“Very good. Here it is.”
The stranger pulls out a scrap of paper on which a string of digits have been scrawled. Toby considers that the man must have prepared this earlier and finds this realisation to be an unsettling one.
Judd takes the paper all the same, thrusts it into his jacket pocket and says, “Thank you. But you’ll have to excuse me now.”
“Of course. But please, please phone me, yeah?”
“OK,” Toby murmurs and in that moment he feels pretty certain that, in the end, he probably won’t make that call. The man looks at him, wild-eyed and trembling, as if he has read his thoughts. Then Toby says: “Wait.”
“Yes?” The man looks up at Dr Judd, skittish and afraid.
“If you share my suspicions about Cannonbridge…”
“Yes?”
“What led you here today? The real content of my lecture wasn’t advertised at all.”
“I knew what you were going to say.”
“How?”
“I had a dream, Dr Judd. A dream of prophecy. And you—you were in it.”
“A…” Toby is about to say “dream” incredulously, but stops himself just in time. “I see.”
“And now, I have some sympathy…” The other man’s nose twitches and his tongue dampens the corner of his mouth: “… with John the Baptist.”
“Oh.”
“The laying straight of the ways. For he who is coming.”
“I see,” Toby says briskly. “And thank you. But I think this is goodbye.” And he turns and starts to walk away, not looking back.
“Goodbye, doctor. You’ll still call me, won’t you?”
Toby walks, still without turning. “Yes. Absolutely. Without fail.”
The unkempt man watches him go.
Toby goes further up the corridor until he reaches a white, unnumbered door. He knocks once and a woman’s voice calls out: “Come in!”
The door opens. Judd slips inside.
The man in the pinstripe suit lingers for longer than he ought in the precincts of a place in which he has no legitimate business. He creeps closer to the white door, close enough to overhear some of what is taking place behind it and catches stray phrases of conversation: “more than a little concerned”; “University’s reputation to consider”; “private life”; “by no means an easy decision” and then, with doleful finality, “I think we’re going to have to say indefinite.”
The voices, had the stranger known them well, he might have recognised as belonging to Professor McGovern and to J J Salazar. Toby himself does not appear to speak. If he does then he talks too softly for the eavesdropper to hear.
After that, there are footsteps towards the door and the man in the pinstripe suit springs away. He steps back and walks, with suddenly sure-footed purpose, towards the exit, out of the institution and back into the real world, his eyes ablaze with inexplicable intensity.
1824
WARREN’S BLACKING FACTORY LONDON
THE BOY IN the blacking factory—a vast and ugly warehouse which looms beside the banks of the Thames—looks down at the filthy, twilit river and barely succeeds in suppressing a shudder.
More than ever today that stretch of dark water seems to him to be alive, a long, grey beast, bloated yet sinuous, with strange hungers, an appetite for sacrifice. As he gazes out from his tiny alcove upon this miserable scene, the boy’s hands work quickly and efficiently on the bench before him. A row of earthenware bottles, filled with boot blacking, is lined up there and the boy covers each of them, first with oil paper then with blue paper, before tying them round with string. A few gross of these completed, he turns, without thinking, to a pile of printed labels and affixes one with paste to every receptacle. The work is repetitive and dull but the boy is diligent and nimble. He goes on without thinking, letting his imagination roam, absenting himself from the clamour of the factory, from the cries and complaints of his fellow workers, the grind and whinnying of machinery, the thick, repulsive smells of the place and its atmosphere of despair.
Stout, sandy-haired Mr Lamert passes by, favouring the child with a glance and an injunction. “Keep up, boy! Concentrate on the task in hand!”
The child bows his head, redoubles his efforts. When Lamert has left, he raises his gaze once more to look from the window and down towards the Thames, upon which he sees, at first with curiosity and then, oddly, with a mounting sense of nervousness, that, standing beside the river almost as if the water itself has but lately disgorged him, is the figure of a man, dark-haired and clad in black, staring up at the factory windows. The boy peers closer, half-wondering if he might not be imagining the stranger, if the man is some trick of the fading light, some weird combination of shadows.
