Kitabı oxu: «Imajica»

Contents

Cover

Title Page

Copyright

Praise

CHAPTER ONE

CHAPTER TWO

CHAPTER THREE

CHAPTER FOUR

CHAPTER FIVE

CHAPTER SIX

CHAPTER SEVEN

CHAPTER EIGHT

CHAPTER NINE

CHAPTER TEN

CHAPTER ELEVEN

CHAPTER TWELVE

CHAPTER THIRTEEN

CHAPTER FOURTEEN

CHAPTER FIFTEEN

CHAPTER SIXTEEN

CHAPTER SEVENTEEN

CHAPTER EIGHTEEN

CHAPTER NINETEEN

CHAPTER TWENTY

CHAPTER TWENTY-ONE

CHAPTER TWENTY-TWO

CHAPTER TWENTY-THREE

CHAPTER TWENTY-FOUR

CHAPTER TWENTY-FIVE

CHAPTER TWENTY-SIX

CHAPTER TWENTY-SEVEN

CHAPTER TWENTY-EIGHT

CHAPTER TWENTY-NINE

CHAPTER THIRTY

CHAPTER THIRTY-ONE

CHAPTER THIRTY-TWO

CHAPTER THIRTY-THREE

CHAPTER THIRTY-FOUR

CHAPTER THIRTY-FIVE

CHAPTER THIRTY-SIX

CHAPTER THIRTY-SEVEN

CHAPTER THIRTY-EIGHT

CHAPTER THIRTY-NINE

CHAPTER FORTY

CHAPTER FORTY-ONE

CHAPTER FORTY-TWO

CHAPTER FORTY-THREE

CHAPTER FORTY-FOUR

CHAPTER FORTY-FIVE

CHAPTER FORTY-SIX

CHAPTER FORTY-SEVEN

CHAPTER FORTY-EIGHT

CHAPTER FORTY-NINE

CHAPTER FIFTY

CHAPTER FIFTY-ONE

CHAPTER FIFTY-TWO

CHAPTER FIFTY-THREE

CHAPTER FIFTY-FOUR

CHAPTER FIFTY-FIVE

CHAPTER FIFTY-SIX

CHAPTER FIFTY-SEVEN

CHAPTER FIFTY-EIGHT

CHAPTER FIFTY-NINE

CHAPTER SIXTY

CHAPTER SIXTY-ONE

CHAPTER SIXTY-TWO

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About the Author

Also by the Author

About the Publisher

CHAPTER ONE

It was the pivotal teaching of Pluthero Quexos, the most celebrated dramatist of the Second Dominion, that in any fiction, no matter how ambitious its scope or profound its theme, there was only ever room for three players. Between warring kings, a peacemaker; between adoring spouses, a seducer, or a child. Between twins, the spirit of the womb. Between lovers. Death. Great numbers might drift through the drama, of course - thousands in fact - but they could only ever be phantoms, agents or, on rare occasions, reflections of the three real and self-willed beings who stood at the centre. And even this essential trio would not remain intact, or so he taught. It would steadily diminish as the story unfolded, three becoming two, two becoming one, until the stage was left deserted.

Needless to say, this dogma did not go unchallenged. The writers of fables and comedies were particularly vociferous in their scorn, reminding the worthy Quexos that they invariably ended their own tales with a marriage and a feast. He was unrepentant. He dubbed them cheats, and told them they were swindling their audiences out of what he called the last great procession, when, after the wedding songs had been sung and the dances danced, the characters took their melancholy way off into darkness, following each other into oblivion.

It was a hard philosophy, but he claimed it was both immutable and universal, as true in the Fifth Dominion, called Earth, as it was in the Second.

And more significantly, as certain in life as it was in art.

Being a man of contained emotion, Charlie Estabrook had little patience with the theatre. It was, in his bluntly stated opinion, a waste of breath; indulgence, flummery, lies. But had some student recited Quexos’s First Law of Drama to him this cold November night he would have nodded grimly, and said: all true, all true. It was his experience precisely. Just as Quexos’s Law required, his story had begun with a trio: himself, John Furie Zacharias, and between them, Judith. That arrangement hadn’t lasted very long. Within a few weeks of setting eyes on Judith he had managed to supersede Zacharias in her affections, and the three had dwindled to a blissful two. He and Judith had married, and lived happily for five years, until, for reasons he still didn’t understand, their joy had foundered, and the two had become one.

He was that one, of course, and the night found him sitting in the back of a purring car being driven around the frosty streets of London in search of somebody to help him finish the story. Not, perhaps, in a fashion Quexos would have approved of—the stage would not be left entirely empty - but one which would salve Estabrook’s hurt.

He wasn’t alone in his search. He had the company of one half-trusted soul tonight: his driver, guide and procurer, the ambiguous Mr Chant. But despite Chant’s shows of empathy, he was still just another servant, content to attend upon his master as long as he was promptly paid. He didn’t understand the profundity of Estabrook’s pain; he was too chilly, too remote. Nor, for all the length of his family history, could Estabrook turn to his lineage for comfort. Although he could trace his ancestors back to the reign of James the First, he had not been able to find a single man on that tree of immoralities - even to the bloodiest root - who had caused, either by his hand or hiring, what he, Estabrook, was out this midnight to contrive: the murder of his wife.

When he thought of her (when didn’t he?) his mouth was dry and his palms were wet; he sighed; he shook. She was in his mind’s eye now, like a fugitive from some more perfect place. Her skin was flawless, and always cool, always pale; her body was long, like her hair, like her fingers, like her laughter; and her eyes, oh, her eyes, had every season of leaf in them: the twin greens of spring and high summer, the golds of autumn, and, in her rages, black midwinter rot.

He was, by contrast, a plain man; well scrubbed, but plain. He’d made his fortune selling baths, bidets and toilets, which lent him little by way of mystique. So, when he’d first laid eyes on Judith - she’d been sitting behind a desk at his accountant’s offices, her beauty all the more luminous for its drab setting - his first thought was: I want this woman; his second: she won’t want me. There was, however, an instinct in him when it came to Judith that he’d never experienced with any other woman. Quite simply, he felt she belonged to him, and that if he turned his wit to it, he could win her. His courtship had begun the day they’d met, with the first of many small tokens of affection delivered to her desk. But he soon learned that such bribes and blandishments would not help his case. She politely thanked him, but told him they weren’t welcome. He dutifully ceased to send presents, and instead began a systematic investigation of her circumstances. There was precious little to learn. She lived simply, her small circle vaguely bohemian. But amongst that circle he discovered a man whose claim upon her preceded his own, and to whom she was apparently devoted. That man was John Furie Zacharias, known universally as Gentle, and he had a reputation as a lover that would have driven Estabrook from the field had that strange certainty not been upon him. He decided to be patient and await his moment. It would come.

Meanwhile he watched his beloved from afar, conspiring to encounter her accidentally now and again, while he researched his antagonist’s history. Again, there was little to learn. Zacharias was a minor painter when he wasn’t living off his mistresses, and reputedly a dissolute. Of this Estabrook had perfect proof when, by chance, he met the fellow. Gentle was as handsome as his legends suggested, but looked, Charlie thought, like a man just risen from a fever. There was something raw about him; his body sweated to its essence, his face betraying a hunger behind its symmetry that lent him a bedevilled look.

Half a week after that encounter, Charlie had heard that his beloved had parted from the man with great grief, and was in need of tender care. He’d been quick to supply it, and she’d come into the comfort of his devotion with an ease that suggested his dreams of possession had been well founded.

His memories of that triumph had, of course, been soured by her departure, and now it was he who wore the hungry, yearning look he’d first seen on Furie’s face. It suited him less well than it had Zacharias. His was not a head made for haunting. At fifty-six, he looked sixty or more, his features as solid as Gentle’s were spare, as pragmatic as Gentle’s were rarefied. His only concession to vanity was the delicately curled moustache beneath his patrician’s nose, which concealed an upper lip he’d thought dubiously ripe in his youth, leaving the lower to jut in lieu of a chin.

Now, as he rode through the darkened streets, he caught sight of that face in the window, and perused it ruefully. What a mockery he was! He blushed to think of how shamelessly he’d paraded himself when he’d had Judith on his arm; how he’d joked that she loved him for his cleanliness, and for his taste in bidets. The same people who’d listened to those jokes were laughing in earnest now; were calling him ridiculous. It was unbearable. The only way he knew to heal the pain of his humiliation was to punish her for the crime of leaving him.

He rubbed the heel of his hand against the window, and peered out.

‘Where are we?’ he asked Chant.

‘South of the river, sir.’

‘Yes, but where?’

‘Streatham.’

Though he’d driven through this area many times - he had a warehouse in the neighbourhood - he recognized none of it. The city had never looked more foreign, nor more unlovely.

‘What sex is London, do you suppose?’ he mused.

‘I hadn’t ever thought,’ Chant said.

‘It was a woman once,’ Estabrook went on. ‘One calls a city she, yes? But it doesn’t seem very feminine any more.’

‘She’ll be a lady again in spring,’ Chant replied.

‘I don’t think a few crocuses in Hyde Park are going to make much difference,’ Estabrook said. The charm’s gone out of it.’ He sighed. ‘How far now?’

‘Maybe another mile.’

‘Are you sure your man’s going to be there?’

‘Of course.’

‘You’ve done this a lot, have you? Been a go-between, I mean. What did you call it … a facilitator?

‘Oh yes,’ Chant said. ‘It’s in my blood.’ That blood was not entirely English. Chant’s skin and syntax carried traces of the immigrant. But Estabrook had grown to trust him a little, even so.

‘Aren’t you curious about all of this?’ he asked the man.

‘It’s not my business, sir. You’re paying for the service, and I provide it. If you wanted to tell me your reasons —’

‘As it happens, I don’t.’

‘I understand. So it would be useless for me to be curious, yes?’

That was neat enough, Estabrook thought. Not to want what couldn’t be had no doubt took the sting from things. He might need to learn the trick of that before he got too much older; before he wanted time he couldn’t have. Not that he demanded much in the way of satisfactions. He’d not been sexually insistent with Judith, for instance. Indeed he’d taken as much pleasure in the simple sight of her as he’d taken in the act of love. The sight of her had pierced him, making her the enterer, had she but known it, and him the entered. Perhaps she had known, on reflection. Perhaps she’d fled from his passivity, from his ease beneath the spike of her beauty. If so, he would undo her revulsion with tonight’s business. Here, in the hiring of the assassin, he would prove himself. And, dying, she would realize her error. The thought pleased him. He allowed himself a little smile, which vanished from his face when he felt the car slowing, and glimpsed through the misted window the place the facilitator had brought him to.

A wall of corrugated iron lay before them, its length daubed with graffiti. Beyond it, visible through gaps where the iron had been torn into ragged wings and beaten back, was a junkyard in which caravans were parked. This was apparently their destination.

‘Are you out of your mind?’ he said, leaning forward to take hold of Chant’s shoulder. ‘We’re not safe here.’

‘I promised you the best assassin in England, Mr Estabrook, and he’s here. Trust me, he’s here.’

Estabrook growled in fury and frustration. He’d expected a clandestine rendezvous - curtained windows, locked doors—not a gypsy encampment. This was altogether too public, and too dangerous. Would it not be the perfect irony to be murdered in the middle of an assignation with an assassin? He leaned back against the creaking leather of his seat and said:

‘You’ve let me down.’

‘I promise you this man is a most extraordinary individual,’ Chant said. ‘Nobody in Europe comes remotely close. I’ve worked with him before -’

‘Would you care to name the victims?’

Chant looked round at his employer, and in faintly admonishing tones said:

‘I haven’t presumed upon your privacy, Mr Estabrook. Please don’t presume upon mine.’

Estabrook gave a chastened grunt.

‘Would you prefer we go back to Chelsea?’ Chant went on. ‘I can find somebody else for you. Not as good, perhaps, but in more congenial surroundings.’

Chant’s sarcasm wasn’t lost on Estabrook; nor could he resist the recognition that this was not a game he should have entered if he’d hoped to stay lily-white.

‘No, no,’ he said. ‘We’re here, and I may as well see him. What’s his name?’

‘I only know him as Pie,’ Chant said.

‘Pie? Pie what?’

‘Just Pie.’

Chant got out of the car and opened Estabrook’s door. Icy air swirled in, bearing a few flakes of sleet. Winter was eager this year. Pulling his coat collar up around his nape, and plunging his hands into the minty depths of his pockets, Estabrook followed his guide through the nearest gap in the corrugated wall. The wind carried the tang of burning timber from an almost spent bonfire set amongst the caravans; that, and the smell of rancid fat.

‘Keep close,’ Chant advised. ‘Walk briskly, and don’t show too much interest. These are very private people.’

‘What’s your man doing here?’ Estabrook demanded to know. ‘Is he on the run?’

‘You said you wanted somebody who couldn’t be traced. Invisible was the word you used. Pie’s that man. He’s on no files of any kind. Not the police, not the Social Security. He’s not even registered as born.’

‘I find that unlikely.’

‘I specialize in the unlikely,’ Chant replied.

Until this exchange the violent turn in Chant’s eye had never unsettled Estabrook, but it did now, preventing him as it did from meeting the other man’s gaze directly. This tale he was telling was surely a lie. Who these days got to adulthood without appearing on a file somewhere? But the thought of meeting a man who even believed himself undocumented intrigued Estabrook. He nodded Chant on, and together they headed over the ill-lit and squalid ground.

There was debris dumped every side: the skeletal hulks of rusted vehicles; heaps of rotted household refuse, the stench of which the cold could not subdue; innumerable dead bonfires. The presence of trespassers had attracted some attention. A dog with more breeds in its blood than hairs on its back foamed and yapped at them from the limit of its rope; the curtains of several trailers were drawn back by shadowy witnesses; two girls in early adolescence, both with hair so long and blonde they looked to have been baptized in gold (unlikely beauty, in such a place) rose from beside the fire, one running as if to alert guards, the other watching the newcomers with a smile somewhere between the seraphic and the cretinous on her face.

‘Don’t stare,’ Chant reminded him as he hurried on, but Estabrook couldn’t help himself.

An albino with white dreadlocks had appeared from one of the trailers with the blonde girl in tow. Seeing the strangers he let out a shout, and headed towards them. Two more doors now opened, and others emerged from their trailers, but Estabrook had no chance to either see who they were or whether they were armed because Chant again said:

‘Just walk, don’t look. We’re heading for the caravan with the sun painted on it. See it?’

‘I see it.’

There were twenty yards still to cover. Dreadlocks was delivering a stream of orders now, most of them incoherent, but surely intended to stop them in their tracks. Estabrook glanced across at Chant, who had his gaze fixed on their destination, and his teeth clenched. The sound of footsteps grew louder behind them. A blow on the head or a knife in the ribs couldn’t be far off.

