Tom Harper
The Lazarus Vault
for Jane Conway-Gordon
better than a poke
in the eye
EPIGRAPH
‘Upon my honour,’ said Sir Guiromelant. ‘Your tales amaze me. It’s a delight to listen, for you tell them as well as any minstrel or troubadour — you’re a born storyteller. And yet at first I took you for a knight, and thought you must have done some great deeds of valour.’
I
Ellie told herself she didn’t want the job. Didn’t need it. She’d just started a PhD in the subject she loved, which was more than a girl like her should ever have dreamed of. Her life until then had been concrete and rust: now she’d stepped through the door into an enchanted world. After nine months in Oxford, she still had to pinch herself at the beauty that surrounded her, the gargoyles and pinnacles, the panelled rooms and immaculate lawns. She had a supervisor who respected her, a boyfriend who adored her, and a mother who almost burst with pride when she told the neighbours how far her daughter had gone.
But none of that stopped her from getting up at six on a grey morning, tugging on some tights that were too thick for May and the tweed skirt she’d bought for her doctoral interview, and taking the bus down the M40 to London. At Marble Arch she got on the Tube with a thousand other commuters, squeezed into the carriage like toothpaste, and wondered how people could endure this every day. She clutched her bag tight to her stomach. Inside was a bottle of water, a sandwich she’d made for the way home, and a letter on thick cream paper with a crest stamped at the top. The reason she’d come.
The Director, Mr Vivian Blanchard, would be delighted if you could visit him to discuss possible career opportunities at the Monsalvat Bank …
Sweat pricked the back of her neck as the train swayed into the tunnel. The air in the carriage was thick with body odour and lowest-common-denominator perfume. She felt ill. She didn’t even want the job.
The moment she came out of the ground at Bank Station she could feel the danger in the air. A crowd of demonstrators had gathered outside the Bank of England, chanting and clapping and waving their ragged banners. More were expected. Police horses stamped their massive hooves and bared their teeth; stiff-backed riders stared down from behind the opaque visors of their helmets, or over the rim of their shields. They gripped their batons like knights getting ready for battle. Above, the barons of capitalism watched from their glass towers and agreed that this was what they paid their taxes for.
Ellie edged around the demonstration. The crowd jostled her; she almost dropped her bag. A policeman looked her up and down and decided she wasn’t a threat. In her tweed skirt and woollen jacket, she didn’t look much like a demonstrator. Not much like anyone in the City. Expensively dressed mannequins reproached her from behind the barricaded shop windows, their faces fixed hard in contempt. She wished she hadn’t come.
‘Look out where you’re going!’
An indignant, wheedling shout. She’d walked straight into someone — one of the protesters. Wild, stringy hair hung over a gaunt face with staring eyes and ragged teeth; his T-shirt looked as if he’d lived in it for weeks. The placard on his shoulder said, ‘CAPITALISM IS KILLING US’.
‘I’m sorry.’ She tried to edge around him, but he sidestepped to block her.
‘Dangerous times, love.’ He thrust himself forward. ‘Got to be careful, know what I mean? Got to chop away the dead wood, stop the rot before we get got. Cut out the disease.’
He smelled like week-old rubbish. Ellie recoiled, but the crowd pressed her towards him.
‘Society’s dying.’ Spittle flecked his mouth; his voice was rising. ‘There’s a disease in this world and it’s killing us all. Look around. The bees are dying and the trees are dying. The oceans are rising, but there’s no fish in them. It’s a sickness.’
Ellie glanced at her watch. She didn’t have time. ‘I’m sorry, but —’
‘No, you listen.’
A hand reached out, grimy nails like talons. He probably meant to grab her arm. But Ellie twisted away, so that the fingers caught the strap of her bag instead. He tugged it off her shoulder; she must have shouted or screamed.
Something blurred the air behind him and the protester sank to his knees with a squeal. A policeman in a fluorescent yellow jerkin stood behind him, baton in hand. He must have been watching, waiting for the excuse. In an instant, two more officers had ziplocked the man’s wrists behind his back and dragged him away.
Ellie began to stammer some thanks, but the policeman cut her off.
‘Go away!’ he shouted. ‘You aren’t safe here!’
The snarl on his face, half-hidden below the visor of his riot helmet, was almost more frightening than the protester. Ellie clutched her bag and stumbled away through the crowd.
A few moments later she felt a sickening stab of guilt. The protester hadn’t meant any harm. Perhaps she should have taken the policeman’s badge number, in case the man wanted to make a complaint. She glanced back, but he’d already disappeared into the yellow-jacketed battle lines.
Ellie arrived ten minutes late, hot and flustered. The encounter with the protester had left her shaken, but that wasn’t what made her late. She’d got lost. The map she’d looked at before she came showed nothing but a grey block of space where the bank should have been. On the ground, that translated into a maze of tiny lanes and alleys worming between old buildings: dead ends that turned out to be blind corners, passages that led through houses or slipped through ancient walls. And, just when she was ready to give up, an old stone building with narrow windows and little turrets on the corners, craning out over the cobbled lane.
A gleaming black Jaguar sat waiting outside. How did that get there? The moment she came into view, a chauffeur in a peaked cap jumped out and opened the rear door, almost as if she’d been expected. But it wasn’t for her. A man in a pinstriped suit and a blue tie strode down the steps and slid into the back of the car. The chauffeur slammed the door and drove off; Ellie had to press herself flat against the wall to avoid being run over. As it rumbled past, Ellie glimpsed a familiar face bowed over the contents of a red leather briefcase. Only for a second, before the Jaguar disappeared round the corner.
Ellie looked back to the bank. A cast-iron sign hung over the door: a snarling eagle framed by a shield, holding what looked like a spear in its claws. It was repeated in frosted glass on the door, and again inside, in brass, on the wall behind the reception desk.
A sour-faced receptionist, with a more-than-passing resemblance to the eagle on the shield, glared her down as she approached the desk. Ellie fumbled the letter out of her bag.
‘Ellie Stanton. I’m here to see, um, Vivian Blanchard.’
The receptionist lifted a phone and announced Ellie in a crisp, cut-glass voice.
‘He won’t be a minute.’
There were no chairs, nowhere to sit. Standing at the desk, not knowing what to do, curiosity got the better of Ellie.
‘That man who just left. Was that —?’
The secretary pursed her lips. ‘I’m afraid we never discuss our clients.’
Ellie blushed. Had she already ruined her chances? Pull yourself together, she told herself. You don’t have anything to prove. They asked to see you.
The ring of a telephone broke the silence. The receptionist answered without taking her eyes off Ellie.