But no, he is real. A moment more and the fellow disappears, stamping along the riverbank towards (or so, at least, the boy assumes) the street beyond.
The next half hour passes very slowly indeed. Not for the first time, the boy considers how fluid is time in this place, how it seems to swirl and eddy as if subject to some fickle, mysterious power. In the factory, a minute might last an hour, an hour a day or, in certain unusual circumstances when something like a trance descends upon him, an afternoon pass by in the manner of a dream.
The boy feels a hand upon his shoulder. He does not have to turn to recognise the touch. Mr Lamert’s voice is calm and firm yet his breath is scented by liquor.
“Finish that one and you can go home.”
The child busies himself with his task. “Thank you, Mr Lamert.” A squeeze on his shoulder. “And, my boy?”
“Yes, sir?”
“There is a gentleman outside who says he knows you.”
“Indeed, Mr Lamert?”
“His name is Cannonbridge. Says he’s a writer of repute.”
“A writer?” the boy asks wonderingly.
“That’s what he said. I can turn him away if you wish.” Another,
longer squeeze. “I promised your father I’d take care of you.” There is a note of concern in the man’s voice which certainly sounds genuine enough and which causes the boy, for the first and, as things would turn out, the last time, to feel something like sympathy for his employer.
“No, Mr Lamert. Thank you, sir. But I believe I recognise the name.”
OUTSIDE ON THE squalid street, beside the steps which lead to something more closely resembling civilisation, stands the man whom the boy had spied earlier that afternoon—saturnine and black-clad though, for all of that, smiling with clear sincerity.
“Charles?”
“Mr Cannonbridge?”
As the boy approaches, the man bends down to the child’s level and extends his hand.
“I’m very pleased to meet you.”
Warily, he takes the offered hand and shakes it. “What do you want with me, sir?”
“Only to talk.”
The boy juts out his chin imperiously. “Then I am to walk home.
You may walk with me.” The man smiles again and seems to be about to speak when another boy, a little older than the first and with a wild crop of red hair, pushes past them and trots spryly up the steps, calling over his shoulder as he goes. “See you tomorrow, Charlie!”
The younger boy replies. “Tomorrow, Bob!”
Cannonbridge looks with gravity at the boy. “Let us walk,” he says. And walk they do, for the best part of three miles, up the Hungerford Stairs and the maze which lies immediately beyond and then, breaking into the relative sanctity of the Strand, up St Martin’s Lane and Broad St Giles, along Tottenham Court and Hampstead Road, heading, eventually, towards open spaces, to the green of Camden Town.
They talk, a little nervously at first, a little stiffly but then with increasing warmth and honesty. It is a conversation that the boy shall remember for the rest of his life. He will also remember this—that the man, with some regularity, glances behind him and, imagining that his companion does not notice, seeks out reflections of the street in window panes and polished surface
s, as if he believes himself to have been followed. Though he will hug the memory close, on this the boy does not remark.
“I trust you will forgive me,” Cannonbridge begins, “for introducing myself in this way.”
The boy does not reply directly but only asks another question: “Do you know my father, sir?”
“I don’t believe I do.”
“Oh. I thought that you might. It is only that…”
“Yes?”
“He has lately proved himself… rather clumsy.” The boy pauses, thinking of the arrest, his mother’s shame, the great and terrible fortress of the Marshalsea. “He would be grateful, I am certain, of a friend.”
“I understand. But I do not believe that I have ever had the pleasure.”
The boy nods glumly, expecting this answer. “You are a writer, sir, are you not?”
“I am. Three works of fiction now. Though I have hopes in the future of applying my talents to the theatre and even to verse.”
They negotiate the streets largely in silence until the boy pipes up. “I think that I should like to be a writer also.”