‘We’re not going to make it,’ Estabrook said.

Within ten yards of the caravan - the albino at their shoulders - the door ahead opened, and a woman in a dressing-gown, with a baby in her arms, peered out. She was small, and looked so frail it was a wonder she could hold the child, who began bawling as soon as the cold found it. The ache of its complaint drove their pursuers to action. Dreadlocks took hold of Estabrook’s shoulder and stopped him dead. Chant - wretched coward that he was - didn’t slow his pace by a beat, but strode on towards the caravan as Estabrook was swung round to face the albino. This was his perfect nightmare, to be facing scabby, pock-marked men like these, who had nothing to lose if they gutted him on the spot. While Dreadlocks held him hard another man - gold incisors glinting - stepped in and pulled open Estabrook’s coat, then reached in to empty his pockets with the speed of an illusionist. This was not simply professionalism. They wanted their business done before they were stopped. As the pick-pocket’s hand pulled out his victim’s wallet a voice from the caravan behind Estabrook said:

‘Let the Mister go. He’s real.’

Whatever the latter meant, the order was instantly obeyed, but by that time the thief had whipped Estabrook’s wallet into his own pocket, and had stepped back, hands raised to show them empty. Nor, despite the fact that the speaker - presumably Pie - was extending his protection to his guest, did it seem circumspect to try and reclaim the wallet. Estabrook retreated from the thieves, lighter in step and cash, but glad to be doing so at all.

Turning, he saw Chant at the caravan door, which was open. The woman, the baby and the speaker had already gone back inside.

‘They didn’t hurt you, did they?’ Chant said.

Estabrook glanced back over his shoulder at the thugs, who had gone to the fire, presumably to divide the loot by its light.

‘No,’ he said. ‘But you’d better go and check the car, or they’ll have it stripped.’

‘First I’d like to introduce you -’

‘Just check the car,’ Estabrook said, taking some satisfaction in the thought of sending Chant back across the no-man’s land between here and the perimeter. ‘I can introduce myself.’

‘As you like.’

Chant went off, and Estabrook climbed the steps into the caravan. A scent and a sound met him, both sweet. Oranges had been peeled, and their dew was in the air. So was a lullaby, played on a guitar. The player, a black man, sat in the furthest corner of the caravan, in a shadowy place beside a sleeping child. The babe lay to his other side, gurgling softly in a simple cot, its fat arms raised as if to pluck the music from the air with its tiny hands. The woman was at a table at the other end of the vehicle tidying away the orange peel. The whole interior was marked by the same fastidiousness she was applying to this task; every surface neat and polished.

‘You must be Pie,’ Estabrook said.

‘Please close the door,’ the guitar player said. Estabrook did so. ‘And sit down. Theresa? Something for the gentleman. You must be cold.’

The china cup of brandy set before him was like nectar. He downed it in two throatfuls, and Theresa instantly replenished it. He drank again with the same speed, only to have his cup furnished with a further draught. By the time Pie had played both the children to sleep, and rose to come and join his guest at the table, the liquor had brought a pleasant buzz to Estabrook’s head.

In his life Estabrook had known only two other black men by name. One the manager of a tiling manufacturers in Swindon, the other a colleague of his brother’s: neither of the men he’d wished to know better. He was of an age and class that still swilled the dregs of colonialism at two in the morning, and the fact this man had black blood in him (and, he guessed, much else besides) counted as another mark against Chant’s judgement. And yet - perhaps it was the brandy - he found the fellow opposite him intriguing. Pie didn’t have the face of an assassin. It wasn’t dispassionate, but distressingly vulnerable; even (though Estabrook would never have breathed this aloud) beautiful. Cheeks high, lips full, eyes heavily lidded. His hair, mingled black and blond, fell in Italianate profusion, knotted ringlets to his shoulders. He looked older than Estabrook would have expected, given the age of his children. Perhaps only thirty, but wearied by some excess or other, the burnished sepia of his skin barely concealing a sickly iridescence, as though there was a mercurial taint in his cells. It made him difficult to fix, especially for eyes awash with brandy, the merest motion of his head breaking subtle waves against his bones, their spume draining back into his skin trailing colours Estabrook had never seen in flesh before.

Theresa left them to their business, and retired to sit beside the cot. In part out of deference to the sleepers, and in part from his own unease at saying aloud what was on his mind, Estabrook spoke in whispers.

‘Did Chant tell you why I’m here?’

‘Of course,’ said Pie. ‘You want somebody murdered.’ He pulled a pack of cigarettes from the breast pocket of his denim shirt, and offered one to Estabrook, who declined with a shake of his head. ‘That is why you’re here isn’t it?’

‘Yes,’ Estabrook replied. ‘Only-’

‘You’re looking at me and thinking I’m not the one to do it,’ Pie prompted. He put a cigarette to his lips. ‘Be honest.’

‘You’re not exactly as I imagined,’ Estabrook replied.

‘So, this is good,’ Pie said, applying a light to the cigarette. ‘If I had been what you’d imagined, I’d look like an assassin, and you’d say I was too obvious.’

‘Maybe.’

‘If you don’t want to hire me, that’s fine. I’m sure Chant can find you somebody else. If you do want to hire me, then you’d better tell me what you need.’

Estabrook watched the smoke drift up over the assassin’s grey eyes, and before he could prevent himself he was telling his story, the rules he’d drawn for this exchange forgotten. Instead of questioning the man closely, concealing his own biography so that the other would have as little hold on him as possible, he spilled the tragedy in every unflattering detail. Several times he almost stopped himself, but it felt so good to be unburdened that he let his tongue defy his better judgement. Not once did the other man interrupt the litany, and it was only when a rapping on the door, announcing Chant’s return, interrupted the flow that Estabrook remembered there was anyone else alive in the world tonight beside himself and his confessor. And by that time the tale was told.

Pie opened the door, but didn’t let Chant in. ‘We’ll wander over to the car when we’ve finished,’ he told the driver. ‘We won’t be long.’ Then he closed the door again and returned to the table. ‘Something more to drink?’ he asked.

Estabrook declined, but accepted a cigarette as they talked on, Pie requesting details of Judith’s whereabouts and movements, Estabrook supplying the answers in a monotone. Finally, the issue of payment. Ten thousand pounds, to be paid in two halves, the first upon agreement of the contract, the second after its completion.

‘Chant has the money,’ Estabrook said.

‘Shall we walk then?’ Pie said.

Before they left the caravan, Estabrook looked into the cot. ‘You have beautiful children,’ he said when they were out in the cold.

‘They’re not mine,’ Pie replied. ‘Their father died a year ago this Christmas.’

‘Tragic,’ Estabrook said.

‘It was quick,’ Pie said, glancing across at Estabrook and confirming in his glance the suspicion that he was the orphan-maker. ‘Are you quite certain you want this woman dead?’ Pie said. ‘Doubt’s bad in a business like this. If there’s any part of you that hesitates-’

‘There’s none,’ Estabrook said. ‘I came here to find a man to kill my wife. You’re that man.’

‘You still love her, don’t you?’ Pie said, once they were out and walking.

‘Of course I love her,’ Estabrook said. ‘That’s why I want her dead.’

‘There’s no Resurrection, Mr Estabrook. Not for you, at least.’

‘It’s not me who’s dying,’ he said.

‘I think it is,’ came the reply. They were at the fire, now untended. ‘A man kills the thing he loves, and he must die a little himself. That’s plain, yes?’

‘If I die, I die,’ was Estabrook’s response. ‘As long as she goes first. I’d like it done as quickly as possible.’

‘You said she’s in New York. Do you want me to follow her there?’

‘Are you familiar with the city?’

‘Yes.’

‘Then do it there and do it soon. I’ll have Chant supply extra funds to cover the flight. And that’s that. We shan’t see each other again.

Chant was waiting at the perimeter, and fished the envelope containing the payment from his inside pocket. Pie accepted it without question or thanks, then shook Estabrook’s hand and left the trespassers to return to the safety of their car. As he settled into the comfort of the leather seat, Estabrook realized the palm he’d pressed against Pie’s was trembling. He knitted its fingers with those of his other hand, and there they remained, white-knuckled, for the length of the journey home.

CHAPTER TWO

Do this for the women of the world, read the note John Furie Zacharias held. Slit your lying throat.

Beside the note, lying on the bare boards, Vanessa and her cohorts (she had two brothers; it was probably they who’d come with her to empty the house) had left a neat pile of broken glass, in case he was sufficiently moved by her entreaty to end his life there and then. He stared at the note in something of a stupor, reading it over and over, looking - vainly, of course - for some small consolation in it. Beneath the tick and scrawl that made her name the paper was lightly wrinkled. Had tears fallen there while she’d written her goodbye, he wondered? Small comfort if they had, and a smaller likelihood still. Vanessa was not one for crying. Nor could he imagine a woman with the least ambiguity of feeling so comprehensively stripping him of possessions. True, neither the mews house nor any stick of furniture in it had been his by law, but they had chosen many of the items together - she relying upon his artist’s eye, he upon her money to purchase whatever his gaze admired. Now it was gone, to the last Persian rug and Deco lamp. The home they’d made together, and enjoyed for a year and two months, was stripped bare. And so indeed was he. To the nerve, to the bone. He had nothing.

It wasn’t calamitous. Vanessa hadn’t been the first woman to indulge his taste in hand-made shirts and silk waistcoats, nor would she be the last. But she was the first in recent memory - for Gentle the past had a way of evaporating after about ten years - who had conspired to remove everything from him in the space of half a day. His error was plain enough. He’d woken that morning, lying beside Vanessa with a hard-on she’d wanted him to pleasure her with, and had stupidly refused her, knowing he had a liaison with Martine that afternoon. How she’d discovered where he was unloading his balls was academic. She had, and that was that. He’d stepped out of the house at noon believing the woman he’d left was devoted to him, and come home five hours later to find the house as it was now.

He could be sentimental at the strangest times. As now, for instance, wandering through the empty rooms, collecting up the belongings she had felt obliged to leave for him. His address book; the clothes he’d bought with his own money as opposed to hers; his spare spectacles; his cigarettes. He hadn’t loved Vanessa, but he had enjoyed the fourteen months they’d spent together here. She’d left a few more pieces of trash on the dining-room floor: reminders of that time. A cluster of keys which they’d never found doors to fit; instruction documents for a blender he’d burned out making midnight margaritas; a plastic bottle of massage oil. All in all, a pitiful collection, but he wasn’t so self-deceiving as to believe their relationship had been much more than a sum of those parts. The question was - now that it was over—where was he to go, and what was he to do? Martine was a middle-aged married woman, her husband a banker who spent three days of every week in Luxembourg, leaving her time to philander. She professed love for Gentle at intervals, but not with sufficient consistency to make him think he could prise her from her husband, even if he wanted to, which he was by no means certain he did. He’d known her eight months - met her, in fact, at a dinner party hosted by Vanessa’s elder brother William - and they had only argued once, but it had been a telling exchange. She’d accused him of always looking at other women: looking, looking, as though for the next conquest. Perhaps because he didn’t care for her too much, he’d replied honestly, and told her she was right. He was stupid for her sex. Sickened in their absence, blissful in their company; love’s fool. She’d replied that while his obsession might be healthier than her husband’s - which was money and its manipulation - his behaviour was still neurotic. Why this endless hunt, she’d asked him. He’d answered with some folderol about seeking the ideal woman, but he’d known the truth even as he was spinning her this tosh, and it was a bitter thing. Too bitter, in fact, to be put on his tongue. In essence, it came down to this: that he felt meaningless, empty, almost invisible unless one or more of her sex were doting on him. Yes, he knew his face was finely made, his forehead broad, his gaze haunting, his lips sculpted so that even a sneer looked fetching on them, but he needed a living mirror to tell him so. More, he lived in hope that one such mirror would find something behind his looks only another pair of eyes could see: some undiscovered self that would free him from being Gentle.

As always when he felt deserted, he went to see Chester Klein, patron of the arts by diverse hands, a man who claimed to have been excised by fretful lawyers from more biographies than any other man since Byron. He lived in Notting Hill Gate, in a house he’d bought cheaply in the late fifties, which he now seldom left, touched as he was by agoraphobia, or, as he preferred it, ‘a perfectly rational fear of anyone I can’t blackmail’.

From this small dukedom he managed to prosper, employed as he was in a business which required a few choice contacts, a nose for the changing taste of his market, and an ability to conceal his pleasure at his achievements. In short, he dealt in fakes, and it was this latter quality he was most deficient in. There were those amongst his small circle of intimates who said it would be his undoing, but they or their predecessors had been prophesying the same for three decades, and Klein had out-prospered every one of them. The luminaries he’d entertained over the decades - the defecting dancers and minor spies, the addicted debutantes, the rock stars with Messianic leanings and the bishops who made idols of barrow-boys - they’d all had their moments of glory, then fallen. But Klein went on to tell the tale. And when, on occasion, his name did creep into a scandal-sheet or a confessional biography, he was invariably painted as the patron saint of lost souls.

It wasn’t only the knowledge that, being such a soul, Gentle would be welcomed at the Klein residence, that took him there. He’d never known a time when Klein didn’t need money for some gambit or other, and that meant he needed painters. There was more than comfort to be found in the house at Ladbroke Grove; there was employment. It had been eleven months since he’d seen or spoken to Chester, but he was greeted as effusively as ever, and ushered in.

‘Quickly! Quickly!’ Klein said. ‘Gloriana’s in heat again!’ He managed to slam the door before the obese Gloriana, one of his five cats, escaped in search of a mate. ‘Too slow, sweetie!’ he told her. She yowled at him in complaint. ‘I keep her fat so she’s slow,’ he said. ‘And I don’t feel so piggy myself.’

He patted a paunch that had swelled considerably since Gentle had last seen him, and was testing the seams of his shirt, which, like him, was florid and had seen better years. He still wore his hair in a pony-tail, complete with ribbon, and wore an ankh on a chain around his neck, but beneath the veneer of a harmless flower-child gone to seed he was as acquisitive as a bower-bird. Even the vestibule in which they embraced was overflowing with collectables: a wooden dog, plastic roses in psychedelic profusion, sugar skulls on plates.

‘My God you’re cold,’ he said to Gentle, ‘and you look wretched. Who’s been beating you about the head?’

‘Nobody.’

‘You’re bruised.’

‘I’m tired, that’s all.’

Gentle took off his heavy coat, and laid it on the chair by the door, knowing when he returned it would be warm and covered with cat hairs. Klein was already in the living room, pouring wine. Always red.

‘Don’t mind the television,’ he said. ‘I never turn it off these days. The trick is not to turn up the sound. It’s much more entertaining mute.’

