Angelmaker

by Nick Harkaway

  “Bugger,” she tells Bastion. He looks back at her with rosy-coloured marbles, and snuffles. She believes she detects approbation, even reinforcement in his suffering face, but it could be wind. No doubt she will know shortly if it is.

  “Buggery bugger,” she says. She picks up the toy soldier and puts it back in the box without a glance. It’s too late to change horses. The deed is done. The wheels are in motion. Edie Banister, ninety years of age and a stalwart of the established order, has pushed the button on the revolution. She sighs again. It’s so odd to be a supervillain, and at her age, too.

  She has to admit privately that she may be mad. Although if so, it is a merciless, clear-sighted sort of madness and not at all what a lady might hope for. She has not lost her marbles or popped her garters, or any of the cosier sorts of madness she has observed in her contemporaries. She has, if anything, gone postal. She tries the expression on for size; it carries a sense of outrage, and fatigue.

  Yes. Edie Banister has gone postal. A very British sort of postal which does not involve shouting, but rather a sudden and total reverse of a lifetime’s perceptions. Although in truth, “sudden” is not entirely accurate. It happened by degrees, and actually by choice. She took a correspondence course in postality. She postalled herself up.

  “I trusted you all to do the right thing,” she tells fifty years of governments, lined up and sheepish in her mind, “I believed you’d get it right. And you!” she adds, to the electorate, “You lazy, venal, self-deluding … ooh, if you were my children, I’d …” But this brings her up short. None of them is her child. No sons or daughters for Edie Banister. Just Bastion, and the faded love of the one whose trust she has betrayed for half a human life. Betrayed in the name of stability and security. A few decades of calm, she reasoned at the time, and the world would set itself straight.

  But somehow it all went wrong instead. The onward march of progress has wandered off down a dark alley and been mugged. The Berlin Wall and Vietnam; the Rwandan Genocide, the Twin Towers, Camp Delta; suicide bombings and global warming; even Vaughn bloody Parry, the little suburban nightmare who lived just around the corner, who killed and killed and no one knew because no one bothered to find out. Edie Banister had given her loyalty to an empty throne. There was no progress. No stability. There was just the question of whether things happened far enough away.

  The Parry thing had been the end of her comfortable certainty. It began, according to the broadsheets, in a new allotment patch in some midway town called Redbury. The council had at last untrousered the cash and purchased a stretch of green once part of a railway siding, sold in Thatcher’s time to make apartments and studios for wealthy buyers who never showed up. A vegetable competition was mooted, and organic food for the locality, and a sense of community and all the other things Britain no longer did because finance was cheaper and faster and the housing market made money out of nothing. And then they turned the first spadeful and it was over before it began. A grinning corpse, wrapped in a tartan blanket, and then another and another, and the burg of Redbury had a serial killer to call its own.

  Edie could not help but notice that when Vaughn Parry tortured a prisoner and buried the corpse seven inches down in sandy soil, he was a monster, but when the same thing was done at the behest of her own government in a cellar overseas, that was an unfortunate necessity.

  Well, perhaps it was. But if so, the world which made it necessary could go hang.

  She had taken for a while to going out every night with Bastion, walking the streets and staring up at the houses and offices of a city she wasn’t sure she knew any longer. Mad Old Edie and her eyeless dog, side by side in the London fog. Yes. Mad, in the American sense. And, alone in the vast encyclopedia of “furious of Derbyshire,” Edie Banister had the power to make a difference to everything which was infuriating her. A mysterious difference, whose precise nature she did not understand, but whose originator swore would rock the world and unravel the darkness of a thousand years. A gift of science to a world of horrors.

  On a Tuesday evening, with the sound of the BBC World Service (soon to be discontinued) in the background, she got a pen and a piece of paper and wrote down a flow chart of her personal revolution. An item to be acquired, and a man to put it where it must go. These in turn would entail disguises, forgeries … but not so many as that. More a confidence trick, really, than a covert operation. All at arm’s length, of course, because there could be consequences, and because her name might still trigger alarms in places which must remain oblivious just a little longer.

