Onions made a show of coming to a decision.
“We should make our way to the Blowhole,” he said.
Jeperson refrained from pointing out that he had made that suggestion when it was still light.
“Lead on,” said Stacy.
Onions looked at his map and strode uphill.
Before his light got too far away, everyone fell in behind him.
* * * *
8
CI Regent had turned up at Euston to see the party off on the midnight sleeper for Edinburgh. While Really-a-Good-Bloke Rory issued “nonoptional suggestions” to the man from “Pronounced ‘Eyesight’“ and Sewell Head filled a carrier-bag with sweeties, Regent had a moment with Richard Jeperson. Stacy gathered they hadn’t talked in over ten years. She hung back tactfully and wondered if she’d packed enough warm clothes. Before she’d boarded the train, her guv’nor had taken her aside, nodded at Jeperson, and said, “He’s special. Take care of him.” She agreed he was and promised she would.
The first leg hadn’t even got them halfway to Skerra. At Edinburgh Airport, they breakfasted and Persephone Gill joined the party, with luggage. A private jet, a luxurious waiting room with wings, flew them to Thurso, almost as far north on the mainland as John O’Groats. Stacy had never been to Scotland before. Edinburgh seemed essentially London with different accents. Only after flying over green glens and glinting thin lochs for tedious hours did she have a real sense of being hideously off her patch.
If she’d been asked yesterday where Thurso was, she’d have ventured a guess at Antarctica; she wasn’t sure now that she’d have been wrong. At home, whether in her flat or on duty, she knew how to get Tampax, small-arms ammunition or last Thursday’s daily papers at three in the morning. Here, she wasn’t even sure what to ask for when she needed directions to the Ladies.
In Thurso, midafternoon, they all had complete medical checkups at the Air-Sea Rescue station clinic. She got a five-minute once-over, and a nurse congratulated her on not being pregnant and having all her limbs. Jeperson was in with the woman for an hour and a half. Everyone else sat around a reception area. Sewell Head offered round Fisherman’s Friends, and hers went tasteless during the wait. When let free, Jeperson shrugged an apology. He kissed the nurse’s hand; she gave him a seal approval that struck Stacy as a lot more personal than the one everyone else in the party had stamped on their file.
Then they were all put in a “guest house,” opened especially out of season. Before dinner, Viscount Henry de Maltby made himself known. He looked with disdain down Persephone’s dress, said “uhhhm” several times, then had a huddle with Adam Onions to go over charts and reports. Aircrewman Kydd was there, too; rubber-faced and cheery, Falklands and Gulf War I insignia on his jersey shoulder.
“Better get an early night,” suggested Onions.
That made Jeperson decide to stay up by the fire in the snug. Stacy’s prime directive was to be his minder, so she did too. Onions frowned a little, but plodded off up the wooden hill to Bedfordshire without complaint.
This was the first time she had been alone with her charge since leaving his house thirty hours previously.
She still didn’t know what to make of him.
“And who might you be, my dear?” he asked.
The snug was warm, but the question chilled her.
“Ah,” said Jeperson. “We’ve met. Pardon me....”
He shut his eyes and massaged his temples. Then, he clicked his fingers.
“All present and correct, Stacy. Fearfully sorry to give you a fright.”
The knot inside her relaxed. Jeperson was so spry and mercurial it was too easy to forget his fragilities.
He insisted on killing a bottle of thirty-year-old Scotch. After two busy days, a single tot made her head swim and she was seeing shapes in the fire. But he drank steadily without seeming more or less affected.
By firelight, his face was dramatic, almost pantomimish.
“CI Regent told me to catch up on my secret history,” she ventured.
“Sound advice.”
“But if it’s secret...”
“I see your problem. Don’t you have that “welcomed to the Inner Circle” feeling yet? Corridors of power, meetings with mandarins, transport laid on, royals and nobs, accommodation to order. It’s very different from chasing villains and making court dates.”
“I still get the impression I’ve not been told anything.”
Jeperson chuckled. “I’ve been in this game as long as I can remember, and I mean literally, and I feel like that too. Of course, I’m supposed to be supersensitive. I don’t need to be told, because I have to keep on proving that I’m still sharp. I have to intuit, feel,say ...”
He waved his fingers.
“You and CI ... you and Fred ... used to work like this? In the seventies?”
“Not quite like this, though he also came to the Diogenes Club from the Met. Only just out of uniform. Shaved his head to go undercover with a bower gang.”
So that was how he lost his hair!
“Diogenes was the philosopher who lived in the barrel,” she said. “Told Alexander to get out of his light.”
Jeperson raised an eyebrow.
“I’ve been on trivia teams too,” she said. “But what is the Diogenes Club? Everyone goes on as if it were famous, but I’d never heard of it.”
“The original idea was to be obscure. It was a club for the unclubbable. Also, a trunk of our family tree of intelligence agencies. It was there for all the business the other plods weren’t comfy with. Businesses like Misery Maudsley. That’d have been a Diogenes show in my day. Angel Down, Sussex. Tomorrow Town. The Seven Stars. Many other matters mysterious and malign. Few of which mean anything to the general public. Part of the game has always been protecting the Great British from knowledge deemed likely to send them off their collective nut.”