This was a new habit, and a distracting one. Gentle accepted the wine, and sat down in the corner of the ill-sprung couch, where it was easiest to ignore the demands of the screen. Even there, he was tempted.

‘So now, my Bastard Boy,’ Klein said, ‘to what disaster do I owe the honour?’

‘It’s not really a disaster. I’ve just had a bad time. I wanted some cheery company.’

‘Give them up, Gentle,’ Klein said.

‘Give what up?’

‘You know what. The fair sex. Give them up. I have. It’s such a relief. All those desperate seductions. All that time wasted meditating on death to keep yourself from coming too soon. I tell you, it’s like a burden gone from my shoulders.’

‘How old are you?’

‘Age has got fuck-all to do with it. I gave up women because they were breaking my heart.’

‘What heart’s that?’

‘I might ask you the same thing. Yes, you whine and you wring your hands, but then you go back and make the same mistakes. It’s tedious. They’re tedious.’

‘So save me.’

‘Oh, now here it comes.’

‘I don’t have any money.

‘Neither do I.’

‘So we’ll make some together. Then I won’t have to be a kept man. I’m going back to live in the studio, Klein. I’ll paint whatever you need.’

‘The Bastard Boy speaks.’

‘I wish you wouldn’t call me that.’

‘It’s what you are. You haven’t changed in eight years. The world grows old but the Bastard Boy keeps his perfection. Speaking of which —’

‘Employ me.’

Don’t interrupt me when I’m gossiping. Speaking of which, I saw Clem the Sunday before last. He asked after you. He’s put on a lot of weight. And his love-life’s almost as disastrous as yours. Taylor’s sick with the plague. I tell you, Gentle, celibacy’s the thing.’

‘So employ me.’

‘It’s not as easy as that. The market’s soft at the moment. And, well, let me be brutal, I have a new Wunderkind.’ He got up. ‘Let me show you.’ He led Gentle through the house to the study. ‘The fellow’s twenty-two, and I swear if he had an idea in his head he’d be a great painter. But he’s like you, he’s got the talent but nothing to say.’

‘Thanks,’ said Gentle sourly.

‘You know it’s true.’ Klein switched on the light. There were three canvases, all unframed, in the room. One, a nude woman after the style of Modigliani. Beside it, a small landscape after Corot. But the third, and largest of the three, was the coup. It was a pastoral scene, depicting classically garbed shepherds standing, in awe, before a tree in the trunk of which a human face was visible.

‘Would you know it from a real Poussin?’

‘Is it still wet?’ Gentle asked.

‘Such a wit.’

Gentle went to give the painting a more intimate examination. This period was not one he was particularly expert in, but he knew enough to be impressed by the handiwork. The canvas was a close weave, the paint laid upon it in careful regular strokes, the tones built up, it seemed, in glazes.

‘Meticulous, eh?’ said Klein.

To the point of being mechanical.’

‘Now, now, no sour grapes.’

‘I mean it. It’s just too perfect for words. You put this in the market and the game’s up. Now, the Modigliani’s another matter -’

That was a technical exercise,’ Klein said. ‘I can’t sell that. The man only painted a dozen pictures. It’s the Poussin I’m betting on.’

‘Don’t. You’ll get stung. Mind if I get another drink?’

Gentle headed back through the house to the lounge, Klein following, muttering to himself.

‘You’ve got a good eye, Gentle,’ he said. ‘But you’re unreliable. You’ll find another woman and off you’ll go.’

‘Not this time.’

‘And I wasn’t kidding about the market. There’s no room for bullshit.’

‘Did you ever have any problem with a piece I painted?’

Klein mused on this. ‘No,’ he admitted.

‘I’ve got a Gauguin in New York. Those Fuseli sketches I did-’

‘Berlin. Oh yes, you’ve made your little mark.’

‘Nobody’s ever going to know it, of course.’

‘They will. In a hundred years’ time your Fuselis will look as old as they are, not as old as they should be. People will start to investigate, and you, my Bastard Boy, will be discovered. And so will Kenny Soames, and Gideon; all my deceivers.’

‘And you’ll be vilified for bribing us. Denying the twentieth century all that originality.’

‘Originality shit. It’s an overrated commodity, you know that. You can be a visionary painting Virgins.’

‘That’s what I’ll do then. Virgins in any style. I’ll be celibate, and I’ll paint Madonnas all day. With child. Without child. Weeping. Blissful. I’ll work my balls off, Kleiny, which’ll be fine because I won’t need them.’

‘Forget the Virgins. They’re out of fashion.’

‘They’re forgotten.’

‘Decadence is your strongest suit.’

‘Whatever you want. Say the word.’

‘But don’t fuck with me. If I find a client, and promise something to him, then it’s down to you to produce it.’

‘I’m going back to the studio tonight. I’m starting over. Just do one thing for me?’

‘What’s that?’

‘Burn the Poussin.’

He had visited the studio on and off through his time with Vanessa - he’d even met Martine there on two occasions when her husband had cancelled a Luxembourg trip and she’d been too heated to miss a liaison - but it was charmless and cheerless, and he’d returned happily to the house in Wimpole Mews. Now, however, he welcomed the studio’s austerity. He turned on the little electric fire, made himself a cup of fake coffee with fake milk, and under its influence thought about deception.

The last six years of his life - since Judith, in fact - had been a series of duplicities. This was not of itself disastrous - after tonight it would once more be his profession - but whereas painting had a tangible end result (two, if he included the recompense), pursuit and seduction always left him naked and empty-handed. An end to that, tonight. He made a vow, toasted in bad coffee, to the God of Forgers, whoever He was, to become great. If duplicity was his genius why waste it on deceiving husbands and mistresses? He should turn it to a profounder end, producing masterpieces in another man’s name. Time would validate him, the way Klein had said it would; uncover his many works, and show him, at last, as the visionary he was about to become. And if it didn’t - if Klein was wrong and his handiwork remained undiscovered forever - then that was the truest vision of all. Invisible, he would be seen; unknown, he’d be influential. It was enough to make him forget women entirely. At least for tonight.

CHAPTER THREE

At dusk the clouds over Manhattan, which had threatened snow all day, cleared and revealed a pristine sky, its colour so ambiguous it might have fuelled a philosophical debate as to the nature of the blue. Laden as she was with her day’s purchases, Jude chose to walk back to Marlin’s apartment at Park Avenue and 80th. Her arms ached, but it gave her time to turn over in her head the encounter which had marked the day, and decide whether she wanted to share it with Marlin or not. Unfortunately, he had a lawyer’s mind. At best, cool, and analytical; at worst, reductionist. She knew herself well enough to know that if he challenged her account in the latter mode she’d almost certainly lose her temper with him, and then the atmosphere between them, which had been (with the exception of his overtures) so easy and undemanding, would be spoiled. It was better to work out what she believed about the events of the previous two hours before she shared it with Marlin. Then he could dissect it at will.

Already, after going over the encounter a few times, it was becoming, like the blue overhead, ambiguous. But she held on hard to the facts of the matter. She’d been in the menswear department of Bloomingdales, looking for a sweater for Marlin. It was crowded, and there was nothing on display that she thought appropriate. She’d bent down to pick up the purchases at her feet, and as she rose again she’d caught sight of a face she knew, looking straight at her through the moving mesh of people. How long had she seen the face for? A second; two at most? Long enough for her heart to jump, and her face to flush; long enough for her mouth to open and shape the word Gentle. Then the traffic between them had thickened, and he’d disappeared. She’d fixed the place where he’d been, stooped to pick up her baggage, and gone after him, not doubting that it was he.

The crowd slowed her progress, but she soon caught sight of him again, heading towards the door. This time she yelled his name, not giving a damn if she looked a fool, and dived after him. She was impressive in full flight and the crowd yielded, so that by the time she reached the door he was only yards the other side. Third Avenue was as thronged as the store, but there he was, heading across the street. The lights changed as she got to the kerb. She went after him anyway, daring the traffic. As she yelled again he was buffeted by a shopper about some business as urgent as hers, and he turned as he was struck, giving her a second glimpse of him. She might have laughed out loud at the absurdity of her error had it not disturbed her so. Either she was losing her mind, or she’d followed the wrong man. Either way, this black man, his ringleted hair gleaming on his shoulders, was not Gentle. Momentarily undecided as to whether to go on looking or to give up the chase there and then, her eyes lingered on the stranger’s face, and for a heart-beat, or less, his features blurred, and in their flux, caught as if by the sun off a wing in the stratosphere, she saw Gentle, his hair swept back from his high forehead, his grey eyes all yearning, his mouth, which she’d not known she missed till now, ready to break into a smile. It never came. The wing dipped, the stranger turned, Gentle was gone. She stood in the throng for several seconds while he disappeared downtown. Then, gathering herself together, she turned her back on the mystery, and started home.

It didn’t leave her thoughts, of course. She was a woman who trusted her senses, and to discover them so deceptive distressed her. But more vexing still was why it should be that particular face, of all those in her memory’s catalogue, she’d chosen to configure from that of a perfect stranger. Klein’s Bastard Boy was out of her life, and she out of his. It was six years since she’d crossed the bridge from where they’d stood, and the river that flowed between was a torrent. Her marriage to Estabrook had come and gone along that river, and a good deal of pain with it. Gentle was still on the other shore, part of her history; irretrievable. So why had she conjured him now?

As she came within a block of Marlin’s building she remembered something she’d utterly put out of her head for that six-year span. It had been a glimpse of Gentle, not so unlike the one she’d just had, that had propelled her into her near-suicidal affair with him. She’d met him at one of Klein’s parties - a casual encounter - and had given him very little conscious thought subsequently. Then, three nights later, she’d been visited by an erotic dream that regularly haunted her. The scenario was always the same. She was lying naked on bare boards in an empty room, not bound but somehow bounded, and a man whose face she could never see, his mouth so sweet it was like eating candy to kiss him, made violent love to her. Only this time the fire that burned in the grate close by showed her the face of her dream-lover, and it had been Gentle’s face. The shock, after so many years of never knowing who the man was, woke her, but with such a sense of loss at this interrupted coitus she couldn’t sleep again for mourning it. The next day she’d discovered his whereabouts from Klein, who’d warned her in no uncertain manner that John Zacharias was bad news for tender hearts. She’d ignored the warning, and gone to see him that very afternoon, in the studio off the Edgware Road. They scarcely left it for the next two weeks, their passion putting her dreams to shame.

Only later, when she was in love with him and it was too late for common sense to qualify her feelings, did she learn more about him. He trailed a reputation for womanizing that, even if it was ninety per cent invention, as she assumed, was still prodigious. If she mentioned his name in any circle, however jaded it was by gossip, there was always somebody who had some titbit about him. He even went by a variety of names. Some referred to him as the Furie; some as Zach or Zacho or Mr Zee; others called him Gentle, which was the name she knew him by, of course; still others John the Divine. Enough names for half a dozen lifetimes. She wasn’t so blindly devoted to him that she didn’t accept there was truth in these rumours. Nor did he do much to temper them. He liked the air of legend that hung about his head. He claimed, for instance, not to know how old he was. Like herself, he had a very slippery grasp on the past. And he frankly admitted to being obsessed with her sex - some of the talk she’d heard was of cradle-snatching; some of deathbed fucks - he played no favourites.

So, here was her Gentle: a man known to the doormen of every exclusive club and hotel in the city, who, after ten years of high living, had survived the ravages of every excess; who was still lucid, still handsome, still alive. And this same man, this Gentle, told her he was in love with her, and put the words together so perfectly she disregarded all she’d heard but those he spoke.

She might have gone on listening forever, but for her rage, which was the legend she trailed. A volatile thing, apt to ferment in her without her even being aware of it. That had been the case with Gentle. After half a year of their affair, she’d begun to wonder, wallowing in his affection, how a man whose history had been one infidelity after another had mended his ways; which thought led to the possibility that perhaps he hadn’t. In fact she had no reason to suspect him. His devotion bordered on the obsessive in some moods, as though he saw in her a woman she didn’t even know herself, an ancient soul-mate. She was, she began to think, unlike any other woman he’d ever met; the love that had changed his life. When they were so intimately joined, how would she not know if he were cheating on her? She’d have surely sensed the other woman. Tasted her on his tongue, or smelt her on his skin. And if not there, then in the subtleties of their exchanges. But she’d underestimated him. When, by the sheerest fluke, she’d discovered he had not one other woman on the side but two, it drove her to near insanity. She began by destroying the contents of the studio, slashing all his canvases, painted or not, then tracking the felon himself, and mounting an assault that literally brought him to his knees, in fear for his balls.

The rage burned a week, after which she fell totally silent for three days; a silence broken by a grief like nothing she’d ever experienced before. Had it not been for her chance meeting with Estabrook - who saw through her tumbling, distracted manner to the woman she was - she might well have taken her own life.

Thus the tale of Judith and Gentle: one death short of tragedy, and a marriage short of farce.

She found Marlin already home, uncharacteristically agitated.

‘Where have you been?’ he wanted to know. ‘It’s six thirty-nine.’

She instantly knew this was no time to be telling him what her trip to Bloomingdales had cost her in peace of mind. Instead she lied. ‘I couldn’t get a cab. I had to walk.’

‘If that happens again just call me. I’ll have you picked up by one of our limos. I don’t want you wandering the streets. It’s not safe. Anyhow, we’re late. We’ll have to eat after the performance.’

‘What performance?’

‘The show in the Village Troy was yabbering about last night, remember? The Neo-Nativity? He said it was the best thing since Bethlehem.’

‘It’s sold out.’

‘I have my connections,’ he gleamed.

‘We’re going tonight?’

‘Not if you don’t move your ass.’

‘Marlin, sometimes you’re sublime,’ she said, dumping her purchases and racing to change.

‘What about the rest of the time?’ he hollered after her. ‘Sexy? Irresistible? Beddable?’

If indeed he’d secured the tickets as a way of bribing her between the sheets, then he suffered for his lust. He concealed his boredom through the first act, but by intermission he was itching to be away to claim his prize.

‘Do we really need to stay for the rest?’ he asked her as they sipped coffee in the tiny foyer, ‘I mean, it’s not like there’s any mystery about it. The kid gets born, the kid grows up, the kid gets crucified.’

‘I’m enjoying it.’

‘But it doesn’t make any sense,’ he complained, in deadly earnest. The show’s eclecticism offended his rationalism deeply. ‘Why were the angels playing jazz?’

‘Who knows what angels do?’

He shook his head. ‘I don’t know whether it’s a comedy or a satire, or what the hell it is,’ he said. ‘Do you know what it is?’

‘I think it’s very funny.’

‘So you’d like to stay?’

‘I’d like to stay.’

