Mum gave a protractedly theatrical sniff. “If a day at the office means more to you than a conversation with your mother-”
“Bye, Mum.” I finished the call and turned back to Barbara.
Miss Morning, still holding that insanely improbably weapon, had begun to walk toward the office, tottering heroically onward in little-old-lady steps. We easily caught up.
I spoke quietly so that only Barbara would hear me. “Something I’ve never understood… If Estella’s in there — the real Estella — then what do we do when we find her?”
“It’s not going to be nice,” she said. “Not nice at all.” Barbara’s face had turned chalk-pale and she seemed to move more mechanically than ever, propelled forward by some irresistible force. “I’m afraid we’re going to have to kill her.”
Slimy with sweat, oppressed by spasms which shook the whole of his body and struggling to swallow the lake of bile in his throat, the next king of England crouched in the passenger seat of Mr. Streater’s Nova and whimpered about the end of the world.
The driver’s gaze passed casually over the prince, his voice a twitch of disdain. “What’s up with you?”
Outside, a gaggle of girls, belt-skirted, orange-peel-skinned and mountainously stilettoed, lurched and reeled along the pavement. Streater honked the car horn, at which one of the revelers raised her middle finger in contemptuous salute.
The driver sniggered. “Always liked a woman with a bit of attitude. With a wiggle in her walk and steel in her arse. You’re the same, aren’t you, chief? You like a girl who knows what she wants and how to get it. Your missus is like that. Just a shame these days it’s not you she wants.”
The prince whimpered again, a pitiful, helpless threnody, like the sound a puppy makes on catching a glimpse of the veterinarian’s knife and guesses, too late, what is to come.
“Up for some tunes, chief? Something to blow away the cobwebs? Something to get us in the mood?” Streater’s left hand drifted away from the steering wheel toward the glove compartment, clicked it expertly open and unleashed an avalanche of old cassettes. Arthur moaned and Streater noted, with something akin to satisfaction, that his charge had actually begun to drool. He tossed a handful of tapes onto Arthur’s lap.
The prince stared dumbly down at them and saw that they were all identical, all labeled with the same short word.
“What is this…” he began, squinting at what was written in front of him as though he was not quite certain of its reality. “What is this… Boner?”
Streater grinned. “That’s my old band, chief.”
“Band? You’re a musician?”
“Played bass. Used to do a lot of gigs. How else do you think I met Pete?” Streater plucked out a tape and thrust it into the mouth of the car’s cassette player. “Here we go. Let us know what you think.”
The prince groaned again, Mr. Streater pressed play and the car was filled with the beehive roar of static. There was a moment’s silence, followed not, as Arthur had expected, by the cacophony of modern music but by a clipped, strangulated voice, a masterclass in received pronunciation.
“Good morning, Arthur.”
At the sound of it, the prince wriggled up in his seat, wiped his mouth and felt the distant pull of lucidity. “Mother?” he said.
He turned to Mr. Streater, intending to ask the meaning of this strange recording, only to see that the blond man was rhythmically tapping his fingers on the steering wheel and humming, a little discordantly, as he drove, as though he was joining in with some chorus or refrain which the prince was unable to hear.
The tape went on. “Of late, I have been thinking a good deal about the first stalking party your father took you on. You must have been terribly small. Six, perhaps, or seven.”
The eyes of the prince moistened at this, for he knew what was coming, knew with what he was about to be confronted.
“You seemed so eager for the adventure. I recall that for once I felt a small measure of pride in you — that warm maternal glow which one is often told that ladies in my position are expected to feel. But then, as usual, you lived down to our expectations. You came home early and in tears. You had walked out with the rest of them but when the moment came for the belly of the kill to be slit open and for you, as the most junior member of the hunt, to receive the honor of having its blood laid across your forehead, you began to cry. You mewed as though you were still a baby. You refused to be blooded then and have spurned it ever since. That awful woman you married has done nothing to encourage you. You have turned out so spineless, Arthur, that I saw no choice but to place you in Mr. Streater’s care. I only hope that he has prized some semblance of manhood from you.”
Mr. Streater winked.
“It saddens me that you are to be the only heir of the House of Windsor. I suspect that by the time you hear this, Leviathan will be on his way at last. I do hope you are blooded in time. I pray you are man enough to welcome our savior and do what needs to be done. I only hope that at long last you can make me proud.”
The tape spooled to a finish and Arthur slumped miserably in his seat. “I never liked the sight of blood,” he said at last. “Why is that so wrong of me?”
Streater laughed. “Tough titty, chief. Gonna be a lot of it about in the next few days.”
“What do you mean by that?”
“I mean that Leviathan’s gonna make a few changes. A few improvements to the city. I mean that you’re expected to help out.”
The car slowed down, almost home now, back in the familiar alley of the Mall, the Nova processing with high seriousness along the wide stone channel. At last, the blond man pulled up outside Clarence House.
“Get out, chief. I’m not stopping. There’s still some shit I’ve gotta sort.”
Arthur groped for the door handle and, like a one-night stand on the morning after, stepped unsteadily, dazed and humiliated, from the car.
“Oi!” Streater had wound down his window and was leering out of it like a lecherous cabbie hoping for a tip. “I’ve got a couple of things for you.”
“What?”
“Here’s a little pick-me-up.” He shoved a shrink-wrapped syringe into Arthur’s hands. “And here’s something else. Just in case.” He shoved an object into the prince’s hands and, too late, Arthur saw what it was, caught the glint of dawn light on gun barrel, and felt nauseous at the sight of it, green with disgust.
“I don’t want a gun.”
“Just take it, chief. Remember what your mum said? You’ve gotta be blooded. And you might need it. What if you see something you don’t like? What if you’re confronted with the truth?”
The window hiccoughed upward. Streater revved the engine and, without so much as a wave goodbye, turned the car and hot-rodded back into the city.
Stowing into his jacket pocket the accessories of a criminality from which, only a few days earlier, he would have believed himself completely removed, Arthur trudged indoors. Servants were already up and about, doing whatever it is that servants do — wiping, scraping and polishing, making ready, making clean. As the prince passed by, they stopped, looked down at the ground and said nothing. They asked no questions. Discretion had been bred into them and even at the sight of their master reduced to the status of a bum, all of them held their tongues.