“Indeed?” Cannonbridge does not sound surprised. “I think that you would be well suited to the life.”
“Thank you, sir. Though I fear at present that I must spend the chief portion of my adult years in paying off my father’s debts.”
“Is he… greatly embarrassed?”
“He is a bankrupt, sir.”
The boy would not, with many others, have been so forthright. In the company of this man, however, he feels curiously able to be frank.
“Our family has much to pay and we all must do our part. That is why they sent me to the factory. So that I might contribute and earn my keep.”
“Charles?”
“Yes, sir?”
“Given all that you’ve said, I don’t wish to trouble you with my own concerns.”
“No trouble, sir. Not that.”
“You are most kind. Suffice to say that certain of my origins are obscure even to me. I am far from certain how I have come to be who I am in such a time and place as this. I mean these things not, you understand, in any philosophical sense but rather in a literal and material one. I have, of late, been endeavouring to uncover the truth. I have visited wise men. Oracles. Priests. Doctors. Magicians. Sages of every stripe. Though they’ve cast no light. Not a man jack of them.”
The boy nods, more from courtesy than comprehension.
“Nonetheless, whilst I pursue this… mystery I wish also to do good.”
“Then you are a philanthropist, sir?”
“Yes. I suppose I am. As much as is possible. Though my time does not always seem to be my own. And I am greatly concerned that the part of my life which I shall spend as any force for good is soon to come to an end.”
“Sir?”
“In recent nights, in certain dreams and visions, I have seen several clues. I have been vouchsafed details of the future. Glimpses only. Fragments of the puzzle. Last night, I saw something of what I shall become. A new kind of creature. A new kind of… intelligence. There are storm clouds gathering above me. My destiny approaches.”
“A man may make his own destiny,” says the boy. “A man can outwit fate.”
“Do you think so?”
An earnest nod. “I do.”
Cannonbridge seems to brighten. “Then perhaps I shall. And perhaps you will too. What I meant to say was that the debts of your father need not overwhelm you.”
“I hope that you are right,” says the boy and they walk on in a silence that now seems almost companionable, as if each has found some succour in the other.
Cannonbridge begins again. “In what I have seen of the future, Charles, you will endure. And not merely endure but thrive. You will write often and well.”
“Truly, sir?”
“Truly. But more than this I cannot say.”
“I see… then thank you, sir.”
They speak of many other things—of the city and the river, of shadows and money, of family, of fog, books, stories, the forging of myth. At last, they come to Camden Town, a place but lately claimed by the city, and along a freshly paved road to Number Sixteen, Bayham Street.
A pump stands opposite the house. Beyond it are lanes and open fields. Here there is still birdsong.
Cannonbridge takes a purse from his pocket, heavy with coin, and presses it into the boy’s hands.
He says: “I hope this may be of some help.”
The boy, proud, hesitates.
“Please. This… stuff. This money, it seems to make so great a deal of difference to people. It can be the difference—I have observed—between happiness and misery.”
The boy ducks his head. The purse, accepted, is slipped adroitly into a pocket.
“This will pass,” Cannonbridge says. “Remember that.”
“Will we meet again?” asks the boy.
“I think that we shall. Many years from now.” There is sadness in the man’s voice. “But when we do, if my suspicions are correct, I fear that I may be greatly changed. Our encounter may not be as happy or as providential as this.”
“You will be changed by… age, then, sir? By time?”
“By age, yes. But by something else also. And then, my boy…”
“Yes, sir?”
“You must not trust me. Do you understand? I shall not be benign.”
The boy nods gravely. “But can you not thwart it, sir? Whatever it may be. Surely you must try. You must try not to let yourself be so transformed.”
The man smiles sadly. “Goodbye, Charles. Thank you for your company and for the conversation.”
The boy holds the purse tightly in his pocket. “Thank you, sir.”
Cannonbridge turns and walks away.