“In my experience, the general public can cope with a lot.”
“Maybe so,” he said, swivelling his eyes to peer at her, thinking. “However, for more than a hundred years, the Diogenes Club was a court of last resort. The Ruling Cabal were the original ‘spooks.’ Before me, the Club harboured others with special interests. Mycroft Holmes, Charles Beauregard, Henry Merrivale. Women, too: the Diogenes was the first gentleman’s club to go coed. Katharine Reed, Catriona Kaye, Dion Fortune. My immediate sponsors were my adoptive father, Geoffrey Jeperson, and Beauregard’s protégé, Edwin Winthrop. My intention was that Fred and ... and another person, unknown to you ... should succeed me. It didn’t work out like that.”
“What happened?”
“Nothing dramatic. Drip-drip-drip of history. Some might blame Arthur Conan Doyle. He let Dr. Watson put in print the observation that Mycroft Holmes not only worked for the British Government but ‘on some occasions, was the British Government.’ Naturally, that earned a black demerit in Whitehall. Steps were taken to ensure that those occasions never reoccurred. Winston Churchill spent years trying to set limits on the remit of the Diogenes Club. He was a man for fixations, hanging onto Hitler, standing up to India (pardon me, t’wixt and about) and curbing that blasted Club.”
Jeperson frowned and somehow made his face Churchillian. He laughed, breaking the illusion, and refilled his glass.
“When I was under Winthrop, adventuring with Fred, successive governments were fractious. This is what happens when you become Prime Minister, or used to anyway. Just after you’ve had tea with the Queen and been given the launch codes for the independent nuclear deterrent, the Man from the Diogenes Club presents you with irrefutable evidence that there are more things in Heaven and Earth than came up on Any Questions? during the election campaign. If you’re very polite, the Man tells you who Jack the Ripper was, what happened to the Mary Celeste and where that thing at Roswell the Yanks are so bloody sure is an alien spacecraft actually comes from. PMs shudder and stick their heads in the sand. The Diogenes Club is then left to get on with defending the realm from ghosties and ghou
lies.”
She thought of pressing him on the identity of Jack the Ripper, but the moment passed.
“Winthrop did Wilson and Heath. Your darlin’ Harold grumbled a bit but sat up straight when he was shown a genuine fifteenth-century manuscript describing the course late twentieth-century history would take if British troops were committed to fight in Vietnam. Ted Heath got very enthusiastic and interested in curses and banes in the context of industrial relations, then bothered Winthrop with ‘suggestions.’ By the time Jim Callahan took over, Winthrop was gone and I wound up with the thankless task. Actually, that’s inaccurate. Callahan said thank you very much. I told him that the chicken entrails suggested it might be an idea to keep a gunboat or two near the Falklands, and he said right-o. Otherwise, he continued as if we didn’t exist. Which was as it should be. Then, in 1979 ... I bet you can guess the rest.”
“Margaret Thatcher.”
Jeperson raised his glass in toast.
“Got it in one, Stacy. Margaret Hilda Roberts Boadicca Thatcher. Not so much a new broom as a new defoliant.”
“She refused to believe in anything?”
Jeperson smiled.
“Oh no. She knew it all beforehand. She had associations. The Club was never alone in its interests. It always had powerful rivals, and Mrs. Empty ... Mistress M. T. ... was a sponsee of the worst of ‘em. There was talk of privatisation, but in the end she went for dismantling us, tearing up the historic charter, boarding up the premises in Pall Mall. Those who could be pensioned off, were. Some others were kept out of it with the threat of prosecution or worse. Fred was seconded back to his original job and began his long slow climb at the Yard. I, ah, had several episodes that did me no credit. There is such a thing as feeling too deeply. Mrs. Empty, you’ll gather, scrapped the South Atlantic gunboats too. You know how that played out.”
“Where does Onions come into it?”
“O-nye-ons? He’s a scientist, you know. Not a crackpot. Well, just because the Diogenes Club was out of commission didn’t mean that the vast and strange forces of the world slacked off. There were still ghosties and ghoulies. And some official response was required. ‘Pronounced “Eyesight”‘ was a typical Thatcher body—not responsible to parliament, a huge drain on public money, and with barely a result to show for it. But it is scientific. It’s a wonder they didn’t try to sell shares. Onions publishes enough to keep tenure and submits reports on the practical applications of the paranormal. John Major’s man originally, he’s very New Labour now. The woman who left her cap at that meeting is covertly the Minister for All Things Weird. ‘Heritage and Sport’ is a euphemism, of course. The last Big Idea was that economic blackspots were under ancient curses. Focus groups were quizzed as to how to lift the gloom. They came up with the Millennium Dome. One could be forgiven for weeping. The whole apparatus trundles along, most of the time. It has managed tolerably without me.”
