Hawker beamed. “Frightfully sorry to hear about your grandpapa’s fall.”
“Terrible pity, sir.”
“He was wizard, your granddad!”
“What a brick, sir!”
Hawker’s eyes were brimming with dewy wistfulness. “And — oh — he had a lovely sense of humor.”
The Prefects exploded into mocking laughter.
I stood silently, determined that these creatures should not get the better of me, that I wouldn’t be reduced to cowering at their cell door like the pit bull Steerforth.
As the Prefects finished cackling, Boon leant forward and looked me in the eye. “I take it old fish-face has sent you?”
“He has,” I said quietly.
Hawker chortled. “He must be sweating conkers now your grandpa’s popped off. S’pose he’s told you to nose out where Estella is?”
“Sad, isn’t it?” said Boon before I could reply, although I expect my expression told him all he needed to know. “Predictable.”
“Dashed predictable.”
“Beastly little prig.”
“Greasy ape.”
“He need a vigorous slippering and I don’t mind admitting it.”
I tried my best to stay calm. “So do you know,” I asked, “where this woman is?”
Hawker waggled his eyebrows. “Rather, my old shoehorn! Your grandpa told us!”
Boon gave a triumphant grin. “If you’re nice to us, one day we might even pass it on.”
I glared back. “I think Mr. Dedlock will want more of a guarantee than that.”
“’Fraid he’ll be disappointed then.”
“Not today, sir!”
“Nothing doing!”
“No room at the inn, sir!”
“Dedlock told me you knew my name,” I said. “How?”
“Oh, but we’ve always known about you, Mr. L.”
“We wanted to see your face, sir.”
“We wanted to look you in the eye.”
A chill slithered down my spine. “Why?”
Boon flashed another sharky smile. “So that we’ll know you when we meet again, sir. Out there in the real world. Just before the end.”
They exchanged glances, sly and conspiratorial.
“I think you’re lying,” I said.
“Oh!” Boon gave a gleeful yelp. “He thinks we’re lying. He’s only just made our acquaintance, Hawker, and already he’s calling us fibbers.”
“Getting rather frilly, ain’t he, Boon?”
“Fearfully bold.”
“The cheek of it. The sheer brazen cheek of it.”
“Say what he thinks, doesn’t he, our young Mr. Lamb?”
“Oh, he calls a spade a spade.”
“Do you know, I rather like that.”
“I respect it.”
“Sound fellow!”
“Good egg!”
“Ripping sport!”
“Come and see us again, won’t you, sir?”
“How we’d adore another visit.”
They laughed uproariously.
“But before you skedaddle, sir.”
“Just one more thing before you cut.”
“A quick word about your father, sir.”
“Your late, lamented pa.”
“My father?” I asked, feeling the stirrings of panic. “What do you know about my dad?”
Boon gave me a subtle look and I felt a heave of nausea.
“Do you want to know how long it took him to die, sir? Trapped in the tangled wreck of his automobile as the medical chaps tired and failed to cut him free?”
The sound of blood thundered through my head. “How do you know this?”
Hawker smirked. “Four hours, sir. Four unbearable hours before he finally popped off. Wasn’t a nice death, was it, Boon?”
“Bally awful if you ask me.”
“Protracted, I’d call it. Horribly protracted.”
“Golly, Boon, you know some long words.”
“So I should, Hawker. You are talking, after all, to the winner of the Cuthbert Cup for Prolixity for five consecutive terms.”
“Congratulations, dear thing.”
“Thank you, my old hat stand.”
Hawker grinned at me. “He bled to death, Mr. L.. Nasty gash in the tummy, I think. Absolutely the worst place for it to happen.”
“He called for you at the end. He shouted your name as delirium took hold and his bowels let him down.”
I turned and banged on the glass window. “Let me out!”
Hawker winced. “Something we said, sir?”
Tears streaming down my face, I slammed my palm into the pane. “Steerforth! Open the bloody door!”
Boon winced. “Hit a nerve, did we, Mr. L?”
I struck the glass as hard as I could. At that moment, I doubt I’d have cared if it had shattered in my hand. “Steerforth!”
Hawker was still smirking. “No need to cut up rough, old thing.”
At last, the door slid open.
Boon gave me a wave. “Bye-bye, Mr. L.”
“Toodle-oo, sir!”
Tinkety-tonk!”
They were still laughing when I staggered out into the corridor where Steerforth was waiting, into whose arms I practically collapsed as the door hissed shut.
“I’m sorry,” he said, an uncharacteristic tenderness in his voice. “I’m so sorry.”
The rain thrashed against the car as we were driven from Downing Street, the force of the downpour making it spray back into the air like steam. I sank down into my seat, finding, for once, the omnipresent smell of soggy dog almost welcoming.
Barnaby was hunched forward, peering past the wipers into the storm, trying to see his way as the rain became torrential. Steerforth was slumped sideways, eyes half closed, hands clasped together. I wondered if he was praying.
In the end, to my surprise, it was me who broke the silence.
“They knew about my dad,” I said, feeling my fear begin to ebb away and be replaced with anger, with raw, burning rage at those Whitehall obscenities, those knuckle-kneed monsters who find nothing so unremittingly hilarious as human misery. “How did they know about Dad?”
The pit bull did not reply but gazed solemnly at the floor as though in hope of absolution.
The rain smashed down on the roof; there was a flash of lightning and the timpani growl of thunder, and as the storm illuminated Steerforth’s face I saw his features begin to convulse, saw them squeezed, tugged and contorted in something utterly impossible.
For a second, I think I forgot to breathe.
When Steerforth spoke I heard that his voice had once again become a parody of his master’s. “Good evening, Mr. Lamb.”
“Dedlock?” I said softly.
“Did you get it?” he asked. “Do we know the whereabouts of Estella?”
“I couldn’t get them to talk. I’m sorry.”
“You’re sorry? You’ve let me down, Henry Lamb. You’ve let me down and as a result of that failure the city stands on the brink of catastrophe.”
“They knew about my father,” I said. “They know everything. The smell in there… The way you feel when they look at you… like needles in your head.”
“You have to see them again.”
My stomach contracted at the thought of it. “I’m just a filing clerk.”
“No objections. You see them again tomorrow.” I tried to protest but it was already too late.
As Dedlock departed from his body, Steerforth fell back into his chair, frantically sucking in lungfuls of air. Struggling to breathe, he loosened his tie and flicked down the first few buttons at the top of his shirt.
I caught a glimpse of the big man’s chest, and even now, I dearly wish I hadn’t. Poor Steerforth — zigzagged in maggot-white scars, scored with old stitches, furrows, grooves and crenellations, the skin repeatedly punctured with pinkish indentations.
Steerforth must have realized what I’d seen, as he swiftly covered himself up, his face aflame with humiliation. “You don’t deserve this,” he murmured. “None of us deserve this.”
Barnaby dropped me a street away from the flat and I had little choice but to make a dash for it through the rain. By the time I got home, my clothes were clinging to my body, my shoes felt squelchy and waterlogged and my hair was a bedraggled mop. The first thing I did was knock on Abbey’s bedroom door. There was no response, but rather than doing the sensible thing — take a hot shower and retire discreetly to bed — I knocked even harder. At last, I heard the click of her bedside lamp, the rustle of a duvet, somnolent steps toward the door.