“Then I shall drive faster. Sir.” The saloon accelerates, heading south.
“HELLO, BOB, ” SAYS JONQUIL’S MUMMY, A SMILE CRINKLING the crow’s-feet at the corners of her eyes. “Oh dear, what did you do to your arm? Let me have a look at that.” She tuts over the state of Julian’s first-aid-very rough and ready, a wadded-up rugby sock held in place by tubigrip, now black with clotted blood. “You really ought to have taken the week off sick: overwork will be the death of you, you know.”
“Fuck off!” Fury and pain give way to a mix of disgust and self-contempt. I should have seen this coming.
“Do feel free to let it all hang out,” she tells me: “It’s not as if you’ve got anything to lose, is it?”
Damn Iris. She knows me well enough to get under my skin.
“You’ve been studying me, haven’t you?”
“Of course.” She glances over her shoulder. “You. Fetch the first-aid kit at once.” Back to me: “I’m sorry about… that.”
“Does your idiot daughter always go around chopping up strangers when you’re not around?”
“Yes,” she says calmly. “It runs in the family. I don’t think you have any grounds to complain, given what you did to poor Gareth. Would you like me to take those handcuffs off you? Don’t get any silly ideas about escaping: the guards upstairs will shoot anyone they don’t recognize.”
“I didn’t do anything to Gareth,” I say as she pulls out a key and holds it up in front of me between two black-gloved fingers: “If he hadn’t meddled-” I stop. There’s no point arguing. “What do you want from me?”
“Your cooperation, for the time being. Nothing more, nothing less.” There’s a click, and my right wrist flops free. My arm flares for a moment, and I nearly black out. “That looks painful. Would you like something for it?” I don’t remember nodding, but a subjective moment later I’m sitting up on the trolley and someone I can’t see is leaning over me with a syringe. It stings, cold as it goes in-then my arm begins to fade, startlingly fast. “It’s just morphine, Bob. Say if you need some more.”
“Morph-” I’m nodding. “What do you want?”
“Come and sit with me,” she says, beckoning. An unseen minion lifts me with an arm under my left shoulder and guides me towards one of two reclining leather armchairs in the middle of a dim pool of light on the flagstones-Flagstones? Where are we? “And I’ll explain.”
I fade in and out for a bit. When I’m back again, I find I’m sitting in one of the chairs. There’s a tight bandage on my right arm, with something that isn’t a rugby sock under it. My hands are lying on the armrests, un-cuffed, although I’ve got sore red bands where the metal cut into my wrists. I can feel my fingers, mostly-I can even make them flex. And for the first time in hours, my arm isn’t killing me. I’m aware of the pain, but it feels as if it’s on the other side of a thick woolen blanket.
Iris is sitting in the other chair, holding an oddly shaped cup made of what looks like yellow plastic, watching me. She’s put her hair up and changed from her usual office casual into what my finely-tuned fashion sense suggests is either a late-Victorian mourning gown or a cultist priestess’s robes. Or maybe she’s just come from a goth nightclub with a really strict dress code.
I stare past her. We’re in a cellar, sure enough-one designed by an architect from the C of E school of baroque cathedral design. It’s all vaulted arches and flying buttresses, carved stone and heavy wooden partitions cutting us off from darkened naves and tunnels. Just like being in church, except for the lack of windows. Putti and angels flutter towards the shadowy ceiling. There are rows of oak pews, blackened with age. “Where are we?” I ask.
“We’re in the underground chapel of the Ancient and Honourable Order of Wheelwrights,” she says. “They had an overground chapel, too, but this one is more private.”
“More p-” I stop. “Were the ancient whatevers a cover organization by any chance? For a brotherhood of a different hue?”
Iris seems amused by the idea. “Hardly! They were purged in the 1890s, but nobody found the way down to this cellar. We had rather a lot of cleaning up to do, interminable reconsecrations and exorcisms before we could dedicate the chapel to its true calling.” She pulls a face. “Skull worshipers.”
Skull worshipers? Does she mean…? Oh dear. There are as many species of cultists as there are dark entities for them to wank over. If this place has a history of uncanny worship going back a century and a half, then it’s a place of power indeed-and that’s before you take into account its location inside a huge graveyard, at one end of a ley line leading into the heart of London that was traversed by tens of thousands of dead over a period of nearly a hundred years. The whole thing has got to be a gigantic necromantic capacitor. “So it was vacant and your people moved in?”
“More or less, yes.”
“You people being, hmm. Officially, the Free Church of the Universal Kingdom? Or unofficially…?”
She shakes her head. “The Free Church aren’t terribly useful over here-the British aversion to wearing one’s religion on one’s sleeve, you know. We’d get lots of very funny looks indeed if we went around fondling snakes and preaching the prosperity gospel-even though that sort of thing is de rigueur for stockbrokers. No: on this side of the pond we mostly use local Conservative and Unionist Party branches. And some Labour groups, we’re not fussy.”
Enlightenment dawns, and it’s not welcome. Firstly, the Tory grass-roots are notorious for their bloody-minded independence-their local branches pretty much run themselves. And secondly, political leverage… Isn’t the Prime Minister very big on community and faith-based initiatives? Oh dear fucking hell…
I blink owlishly. Iris leans forward, concerned. “Would you like a can of Red Bull? I’m sure you could do with a pick-me-up.”
I nod, speechless. “Why me?” I ask, as a male minion-wearing a long black robe, naturally-sweeps forward with a small silver tray, on which is balanced a can of energy drink. I stare at it and twitch my right hand. He opens the ring-pull and holds the tray in front of my (functioning) left hand. I take the can gratefully, and manage to get most of a mouthful down my throat rather than down my tee shirt. As he steps back, I repeat my question: “Why did you abduct me? Because I’m quite clear now that this little charade is all about me. We’ve all been suckered. Iris is one of the two sharpest managers I’ve ever had-the other being Angleton-and she’s been one step ahead of us all along. She probably swiped Mo’s report, too. “Why? I’m a nobody.”
“You underestimate your value, Bob.” She raises her cup, and smiles over its rim as she takes a sip of something dark. I blink, focusing on it. (That’s not a cup, I realize with a sense of detachment. Why is she drinking from a-because she’s a cultist, idiot.) “You’ve been fast-tracked for senior management for the past eight years. You knew that, didn’t you? But you’re only graded as an SSO 3. That’s a bit low for someone who’s reporting directly to a DSS, so I did some digging. You’re not being held back; it’s just that the Laundry operates a Y-shaped promotion path-administration and line ranks diverge above a very low level. You’re due for regrading later this year, Bob. If you pass the board, they’ll make you an SSO 4(L). Doesn’t sound like much, but it’s the first step up from the fork into the line hierarchy, and it’ll entitle you to boss Army majors around. Or police superintendents. I’m an SSO 6(A) but you’d be able to tell me what to do. And a year after that, unless you really go off the rails, they’ll be coaching you for SSO 5(L).”
I try not to boggle openly. I haven’t been paying too much attention to my grade, frankly: I get regular yearly pay raises and rung increments, and I knew I was up for promotion sooner or later, and I knew about the Y-path, but it hadn’t occurred to me that I might be about to effectively jump three grades.
“I’ve seen your confidential record, Bob. It’s impressive. You get stuff done, and Angleton thinks very highly of you. Angleton. You know what that means, don’t you?”