“And you? You left it all behind?”
“Took my bat and ball and repaired to Cheyne Walk. It was a relief, really—not having to feel anything anymore.”
He made her angry again. It was all very well to sneer at Onions and the government and the bloody dome. If he’d done anything in the last twenty-five years except stare at white walls and feed the cats, she might have been more inclined to sympathise.
“Good point,” he said.
He had picked up her thoughts. It was like ice-points in her heart.
“I’m sorry,” he said genuinely. “We’re just in tune. Fred knew we would be. You haven’t tumbled yet.”
“But I will?”
“Don’t be peeved. It’s not so terrible. What harm can I be? I’m a bitter old recluse, totally ineffectual and probably on drugs.”
She didn’t want to laugh, but his boyish look of querying innocence tickled her.
“That’s better. You were a smiler, not a pouter.”
It was true. She had always been photographed showing her teeth. She thought that was why the agency made a fuss about them.”
“Besides, I’m here, aren’t I?” said Jeperson. “I could have thrown a pillow over my head, but I’m on the way to Skerra like the rest of our merry band.”
“Have you been to the island before?”
“I don’t know. Possibly.”
* * * *
9
The Blowhole was the highest point on Skerra. It looked like a volcanic crater, but the file said it was man-made, a vertical shaft sunk from the levelled-off plateau abutting the cliff into the water-carved caverns below. Steps hewn into the rock wound around the hole, though a Post-it note on the page advised against attempting any descent without climbing gear.
Adam Onions, big orange suitcase fetched from the Sea King, stood at the lip of the Blowhole and pointed his torch down.
The “steps” were a wet-looking groove around the shaft. However, a ladder—orange rope and silver treads—dangled, secured to the rock by pitons.
‘“Arne Saknussemm, His Sign,’“ quoted Jeperson.
“Beg your pardon?” said Onions.
“Voyage au centre de la terre, Jules Verne,” explained Sewell Head, the trivia champion, “1863, expanded 1867; translated, anonymously, into English as Journey to the Centre of the Earth, 1872.”
“Also a film with James Mason,” Kydd added.
“I’m so glad that’s cleared up,” said Onions.
Head scrunched the wrapper from a large bar of Cadbury’s Fruit & Nut, held it over the Blowhole, and dropped it. Weighted by silver foil, it spiralled downwards; then an underground gust caught it and disappeared. For a moment, Stacy didn’t know why her spine prickled. Then she realised the chocolate wrapper had been sucked rather than blown.
It had started to rain. The wind was so fierce that pellets of water came at them horizontally, or even from below.
“We should get out of this weather,” said Persephone Gill. “Seriously.”
“So speaks the classical Queen of the Underworld,” said Jeperson.
“Also known as ‘Proserpina’,” footnoted Head.
“Our business is down there, Adam,” said Jeperson. “It is why we’re here.”
Onions made show of thinking it over.
“Until we find out what happened to Captain Vernon’s team, I don’t think we should risk—”
“We won’t find out by standing up here catching our deaths,” said Jeperson. “I deduce from this ladder that the estimable Captain and his hardy tars are quite likely down below.”
“They were ordered to stay—”
Jeperson silenced him with a look.
“In case you’d forgotten, we’re the professionals in this field. We’re the psychic detectives, the occult adventurers, the ghost-hunters. And this hole leads to a haunted place. It’s where we should be.”
Jeperson bent to grasp the ladder and get his foot on a rung. His moon boot slipped, and Kydd grabbed his arm.
“Thank you,” said Jeperson. “Nearly a nasty accident.”
With Onions’ torchlight on him, Jeperson made his way down the Blowhole. The reflective strips on his poncho shone red.
Kydd followed.
Onions reluctantly surrendered his torch to Stacy, which meant she’d have to go last. Before descending, Onions fastened a rope to his suitcase and lowered it to the temporary custody of Kydd. Once the others had touched bottom, she dropped the torch, which Onions managed to catch.
By the time she was at the foot of the ladder, the others were arguing about underground breezes. Though shielded from the worst of the rain and wind, there was a definite air current.
Onions played torchlight across ancient rock.
For a moment, Stacy assumed Captain Vernon’s initial report had been a complete wind-up. This was just a hole in an island.
Then Sewell Head coughed.
And the rock walls parted with a metallic clang.
Bright, artificial light struck them blind.
* * * *
ACT II: HEAD OF
FICE
1
After the murderous wind and rain topside, the cavern was pleasantly temperate.
Though rusty on cutting edge high-tech, Richard Jeperson had seen the inside of enough military-industrial complexes to recognise the installation under Skerra as private enterprise rather than government. It was designed first to impress visiting shareholders, then to be a work environment.
Once the party had stopped exclaiming and clattering, he heard the thrum of big engines somewhere below.
“Just heating and lighting this must suck an enormous wattage,” he mused. “And we’re well off the national grid. What d’you reckon, Yoland?”
The Man from the Diogenes Club - [Diogenes Club 01] Page 46
