Something opened. There was a change in the air on Billy’s face. Goss whispered, “Hush now.”
The room they were in smelt of damp and sweat. Something shifted. There was sound, a sputtering and crack. Lights came up.
There were no windows. The floor was dirty cement. The bricks sloped overhead were mapped with mildew. The chamber was huge. Goss stood by the wall holding a lever he had thrown. The room was full of lights, dangling on wires and jutting mushrooms from wall cracks.
Goss swore mildly as if at curious pigs. Billy heard a radio. A circle of people waited. Figures in leather jackets, dark jeans, boots, gloves. Some in band T-shirts, all in motorbike helmets. They held pistols, knives, cartoonishly vile nail-studded clubs. A radio played staticky classical music, fuzzed. There was a naked man on all fours. His lips fluttered. He had dials pushed into him, above each nipple. Unbleeding but extruding clearly from his body. It was from his open mouth that the radio sounds came. His lips moved to make the music, interference, the ghosts of other stations.
On a brick dais was a man. An older scrawny punk with spiked-up hair. A bandanna hid his mouth. His eyes were so wide he looked unhinged. He breathed hard, the cloth of his mask gusting in and out, and he was sweating in the cold. He was topless. He sat on a stool, his hands in his lap.
Billy was dizzy and sick from everything that night. Billy tried not to believe what he was seeing. Tried to imagine he might wake.
“Billy bloody Harrow,” the man said. “Check what that little bitch is doing.”
One of the figures in helmets twisted a dial on the radio-man’s chest, and radio-man’s mouth changed to sudden new shapes as the song ended. He whispered in little bursts and spoke barely audible interactions, men’s voices and women’s.
“Roger that ic-two, Sarge,” he said, and, “Have a word with Vardy, will you?,” and, “ETA fifteen minutes, over.”
“Not there yet,” the bandanna man said. “They’re visiting your old house.” His voice was loud and low, London-accented. Goss shoved Billy closer. “Send that lot, then,” he said. “Are you going to make me go through various motions, Billy Harrow? Can you just tell me who it is you’re with and what it is you’re doing? Can you tell me puh-lease what is going on tonight, what it is you set walking. Because something’s out there. And more to the bloody point, what, pray bloody tell, is your interest?”
“WHAT IS THIS?” BILLY WHISPERED AT LAST. “WHAT DID YOU DO TO Leon?”
“Leon?”
“You know how it is,” Goss said. “You’re both vying for the best vol-au-vent, and the next thing it’s all been eaten.”
Goss held Billy as if he were a puppet. Little Subby’s hands clutched Billy’s own.
“What’s going on?” Billy said. He stared everywhere, at the radioman; he struggled. “What is this?”
The sitting man sighed. “Bugger,” he said. “You’re going to do this.” His staring eyes did not change at all. “Let me put it to you this way, Billy. What the fuck are you?”
He twisted on his stool. He raised his hands a little. He was blinking violently. “Who are you working with?” he said. “What are you?” Billy realised that the kerchief was not cowboy-style but was haphazardly balled in his mouth. The man was gagged. He shook his hands and Billy saw he wore handcuffs.
“Turn your fucking head!” the voice continued, from this man who could not be speaking. “Turn around.” One of the helmeted guards slapped him hard across his face, and he screamed muffled into his gag. “Stand this bugger up.” Two guards hauled him up by his armpits. His head lolled. “Let’s see,” the voice said. The guards turned the man to face the back wall.
Colours appeared. The whole of the topless man’s back was a tattoo. At its edges it was wisps of coloured swirl, crossbred Celtic-knot fractals. In the centre was a big, dark-outlined, stylised face. Bold and expertly done. A man’s face, in unnatural colours. A sharp old face with red eyes, something between a professor and a devil. Billy stared.
The Tattoo moved. Its heavy-lidded eyes met his. Billy stared at it and the Tattoo stared back.
Chapter Twelve
BILLY SHOUTED IN SHOCK AND TRIED TO SCRABBLE BACKWARD. Goss held him.
The guards held the punk-haired man still. The Tattoo’s inked eyes went side to side, like an animation, as if it were a cartoon projected onto him. The thick black edges travelled, the shaded blue, blue-green, copper sections of skin shifting as the Tattoo pursed its lips, watched Billy, raised its eyebrows at him. It opened its mouth, and a hole of dark ink opened, a drawn throat. It spoke in that deep London voice.
“Where’s the kraken, Harrow? What’s your angle? What does Baron’s gang want with you?” The radio-man whispered static.
“What are you…?”
“Let me explain our problem,” the tattoo said. The man whose back it was on struggled in the guards’ grip. “My problem is no one knows you, Billy Harrow. You come out of nowhere. No one knows your percentage. And normally I couldn’t give a monkey’s what you’re up to, but that kraken, man. That kraken’s choice, mate. And it’s gone. And that’s trouble. Something like that, angel watching over it. If not very well, eh? Here’s the thing-I can’t make sense of what you’ve done, or how. So how about you fill me in?”
Billy tried to think for anything, anything to say to make these impossible abductors let him go. He would tell them anything. But not a solitary word of the Tattoo’s questions made any sense at all.
The shadows shifted. “You’re running with Baron’s mob,” the Tattoo said. “Shit taste, but I can save you from yourself. Now you and me work together, we can’t have secrets. So bring me up to speed.” The Tattoo stared. “What’s the story?”
Men unfold and people are generators and ink rides a man.
“Look at him,” the Tattoo said. “This little prick’s a Christ, is he? You said there’s nothing in his house?”
“Buggery I could taste,” said Goss. He hawked and swallowed what he raised.
“Who took the kraken, Billy?” the Tattoo said. Billy tried. There was a long silence.
“Look,” Goss said. “He’s got knowledges.”
“No,” the Tattoo said, slowly. “No. You’re wrong. He don’t. I think we’re going to want to workshop this.” The man shook and moaned, and a guard hit him again. The Tattoo rocked with the body that bore it. “You know what we need,” the Tattoo said. “Take him to the workshop.” The man who was a radio whispered an ill-tuned-in weather report.
GOSS DRAGGED BILLY, MAKING HIS LEGS MOVE WITH A NEW LOCOMOTION like a cartoon caper. Little Subby followed.
“Get off me,” Billy gasped abruptly. Goss smiled like a grandfather.
“Attention one and all,” said Goss. “I love it when you’re very very quiet. Beyond this door,” Goss said, “just over the road, we can open up the old bonnet, take a look inside, see what’s making the old girl seize up like that.” He tapped Billy’s belly. “We’re all recyclers; we all have to do our bit, don’t we, for the global warming and the polar bears and that. We’ll find new life for her as a fridge.”
“Wait,” whispered Billy. Whispering was all he could do. “Listen, I can…”
“You can what, poppet?” said Goss. “I couldn’t live with myself if I let you get in the way of progress. There’s white-hot innovation around the corner, and we all have to be ready. We’ve never had it so good.”
Goss opened the door into the cold and a girder of streetlamp light. Subby went out. Goss sent Billy after him, onto his hands and knees. Goss came after him. Billy put up his hands. He felt a rush. He heard splintering glass.
Billy crawled away. Goss did not follow. Subby did not move. The air was still. Billy did not understand. Nothing moved but him, for one, two seconds, and he could hear nothing but his own heart. Then air rushed past his ears again, and only then, too late, glass from whatever window had broken hit the ground, and Goss moved, his head shaking in a moment’s confusion as he looked at space where Billy no longer quite was.