The second half was even more of a grab-bag than the first, the suspicion growing in Jude as she watched that the parody and pastiche was a smoke-screen put up to cover the creators’ embarrassment at their own sincerity. In the end, with Charlie Parker angels wailing on the stable roof, and Santa crooning at the manger, the piece collapsed into high camp. But even that was oddly moving. The child was born. Light had come into the world again, even if it was to the accompaniment of tap-dancing elves.

When they exited, there was sleet in the wind.

‘Cold, cold, cold,’ Marlin said. ‘I’d better take a leak.’

He went back inside to join the queue for the toilets, leaving Jude at the door, watching the blobs of wet snow pass through the lamplight. The theatre was not large, and the bulk of the audience were out in a couple of minutes, umbrellas raised, heads dropped, darting off into the Village to look for their cars, or a place where they could put some drink in their systems, and play critics. The light above the front door was switched off, and a cleaner emerged from the theatre with a black plastic bag of rubbish and a broom, and began to brush the foyer, ignoring Jude - who was the last visible occupant - until he reached her, when he gave her a glance of such venom she decided to put up her umbrella and stand on the darkened step. Marlin was taking his time emptying his bladder. She only hoped he wasn’t titivating himself, slicking his hair and freshening his breath in the hope of talking her into bed.

The first she knew of the assault was a motion glimpsed from the corner of her eye: a blurred form approaching her at speed through the thickening sleet. Alarmed, she turned towards her attacker. She had time to recognize the face on Third Avenue, then the man was upon her.

She opened her mouth to yell, turning to retreat into the theatre as she did so. The cleaner had gone. So had her shout, caught in her throat by the stranger’s hands. They were expert. They hurt brutally, stopping every breath from being drawn. She panicked; flailed; toppled. He took her weight, controlling her motion. In desperation she threw the umbrella into the foyer, hoping there was somebody out of sight in the box office who’d be alerted to her jeopardy. Then she was wrenched out of shadow into heavier shadow still, and realized it was almost too late already. She was becoming light-headed; her leaden limbs no longer hers. In the murk her assassin’s face was once more a blur, with two dark holes bored in it. She fell towards them, wishing she had the energy to turn her gaze away from this blankness, but as he moved closer to her a little light caught his cheek and she saw, or thought she saw, tears there, spilling from those dark eyes. Then the light went, not just from his cheek but from the whole world. And as everything slipped away she could only hold on to the thought that somehow her murderer knew who she was.

‘Judith?’

Somebody was holding her. Somebody was shouting to her. Not the assassin, but Marlin. She sagged in his arms, catching dizzied sight of the assailant running across the pavement, with another man in pursuit. Her eyes swung back towards Marlin, who was asking her if she was all right, then back towards the street as brakes shrieked, and the failed assassin was struck squarely by a speeding car, which reeled round, wheels locked and sliding over the sleet-greased street, throwing the man’s body off the bonnet and over a parked car. The pursuer threw himself aside as the vehicle mounted the pavement, slamming into a lamp-post.

Jude put her arm out for some support other than Marlin, her fingers finding the wall. Ignoring his advice that she stay still, stay still, she started to stumble towards the place where her assassin had fallen. The driver was being helped from his smashed vehicle, unleashing a stream of obscenities as he emerged. Others were appearing on the scene to lend help in forming a crowd, but Jude ignored their stares and headed across the street, Marlin at her side. She was determined to reach the body before anybody else. She wanted to see it before it was touched; wanted to meet its open eyes and fix its dead expression; know it, for memory’s sake.

She found his blood first, spattered in the grey slush underfoot, and then, a little way beyond, the assassin himself, reduced to a lumpen form in the gutter. As she came within a few yards of it, however, a shudder passed down its spine, and it rolled over, showing its face to the sleet. Then, impossible though this seemed given the blow it had been struck, the form started to haul itself to its feet. She saw how bloodied it was, but she saw also that it was still essentially whole. It’s not human, she thought, as it stood upright; whatever it is, it’s not human. Marlin groaned with revulsion behind her, and a woman on the pavement screamed. The man’s gaze went to the screamer, wavered, then returned to Jude.

It wasn’t an assassin any longer. Nor was it Gentle. If it had a self, perhaps this was its face: split by wounds and doubt; pitiful; lost. She saw its mouth open and close as if it was attempting to address her. Then Marlin made a move to pursue it, and it ran. How, after such an accident, its limbs managed any speed at all was a miracle, but it was off at a pace that Marlin couldn’t hope to match. He made a show of pursuit, but gave up at the first intersection, returning to Jude breathless.

‘Drugs,’ he said, clearly angered to have missed his chance at heroism. ‘Fucker’s on drugs. He’s not feeling any pain. Wait till he comes down, he’ll drop dead. Fucker! How did he know you?’

‘Did he?’ she said, her whole body trembling now, as relief at her escape and terror at how close she’d come to losing her life both stung tears from her.

‘He called you Judith,’ Marlin said.

In her mind’s eye she saw the assassin’s mouth open and close, and on them read the syllables of her name.

‘Drugs,’ Marlin was saying again, and she didn’t waste words arguing, though she was certain he was wrong. The only drug in the assassin’s system had been purpose, and that would not lay him low, tonight or any other.

CHAPTER FOUR
1

Eleven days after he had taken Estabrook to the encampment in Streatham, Chant realized he would soon be having a visitor. He lived alone, and anonymously, in a one-room flat on a soon to be condemned estate close to the Elephant and Castle, an address he had given to nobody, not even his employer. Not that his pursuers would be distracted from finding him by such petty secrecy. Unlike homo sapiens, the species his long-dead master Sartori had been wont to call the blossom on the simian tree, Chant’s kind could not hide themselves from oblivion’s agents by closing a door and drawing the blinds. They were like beacons to those that preyed on them.

Men had it so much easier. The creatures that had made meat of them in earlier ages were zoo specimens now, brooding behind bars for the entertainment of the victorious ape. They had no grasp, those apes, of how close they lay to a state where the devouring beasts of Earth’s infancy would be little more than fleas. That state was called the In Ovo, and on the other side of it lay four worlds, the so-called Reconciled Dominions. They teemed with wonders: individuals blessed with attributes that would have made them, in this, the Fifth Dominion, fit for sainthood, or burning, or both; cults possessed of secrets that would overturn in a moment the dogmas of faith and physics alike; beauty that might blind the sun, or set the moon dreaming of fertility. All this, separated from Earth - the unreconciled Fifth - by the abyss of the In Ovo.

It was not, of course, an impossible journey to make. But the power to do so, which was usually - and contemptuously - referred to as magic, had been waning in the Fifth since Chant had first arrived. He’d seen the walls of reason built against it, brick by brick. He’d seen its practitioners hounded and mocked; seen its theories decay into decadence and parody; seen its purpose steadily forgotten. The Fifth was choking in its own certainties, and though he took no pleasure in the thought of losing his life, he would not mourn his removal from this hard and unpoetic Dominion.

He went to his window, and looked down the five storeys into the courtyard. It was empty. He had a few minutes yet, to compose his missive to Estabrook. Returning to his table he began it again, for the ninth or tenth time. There was so much he wanted to communicate, but he knew that Estabrook was utterly ignorant of the involvement his family, whose name he’d abandoned, had with the fate of the Dominions. It was too late now to educate him. A warning would have to suffice. But how to word it so that it didn’t sound like the rambling of a wild man? He set to again, putting the facts as plainly as he could, though doubted that these words would save Estabrook’s life. If the powers that prowled this world tonight wanted him dispatched, nothing short of intervention from the Unbeheld Himself, Hapexamendios, the all-powerful occupant of the First Dominion, would save him.

With the note finished, Chant pocketed it, and headed out into the darkness. Not a moment too soon. In the frosty quiet he heard the sound of an engine too suave to belong to a resident, and peered over the parapet to see the men getting out of the car below. He didn’t doubt that these were his visitors. The only vehicles he’d seen here so polished were hearses. He cursed himself. Fatigue had made him slothful, and now he’d let his enemies get dangerously close. He ducked down the back stairs - glad, for once, that there were so few lights working along the landings - äs his visitors strode towards the front. From the flats he passed, the sound of lives: Christmas pops on the radio, argument, a baby laughing, which became tears, as though it sensed that there was danger near. He knew none of his neighbours, except as furtive faces glimpsed at windows, and now - though it was too late to change that - he regretted it.

He reached ground level unharmed and, discounting the thought of trying to retrieve his car from the courtyard, headed off towards the street most heavily trafficked at this time of night, which was Kennington Park Road. If he was lucky he’d find a cab there, though at this time of night they weren’t frequent. Fares were harder to pick up in this area than in Covent Garden or Oxford Street, and more likely to prove unruly. He allowed himself one backward glance towards the estate, then turned his heels to the task of flight.

2

Though classically it was the light of day which showed a painter the deepest flaws in his handiwork, Gentle worked best at night; the instincts of a lover brought to a simpler art. In the week or so since he’d returned to his studio it had once again become a place of work: the air pungent with the smell of paint and turpentine, the burned-down butts of cigarettes left on every available shelf and plate. Though he’d spoken with Klein daily there was no sign of a commission yet, so he had spent the time re-educating himself. As Klein had so cruelly observed, he was a technician without a vision, and that made these days of meandering difficult. Until he had a style to forge, he felt listless, like some latter-day Adam, born with the power to impersonate but bereft of subjects. So he set himself an exercise. He would paint a canvas in four radically different styles: a cubist North, an impressionist South, an East after Van Gogh, a West after Dali. As his subject he took Caravaggio’s Supper at Emmaus. The challenge drove him to a healthy distraction, and he was still occupied with it at three thirty in the morning, when the telephone rang. The line was watery, and the voice at the other end pained and raw, but it was unmistakably Judith.

‘Is that you, Gentle?’

‘It’s me.’ He was glad the line was so bad. The sound of her voice had shaken him, and he didn’t want her to know. ‘Where you calling from?’

‘New York. I’m just visiting for a few days.’

‘It’s good to hear from you.’

‘I’m not sure why I’m calling. It’s just that today’s been strange and I thought maybe, oh.’ She stopped. Laughed at herself, perhaps a little drunkenly. ‘I don’t know what I thought,’ she went on. ‘It’s stupid. I’m sorry.’

‘When are you coming back?’

‘I don’t know that either.’

‘Maybe we could get together?’

‘I don’t think so, Gentle.’

‘Just to talk.’

‘This line’s getting worse. I’m sorry I woke you.’

‘You didn’t—’

‘Keep warm, huh?’

‘Judith-’

‘Sorry, Gentle.’

The line went dead. But the water she’d spoken through gurgled on, like the noise in a sea-shell. Not the ocean at all, of course; just illusion. He put the receiver down, and -knowing he’d never sleep now - squeezed out some fresh bright worms of paint to work with, and set to.

3

It was the whistle from the gloom behind him that alerted Chant to the fact that his escape had not gone unnoticed. It was not a whistle that could have come from human lips, but a chilling scalpel shriek he had heard only once before in the Fifth Dominion, when, some two hundred years past, his then possessor, the Maestro Sartori, had conjured from the In Ovo a familiar which had made such a whistle. It had brought bloody tears to its summoner’s eyes, obliging Sartori to relinquish it post haste. Later Chant and the Maestro had spoken of the event, and Chant had identified the creature. It was a creature known in the Reconciled Dominions as a voider, one of a brutal species that haunted the wastes north of the Lenten Way. They came in many shapes, being made from collective desire, which fact seemed to move Sartori profoundly.

‘I must summon one again,’ he’d said, ‘and speak with it,’ to which Chant had replied that if they were to attempt such a summoning they had to be ready next time, for voiders were lethal, and could not be tamed except by Maestros of inordinate power. The proposed conjuring had never taken place. Sartori had disappeared a short time later. In all the intervening years Chant had wondered if he had attempted a second summoning alone, and been the voiders’ victim. Perhaps the creature coming after Chant now had been responsible. Though Sartori had disappeared two hundred years ago, the lives of voiders, like those of so many species from the other Dominions, were longer than the longest human span.

Chant glanced over his shoulder. The whistler was in sight. It looked perfectly human, dressed in a grey, well-cut suit and black tie, its collar turned up against the cold, its hands thrust into its pockets. It didn’t run, but almost idled as it came, the whistle confounding Chant’s thoughts, and making him stumble. As he turned away the second of his pursuers appeared on the pavement in front of him, drawing its hand from his pocket. A gun? No. A knife. No. Something tiny crawled in the voider’s palm, like a flea. Chant had no sooner focused upon it than it leapt towards his face. Repulsed, he raised his arm to keep it from his eyes or mouth, and the flea landed upon his hand. He slapped at it with his other hand, but it was beneath his thumbnail before he could get to it. He raised his arm to see its motion in the flesh of his thumb, and clamped his other hand around the base of the digit in the hope of stopping its further advance, gasping as though doused with ice-water. The pain was out of all proportion to the mite’s size, but he held both thumb and sobs hard, determined not to lose all dignity in front of his executioners. Then he staggered off the pavement into the street, throwing a glance down towards the brighter lights at the junction. What safety they offered was debatable, but if worst came to worst he would throw himself beneath a car, and deny the voiders the entertainment of his slow demise.

He began to run again, still clutching his hand. This time he didn’t glance back. He didn’t need to. The sound of the whistling faded, and the purr of the car replaced it. He threw every ounce of his energy into the run, reaching the bright street to find it deserted by traffic. He turned north, racing past the Underground station towards the Elephant and Castle. Now he did glance behind, to see the car following steadily. It had three occupants. The voiders, and another, sitting in the back seat. Sobbing with breathlessness he ran on, and - Lord love it! - a taxi appeared around the next corner, its yellow light announcing its availability. Concealing his pain as best he could, knowing the driver might pass on by if he thought the nailer was wounded, he stepped out into the street, and raised his hand to wave the driver down. This meant unclasping one hand from the other, and the mite took instant advantage, working its way up into his wrist. But the vehicle slowed.

‘Where to, mate?’

He astonished himself with the reply, giving not Estabrook’s address, but that of another place entirely.

∧Clerkenwell,’ he said. ‘Gamut Street.’

‘Don’t know it,’ the cabbie replied, and for one heart-stopping moment Chant thought he was going to drive on.

‘I’ll direct you,’ he said.

‘Get in, then.’

Chant did so, slamming the cab door with no little satisfaction, and barely managing to reach the seat before the cab picked up speed.

Why had he named Gamut Street? There was nothing there that would heal him. Nothing could. The flea - or whatever variation in that species it was that crawled in him - had reached his elbow, and his arm below that pain was now completely numb, the skin of his hand wrinkled and flaky. But the house in Gamut Street had been a place of miracles once. Men and women of great authority had walked in it, and perhaps left some ghost of themselves to calm him in extremis. No creature, Sartori had taught, passed through this Dominion unrecorded, even to the least - to the child that perished a heart-beat after it opened its eyes, the child that died in the womb, drowned in its mother’s waters - even that unnamed thing had its record and its consequence. So how much more might the once-mighty of Gamut Street have left, by way of echoes?

