“It’s complicated.”
“Listen, we’ve missed the film. You’re knackered. Let’s go back to the flat.”
I nodded my grateful assent. “I’m so sorry about tonight.”
“It’s OK.” She grinned. “You’ll have to make it up to me.”
Three stops on the Northern line and we were home again. Abbey made beans on toast and we sat together quietly, the atmosphere between us thick with the unspoken.
“How was work?” I asked at last.
“Same as usual,” she said. “Bit boring. Just a couple more rich people getting divorced. I’m starting to think there’s got to be more to life.”
“I know what you mean.”
“Henry?”
“Hmm?”
“What’s happening to you?”
I hesitated. “I can’t say. I’d love to tell you but I really can’t.”
“If you ever need someone…”
“Thanks.”
She leant toward me and kissed me, long and lingeringly, on the lips. I surprised myself by not being too tired to respond.
“Abbey?” I said as we lay stretched out on the sofa, our hands entwined, our arms clasped together in tentative embrace. “What would you say… what your reaction be if I were to tell you that a secret civil war has been waged in this country for years? What if I said that a little department in the civil service has been fighting tooth and nail with the royal family since 1857?”
Abbey laughed. “God, Henry. You’re so different from the other blokes I’ve been out with.”
Granite-faced, I gazed back at her.
“Please tell me you’re joking.”
“Of course,” I said, despising myself for my cowardice and fear. “Of course I am. Just joking.”
Chapter 10
Floating in amniotic fluid with only his trunks to protect his wrinkled modesty, Dedlock glowered at me from within his glass sarcophagus. “You failed to retrieve anything of value from the house of your grandfather. The old man’s journal is lost to the flames.”
“I’m afraid so, yes.”
As Dedlock paddled over to me, I was put in mind of a shark I had once seen at the aquarium on a half-term trip with Granddad. Toothless and gray, it can’t have killed its own food for years and must have spent half a lifetime chewing on stale meat tossed into the water by its keepers, yet despite all this, it still had murder blazing in its eyes. Looking at it through the glass, I knew that one chance was all it needed, one momentary slip on the part of its owners — and it would grab the opportunity to kill again, seize it with its withered gums and swallow it whole.
“Unacceptable, Henry. You’re not filing paper anymore. Every secret in that house is in ashes. The only man who can help us is in a coma. And now the House of Windsor is marshaling its forces against us. It is only a matter of time before they make their move.”
I was flanked by Steerforth and Jasper, both of whom had remained strategically silent in the course of my thorough dressing-down. Steerforth looked as though he hadn’t shaved that morning and appeared to be nursing a more than usually persistent hangover. A volcanic pimple protruded from his chin.
“We’ve no other choice, sir,” he said. “We all know it.”
When Dedlock turned to me, his eyes were glittering with a horrible facsimile of geniality. “Henry Lamb?”
“Yes?”
“The time has come to tell you precisely why we are prosecuting this war — why the House of Windsor is the sworn enemy of this city. The time has come to tell you the secret.”
Jasper touched my shoulder. “Sorry. I always liked your innocence.”
“You might want to sit down,” Dedlock said. “People often find they lose the use of their legs when they hear the truth. I would ask you also not to scream. This is the city’s most profitable attraction and I’m loathe to scare our visitors away.” He grinned again in that same ghastly parody of good humor. “Now then,” he said, with what he probably thought of as an avuncular twinkle. “Are we sitting comfortably?”
Stepping out of the pod, I walked swiftly through the mirage, past the queue of sightseers and toward the scrap of grass which backs onto the Eye. There, I found myself an isolated corner and proceeded to be copiously sick. When I was done, I straightened up, dabbed at my mouth with a tissue and began to worry about my breath. A seagull landed at my feet and pecked inquisitively at the vomit.
Trying desperately not to consider the ramifications of what I’d been told, I stumbled to the river and stared dully down into its murky waters.
Someone strolled up beside me. “They’ve told you, then?”
The speaker was an elderly woman, fragile with age but in possession of a certain geriatric poise which suggested that there was little she would not be willing to face down.
“I suppose you’ve come to sell me some double glazing?” I said.
A hint of a smile. “Could I tempt you to a stroll? We don’t have long.”
Wearily, I agreed, and together we walked along the riverbank, past tourists, buskers, tramps, office workers on an early lunch and truculent-looking kids on skateboards — all of them oblivious to the secret I had just been told, the truth that made a perverted joke of every one of their lives.
“Hits you rather hard, doesn’t it?” the old lady said, as though she was discussing nothing more alarming than a national shortage of buttered scones. “You’ll get used to it.”
“Are you going to tell me who you are?”
“Unlike the rest of them, Henry, I’m going to do you the courtesy of telling you the name I was born with.” She smiled. “I am Miss Jane Morning.”
“Are you… Did he…” I gesticulated inarticulately toward the Eye.
“Before his defection to the BBC, your grandfather and I worked together at the Directorate for many years.”
“I never knew any of this.”
“There are less than two dozen men in all of England who know of the Directorate’s true purpose. Your grandfather loved you dearly but, come now, he was hardly likely to entrust you with one of the best-kept secrets of British intelligence.”
“That’s why they need me, isn’t it? Because of Granddad.”
Miss Morning nodded. “The whereabouts of Estella is keeping the war in stalemate. That was always your grandfather’s secret. And with him gone” — she looked as though she wasn’t sure whether to laugh or cry — “well, as I believe the saying goes — all bets are off.”
“You’re not making a great deal of sense. Not that anything seems to lately.”
“Concentrate, young man. The hunt is on for Estella now. Your grandfather knew this day would come and he planned for it. But something’s gone wrong. Certain forces have taken an interest in us and it is most unlikely that we shall survive their attention.” She broke off. “You seem frightened.”
“Of course I’m frightened. I’m extremely frightened. Probably close to terrified if I’m being honest.”
“That’s eminently sane of you. But things are about to get a good deal worse. If I know how Dedlock thinks — and I’m very much afraid that I do — then he’ll take you to see the prisoners tonight.”
“Who are these prisoners?” I asked. “How do they know who I am?”
“You don’t want me to say their names. Not out loud. Not in public.”
“Why on earth not?”
“Names have power. Theirs more than most. I warn you, Henry. They’ll lie to you. If they ever tell the truth, it will be to twist it to their own purposes. Don’t take a single wicked word they say on trust. They are chaos incarnate. They delight in destruction for its own sake. And nothing is sweeter to them than the corruption of an innocent soul.”
“I don’t know what you’re talking about.”
“Then I fear you may have to discover it for yourself.” Miss Morning snapped open her handbag and passed me a discreet square of card. “Call me when you need me. And you will need me.”
“Can’t you tell me more?”
“Not today.”