Digger Browne was a short, stocky personage, in an old-fashioned wraparound coat with mud stains on the sleeves. He wore heavy woollen gloves when he was out in public, to hide his long horny fingernails made for digging and tearing. He also wore a wide-brimmed hat that hid most of his face in shadow. Digger was a ghoul and smelt strongly of carrion and recently disturbed earth.
"I’m just a part of nature," he said easily. "I take out the trash, clean up the garbage, and generally keep the world tidy. So I enjoy my work; is that a sin? Not everyone has a taste for the kind of work I do, but it has to be done. Someone’s got to eat all those bodies. Remember the undertakers’ strike, back in the seventies? People couldn’t do enough for me then…"
And finally, there was Mr. Stab. I didn’t need to be introduced to him. Everyone knew Mr. Stab, if only by reputation: the notorious uncaught serial killer of old London Town. He’d operated under many names, down the long years, and I don’t think even he knew for sure exactly how many people he’d murdered since he started out with five unfortunate whores in the East End in 1888. He gained something, some power, from what he did then. A ceremony of blood, he called it; a celebration of slaughter. And now he goes on and on and no one can stop him. When he was just being himself at the Wulfshead, he still dressed in the formal dark clothes of his time, right down to the opera cloak and top hat.
Most of these people knew or at least knew of Shaman Bond, and it came as quite a shock to them when Molly introduced me as Edwin Drood. Subway Sue looked around for the nearest exit, Digger Browne chewed nervously on his finger snack, and Girl Flower giggled at me owlishly over her glass. Mr. Stab smiled slowly, showing large blocky teeth stained brown with age.
"So you’re Edwin Drood. The man behind the mask. You probably have a body count nearly equal to mine."
"I kill to put an end to suffering," I said. "Not to celebrate it."
"I serve a purpose, just as you do."
"Don’t you dare try to justify yourself to me!" I said, and my voice was cold enough that everyone except Mr. Stab fell back a step.
"Why not?" said Mr. Stab. "I am a part of the natural order, just like Mr. Browne here. I cull the herd, thin out the weak and helpless, improve the stock. Someone has to do it, if the herd is to stay healthy."
"You do it because you enjoy it!"
"That too."
I started to subvocalise the Words that would call up my armour. The only reason I hadn’t killed Mr. Stab before this was because I’d never known where to look for him. I’d seen some of his victims, or what he’d left of them, and that was enough for me. Molly guessed what I was about to do, grabbed me by the arm, and pulled me around to glare right into my face.
"Don’t you dare embarrass me in front of my friends!"
"This is a friend? Mr. Stab? Do you know how many women just like you he’s killed?"
"But he’s never harmed me, or any of my friends, and he has been there for me when I needed him. Not even monsters are monsters all the time, remember? I’ve killed, in my time, for what seemed like good reasons, and so have you. You really think the world sees you as any different from him? How many grieving families have you left in your bloody wake, Edwin Drood?"
I took a long slow breath and forced myself into a kind of calm. I’d come here looking for answers, and the kind I needed could only be freely given. I nodded jerkily to Molly, and she let go of my arm. We turned back to face the others.
"There’s a traitor in my family," I said stiffly. "I would be grateful for any information you could give me."
"How grateful?" said Subway Sue. "Are we talking serious money?"
"If I had serious money, do you really think I’d be here talking to you?" I said just a bit ungraciously. "I’m rogue, outcast, outlaw. All I have is what I stand up in."
"I’m sure we could make some kind of deal," said Girl Flower in her breathy voice, batting her eyelashes at me, and then spoiled the mood by giggling.
"There is a traitor at the heart of the Droods," said Digger Browne.
"That’s common knowledge. But I don’t think anyone knows who."
"Lots of people have put forward names," said Mr. Stab. "But it’s all guesswork. Lots of people thought it might be you, Edwin. A field agent operating on his own, far from Drood central control, the only Drood ever to run away from home and not be hunted down like a dog by his family. The only reason everyone didn’t think it was you was because that would have been too obvious."
"And none of you know why I was made rogue?" I said.
"I’ve done some work for your family on occasion," said Digger. "I’d have sworn you were depressingly squeaky clean, like most of your family. I mean, yes, you run the world and everything, but—"
"I too have done work for the Droods," said Mr. Stab. He smiled crookedly at me. "Pretty much everyone here has, at one time or another. It’s the Droods’ world; we just live in it."
"We would never deal with filth like you," I said, but my heart wasn’t in it. I didn’t know what my family was capable of anymore.
"There are many like us," Molly said carefully. "Allowed to operate as long as we don’t rock the boat too much. As long as we pay tithes, or perform the occasional service for them. Dirty jobs, off-the-books cases; the kind you regular field agents aren’t suited for. The kind you were never supposed to know about, because it might stain your precious honour. We’ve all done the Droods’ dirty work. That’s why we’re all so ready to bring them down."
My head was spinning. I felt sick. Could I really have spent my whole life supporting a lie? Was there really anything left to me now, except to bring down my own family?
CHAPTER TWELVE
Down, Down, Deeper and Down
There are times in every man’s life when the woman you’ve taken up with suddenly disappears on business of her own, and you’re left to make polite conversation with her friends. Personally, I’d rather stick needles in my eyes, but it’s one of those things you just have to do. Molly Metcalf produced a one-time-only mobile phone and headed for the women’s toilet so she could reach her contact in Manifest Destiny without being glared at by everyone else in the club. I approved of her sense of caution. One-time-only phones are phones you can use only once, and then immediately discard and destroy. A call that can’t be tapped and a phone that can’t be traced. It was good to know Manifest Destiny operated in a professional way. But it did mean I was left alone with Molly’s friends, most of whom I would have tried to kill on sight only a few days before. And vice versa, quite probably. So we stood and smiled awkwardly at each other, while the only thing we had in common disappeared into the ladies’.
"So," I said finally to the ghoul, Digger Browne, as the least obviously disquieting of the bunch, "you say you’ve done work for my family, on occasion?"
He shrugged easily. "I help out, when called upon to do so. The price of existence, in these hard times. My clan’s status is not what it was in the old days, when we had an honourable place in society, cleaning up the mess left behind by man’s many battles…These days, your family only ever call us in to devour those bodies deemed too costly or too dangerous to otherwise dispose of. You know; the kind that might rise again, or regenerate, or melt down into hazardous waste. There’s not much a ghoul can’t digest. Though admittedly our toilets have to be rather more thorough than most…"