  And now, looking at Joe Spork’s business card and stroking her eyeless dog, she thinks about those consequences and feels like a cow. She has webbed the young Spork into a muddle of almighty proportions. It was necessary, if distasteful, and ultimately he will be fine. Once they look at things seriously, they will see he was a patsy.

  If they look at things seriously. If they take the time. If they don’t need a scapegoat for the redtops. If they feel generous. And there’s that word again: “necessary.” A magic word to excuse a multitude of sins, and all it really means is “easier this way than the other.”

  The only thing she need do now is sit back and watch, and know that she has discharged her debt and made a difference. There’s no danger of anything really bad happening to him. All the old ghosts are surely laid to rest.

  So why, having ascertained weeks back that he would do for item two, has she been dragging him here ever since to work on junk? Getting to know him. Discovering that he’s sweet and a bit lost?

  No reason at all.

  Except that she is feeling, as already noted, like a cow. Cow, cow, cow.

  And to be honest … was it necessary? It may have been. It’s quite possible that he’s the only person around with the skills to do the job right. If he learned from his grandfather. If he paid attention. If there are complications any halfway competent clockworker couldn’t deal with. If, if, if. She is conscious that she has heard these arguments before, in the pusillanimous mouths of modern politicians.

  She peers at her reflection in the tabletop, wondering. Joshua Joseph Spork, grandson of the great love of her life, but not, obviously, her own. Evidence of her insufficiency.

  Is it possible that she has put him in the line of fire out of spite?

  Her reflection won’t look at her.

  “Mooo,” says Edie Banister.

  So now, having been the bad fairy, she will have to be the good one, too, and keep an eye on him.

  And with that decision, she finds herself delighted. Hah. Hah! Hold onto your hats, gents, and avert your eyes, you rose-petalled ladies in your mopsy, mumsy woollens. Banister is back! And this time she’s leading the charge!

  Bastion looks up at her, and slowly staggers to his feet. A moment later, he turns his back on her and growls ferociously, then cranes his head round for her approval.

  “Yes, darling,” she says, “you and me against the world.”

  Which is when she hears a hiss of indrawn breath, and moves abruptly from jubilant to very, very serious.

  She is not alone in her flat.

  Edie Banister opens her bedroom door to find three men, the middle one very large, standing in her living room in attitudes suggesting that her arrival has come at an unexpected time. They wear solid shoes and drab, ho-hum clothes. The large one is carrying a hammer, held loosely in his left hand, and his zip-up tracksuit top is bulgy under the left arm. He has a small, ski-jump nose, the product of reconstructive surgery, fatuous on his slab of a face. His wingers are younger. Trainee bastards. Edie switches over to automatic. Action stations, old cow, she thinks, these lads have your end in view. Too late to stop it all from starting. The deed is done. This last meeting with Joe Spork was for the sake of her conscience, not her devious plan. That was set in motion some days back, oh, yes, and indirectly. This is consequence, not prevention. But in time to take you out of the picture, sure enough. So.

  She smiles, a dotty old lady sm
ile.

  “Oh, goodness,” she says, “but you made me jump. You must be Mr. Big—”—oh, yes, bloody brilliant, Edie: Mr. Big, because he is big, and so many people have adjectives for family names. Dig yourself out, or fall at the first—“—landry, from the Council. I’m glad Miss Hampton let you in, I’m terribly sorry to be so late!” There. Someone else is due here at any moment, and I think you’re them. Best come back later, eh? Finish me off in the quiet time.

  The newly-christened Mr. Biglandry hesitates. Edie steps brightly towards him, hand out, and he moves his body to suggest he may take it. Edie has no intention of touching him, oh, no, not and get a hug from a lad with shoulders so broad. Though in our younger days, we might have enjoyed climbing a mountain like that, mightn’t we? Oh, yes, indeed. “Oh, where are my manners?” She takes her hand away. The junior bastards are spreading out to block her escape. I must just get some milk, darlings, to make you tea, all right? Hah! They’d snap me in two. Softly, softly, old cow. You’ve a long way to go and a short time to get there. Objective: escape. Nothing else. So. “I’ll put the kettle on, shall I, and would you mind moving the furniture? I’m too old, I’m afraid, I did try, but the flesh is weak. Not like yours, Mr. Biglandry. And who are these?”