For a time, Charles watches him go, curious, a little afraid and in no particular hurry to go inside to face the tears of his mother, the drawn and sullen faces of his siblings. For an instant before the author vanishes into the gloom, Charles is almost certain that he spies something in the visitor’s wake, something made of ebony, blacker even than the shadows, something more animal than man, something with eyes which shine in the darkness.
Then the illusion passes. Shivering, although it is not especially cold, Charles looks away and hurries to the front door, feeling oddly certain that he has just been made privy to some bleak and consequential secret.
As he knocks, from somewhere nearby, in a room in the house of a neighbour or from a passer-by on the street beyond (or so, at least, he tells himself), he hears, quite distinctly, the sound of evil laughter.
The door is opened by his mother, eyes red-rimmed from weeping and, all at once, Master Charles Dickens does not believe that he has ever been so glad to see her.
NOW
IT IS A week after the lecture and Toby Judd is trudging home in the early afternoon sun, feeling, through a haze of lunchtime beer, simultaneously light-headed and glum.
He has spent the past two and a half hours in a pub (where, to his mild disquiet, he is beginning to be known) with a couple of beers, a plate of lukewarm scampi and a bulging A5 notebook. Its pages are filled with scribbled ideas—with theories, plans and patient workings-out, with any number of notions about how the Cannonbridge Conspiracy might have come about, with innumerable speculations as to its purpose and intention. The seeds of true obsession are here, in that book, taking patient root.
Now, on this long suburban road, his little house comes into view and he notices, feeling queasily uncertain of its significance, that a police car is parked outside.
As Toby comes closer, the car doors open and two people step out, neither of them in uniform. One is an older woman, a few years senior to Toby, straight-haired and serious, the other, a man, not yet thirty, built like a rugby player, bull-necked and eager.
Both look determined and rumpled and the effect is that of a headmistress and a junior member of staff who share an out of hours interest in violence. Toby is almost upon them.<
br />
“Dr Toby Judd?” This is the woman, firm yet discreet. “Yes?” The word comes out in a croak. Toby, wondering if they can smell the alcohol on his breath, has never craved as much as he does now a packet of mints.
“I thought it must be you, sir.”
“You did?”
“Of course I recognise you, sir.”
“Really?”
“From the video, sir.”
“What video?”
“It might be easier if we took this inside, sir. I’m Detective Inspector Nia Cudden. This is Sergeant Isaac Angeyo.”
The man nods and both of them briefly flourish identity cards (so swiftly that they might just as easily have been bus passes or driving licenses).
“Oh,” says Toby. “Hello, then.”
“Have you got a minute for a quiet word, sir?”
“Of course.”
“Yes. Thank you, sir.”
Toby starts fumbling for the keys, pulls them out, drops them.
Sergeant Angeyo, who has yet to speak, bends down, picks them up and hands them back.
“Thank you.” Dr Judd walks towards the door then, remembering his manners, turns back to his companions. “I’m terribly sorry,” he says. “I haven’t had a chance to tidy for a while. You’ll have to forgive the mess.”
“No problem, sir. I’m sure we’ve seen worse. Just lead the way.”
THE MILK IN the fridge is rancid so Toby can only offer them black coffee or green tea. To his mild relief, they decline both. Once Toby has cleared away the detritus (the guests are too polite to mention the dust and the dirt), the two police officers sit together on the sofa while Toby perches on the room’s only chair. He is about to ask what this is all about when Cudden, with the patient deliberation of a woman who knows from experience that mistakes are more likely if things are done at speed, says: “Tell us, Dr Judd. Do you know a man named Russell Spicer?”
Toby shakes his head. “No. I don’t believe I do.”
The officers exchange looks of professional scepticism. “Perhaps you’ll recognise his face, sir.”
This is Sergeant Angeyo, speaking for the first time. His voice is low and earnest with a hint of a rural burr, a strange suggestion of the countryside in this place of concrete and gravel. He takes a photograph from his jacket pocket and passes it to Toby, face down.
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