His heart was palpitating, and his body full of jitters. Fearing he’d soon lose control of his functions, he pulled the letter to Estabrook from his pocket, and leaned forward to slide the half-window between himself and the driver aside.

‘When you’ve dropped me in Clerkenwell I’d like you to deliver a letter for me. Would you be so kind?’

‘Sorry, mate,’ the driver said, ‘I’m going home after this. I’ve a wife waiting for me.’

Chant dug in his inside pocket and pulled out his wallet, then passed it through the window, letting it drop on the seat beside the driver.

‘What’s this?’

‘All the money I’ve got. This letter has to be delivered.’

‘All the money you’ve got, eh?’

The driver picked up the wallet and flicked it open, his gaze going between its contents and the road.

There’s a lot of dosh in here.’

‘Have it. It’s no good to me.’

‘Are you sick?’

‘And tired,’ Chant said. ‘Take it, why don’t you? Enjoy it.’

‘There’s a Daimler been following us. Somebody you know?’

There was no purpose served by lying to the man. ‘Yes,’ Chant said. ‘I don’t suppose you could put some distance between them and us?’

The man pocketed the wallet, and jabbed his foot down on the accelerator. The cab leapt forward like a racehorse from a gate, its jockey’s laugh rising above the guttural din of the engine. Whether it was the cash he was now heavy with or the challenge of out-running a Daimler that motivated him, he put his cab through its paces, proving it more mobile than its bulk would have suggested. In under a minute they’d made two sharp lefts and a squealing right, and were roaring down a back street so narrow the least miscalculation would have taken off handles, hubs and mirrors. The mazing didn’t stop there. They made another turn, and another, bringing them in a short time to Southwark Bridge. Somewhere along the way, they’d lost the Daimler. Chant might have applauded had be possessed two workable hands, but the flea’s message of corruption was spreading with agonizing speed. While he still had five fingers under his command he went back to the window and dropped Estabrook’s letter through, murmuring the address with a tongue that felt disfigured in his mouth.

‘What’s wrong with you?’ the cabbie said. ‘It’s not fucking contagious is it, ‘cause if it is -’

‘… not…’ Chant said.

‘You look fucking awful,’ the cabbie said, glancing in the mirror. ‘Sure you don’t want a hospital?’

‘No. Gamut Street. I want Gamut Street.’

‘You’ll have to direct me from here.’

The streets had all changed. Trees gone; rows demolished; austerity in place of elegance, function in place of beauty; the new for old, however poor the exchange rate. It was a decade and more since he’d come here last. Had Gamut Street fallen, and a steel phallus risen in its place?

‘Where are we?’ he asked the driver.

‘Clerkenwell. That’s where you wanted, isn’t it?

‘I mean the precise place.

The driver looked for a sign, and found:

‘Flaxen Street. Does it ring a bell?

Chant peered out of the window.

‘Yes! Yes! Go down to the end, and turn right.

‘Used to live around here, did you?

‘A long time ago.’

‘It’s seen better days.’ He turned right. ‘Now where?

‘First on the left.’

‘Here it is,’ the man said. ‘Gamut Street. What number was it?’

‘Twenty-eight.’

The cab drew up at the kerb. Chant fumbled for the handle, opened the door, and all but fell out on to the pavement. Staggering, he put his weight against the door to close it, and for the first time he and the driver came face to face. Whatever the flea was doing to his system it must have been horribly apparent, to judge by the look of repugnance on the man’s face.

‘You will deliver the letter?’ Chant said.

‘You can trust me, mate.’

‘When you’ve done it, you should go home,’ Chant said. Tell your wife you love her. Give a prayer of thanks.’

‘What for?’

‘That you’re human,’ Chant said.

The cabbie didn’t question this little lunacy.

‘Whatever you say, mate,’ he replied. ‘I’ll give the missus one and give thanks at the same time, how’s that? Now don’t do anything I wouldn’t do, eh?’

This advice given, he drove off, leaving his passenger to the silence of the street.

With failing eyes, Chant scanned the gloom. The houses, built in the middle of Sartori’s century, looked to be mostly deserted; primed for demolition perhaps. But then Chant knew that sacred places - and Gamut Street was sacred in its way - survived on occasion because they went unseen, even in plain sight. Burnished by magic, they deflected the threatening eye and found unwitting allies in men and women who, all unknowing, knew holiness; became sanctuaries for a secret few.

He climbed the three steps to the door, and pushed at it, but it was securely locked, so he went to the nearest window. There was a filthy shroud of cobweb across it, but no curtain beyond. He pressed his face to the glass. Though his eyes were weakening by the moment, his gaze was still more acute than that of the blossoming ape. The room he was looking into was stripped of all furniture and decoration; if anybody had occupied this house since Sartori’s time - and it surely hadn’t stood empty for two hundred years - they had gone, taking every trace of their presence. He raised his good arm and struck the glass with his elbow, a single jab which shattered the window. Then, careless of the damage he did himself, he hoisted his bulk on to the sill, beat out the rest of the pieces of glass with his hand, and dropped down into the room on the other side.

The layout of the house was still clear in his mind. In dreams he’d drifted through these rooms, and heard the Maestro’s voice summoning him up the stairs, up! up!, to the room at the top where Sartori had worked his work. It was there Chant wanted to go now, but there were new signs of atrophy in his body with every heartbeat. The hand first invaded by the flea was withered, its nails dropped from their place, its bone showing at the knuckles and wrist. Beneath his jacket he knew his torso to the hip was similarly unmade; he felt pieces of his flesh falling inside his shirt as he moved. He would not be moving for much longer. His legs were increasingly unwilling to bear him up, and his senses were close to flickering out. Like a man whose children were leaving him he begged as he climbed the stairs:

‘Stay with me. Just a little longer. Please …’

His cajoling got him as far as the first landing, but then his legs all but gave out, and thereafter he had to climb using his one good arm to haul him onwards.

He was halfway up the final flight when he heard the voiders’ whistle in the street outside, its piercing din unmistakable. They had found him quicker than he’d anticipated, sniffing him out through the darkened streets. The fear that he’d be denied sight of the sanctum at the top of the stairs spurred him on, his body doing its ragged best to accommodate his ambition.

From below, he heard the door being forced open. Then the whistle again, harder than before, as his pursuers stepped into the house. He began to berate his limbs, his tongue barely able to shape the words.

‘Don’t let me down! Work, will you? Work!’

And they obliged. He scaled the last few stairs in a spastic fashion, but reached the top flight as he heard the voiders’ soles at the bottom. It was dark up here, though how much of that was blindness and how much night he didn’t know. It scarcely mattered. The route to the door of the sanctum was as familiar to him as the limbs he’d lost. He crawled on hand and knees across the landing, the ancient boards creaking beneath him. A sudden fear seized him: that the door would be locked, and he’d beat his weakness against it, and fail to gain access. He reached up for the handle, grasped it, tried to turn it once, failed, tried again and this time dropped face down over the threshold as the door swung open.

There was food for his enfeebled eyes. Shafts of moonlight spilled from the windows in the roof. Though he’d dimly thought it was sentiment that had driven him back here, he saw now it was not. In returning here he came full circle, back to the room which had been his first glimpse of the Fifth Dominion. This was his cradle, and his tutoring room. Here he’d smelt the air of England for the first time, the crisp October air; here he’d fed first, drunk first; first had cause for laughter, and later, for tears. Unlike the lower rooms, whose emptiness was a sign of desertion, this space had always been sparsely furnished, and sometimes completely empty. He’d danced here on the same legs that now lay dead beneath him, while Sartori had told him how he planned to take this wretched Dominion, and build in its midst a city that would shame Babylon; danced for sheer exuberance, knowing his Maestro was a great man, and had it in his power to change the world.

Lost ambition; all lost. Before that October had become November Sartori had gone, flitted in the night, or murdered by his enemies. Gone, and left his servant stranded in a city he barely knew. How Chant had longed then to return to the ether from where he’d been summoned; to shrug off the body which Sartori had congealed around him, and be gone out of this Dominion. But the only voice capable of ordering such a release was that which had conjured him, and with Sartori gone he was exiled on earth forever. He hadn’t hated his summoner for that. Sartori had been indulgent for the weeks they’d been together. Were he to appear now, in the moonlit room, Chant would not have accused him of negligence, but made proper obeisances and been glad that his inspiration had returned.

… Maestro …’ he murmured, face to the musty boards.

‘Not here,’ came a voice from behind him. It was not, he knew, one of the voiders. They could whistle, but not speak. ‘You were Sartori’s creature, were you? I don’t remember that.’

The speaker was precise, cautious and smug. Unable to turn. Chant had to wait until the man walked past his supine body to get a sight of him. He knew better than to judge by appearances. He, whose flesh was not his own, but of the Maestro’s sculpting. Though the man in front of him looked human enough, he had the voiders in tow, and spoke with knowledge of things few humans had access to. His face was an overripe cheese, drooping with jowls and weary folds around the eyes, his expression that of a funereal comic. The smugness in his voice was here too, in the studied way he licked upper and lower lips with his tongue before he spoke, and tapped the fingertips of each hand together as he judged the broken man at his feet. He wore an immaculately tailored three-piece suit, cut from a cloth of apricot cream. Chant would have given a good deal to break the bastard’s nose so he bled on it.

‘I never did meet Sartori,’ the man said. ‘Whatever happened to him?’ He went down on his haunches in front of Chant and suddenly snatched hold of a handful of his hair. ‘I asked you what happened to your Maestro,’ he said. ‘I’m Dowd, by the way. You never knew my master, the Lord Godolphin, and I never knew yours. But they’re gone, and you’re scrabbling around for work. Well, you won’t have to do it any longer, if you take my meaning.’

‘Did you … did you send him to me?’

‘It would help my comprehension if you could be more specific’

‘Estabrook.’

‘Oh yes. Him.’

‘You did. Why?’

‘Wheels within wheels, my dove,’ Dowd said. ‘I’d tell you the whole bitter story, but you don’t have the time to listen and I don’t have the patience to explain. I knew of a man who needed an assassin. I knew of another man who dealt in them. Let’s leave it at that.’

‘But how did you know about me?’

‘You’re not discreet,’ Dowd replied. ‘You get drunk on the Queen’s birthday, and you gab like an Irishman at a wake. Lovey, it draws attention sooner or later.’

‘Once in while …’

‘I know, you get melancholy. We all do, lovey, we all do. But some of us do our weeping in private, and some of us’ - he let Chant’s head drop - ‘make fucking public spectacles of ourselves. There are consequences, lovey, didn’t Sartori tell you that? There are always consequences. You’ve begun something with this Estabrook business, for instance, and I’ll need to watch it closely, or before we know it there’ll be ripples, spreading through the Imajica.’

‥ the Imajica

That’s right. From here to the margin of the First Dominion. To the region of the Unbeheld Himself.’

Chant began to gasp, and Dowd - realizing he’d hit a nerve—leaned towards his victim.

‘Do I detect a little anxiety?’ he said. ‘Are you afraid of going into the glory of our Lord Hapexamendios?’

Chant’s voice was frail now. ‘Yes …’ he murmured.

‘Why?’ Dowd wanted to know. ‘Because of your crimes?’

‘Yes.’

‘What are your crimes? Do tell me. We needn’t bother with the little things. Just the really shameful stuff’ll do.’

‘I’ve had dealings with a Eurhetemec.’

‘Have you indeed?’ Dowd said. ‘How ever did you get back to Yzordderrex to do that?’

‘I didn’t,’ Chant replied. ‘My dealings … were here in the Fifth.’

‘Really,’ said Dowd softly. ‘I didn’t know there were Eurhetemecs here. You learn something new every day. But, lovey, that’s no great crime. The Unbeheld’s going to forgive a poxy little trespass like that. Unless …’ He stopped for a moment, turning over a new possibility. ‘Unless, the Eurhetemec was a mystif. ‥ ’ He trailed the thought, but Chant remained silent. ‘Oh, my dove,’ Dowd said. ‘It wasn’t, was it?’ Another pause. ‘Oh, it was. It was.’ He sounded almost enchanted. There’s a mystif in the Fifth, and what? You’re in love with it? You’d better tell me before you run out of breath, lovey. In a few minutes your eternal soul will be waiting at Hapexamendios’s door.’

Chant shuddered. The assassin …’ he said.

‘What about the assassin?’ came the reply. Then realizing what he’d just heard, Dowd drew a long, slow breath. ‘The assassin is a mystif?’ he said.

‘Yes.’

‘Oh, my sweet Hyo!’ he exclaimed. ‘A mystif!’ The enchantment had vanished from his voice now. He was hard and dry. ‘Do you know what they can do? The deceits they’ve got at their disposal? This was supposed to be an anonymous piece of shit-stirring, and look what you’ve done!’ His voice softened again. ‘Was it beautiful?’ he asked. ‘No, no. Don’t tell me. Let me have the surprise, when I see it face to face.’ He turned to the voiders. ‘Pick the fucker up,’ he said.

They stepped forward, and raised Chant by his broken arms. There was no strength left in his neck, and his head lolled forward, a solid stream of bilious fluid running from mouth and nostrils. ‘How often does the Eurhetemec tribe produce a mystif?’ Dowd mused, half to himself. ‘Every ten years? Every fifty? They’re certainly rare. And there you are, blithely hiring one of these little divinities as an assassin. Imagine! How pitiful, that it had fallen so low. I must ask it how that came about. ‥’ He stepped towards Chant, and at Dowd’s order one of the voiders raised Chant’s head by the hair. ‘I need the mystif’s whereabouts,’ Dowd said, ‘and its name.’

Chant sobbed through his bile. ‘Please …’ he said, ‘… I meant … I … meant. ‥’

‘Yes, yes. No harm. You were just doing your duty. The Unbeheld will forgive you, I guarantee it. But the mystif, lovey, I need you to tell me about the mystif. Where can I find it? Just speak the words, and you won’t ever have to think about it again. You’ll go into the presence of the Unbeheld like a babe.’

‘I will?’

‘You will. Trust me. Just give me its name and tell me the place where I can find it.’

‘Name … and … place.’

‘That’s right. But get to it, lovey, before it’s too late!’

Chant took as deep a breath as his collapsing lungs allowed. ‘It’s called Pie’oh’pah,’ he said.

Dowd stepped back from the dying man as if slapped. ‘Pie’oh’pah? Are you sure?’

… I’m sure …’

‘Pie’oh’pah is alive? And Estabrook hired it?’ ‘Yes.’

Dowd threw off his imitation of a Father Confessor, and murmured a fretful question of himself. ‘What does this mean?’ he said.