  Junior Bastard A sticks out his hand when her gaze falls upon him and mutters “James.” It clearly isn’t his name, but Junior Bastard B and Mr. Biglandry stare at him as if he has taken his trousers off. Hah! I fancy that’s an instant fail on your test, young Jimmy, and quite right too. Mr. Biglandry will want a word later, I imagine, about talking to the mark. “Hello!” Edie waves daftly. “And you must be Biglandry the younger, I can see the family resemblance! Was it George?” You’re both stone killers, there is that, but he’s a red-faced old git and you’ve something pale and Hungarian about you, Georgie-boy, I wouldn’t wonder your Dad was AVH, no, I would not, and likely a goon just like you. She smiles even wider. “Would you mind pushing the bolt across? Sometimes the door rattles in the wind and it gives me a start.” George Biglandry looks at Dad, and Dad nods. Edie slips into the kitchen: knives, rolling pins, the microwave oven (she pictures herself jamming the door open and threatening to cook them, the thing plugged in behind her and beeping, a little picture of a chicken in blue neon on the dash), no, no, and no. Edie Banister knows where she is going. Flick the switch on the kettle. Now they have to separate you from that, indeedy they do. No gentleman wants a lap full of the hot stuff when he’s killing old ladies. Permanent damage can occur. Edie summons her first secret weapon.

  “Bastion! Dar-ling? Bast-ion? Mummy’s got a bit of pie, yes, she has, hasn’t she, yessywessy, she has!” And may the good Lord have mercy on your souls.

  It is not the hour for pie. Bastion knows it. He knows that Edie knows it, too. They have long ago settled between them that he is to be disturbed between three and nine only in the direst of emergencies or if there is steak. The steak should be meltingly soft and warmed over in the pan. The emergencies are more exigent: fire, earthquake, rains of frogs, the arrival of a cat in the building. Certainly, pie does not figure. Bastion’s afternoon nap is sacrosanct.

  “Bastion?” She looks around. He is in her bedroom, of course, at the foot of the bed: does not stir from it except at two-ish to go out onto the balcony and pee on passing truants. Edie smiles at Mr. Biglandry, who is busy preparing to insert himself between her and the kettle. James and George are still in the living room. Edie feints for the kettle, and Biglandry jumps a bit. His eyes narrow. She grins at him, a little wolfish, pro-on-pro. He looks back, hard-faced. Edie rests her hand on the Russell Hobbs. “Would you mind?” You think this is endgame. It is barely begun. You want this? This kettle? Shall I throw it at you? But then there are the boys, no doubt eager to help out in doing me in. You may have this round. Except Edie knows fine well, and Mr. Biglandry almost realises, she never intended to use the kettle for anything other than this. She brushes past as he takes possession of the boiling water. She opens the door to the bedroom, and Bastion barges out, bristling. He sees George first, and immediately charges over, yowling, and starts nipping at his ankles. Who is this man, that comes to disturb my time of slumber? Woe unto you, that are rash enough to let your ankles within my scope. Behold! You shall not leave but that you are shorter by one foot, this much I promise you …

  “Oh, Bastion, darling, no!” Edie Banister says with manifest insincerity. She smiles broadly at George, who scowls at her and glances at his boss. But Edie is in motion. Too slow, boys, far and away. Bastion, unwelcome playmate, apparently decides that James has better legs. He lunges for them, and his single solid tooth makes an ugly hole in James’s calf. I should think that’s jolly painful, Edie reflects, as James swears. He lashes out with his foot, but Bastion knows this game well, and has latched onto the other leg. James would have to kick himself, and few people … no. No, James actually is that stupid. There’s a thud, and James goes a bit white. It’s amazing how much you can hurt yourself with your own toecap. Bastion, sensing victory, spins around several times and scents Mr. Biglandry. No, darling. He’s out of your league. But Bastion is game, and more than game. His performance so far has made Biglandry Père nervous enough that he backs up, glancing at Edie with the outrage of non-dog owners: ’Ere, lady, control this dog or I’ll ’ave the law on you!

  Like Hell you will.

