“Why?”
“Because if you knew everything, I doubt you’d find the strength to carry on.”
Although this sentence might look a little theatrical on paper, I should point out that it was delivered in a tone which was remarkably calm and matter-of-fact.
“There is one more thing,” she said.
“Yes?”
“I have his cat. It found its way to me.” A sad smile. “As, in your own way, have you.” Then she gave me a good crisp nod goodbye and walked into the crowd.
If I thought it would do any good, I’d tell you the secret now. I’d write it down and damn the consequences. But I can’t see what help that would be. I don’t see how laying before you those terrible truths about the House of Windsor, their insane treachery and their secret lusts, would serve any useful purpose save to infuse your nightmares with clammy and crepuscular dread.
I stood motionless, my mind whirling with impossibilities. Then — bathos.
“Henry? Is that you?”
Someone chunky stood in front of me, a sandwich engorged with cheese and pickle clasped half-eaten in her hands.
“Barbara!” I mustered a wonky kind of smile. “How are you?”
“Mustn’t grumble. But how are you? How’s life in” — she lowered her voice in serio-comic reverence — “the new department?”
I gulped back a bitter laugh, wondering what kind of cover story she’d been fed. “It’s… challenging.”
Barbara grunted and took a noisy bite of her sandwich but seemed to have nothing further to add to the conversation.
“How’s Peter?” I asked.
“He’s fine,” she said between mouthfuls. “Keeps talking to me about all the gigs he’s going to.”
I rolled my eyes and we shared a moment of exasperated collusion.
“Actually,” Barbara chomped on, “I had a phone call from one of your colleagues. Mr. Jasper. Remember? He introduced himself when he came into the office. Tallish man. Lovely skin.”
I don’t think she noticed me flinch at the mention of the name. What the hell was Jasper doing calling Barbara?
“He’s taking me out to dinner,” she said in answer to my unspoken question. Then, with a small crescendo of pride: “We’re getting pizza.”
I couldn’t think of anything to say.
“He seems really nice.” For an instant, she sounded like a very small girl. “He is nice, isn’t he?”
“He’s interesting,” I said. “Oh, he’s full of surprises.”
Barbara looked at her watch. “Better go. Nice seeing you again.”
“And you,” I said politely, meaninglessly, as Barbara lumbered away, leaving me to watch the surge of strangers, wondering if any of them had the dimmest notion of how brittle the world really was.
My landlady and I sat in front of the television in an exploratory embrace, Abbey trying her best to get comfortable with my arm around her, me struggling against that nausea which had settled in my stomach ever since I’d been told the truth about the war.
Abbey had remarked on my pallor but I had admitted only to being worn and exhausted from my new job. I’d not forgotten Mr. Dedlock’s threats.
So as not to hurt her feelings, I was wearing the lemon-colored sweater which she’d given me for my birthday.
She was channel hopping. “Poor bastard,” she said as she came to rest on BBC1.
I forced myself to focus on the screen. “Who?”
“Prince Arthur,” she said, as the crinkled Prince of Wales moped dolefully across the screen. “Sixty today and still no closer to being king. No wonder he looks so flipping miserable.”
“Hmm.”
“I mean, look at him. Always so sour.”
“Hmm.”
“Wife’s quite pretty, though. Never understood what she saw in him.”
“Uh-huh.”
“Are you OK, Henry? You seem miles away.”
“Difficult day,” I murmured.
“You can talk to me, you know.”
I laughed, and judging from Abbey’s expression, I imagine the sound cannot have been a pretty one.
Consequently, when the doorbell rang, I was grateful for the excuse to get to my feet.
The sky was stormy and black, and Mr. Steerforth was standing on our doorstep. He seemed bulkier than ever, dressed in some kind of flak jacket and the sort of khaki trousers which boast a preposterous amount of pockets. “You all right? ’Cause you look bloody rough.”
“I’m fine.”
Steerforth snorted. “The secret will do that to you. Better get used to it.”
“What do you want?”
“Get your coat. You’re going to see them tonight.”
“See who?”
“I can’t say their names. Not their real names. But I call them…” He swallowed hard. “I call them the Domino Men.”
“What?”
“Just get your coat,” he barked, then, unable to resist a grin: “Nice sweater.”
“Who was that?” Abbey asked, her attention half on me, half on the TV, which had now begun to show a montage of the heir to the throne’s baby photos.
“It’s work. I’ve got to go out.”
“This late?”
“Sorry. Can’t be helped.”
The look that she gave me was split between sympathy and suspicion. “I wish you could tell me what’s really going on.”
“Believe me,” I said grimly. “So do I.”
It had begun to rain, a mean, thin drizzle, and Barnaby was waiting in the car, slouched in his seat, engrossed in the Dissemination of Irony: The Challenger Narratives Through the Prism of Postmodernism.
“What a bloody awful sweater,” he said, then blew his nose defiantly on the sleeve of his jacket.
Steerforth was already inside.
“Isn't Jasper coming with us?” I asked.
The driver spat out of the window. “Too chicken. Strap yourselves in.” I did as I was told and Barnaby started the engine with the dutiful air of a man doing the school run for someone else’s kids.
“Where are we going?” I asked.
“You’ll know it when you see it,” Barnaby said.
Steerforth nudged me in the ribs. “Dedlock wants to talk.”
“Fine.” I looked around for a phone. “How’s he going to manage that?”
“Give me a minute.” Steerforth screwed up his face s though grappling with the most gruesome kind of constipation. “He’s coming through.”
Then the big man’s face began to twist, flex and gurn; it was possessed by rubbery quivers, spasms and twitches, contorting itself into strange and horrible shapes. He was evidently in considerable pain and it only seemed to end when the man who sat opposite me was utterly transformed. He may still have had Steerforth’s body, but through some impossible realignment of his features, he’d become a parody of the old man in the tank. Even his voice was altered, moving into a higher pitch, suddenly wavery with unnatural age.
“Good evening, Henry Lamb,” he said.
I stared, astonished. “Dedlock?”
“Do not be alarmed. Steerforth is the pit bull of the Directorate. Some time ago, he submitted to a small procedure which allows me, on occasion, to borrow his physical form.”
“Unbelievable.”
“Indeed. And speaking of unbelievable… What a splendid pullover.” The body of Steerforth emitted a series of gurgles which I presumed, after a while, to be laughter. “We’ve been left with no choice,” he said. “Tonight, you meet the prisoners. You need to prize just one single piece of information from them. The whereabouts of a woman called Estella. Have you got that, Henry Lamb? Am I making myself unequivocally clear?”
“Who are these prisoners? How do they know so much?”
“I don’t wish to say their names. Not now.”
“Dedlock? I need to know who these people are.”
It was raining harder now, each drop a hammer-blow against the pane. “My, my.” The thing in Steerforth gave a liquid giggle. “Who said anything about them being people?”
There was a final burble, then Steerforth’s face, running with rivulets of sweat, went slack and sagged back into its old, familiar lineaments.
“What the hell was that?”
Steerforth yanked a handkerchief from his pocket and mopped his face. “Now you see the price of the war,” he murmured. “And we can’t afford it. Not by a long shot.”