“It’s good to be back, sir.”
“And so wonderful to see that everything’s been forgiven and forgotten.”
Barbara peered into the tank and the head of the Directorate shrank from her gaze. “That’s all in the past, sir.” She bared an unnaturally bright white set of teeth. “That’s water under the bridge.”
Mercifully, at that moment, the pod’s revolution was complete, and we were pushed back out into the freezing night air.
Barnaby was waiting. Barbara had climbed into the passenger seat and Jasper was clambering in the back when Miss Morning tapped me lightly on the shoulder.
“You need to call home. Tell Abbey I’m coming round.”
Exhausted from the battering of the past few days, my brain couldn’t really compute this information. “What?”
“Just tell her I’m on my way.”
“OK… Why are you going to my flat?”
“That flat isn’t your flat. It’s a Directorate safe house.”
“What?”
“Henry, it’s where we carried out the Process. Its’ where we cut poor Estella. Don’t act so surprised. Why else do you think your granddad was so keen for you to live there?”
The window at the front of the car whirred down. “Henry,” Barbara said quietly — although this new softness in her tone made me feel more afraid of her than any shout or scream would have done. “Get in the car.”
“You have to go,” Miss Morning said. “I’ll explain later.”
For a second, I hesitated. Then I heard Barbara’s cool, clear vice (“Time is of the essence, Henry”) and I climbed in beside Jasper. Miss Morning slammed shut the door and as the car drove away, she mouthed something at me. A single word. I couldn’t quite make it out, but now, looking back on it as the days of my life almost certainly dwindle into single digits, I’m certain I know what it was.
“Sorry.”
Jasper was fidgeting, interlocking his fingers, touching the end of his nose, fiddling with his chair, periodically clearing his throat and then, growing bored with the rest, poking me in the ribs.
“Isn't she wonderful?” He nodded toward the front, where Barbara was giving our driver directions in the dispassionate tones of a satellite navigation system.
“Why did it have to be Barbara?” I hissed. “Why did you have to choose her?”
“She was perfect, Mr. Lamb. Just perfect.”
Swallowing my disgust, I took out my mobile and stabbed in Abbey’s number.
Barbara swiveled around, suddenly suspicious. “Who are you calling?”
“My landlady.”
“Make it quick, then.”
As it happened, I only got her voicemail.. “Hi, Abbey,” I said, almost in a whisper, acutely aware that the others were listening. “Listen, I know this might sound a bit odd but I’ve got a friend coming round to the flat. Is there any chance you could be there for her? Help her out with anything she needs. I can’t explain. But it’s really important. Anyway, I’ll call you later. And…” I couldn’t begin to articulate what I wanted to say. “I’m thinking about you a lot.” I broke the connection.
Jasper, still buoyant from his triumph, started smirking knowingly at me, but I ignored him and took to staring moodily out of the window.
We moved into the city and were passing a department store, open late for Christmas shopping, festooned with fluorescent Santas, blinking baubles, and Day-Glo snowmen, when Barbara suddenly said: “Pull over here.”
“Why?” Barnaby asked.
A hint of a smile. Or perhaps just a trick of the light. “We’re going to need costumes.”
At the far end of Upper Street, sandwiched between the kind of newsagent that makes most of its money from the magazines on its top shelf and a place which will sell you fried chicken at four o’clock in the morning, there was a nightclub called Diabolism.
Its name was a vestigial piece of pretension from an old proprietor who had nurtured plans to take the place upmarket. Unlike him, his successors knew their market.
Once a week, every week, the club hosted an event called Skool Daze, which, with its melange of cheap alcohol, hoped for promiscuity and chemically induced good humor, seemed no different from any other evening at Diabolism — except for a single innovation. In an attempt to recapture the carefree sybaritism of their adolescence, everyone who came through the door had to be dressed in an approximation of school uniform.
So you see now why Barbara insisted that we stop to pick up costumes.
It should go without saying that she looked extraordinary. She had picked out a skirt which displayed an impressive amount of leg and a blouse which, generously unbuttoned, revealed the aerodynamics of her cleavage. She was gorgeous — ravishingly, ridiculously so — yet I felt not a flicker of desire for her. The more time I spent in her company, the less real she seemed, as though she wasn’t quite there, more like a fantasy come to strange half-life instead of a real woman. It was only when I caught occasional glimpses of the Barbara I knew, in the way that she moved or a sudden dimpling of her cheeks, that I remembered the essential tragedy of the woman.
I’m rambling, of course, doing my best to avoid having to describe how Jasper and I climbed reluctantly into our little outfits, our shirts and striped ties. I couldn’t find shorts to fit me so I had to make do with rolling my trousers up above my knees. Actually, it was a look that Jasper almost pulled off, even if he did resemble the kind of kid who always came top of the class in mental arithmetic. I just looked ridiculous.
We left Barnaby in the car, engrossed in Peril Fiction and the Yellow Movement: The Fallible Narrator in the Lives of Sexton Blake. The photograph on the back cover was a younger version of our driver, uncharacteristically clean shaven, quietly pleased with himself, full of expectation for the future.
“I might have a sniff around in a bit,” he said, glancing up from his book. “See if there’s any sign of the enemy.”
I wish now that I’d said something to him. Thanked him, perhaps, for giving us a lift. Shaken his hand or something. Told him to let the bitterness go and enjoy what little was left of his life. But how could I have guessed? How could I have known that I was never going to see him again?
We strode over to the club. There was a ridiculously weedy bouncer at the door, sporting a little spiv’s moustache like no one had bothered to tell him that the Blitz was over and we didn’t have rationing anymore. He smirked at Barbara as she walked past and nodded brusquely at me, but just as Jasper was about to strut through, he held out his arm to stop him.
“Sorry, sir. Couples only.”
Jasper looked at him in astonishment. “What did you say?”
“Couples only. That’s the rules. Makes it a level playing field, you see.”
“Just let me through,” Jasper said, and tried to push his way past. All I can say about the struggle that ensued is that the bouncer must have been very much more forceful than he appeared.
“OK.” Jasper stood back, put his hand in his pocket and produced a twenty-pound note. “Would this help change your mind?”
“Rules is rules,” the bouncer said sententiously.
“Fine.” Jasper dragged out another twenty-pound note. “How about this?”
The mustachioed man just shook his head.
“Brilliant,” Jasper snapped. “London’s only honest bouncer. Listen here,” he said, and I could see he was on the cusp of losing his temper. “Right now, inside your club, there are a couple of creatures who’d think nothing of making every woman in this city a widow just because they’re bored. Now, for God’s sake, let me pass.”
“No offense, sir. And I don’t mean to be rude. But would you mind awfully buggering off?”
I’d been watching this performance with no small amount of amusement, but when I turned to look at Barbara there was nothing but stern professionalism on her face.
“Mr. Jasper,” she said. “We can’t afford to waste time to here. See if you can gain access with another party. Henry and I must go inside.”