Chant made a pained little moan, his system racked by further waves of dissolution. Realizing that time was now very short, Dowd pressed the man afresh.

‘Where is this mystif? Quickly, now! Quickly!’

Chant’s face was decaying, cobs of withered flesh sliding off his slickened bone. When he answered it, it was with half a mouth. But answer he did, to be unburdened.

‘I thank you,’ Dowd said to him, when all the information had been supplied. ‘I thank you.’ Then, to the voiders, ‘Let him go.’

They dropped Chant without ceremony. When he hit the floor his face broke, pieces spattering Dowd’s shoe. He viewed the mess with disgust.

‘Clean it off,’ he said.

The voiders were at his feet in moments, dutifully removing the scraps of matter from Dowd’s hand-made shoes.

‘What does this mean?’ Döwd murmured again. There was surely synchronicity in this turn of events. In a little over half a year’s time, the anniversary of the Reconciliation would be upon the Imajica. Two hundred years would have passed since the Maestro Sartori had attempted, and failed, to perform the greatest act of magic known to this or any other Dominion. The plans for that ceremony had been laid here, at number twenty-eight Gamut Street, and the mystif, amongst others, had been there to witness the preparations.

The ambition of those heady days had ended in tragedy, of course. Rites intended to heal the rift in the Imajica, and reconcile the Fifth Dominion with the other four, had gone disastrously awry. Many great theurgists, shamans and theologians had been killed. Determined that such a calamity never be repeated, several of the survivors had banded together in order to cleanse the Fifth of all magical knowledge. But however much they scrubbed to erase the past, the slate could never be entirely cleansed. Traces of what had been dreamed and hoped for remained; fragments of poems to Union, written by men whose names had been systematically removed from all record. And as long as such scraps remained, the spirit of the Reconciliation would survive.

But spirit was not enough. A Maestro was needed; a magician arrogant enough to believe that he could succeed where Christos and innumerable other sorcerers, most lost to history, had failed. Though these were bliss-less times, Dowd didn’t discount the possibility of such a soul appearing. He still encountered in his daily life a few who looked past the empty gaud that distracted lesser minds and longed for a revelation that would burn the tinsel away, an Apocalypse that would show the Fifth the glories it yearned for in its sleep.

If a Maestro was going to appear, however, he would need to be swift. Another attempt at Reconciliation couldn’t be planned overnight, and if the next midsummer went unused, the Imajica would pass another two centuries divided. Time enough for the Fifth Dominion to destroy itself out of boredom or frustration, and prevent the Reconciliation from ever taking place.

Dowd perused his newly polished shoes.

‘Perfect,’ he said. ‘Which is more than I can say for the rest of this wretched world.’

He crossed to the door. The voiders lingered by the body, however, bright enough to know that they still had some duty to perform with it. But Dowd called them away.

‘We’ll leave it here,’ he said. ‘Who knows? It may stir a few ghosts.’

CHAPTER FIVE
1

Two days after the pre-dawn call from Judith - days in which the water heater in the studio had failed, leaving Gentle the option of bathing in polar waters or not at all (he chose the latter) - Klein summoned him to the house. He had good news. He’d heard of a buyer with a hunger that was not being satisfied through conventional markets, and Klein had allowed it to be known that he might be able to lay his hands on something attractive. Gentle had successfully recreated one Gauguin previously, a small picture which had gone on to the open market and been consumed without any questions being asked. Could he do it again? Gentle replied that he would make a Gauguin so fine the artist himself would have wept to see it. Klein advanced Gentle five hundred pounds to pay the rent on the studio, and left him to it, remarking only that Gentle was looking a good deal better than he’d looked previously, though he smelt a good deal worse.

Gentle didn’t much care. Not bathing for two days was no great inconvenience when he only had himself for company; not shaving suited him fine when there was no woman to complain of beard burns. And he’d rediscovered the old, private erotics: spit, palm and fantasy. It sufficed. A man might get used to living this way; might get to like his gut a little ample, his armpits sweaty, his balls the same. It wasn’t until the weekend that he started to pine for some entertainment other than the sight of himself in the bathroom mirror. There hadn’t been a Friday or Saturday in the last year which hadn’t been occupied by some social gathering, where he’d mingled with Vanessa’s friends. Their numbers were still listed in his address book, just a phone call away, but he felt squeamish about making contact. However much he may have charmed them, they were her friends not his, and they’d have inevitably sided with her in this fiasco.

As for his own peers - the friends he’d had before Vanessa - most had faded. They were a part of his past, and like so many other memories, slippery. While people like Klein recalled events thirty years old in crystalline detail, Gentle had difficulty remembering where he was and with whom even ten years before. Earlier than that still, and his memory banks were empty. It was as though his mind was disposed only to preserve enough details of his history to make the present plausible. The rest it disregarded. He kept this strange fallibility from almost everybody he knew, concocting details if he was pressed hard. It didn’t much bother him. Not knowing what it meant to have a past, he didn’t miss it. And he construed from exchanges with others that though they might talk confidently about their childhood and adolescence, much of it was rumour and conjecture; some of it pure fabrication.

Nor was he alone in his ignorance. Judith had once confided that she too had an uncertain grasp of the past, though she’d been drunk at the time, and had denied it vehemently when he’d raised the subject again. So, between friends lost and friends forgotten, he was very much alone this Saturday night, and picked up the phone when it rang with some gratitude.

‘Furie here,’ he said. He felt like a Furie tonight. The line was alive, but there was no answer. ‘Who’s there?’ he said. Still, silence. Irritated, he put down the receiver. Seconds later, the phone rang again. ‘Who the hell is this?’ he demanded, and this time an impeccably spoken man replied, albeit with another question.

‘Am I speaking to John Zacharias?’

Gentle didn’t hear himself called that too often.

‘Who is this?’ he said again.

‘We’ve only met once. You probably don’t remember me. Charles Estabrook?’

Some people lingered longer in the memory than others. Estabrook was one. The man who’d caught Jude when she’d dropped from the high-wire. A classic inbred Englishman, member of minor aristocracy, pompous, condescending and -

‘I’d like very much to meet with you, if that’s possible.’

‘I don’t think we’ve got anything to say to each other.’

‘It’s about Judith, Mr Zacharias. A matter I’m obliged to keep in the strictest confidence, but it is, I cannot stress too strongly, of the profoundest importance.’

The tortured syntax made Gentle blunt. ‘Spit it out, then,’ he said.

‘Not on the telephone. I realize this request comes without warning, but I beg you to consider it.’

‘I have. And no. I’m not interested in meeting you.’

‘Even to gloat?’

‘Over what?’

‘Over the fact that I’ve lost her,’ Estabrook said. ‘She left me, Mr Zacharias, just as she left you. Thirty-three days ago.’ The precision of that spoke volumes. Was he counting the hours as well as the days. Perhaps the minutes too. ‘You needn’t come to the house if you don’t wish to. In fact, to be honest, I’d be happier if you didn’t.’

He was speaking as if Gentle would agree to the rendezvous, which, though he hadn’t said so yet, he would.

2

It was cruel, of course, to bring someone of Estabrook’s age out on a cold day, and make him climb a hill, but Gentle knew from experience you took whatever satisfactions you could along the way. And Parliament Hill had a fine view of London, even on a day of louring cloud. The wind was brisk, and as usual on a Sunday the hill had a host of kite-fliers on its back, their toys like multi-coloured candles suspended in the wintry sky. The hike made Estabrook breathless, but he seemed glad that Gentle had picked the spot.

‘I haven’t been up here in years. My first wife used to like coming here to see the kites.’

He brought a brandy flask from his pocket, proffering it first to Gentle. Gentle declined.

The cold never leaves one’s marrow these days. One of the penalties of age. I’ve yet to discover the advantages. How old are you?’

Rather than confess to not knowing, Gentle said: ‘Almost forty.’

‘You look younger. In fact you’ve scarcely changed since we first met. Do you remember? At the auction? You were with her. I wasn’t. That was the world of difference between us. With; without. I envied you that day the way I’d never envied any other man; just for having her beside you. Later, of course, I saw the same look on other men’s faces - ‘

‘I didn’t come here to hear this,’ Gentle said.

‘No, I realize that. It’s just necessary for me to express how very precious she was to me. I count the years I had with her as the best of my life. But of course the best can’t go on forever, can they, or how are they the best?’ He drank again. ‘You know, she never talked about you,’ he said. ‘I tried to provoke her into doing so, but she said she’d put you out of her mind completely - she’d forgotten you, she said - which is nonsense of course - ‘

‘I believe it.’

‘Don’t,’ Estabrook said quickly. ‘You were her guilty secret.’

‘Why are you trying to flatter me?’

‘It’s the truth. She still loved you, all through the time she was with me. That’s why we’re talking now. Because I know it, and I think you do too.’

Not once so far had they mentioned her by name, almost as though from some superstition. She was she, her, the woman; an absolute and invisible power. Her men seemed to have their feet on solid ground, but in truth they drifted like the kites, tethered to reality only by the memory of her.

‘I’ve done a terrible thing, John,’ Estabrook said. The flask was at his lips again. He took several gulps before sealing it and pocketing it. ‘And I regret it bitterly.’

‘What?’

‘May we walk a little way?’ Estabrook said, glancing towards the kite-fliers, who were both too distant and too involved in their sport to be eavesdropping. But he was not comfortable with sharing his secret until he’d put twice the distance between his confession and their ears. When he had, he made it simply and plainly. ‘I don’t know what kind of madness overtook me,’ he said, ‘but a little time ago I made a contract with somebody to have her killed.’

‘You did what?’

‘Does it appal you?’

‘What do you think? Of course it appals me.’

‘It’s the highest form of devotion, you know, to want to end somebody’s existence rather than let them live on without you. It’s love of the highest order.’

‘It’s a fucking obscenity.’

‘Oh yes, it’s that too. But I couldn’t bear … just couldn’t bear … the idea of her being alive and me not being with her…’ His delivery was now deteriorating; the words becoming tears. ‘… She was so dear to me …’

Gentle’s thoughts were of his last exchange with Judith. The half-drowned telephone call from New York, which had ended with nothing said. Had she known then that her life was in jeopardy? If not, did she now? My God, was she even alive? He took hold of Estabrook’s lapel with the same force that the fear took hold of him.

‘You haven’t brought me here to tell me she’s dead.’

‘No. No,’ he protested, making no attempt to disengage Gentle’s hold. ‘I hired this man, and I want to call him off-’

‘So do it,’ Gentle said, letting the coat go.

‘I can’t.’

Estabrook reached into his pocket and pulled out a sheet of paper. To judge by its crumpled state it had been thrown away then reclaimed.

‘This came from the man who found me the assassin,’ he went on. ‘It was delivered to my home two nights ago. He was obviously drunk or drugged when he wrote it, but it indicates that he expects to be dead by the time I read it. I’m assuming he’s correct. He hasn’t made contact. He was my only route to the assassin.’

‘Where did you meet with this man?’

‘He found me.’

‘And the assassin?’

‘I met him somewhere south of the river, I don’t know where. It was dark. I was lost. Besides, he won’t be there. He’s gone after her.’

‘So warn her.’

‘I’ve tried. She won’t accept my calls. She’s got another lover now. He’s being covetous the way I was. My letters, my telegrams, they’re all sent back unopened. But he won’t be able to save her. This man I hired, his name’s Pie-’

‘What’s that, some kind of code?’

‘I don’t know,’ Estabrook said. ‘I don’t know anything except I’ve done something unforgivable and you have to help me undo it. You have to. This man Pie is lethal.’

‘What makes you think she’ll see me when she won’t see you?’

‘There’s no guarantee. But you’re a younger, fitter man, and you’ve had some … experience of the criminal mind. You’ve a better chance of coming between her and Pie than I have. I’ll give you money for the assassin. You can pay him off. And I’ll pay whatever you ask. I’m rich. Just warn her, Zacharias, and get her to come home. I can’t have her death on my conscience.’

‘It’s a little late to think about that.’

‘I’m making what amends I can. Do we have a deal?’

He took off his leather glove in preparation for shaking Gentle’s hand.

‘I’d like the letter from your contact,’ Gentle said.

‘It barely makes any sense,’ Estabrook said.

‘If he is dead, and she dies too, that letter’s evidence whether it makes sense or not. Hand it over, or no deal.’

Estabrook reached into his inside pocket, as if to pull out the letter, but with his fingers upon it he hesitated. Despite all his talk about having a clear conscience, about Gentle being the man to save her, he was deeply reluctant to hand the letter over.

‘I thought so,’ Gentle said. ‘You want to make sure I look like the guilty party if anything goes wrong. Well, go fuck yourself.’

He turned from Estabrook and started down the hill. Estabrook came after him, calling his name, but Gentle didn’t slow his pace. He let the man run.

‘All right!’ he heard behind him. ‘All right, have it! Have it!’

Gentle slowed but didn’t stop. Grey with exertion, Estabrook caught up with him.

‘The letter’s yours,’ he said.

Gentle took it, pocketing it without unfolding it. There’d be plenty of time to study it on the flight.

CHAPTER SIX
1

Chant’s body was discovered the following day by 93-year-old Albert Burke, who found it while looking for his errant mongrel, Kipper. The animal had sniffed from the street what its owner had only begun to nose as he climbed the stairs, whistling for his hound between curses: the rotting tissue at the top. In the autumn of 1916 Albert had fought for his country at the Somme, sharing trenches with dead companions for days at a time. The sights and smells of death didn’t much distress him. Indeed his sanguine response to his discovery lent colour to the story when it reached the evening news, and assured it of greater coverage than it might otherwise have merited, that focus in turn bringing a penetrating eye to bear on the identity of the dead man. Within a day a portrait of the deceased as he might have looked in life had been produced, and by Wednesday a woman living on a council estate south of the river had identified him as her next-door neighbour, Mr Chant.

An examination of his flat turned up a second picture, not of Chant’s flesh this time, but of his life. It was the conclusion of the police that the dead man was a practitioner of some obscure religion. It was reported that a small altar dominated his room, decorated with the withered heads of animals forensics could not identify, its centre-piece an idol of such explicitly sexual a nature no newspaper dared publish a sketch of it, let alone a photograph. The gutter press particularly enjoyed the story, especially as the artifacts had belonged to a man now thought to have been murdered. They editorialized with barely concealed racism on the influx of perverted foreign religions. Between this and stories on Burke of the Somme, Chant’s death attracted a lot of column inches. That fact had several consequences. It brought a rash of right-wing attacks on mosques in Greater London, it brought a call for the demolition of the estate where Chant had lived, and it brought Dowd up to a certain tower in Highgate, where he was summoned in lieu of his absentee master, Estabrook’s brother, Oscar Godolphin.

