when he needed a quick getaway.’
She had already taken hold of the top rung and was lowering herself into the shaft.
‘Where does it go?’ I asked.
The shadows were swallowing her now, closing over her head like black water. Her voice echoed off the stone walls. ‘Does it matter?’
TWELVE
ADRENALINE CRASH
George Lancaster’s escape tunnel came out round the back of a Chinese restaurant in the tangle of roads leading off from Leicester Square tube station. It took us ten minutes, maybe less, to get there. As soon as we had reached the bottom of the ladder beneath Incognito – having pulled the rug back across the trapdoor and closed it behind us in an attempt to cover our tracks as best we could – Clover grabbed a torch from a stone shelf, peeled off the plastic bag it was wrapped in and turned it on.
I was not sure what I’d been expecting to see. My sole knowledge of London sewer tunnels came from old Sherlock Holmes movies and the like. I suppose I thought they might have been modernised since the 1890s, but I was wrong. Clearly those Victorians knew what they were doing.
