‘Possibly.’
‘Then you can find out.’
‘But not from you?’
‘Depends.’
‘On what?’
‘Are you on the list?’
It was as if he was a character in a video game. Costain was pretty sure now that the bouncer wasn’t a human being, but something made by someone. A sort of deliberately placed ‘ghost’. But one that the non-Sighted were very much aware of. ‘Is the list real? Or is it just some sort of metaphor? Does whether or not you’re on the list change from moment to moment? Is it down to how confident you are or how you dress or who your parents were? Please, dear sir, enlighten me.’
The bouncer paused for a second. Processing. But no, there was nothing robotic about those quivering jowls. Whatever he was had been made of emotion and flesh. ‘Depends,’ he finally decided.
Costain sighed. His way out of this place, should he need it, was what it was. No advantage to be found here. It was time to share the risk his unit was taking. That was the right thing to do, and these days he always did the right thing.
Besides, Ross was down there. Among the powerful shit.
He headed for the stairs and patiently waited until it was his turn with the gatekeeper, who looked at him as if it was incredible that two black men had come his way this evening. He made the gesture and sighed at the result, letting him through as if the sky had fallen. Rules were rules, he seemed to be thinking, but he didn’t have to like what the rules allowed.
Costain was about to walk past him with confidence, the star of this picture. Then he remembered the character he was playing. He stopped and made his body language submissive and dropped his gaze to the floor. ‘Excuse me, sir,’ he said.
The gatekeeper inclined his head, and Costain went down the stairs.
SIX
Quill noted Costain’s arrival. Now all his unit were two floors below street level. Exactly what they had gone down into was another question. At first sight, this bar looked like the one immediately above it, but many of the details were different, and, with the Sight suddenly putting a queasy feeling of gravity in his gut, those details seemed drastically important. He felt as if he was already deep under the earth, as if rescue was a long way off, far above. When he first got down here he’d had to stop himself from going over to Ross and indicating they should both pull out immediately. But there was no operational reason for him to feel like that. Ross had walked straight over to a barwoman who looked a degree more specialized again than the one in the bar above, with a distinctly old-fashioned touch to her uniform, curls to her hair that looked to be from some era he couldn’t pin down, and, startlingly, white pancake make-up that made her look like a mime artist. The dress code for those who’d got down here was clearly older, poorer, often specifically London in nature. There were remnants of uniform: London transport; real cavalry jackets; what Quill realized was a zookeeper, even. The look was distinctive, but hardly impressive in the way of a fashion show. They also showed signs of harm: the odd missing finger; bruises and cuts displayed proudly. There was something else about them now: their voices were hushed, they kept glancing towards the door. This lot were in their familiar place, obviously used to being here … but tonight they were afraid of what remained above. To get out of what had started to feel like a footie boozer with a bunch of away fans in it hadn’t eased the pressure very much.
In the far corner, in the same place as on the floor above, was a different tweedy bloke with a beard, sitting guarding yet another downward stairwell. As above, so below. So there was another level beneath this. Of course.
Quill went over to the juke box, in exactly the same place as in the bar above. This one was an old-fashioned job with vinyl singles, and the selections were all songs about London: the Kinks; Blur; the Small Faces. To play one cost only twenty pence. But he didn’t feel like being the first to select a track. He went to a table and picked up a menu. These cocktails had names like the Lambeth Walk, the Ally Sloper, the Black Shock. That last name made something echo in his head. Like déjà vu for something that hadn’t yet happened. Quill didn’t know one bottle of champers from another, but the top of the range down here was considerably cheaper than upstairs. He went to check out the paintings on the walls. These were all portraits of individuals, their names underneath, nothing spooky about them. Though, wait a sec, Aleister Crowley — there was a name he recognized: fat bloke, a sort of coked-up mania about him, half performance, half something a bit more worrying. Beside him: Dion Fortune; Austin Osman Spare; Gerald Gardner … There were many more — a complete circuit of them on the walls — and in between the portraits were what seemed to be action scenes, or at least metaphorical versions of such. Here were a group of figures under the searchlights and blimps of wartime London, their arms arranged in stark stick-figure angles, protesting against or attacking what was surely the threatening shape of a falling V2 rocket. Here was a parting of the ways, a splitting, as many figures walked many different paths, some falling off into nothingness, into a sunlit map of London.
So someone in this community knew at least a bit about the history of it. Looking around, though, Quill decided that even the punters down here seemed about as useless as the general public he was used to.
* * *
Ross looked into the white face of the barmaid. ‘What can I get you, my darling?’ said the woman, her mask of make-up not equalling the welcome of her broad East End accent. The mask was extraordinary, now she was up close. Some of it, around the eyes, was obviously cosmetics on the surface of skin, but some of it was absolutely smooth, blank, as if there was only the artificial colour of the cosmetics and nothing underneath. If she wiped it all off, the woman looked as if she might be just eyes and what was around them and a mouth floating in mid-air.
Ross realized that she was staring and ordered a glass of red she had no intention of drinking. The barmaid gave it to her. Ross could see fine old cuts in almost every inch of the skin of her hands, making it look like a map on vellum. Her fingernails were cut to the quick. ‘And how are you going to pay for that?’
Ross made a decision based on what she’d seen at the New Age fair. ‘Not with money.’
‘Good. Were they upstairs already? Are they going to come down here?’
‘Who?’
‘Well, that’s even better, you going the right way about things without knowing what’s going on. All right, what have you got to offer?’
What had the fortune-teller at the New Age fair lost? Fingers, teeth … ‘Blood?’
The woman laughed. ‘Bit much, my dear. Never met anyone before who opened with that. Tell you what, I’ll start a slate for you, and eventually you can make a donation. Blimey, I can’t get over it, a first-timer who actually wants to follow the form. You came here wanting something, I take it?’
Did she know?
The barmaid obviously read the expression on her face. ‘I haven’t just rifled through your drawers, love. It’s why most people come here.’
* * *
Sefton followed the abusive young woman to a group of people seemingly familiar to her, hoping they’d take him for an acquaintance of hers and that would give him a way in. But the woman looked sidelong at him as soon as he got there, like a bird of prey needing to alter the angle of its vision to get perspective on its target. Perhaps, Sefton thought nervously, that was exactly what she was doing. He was among power, of varying degrees, and who knew who was hiding theirs? The users of it were all looking at him, and at Costain, now he turned to look, as if the two of them were a terrible development. He should think of this lot, as he did when he was in a gang, as being armed and dangerous. ‘Fucking poser jacket,’ said the abusive woman, actually raising her voice so he’d be sure to hear. ‘How did you get down here, when you look like a complete fuckwit?’