2

In the 1780s, when Highgate Hill was so steep and deeply rutted that carriages regularly failed to make the grade, and the drive to town sufficiently dangerous that a wise man went with pistols, a merchant called Thomas Roxborough had constructed a handsome house on Hornsey Lane, designed for him by one Henry Holland. At that time it had commanded fine views: south all the way to the river; north and west over the lush pastures of the region towards the tiny village of Hampstead. The former view was still available to the tourist, from the bridge that spanned the Archway Road, but Roxborough’s fine house had gone, replaced in the late thirties with an anonymous ten-storey tower, set back from the street. There was a screen of well-tended trees between tower and road, not sufficiently thick to conceal the building entirely, but enough to render what was already an undistinguished building virtually invisible. The only mail that was delivered there was circulars, and official paperwork of one kind or another. There were no tenants, either individuals or businesses. Yet Roxborough Tower was kept well by its owners, who once every month or so gathered in the single room which occupied the top floor of the building in the name of the man who had owned this plot of land two hundred years before, and who had left it to the society he had founded.

The men and women (eleven in all) who met here and talked for a few hours and went their unremarkable ways, were the descendants of the impassioned few Rox-borough had gathered around him in the dark days following the failure of the Reconciliation. There was no passion amongst them now, nor more than a vague comprehension of Roxborough’s purpose in forming what he’d called the Society of the Tabula Rasa, or the Clean Slate. But they met anyway, in part because in their early childhood one or other of their parents, usually but not always the father, had taken them aside and told them a great responsibility would fall to them: the carrying forward of a hermetically protected family secret, and in part because the Society looked after its own. Roxborough had been a man of wealth and insight. He’d purchased considerable tracts of land during his lifetime, and the profits that accrued from that investment had ballooned as London grew. The sole recipient of those monies was the Society, though the funds were so ingeniously routed, through companies and agents who were unaware of their place in the system, that nobody who serviced the Society in any capacity whatsoever knew of its existence.

Thus the Tabula Rasa flourished in its peculiar, purposeless way, gathering to talk about the secrets it kept, as Roxborough had decreed, and enjoying the sight of the city from its place on Highgate Hill.

Kuttner Dowd had been here several times, though never when the Society was assembled, as it was tonight. His employer, Oscar Godolphin, was one of the eleven to whom the flame of Roxborough’s intent had been passed, though of all of them surely none was so perfect a hypocrite as Godolphin, who was both a member of a Society committed to the repression of all magical activity, and the employer (Godolphin would have said owner) of a creature summoned by magic in the very year of the tragedy that had brought the Society into being.

That creature was of course Dowd, whose existence was known to the Society’s members but whose origins were not. If it had been, they would never have summoned him here and allowed him access to the hallowed Tower. Rather they would have been bound by Roxborough’s edict to destroy him at whatever cost to their bodies, souls or sanity that might entail. Certainly they had the expertise; or at least the means to gain it. The Tower reputedly housed a library of treatises, grimoires, cyclopaedias and symposia second to none, collected by Roxborough and the group of Fifth Dominion magi who’d first supported the attempt at the Reconciliation. One of those men had been Joshua Godolphin, Earl of Bellingham. He and Roxborough had survived the calamitous events of that midsummer almost two hundred years ago, but most of their dearest friends had not. The story went that after the tragedy Godolphin had retired to his country estate, and never again ventured beyond its perimeters. Roxborough, on the other hand, ever the most pragmatic of the group, had within days of the cataclysm secured the occult libraries of his dead colleagues, hiding the thousands of volumes in the cellar of his house where they could, in the words of a letter to the Earl, ‘no longer taint with unChristian ambition the minds of good men like our dear friends. We must hereafter keep the doing of this damnable magic from our shores.’ That he had not destroyed the books, but merely locked them away, was testament to some ambiguity in him, however. Despite the horrors he’d seen, and the fierceness of his revulsion, some small part of him retained the fascination that had drawn him, Godolphin and their fellow experimenters together in the first place.

Dowd shivered with unease as he stood in the plain hallway of the Tower, knowing that somewhere nearby was the largest collection of magical writings gathered in one place outside the Vatican, and that amongst them would be many rituals for the raising and dispatching of creatures like himself. He was not the conventional stuff of which familiars were made, of course. Most were simpering, mindless functionaries, plucked by their summoners from the In Ovo - the space between the Fifth and the Reconciled Dominions - like a lobster from a restaurant tank. He, on the other hand, had been a professional actor in his time; and fêted for it. It wasn’t congenital stupidity that had made him susceptible to human jurisdiction, it was anguish. He’d seen the face of Hapexamendios Himself, and half-crazed by the sight had been unable to resist the summons, and the binding, when it came. His invoker had of course been Joshua Godolphin, and he’d commanded Dowd to serve his line until the end of time. In fact, Joshua’s retirement to the safety of his estate had freed Dowd to wander until the old man’s demise, when he was drawn back to offer his services to Joshua’s son Nathaniel, only revealing his true nature once he’d made himself indispensable, for fear he was trapped between his bounden duty and the zeal of a Christian.

In fact Nathaniel had grown into a dissolute of considerable proportions by the time Dowd entered his employ, and could not have cared less what kind of creature Dowd was as long as he procured the right kind of company. And so it had gone on, generation after generation, Dowd changing his face on occasion (a simple trick, or feit) so as to conceal his longevity from the withering human world. But the possibility that one day his double-dealing would be discovered by the Tabula Rasa, and they would search through their library and find some vicious sway to destroy him, never entirely left his calculations. Especially now, waiting for the call into their presence.

That call was an hour and a half in coming, during which time he distracted himself thinking about the shows that were opening in the coming week. Theatre remained his great love, and there was scarcely a production of any significance he failed to see. On the following Tuesday he had tickets for the much-acclaimed Lear at the National, and then two days later a seat in the stalls for the revival of Turandot at the Coliseum. Much to look forward to, once this wretched interview was over.

At last the lift hummed into life and one of the Society’s younger members, Giles Bloxham, appeared. At forty, Bloxham looked twice that age. It took a kind of genius, Godolphin had once remarked when talking about Bloxham (he liked to report on the absurdities of the Society, particularly when he was in his cups) to look so dissipated and have nothing to regret for it.

‘We’re ready for you, now,’ Bloxham said, indicating that Dowd should join him in the lift. ‘You realize,’ he said as they ascended, ‘that if you’re ever tempted to breathe a word of what you see here the Society will eradicate you so quickly and so thoroughly your mother won’t even know you existed?’

This over-heated threat sounded ludicrous delivered in Bloxham’s nasal whine, but Dowd played the chastened functionary.

‘I perfectly understand,’ he said.

‘It’s an extraordinary step,’ Bloxham continued, ‘calling anyone who isn’t a member to a meeting. But these are extraordinary times. Not that it’s any of your business.’

‘Quite so,’ Dowd said, all innocence.

Tonight he’d take their condescension without argument, he thought, more confident by the day that something was coming that would rock this Tower to its foundations. When it did, he’d have his revenge.

The lift door opened, and Bloxham ordered Dowd to follow him. The passages that led to the main suite were stark and uncarpeted, the room he was led into the same. The drapes were drawn over all the windows, the enormous marble-topped table that dominated the room lit by overhead lamps, the wash of their light thrown up on the six members, two of them women, sitting around it. To judge by the clutter of bottles, glasses, and over-filled ashtrays, and the brooding, weary faces, they had been debating for many hours. Bloxham poured himself a glass of water, and took his place. There was one empty seat: Godolphin’s. Dowd was not invited to occupy it, but stood at the end of the table, mildly discomfited by the stares of his interrogators. There was not one face amongst them that would have been known by the populace at large. Though all of them had descended from families of wealth and influence, these were not public powers. The Society forbade any member to hold office or take as a spouse an individual who might invite or arouse the curiosity of the press. It worked in mystery, for the demise of mystery. Perhaps it was that paradox - more than any other aspect of its nature - which would finally undo it.

At the other end of the table from Dowd, sitting in front of a heap of newspapers doubtless carrying the Burke reports, sat a professorial man in his sixties, white hair oiled to his scalp. Dowd knew his name from Godolphin’s description: Hubert Shales; dubbed the Sloth by Oscar. He moved and spoke with the caution of a glass-boned theologian.

‘You know why you’re here?’ he said.

‘He knows,’ Bloxham put in.

‘Some problem with Mr Godolphin?’ Dowd ventured.

‘He’s not here,’ said one of the women to Dowd’s right, her face emaciated beneath a confection of dyed black hair. Alice Tyrwhitt, Dowd guessed. ‘That’s the problem.’

‘So I see,’ Dowd said.

‘Where the hell is he?’ Bloxham demanded.

‘He’s travelling,’ Dowd replied. ‘I don’t think he anticipated a meeting.’

‘Neither did we,’ said Lionel Wakeman, flushed with the Scotch he’d imbibed, the bottle lying in the crook of his arm.

‘Where’s he travelling?’ Tyrwhitt asked. ‘It’s imperative we find him.’

‘I’m afraid I don’t know,’ Dowd said. ‘His business takes him all over the world.’

‘Anything respectable?’ Wakeman slurred.

‘He’s got a number of investments in Singapore,’ Dowd replied. ‘And in India. Would you like me to prepare a dossier? I’m sure he’d be -’

‘Bugger the dossier!’ Bloxham said. ‘We want him here! Now!’

‘I’m afraid I don’t know his precise whereabouts. Somewhere in the Far East.’

The severe but not unalluring woman to Wakeman’s left now entered the exchange, stabbing her cigarette in the ashtray as she spoke. This could only be Charlotte Feaver; Charlotte the Scarlet, as Oscar called her. She was the last of the Roxborough line, he’d said, unless she found a way to fertilize one of her girlfriends.

‘This isn’t some damn club he can visit when it fucking well suits him,’ she said.

‘That’s right,’ Wakeman put in. ‘It’s a damn poor show.’

Shales picked up one of the newspapers in front of him and pitched it down the table in Dowd’s direction.

‘I presume you’ve read about this body they found in Clerkenwell?’ he said.

‘Yes. I believe so.’

Shales paused for several seconds, his sparrow eyes going from one member to another. Whatever he was about to say, its broaching had been debated before Dowd entered.

‘We have reason to believe that this man Chant did not originate in this Dominion.’

‘I’m sorry?’ Dowd said, feigning confusion. ‘I don’t follow. Dominion?’

‘Spare us your discretion,’ Charlotte Feaver said. ‘You know what we’re talking about. Oscar hasn’t employed you for twenty-five years and kept his counsel.’

‘I know very little,’ Dowd protested.

‘But enough to know there’s an anniversary imminent,’ Shales said.

My, my, Dowd thought, they’re not as stupid as they look.

‘You mean the Reconciliation?’ he said.

That’s exactly what I mean. This coming midsummer - ‘

‘Do we have to spell it out?’ Bloxham said. ‘He already knows more than he should.’

Shales ignored the interruption, and was beginning again when a voice so far unheard, emanating from a bulky figure sitting beyond the reach of the light broke in. Dowd had been waiting for this man, Matthias McGann, to say his piece. If the Tabula Rasa had a leader, this was he.

‘Hubert?’ he said. ‘May I?’

Shales murmured: ‘Of course.’

‘Mr Dowd,’ said McGann, ‘I don’t doubt that Oscar has been indiscreet. We all have our weaknesses. You must be his. Nobody here blames you for listening. But this Society was created for a very specific purpose, and on occasion has been obliged to act with extreme severity in the pursuit of that purpose. I won’t go into details. As Giles says, you’re already wiser than any of us would like. But believe me, we will silence any and all who put this Dominion at risk.’

He leaned forward. His face announced a man of good humour, presently unhappy with his lot.

‘Hubert mentioned that an anniversary is imminent. So it is. And forces with an interest in subverting the sanity of this Dominion may be readying themselves to celebrate that anniversary. So far, this’ - he pointed to the newspaper - ‘is the only evidence we’d found of such preparations, but if there are others they will be swiftly terminated by this Society and its agents. Do you understand?’ He didn’t wait for an answer. ‘This sort of thing is very dangerous,’ he went on. ‘People start to investigate. Academics. Esoterics. They start to question, and they start to dream.’

‘I could see how that would be dangerous,’ Dowd said.

‘Don’t smarm, you smug little bastard,’ Bloxham burst out. ‘We all know what you and Godolphin have been doing. Tell him, Hubert!’

‘I’ve traced some artifacts of … non-terrestrial origin … that came my way. The trail, as it were, leads back to Oscar Godolphin.’

‘We don’t know that,’ Lionel put in. These buggers lie.’

‘I’m satisfied Godolphin’s guilty,’ Alice Tyrwhitt said. ‘And this one with him.’

‘I protest,’ Dowd said.

‘You’ve been dealing in magic,’ Bloxham hollered. ‘Admit it!’ He rose and slammed the table. ‘Admit it!’

‘Sit down, Giles,’ McGann said.

‘Look at him,’ Bloxham went on, jabbing his thumb in Dowd’s direction. ‘He’s guilty as hell.’

‘I said sit down,’ McGann replied, raising his voice ever so slightly. Cowed, Bloxham sat. ‘You’re not on trial here,’ McGann said to Dowd. ‘It’s Godolphin we want.’

‘So find him,’ Feaver said.

‘And when you do,’ Shales said, ‘tell him I’ve got a few items he may recognize.’

The table fell silent. Several heads turned in Matthias McGann’s direction. ‘I think that’s it,’ he said. ‘Unless you have any remarks to make?’

‘I don’t believe so,’ Dowd replied.

‘Then you may go.’

Dowd took his leave without further exchange, escorted as far as the lift by Charlotte Feaver, and left to make the descent alone. They were better informed than he’d imagined, but they were some way from guessing the truth. He turned over passages of the interview as he drove back to Regent’s Park Road, committing them to memory for later recitation. Wakeman’s drunken irrelevancies; Shales’s indiscretion; McGann, smooth as a velvet scabbard. He’d repeat it all for Godolphin’s edification, especially the cross-questioning about the absentee’s whereabouts.

Somewhere in the East, Dowd had said. East Yzordderrex maybe, in the Kesparates built close to the harbour where Oscar liked to bargain for contraband brought back from Hakaridek or the Islands. Whether he was there or some other place Dowd had no way of fetching him back. He would come when he would come, and the Tabula Rasa would have to bide its time, though the longer he was away the more the likelihood grew of one of their number voicing the suspicion some of them surely nurtured: that Godolphin’s dealings in talismans and wantons were only the tip of the iceberg. Perhaps they even suspected he took trips.