  Edie ducks into the bedroom, and lunges for her knicker drawer and Secret Weapon No. 2, amid the frills and bunting. Yes, knickers! That’s what I shall need. And it bloody would have been, too, in fifty-nine. I could have changed into something more comfortable and they’d have carried me to the nick and handed themselves in … but honesty compels her to admit that even in fifty-nine it might not have been so. Corset. Bloomers. Tights. Popsocks, how I loathe you. Woollen leggings—the shame. Edie Banister, toast of the Fighting 16th, swathed in bloody sheep’s fur and with all the allure of a toast rack. Hard times. Suspender belt, that’s more like it; garters, and stockings, and lace, oh my! And now I’ve thrown my memories on the floor, where the bloody hell is the item we came for? Because if I’ve put it in another drawer then we may assume I am about to die. But the other belt is in her hands, cool and thick, brown leather and a strange, ancient smell. She cleans it once a month, checks it, the way most people do their accounts. And once—Edie Banister grins—once, she did actually wear this outfit as lingerie, to the absolute abandonment and lust of her lover and, she is forced to admit, herself.

  Mr. Biglandry shoves the door to Edie’s boudoir open with a very impatient hand. He has his hammer raised to crack her skull into as many pieces as he can. Why a hammer? Edie wonders. Maybe because it’s so unprofessional, so thuggish. Everyone will look for a lunatic—and you can always find one, if you try hard enough. “It’s fucking time, you crazy old bag,” Mr. Biglandry says, angry now at the delay. Perhaps he has somewhere to be. “It is fucking time.”

  “Yes,” Edie Banister says. “I believe it is.” And she turns around, holding the gun in the Weaver stance.

  Mr. Biglandry says “Fuck” again, but in a more impressed, appalled way. He drops the hammer and goes for his own gun (Edie guesses it will prove to be an automatic, unlike her own, which is a revolver). Edie shoots him in the head. The revolver makes an absolutely huge noise. To her relief, the back of Mr. Biglandry’s head stays on, although it’s clearly a close-run thing. She hears, in the other room, the sound of George saying “Fuck” as well, percussively, and trying to pull something from his waistband. Idiot. If George does not shoot himself in the penis in the next two seconds, he will get the gun out and start firing it, but anyone who sticks a gun in his jeans is probably not someone with surgical weapon skills. He will fire randomly. Edie’s neighbours might get hurt. Or Bastion. She turns, and fires three more times directly through the plasterboard wall, angling so that any misses will hit the bricks of the fireplace in the room beyond. The third shot makes a splunch noise, and George goes down. Edie moves, in case James is about to try the s
ame thing, and sees him exactly where he was, next to the door, a look of absolute confusion on his young, sallow face. She points the gun near him rather than at him. Bastion, emerging from the kitchen in pursuit of Mr. Biglandry, finds his foe already fallen and clambers up on top of him to indicate his conquest. Died of fright. I am mighty. You may now applaud.

  Edie looks sharply at James. “Get rid of it.”

  James has a gun, but it’s in his pocket and, when it comes to it, not loaded. Sheepish, he puts the ammunition down on the floor next to the weapon. Edie shakes her head. He shrugs at her, surrendered.

  “Who sent you?”

  “Don’t know. Honestly!”

  “Ever see them?”

  “No! They had hats on. Or sheets. Like in Iran!”

  Like in Iran. Yes, she might know someone matching that description. She sighs.

  “Have you got a mum?”

  “Yes. In Doncaster.”

  “Best piss off back there, ey?”

  “Yes, ma’am.”

  She nods, then peers at him.

  “This your first?”

  “Oh, God, yeah. Christ.”

  “Don’t hang about. Don’t go and tell anyone what happened. Best to vanish, all right? Go stay with your mum. No one cares if you didn’t die, so long as you aren’t seen again.”

  “Right.”

  “Ever. And James? Get a proper job,” Edie says.

  “Yes, ma’am.”

  “Now, I’m going to pick up two bags and I’m going to walk out of here and we won’t see one another ever again. You’re going to sit in that chair, facing the window, and you’re going to ignore me for the five minutes I’ll still be here, and then you’re going to contemplate your soul in silence for another ten minutes in the company of these dead men you once called friends. And then …?”