'What the -'
He kicked out at the dog, which had its teeth sunk firmly in his left boot.
'Mind my dog!'
'Get him off me!'
Vince sat up and shoved his hair out of his eyes. It wasn't a crustie at all, but a sickly young man with a badly-shaved head and an oversized navy raincoat who, having fulfilled his role as a human airbag, was attempting to wriggle out from beneath his attacker and stand up. Patrons peered timidly out from the foyer of the theatre at them, convinced that some sort of crime had been committed. The dog was still refusing to relax its jaws, presumably out of loyalty to its master.
'Crippen, let go! It's just his way of making friends, mate. He likes to get a taste of you first.'
'He'll get a taste of my boot if he tries it again.' Vince belatedly remembered that he was not supposed to talk to anyone. Alarmed, he finally managed to push the dog away, rose and wiped himself down. The man who had broken his fall was patting his chest as if testing for broken ribs.
'What were you doing up there? That could have been nasty. Did you fall out? Who's the bubbly for? You celebrating something?'
He dared not answer. He could feel Sebastian's men watching him from some vantage point nearby.
'What's the matter? Don't you talk to street people? Fucking Tory! Sybaritic Saatchi sycophant!'
'Do you mind, I voted Labour in the last election,' Vince muttered, groggily setting off along the kerb. The fall had disturbed his equilibrium.
'Typical, bloody champagne socialist!'
He slipped into an alleyway at the side of the theatre, praying that Sebastian had not seen him talking to a stranger. He didn't want to be responsible for anyone's death. He shifted beneath the nearest streetlamp and detached the envelope from the champagne bottle. Tearing it open, he removed a single sheet of paper and read:
Speedwell 711
There was nothing else typed on the paper apart from the time allowance: one hour. He held the sheet up to the light, and even as he did so it broke in two. What the hell was it supposed to mean? It would take a special kind of inspiration to figure this one out. Clairvoyance, more like. All he knew was that he had barely managed to solve the last clue in time, and now had exactly fifty-eight minutes left to solve this one. As he looked up into the sky and forced his breathing to a slower rate, the rain began pumping down from the clouds in earnest.
CHAPTER TWENTY-TWO
OKAY, THE hour had started, but was this all he had to go on? As far as he knew, there was no area of London called Speedwell. Perhaps there had been in the year 711. This had to be a history question. He picked up the bottle of champagne and examined the label. Non-vintage, no year or corresponding serial number. Möet & Chandon, nothing unusual there.
He was stumped. There were no libraries in the vicinity, and there was no point in trying to track down an open bookstore – besides, what could he look up? The events of that year, perhaps.
There was one person who could help him – Harold Masters. From where Vince stood, he could see a red call box on the next corner. The narrow street led down to the Thames, and was quite deserted. The air from the river was further chilled by the falling rain. Sebastian had no men posted around here. How could they see him make a call? He dug in his pocket and pulled Masters's card from his wallet. He kept a phonecard somewhere. He checked again. The street was still empty. He loped to the call box and punched out the doctor's home number. A woman answered.
'Is Doctor Masters there, please?' He stood with his back to the call box, watching the road. 'Hi, Doctor Masters? This is Vince Reynolds, I met you outside the British Museum. You gave me some advice? And your number?'
'Oh – um -'
'Listen, I wouldn't call like this but I really need your help.'
'Is this to do with – what we were talking about?'
'I'm afraid so, yes. Don't ask me to explain. I seem to be involved in some kind of a game.'
'Do be careful, for heaven's sake. I told you they could be dangerous.'
'I need help with a sort of clue thing, and don't know who else to ask. What happened in London in the year 711?'
The doctor, who infinitely preferred academic conversations to mundane calls about train-times and dinner arrangements, perked up no end and gave the question careful thought. '711? It's hard to say, just like that. The eighth century – that was before the country even had its first monarch.'
'I just wondered if anything particular occurred in that year.'
'I can't just tell you off the top of my head, you know. This is not my area of expertise. Can you hold on while I grab a book?'
He came back after a moment. 'Well, it was before the Great Slaughter.'
'What was that?'
'The Vikings attacked London, but that was in 842. St Paul's Cathedral was already built, not as we know it now, of course…'
'But is there nothing that's -'
A shadow crossed his peripheral vision. There was a man standing behind him. A hand fell onto his shoulder. Vince dropped his fist on the connection, cutting the call.
'Do you always go running off like that without apologising?' asked the pasty-faced young man he had fallen on outside the theatre.
Vince was furious. 'You moron!' he shouted, 'I've just cut him off!'
The young man threw up his hands. 'Great, fine. First you parachute onto my back from the sky, then you swear at me and vanish, then when I find you again you bloody insult me. Are you in PR, by any chance?'
'You don't know what you've done,' Vince said angrily, shoving him away and throwing the receiver down.
'Tell me.'
'That was a very important call!'
'If you're, like, so important, why haven't you got a mobile phone? Answer that, then. Everyone else has. Why isn't your e-mail faxing your voicemail?' He rattled out sentences, as talkative as only the very skinny can be.
'I didn't say – never mind, just get away from me.' Vince didn't need this, wasn't he under enough pressure already without – 'What now? What the fuck are you staring at?'
He was scrunching up his face, gurning a visual representation of intense thought. 'What were you doing up there in the first place? Fringe performance, was it? Acrobatics?'
'It's none of your business.' Vince swung his duffel bag onto his shoulder. 'I can handle it.' Sure I can, he thought.
'Is that yours?' He was pointing to the bottle of champagne standing on the shelf of the call box. 'Just gonna leave it there? Don't you want it?'
'I don't know how to say this politely but -'
The young man held up his hand. 'There is no polite way, trust me, I hear it every day. "Fuck off." "Get yourself a job." "Earn a living." "Just fuck off." Don't worry, I'm going. It's a pity, because Crippen took a shine to you.' He paused. 'I just want to check one thing. You're all right, you don't need any help at all.'
'No.'
'You're fine, then.'
'Yes.'
''Cause street people look after each other.'
'I am not a street -'
'And you're bleeding.'
'Am I?' He touched his face, and his fingers came away wet.
'It's a wicked cut. You need help? Life is short. Parks and paintings survive the centuries, not people. We're here and gone. Make friends, man.'
'There's nothing you can do, trust me.'
'You don't know that.'
Vince rooted about in his duffel bag for a notepad and pen, then wrote out what had been written on the League's latest page. 'All right, smartarse. Tell me what that means.'
The young man read it slowly, moving his lips. Made as if to speak. Crumpled his forehead deeper – three furrows. Closed his mouth, then opened it again.
'Mr Pink,' he said finally. 'Telephones.'
'What?' Vince gave him a strange look.
'You've asked the one person around here who can tell you. It's one of those odd little stories you find about London. How do I know? Weird, huh? Sit down for a sec.' He eased himself onto the sheltered step of a building and waved Vince down. 'Many years ago, the LTE -'