He wasn’t the only Fifther who’d jaunted between Dominions, of course. There were many routes from Earth to the Reconciled Dominions, some safer than others, but all used at one time or another, and not always by magicians. Poets had found their way over (and sometimes back, to tell the tale); so had a good number of priests over the centuries, and hermits, meditating on their essence so hard the In Ovo enveloped them and spat them into another world. Any soul despairing or inspired enough could get access. But few in Dowd’s experience had made such a commonplace of it as Godolphin.

These were dangerous times for such jaunts, both here and there. The Reconciled Dominions had been under the control of Yzordderrex’s Autarch for over a century, and every time Godolphin returned from a trip he had new signs of unrest to report. From the margins of the First Dominion to Patashoqua and its satellite cities in the Fourth, voices were raised to stir rebellion. There was as yet no consensus on how best to overcome the Autarch’s tyranny. Only a simmering unrest which regularly erupted in riots or strikes, the leaders of such mutinies invariably found and executed. In fact on occasion the Autarch’s suppressions had been more draconian still. Entire communities had been destroyed in the name of the Yzordderrexian Engine. Tribes and small nations deprived of their gods, their lands and their right to procreate, others simply eradicated by pogroms the Autarch personally supervised. But none of these horrors had dissuaded Godolphin from travelling in the Reconciled Dominions. Perhaps tonight’s events would, however, at least until the Society’s suspicions had been allayed.

Tiresome as it was, Dowd knew he had no choice as to where he went tonight: to the Godolphin Estate and the folly in its deserted grounds which was Oscar’s departure place. There he would wait, like a dog grown lonely at its master’s absence, until Godolphin’s return. Oscar was not the only one who would have to muster some excuses in the near future: so would he. Killing Chant had seemed like a wise manoeuvre at the time - and, of course, an agreeable diversion on a night without a show to go to - but Dowd hadn’t predicted the furore it would cause. With hindsight, that had been naive. England loved murder, preferably with diagrams. And he’d been unlucky, what with the ubiquitous Mr Burke of the Somme and a low quota of political scandals conspiring to make Chant posthumously famous. He would have to be prepared for Godolphin’s wrath. But hopefully it would be subsumed in the larger anxiety of the Society’s suspicions. Godolphin would need Dowd to help him calm these suspicions, and a man who needed his dog knew not to kick it too hard.

CHAPTER SEVEN
1

Gentle called Klein from the airport, minutes before he caught his flight. He presented Chester with a severely edited version of the truth, making no mention of Estabrook’s murder plot, but explaining that Jude was ill and had requested his presence. Klein didn’t deliver the tirade that Gentle had anticipated. He simply observed, rather wearily, that if Gentle’s word was worth so little after all the effort he, Klein, had put into finding work for him, then it was perhaps best that they end their business relationship now. Gentle begged him to be a little more lenient, to which Klein said he’d call Gentle’s studio in two days’ time, and if he received no answer would assume their deal was no longer valid.

‘Your dick’ll be the death of you,’ he commented as he signed off.

The flight gave Gentle time to think about both that remark and the conversation on Kite Hill, the memory of which still vexed him. During the exchange itself he’d moved from suspicion to disbelief to disgust and finally to acceptance of Estabrook’s proposal. But despite the fact that the man had been as good as his word, providing ample funds for the trip, the more Gentle returned to the conversation in memory, the more that first response -suspicion - was reawoken. His doubts circled around two elements of Estabrook’s story: the assassin himself (this Mr Pie, hired out of nowhere) and more particularly, around the man who’d introduced Estabrook to his hired hand: Chant, whose death had been media fodder for the past several days.

The dead man’s letter was virtually incomprehensible, as Estabrook had warned, veering from pulpit rhetoric to opiate invention. The fact that Chant, knowing he was going to be murdered (that much was cogent), should have chosen to set these nonsenses down as vital information was proof of significant derangement. How much more deranged then was a man like Estabrook, who did business with this crazy? And by the same token was Gentle not crazier still, employed by the lunatic’s employer?

Amid all these fantasies and equivocations, however, there were two irreducible facts: death and Judith. The former had come to Chant in a derelict house in Clerkenwell; about that there was no ambiguity. The latter, innocent of her husband’s malice, was probably its next target. His task was simple. To come between the two.

He checked into his hotel at 52nd and Madison a little after five in the afternoon New York time. From his window on the fourteenth floor he had a view downtown, but the scene was far from welcoming. A gruel of rain, threatening to thicken into snow, had begun to fall as he journeyed in from Kennedy, and the weather reports promised cold and more cold. It suited him, however. The grey darkness, together with the horn and brake squeals rising from the intersection below, fitted his mood of dislocation. As with London, New York was a city in which he’d had friends once, but lost them. The only face he would seek out here was Judith’s

There was no purpose in delaying that search. He ordered coffee from Room Service, showered, drank, dressed in his thickest sweater, leather jacket, corduroys and heavy boots, and headed out. Cabs were hard to come by, and after ten minutes of waiting in line beneath the hotel canopy he decided to walk uptown a few blocks and catch a passing cab if he got lucky. If not, the cold would clear his head. By the time he’d reached 70th Street the sleet had become a drizzle, and there was a spring in his step. Ten blocks from here Judith was about some early evening occupation: bathing perhaps, or dressing for an evening on the town. Ten blocks, at a minute a block. Ten minutes until he was standing outside the place where she was.

2

Marlin had been as solicitous as an erring husband since the attack, calling her from his office every hour or so, and several times suggesting that she might want to talk with an analyst, or at very least with one of his many friends who’d been assaulted or mugged on the streets of Manhattan. She declined the offer. Physically she was quite well. Psychologically too. Though she’d heard that victims of attack often suffered from delayed repercussions - depression and sleeplessness amongst them -neither had struck her yet. It was the mystery of what had happened that kept her awake at night. Who was he, this man who knew her name, who got up from a collision that should have killed him outright, and still managed to outrun a healthy man? And why had she projected upon his face the likeness of John Zacharias? Twice she’d begun to tell Marlin about the meeting in and outside Bloomingdales; twice she’d re-channelled the conversation at the last moment, unable to face his benign condescension. This enigma was hers to unravel, and sharing it too soon, perhaps at all, might make the solving impossible.

In the meantime, Marlin’s apartment felt very secure. There were two doormen: Sergio by day and Freddy by night. Marlin had given them both a detailed description of the assailant, and instructions to let nobody up to the second floor without Ms Odell’s permission, and even then they were to accompany the visitor to the apartment door, and escort them out if his guest chose not to see them. Nothing could harm her as long as she stayed behind closed doors. Tonight, with Marlin working until nine and a late dinner planned, she’d decided to spend the early evening assigning and wrapping the presents she’d accumulated on her various Fifth Avenue sorties, sweetening her labours with wine and music. Marlin’s record collection was chiefly seduction songs of his sixties adolescence, which suited her fine. She played smoochy soul and sipped well-chilled Sauvignon as she pottered, more than content with her own company. Once in a while she’d get up from the chaos of ribbons and tissue, and go to the window to watch the cold. The glass was misting. She didn’t clear it. Let the world lose focus. She had no taste for it tonight.

There was a woman standing at one of the second-storey windows when Gentle reached the intersection, just gazing out at the street. He watched her for several seconds before the casual motion of a hand raised to the back of her neck and run up through her long hair identified the silhouette as Judith. She made no backward glance to signify the presence of anyone else in the room. She simply sipped from her glass and stroked her scalp and watched the murky night. He had thought it would be easy to approach her, but now, watching her remotely like this, he knew otherwise.

The first time he’d seen her - all those years ago - he’d felt something close to panic. His whole system had been stirred to nausea as he relinquished power to the sight of her. The seduction that had followed had been both a homage and a revenge; an attempt to control someone who exercised an authority over him that defied analysis. To this day he didn’t understand that authority. She was certainly a bewitching woman, but then he’d known others every bit as bewitching, and not been panicked by them. What was it about Judith that threw him into such confusion now, as then? He watched her until she left the window, then he watched the window where she’d been, but he wearied of that finally, and of the chill in his feet. He needed fortification: against the cold, against the woman. He left the corner and trekked a few blocks east until he found a bar, where he put two bourbons down his throat, and wished to his core that alcohol and not the opposite sex had been his addiction.

At the sound of the stranger’s voice Freddy, the night doorman, rose muttering from his seat in the nook beside the elevator. There was a shadowy figure visible through the ironwork filigree and bullet-proof glass of the front door. He couldn’t quite make out the face, but he was certain he didn’t know the caller, which was unusual. He’d worked in the building for five years, and knew the names of most of the occupants’ visitors. Grumbling, he crossed the mirrored lobby, sucking in his paunch as he caught sight of himself. Then, with chilled fingers, he unlocked the door. As he opened it he realized his mistake. Though a gust of icy wind made his eyes water, blurring the caller’s features, he knew them well enough. How could he not recognize his own brother? He’d been about to call him and find out what was going on in Brooklyn when he’d heard the voice and the rapping on the door.

‘What are you doing here, Fly?’

Fly smiled his missing-toothed smile. ‘Thought I’d just drop in,’ he said. ‘You got some problem?’

‘No, everything’s fine,’ Fly said. Despite all the evidence of his senses, Freddy was uneasy. The shadow on the step, the wind in his eye, the very fact that Fly was here when he never came into the city on weekdays: it all added up to something he couldn’t quite catch hold of.

‘What you want?’ he said. ‘You shouldn’t be here.’

‘Here I am, anyway,’ Fly said, stepping past Freddy into the foyer. ‘I thought you’d be pleased to see me.’

Freddy let the door swing closed, still wrestling with his thoughts. But they went from him the way they did in dreams. He couldn’t string Fly’s presence and his doubts together long enough to know what one had to do with the other.

‘I think I’ll take a look around,’ Fly was saying, heading towards the elevator. ‘Wait up! You can’t do that.’

‘What am I going to do? Set fire to the place?’

‘I said no!’ Freddy replied, and blurred vision notwithstanding, went after Fly, overtaking him to stand between his brother and the elevator. His motion dashed the tears from his eyes, and as he came to a halt he saw the visitor plainly.

‘You’re not Fly!’ he said.

He backed away towards the nook beside the elevator, where he kept his gun, but the stranger was too quick. He reached for Freddy, and with what seemed no more than a flick of his wrist pitched him across the foyer. Freddy let out a yell, but who was going to come and help? There was nobody to guard the guard. He was a dead man.

Across the street, sheltering as best he could from the blasts of wind down Park Avenue, Gentle - who’d returned to his station barely a minute before - caught sight of the doorman scrabbling on the foyer floor. He crossed the street, dodging the traffic, reaching the door in time to see a second figure stepping into the elevator. He slammed his fist on the door, yelling to stir the doorman from his stupor.

‘Let me in! For God’s sake! Let me in!’

Two floors above, Jude heard what she took to be a domestic argument, and not wanting somebody else’s marital strife to sour her fine mood, was crossing to turn up the soul song on the turntable when somebody knocked on the door.

‘Who’s there?’ she said.

The summons came again, not accompanied by any reply. She turned the volume down instead of up and went to the door, which she’d dutifully bolted and chained. But the wine in her system made her incautious; she fumbled with the chain, and was in the act of opening the door when doubt entered her head. Too late. The man on the other side took instant advantage. The door was slammed wide, and he came at her with the speed of the vehicle that should have killed him two nights before. There were only phantom traces of the lacerations that had made his face scarlet; and no hint in his motion of any bodily harm. He had healed miraculously. Only the expression bore an echo of that night. It was as pained and as lost - even now, as he came to kill her - as it had been when they’d faced each other in the street. His hands reached for her, silencing her scream behind his palm.

‘Please,’ he said.

If he was asking her to die quickly, he was out of luck. She raised her glass to break it against his face but he intercepted her, snatching it from her hand.

‘Judith!’ he said.

She stopped struggling at the sound of her name, and his hand dropped from her face.

‘How the fuck do you know who I am?’

‘I don’t want to hurt you,’ he said. His voice was downy; his breath orange-scented. The perversest desire came into her head, and she cast it out instantly. This man had tried to kill her, and this talk now was just an attempt to quiet her till he tried again.

‘Get away from me.’

‘I have to tell you - ‘

He didn’t step away, nor did he finish. She glimpsed a movement behind him, and he saw her look, turning his head in time to meet a blow. He stumbled but didn’t fall, turning his motion to attack with balletic ease, and coming back at the other man with tremendous force. It wasn’t Freddy, she saw. It was Gentle, of all people. The assassin’s blow threw him back against the wall, hitting it so hard he brought books tumbling from the shelves, but before the assassin’s fingers found his throat he delivered a punch to the man’s belly that must have touched some tender place, because the assault ceased, and the attacker let him go, his eyes fixed for the first time on Gentle’s face.

The expression of pain in his face became something else entirely: in some part horror, in some part awe, but in the greatest part some sentiment for which she knew no word. Gasping for breath, Gentle registered little or none of this, but pushed himself up from the wall to re-launch his attack. The assassin was quick, however. He was at the door and out through it before Gentle could lay hands on him. Gentle took a moment to ask if Judith was all right - which she was - then raced in pursuit.

The snow had come again, its veil dropping between Gentle and Pie. The assassin was fast, despite the hurt done him, but Gentle was determined not to let the bastard slip. He chased Pie over Park Avenue, and West on 80th, his heels sliding on the sleet-slickened ground. Twice his quarry threw him backward glances, and on the second occasion seemed to slow his pace, as if he might stop and attempt a truce, but then thought better of it and put on an extra turn of speed. It carried him over Madison towards Central Park. If he reached its sanctuary, Gentle knew, he’d be gone. Throwing every last ounce of energy into the pursuit, he came within snatching distance. But even as he reached for the man he lost his footing. He fell headlong, his arms flailing, and struck the street hard enough to lose consciousness for a few seconds. When he opened his eyes, the taste of blood sharp in his mouth, he expected to see the assassin disappearing into the shadows of the park, but the bizarre Mr Pie was standing at the kerb looking back at him. He continued to watch as Gentle got up, his face betraying a mournful empathy with Gentle’s bruising. Before the chase could begin again he spoke, his voice as soft and melting as the sleet.

‘Don’t follow me,’ he said.

‘You leave her … the fuck … alone,’ Gentle gasped. knowing even as he spoke he had no way of enforcing this edict in his present state.

But the man’s reply was affirmation.

‘I will,’ he said. ‘But please … I beg you … forget you ever set eyes on me.’

As he spoke he began to take a backward step, and for an instant Gentle’s dizzied brain almost thought it possible the man would retreat into nothingness; be proved spirit rather than substance.

‘Who are you?’ he found himself asking.

‘Pie’oh’pah,’ the man returned, his voice perfectly matched to the soft expellations of those syllables.

‘But who?’

‘Nobody and nothing,’ came the second reply, accompanied by a backward step.

He took another and another, each pace putting further layers of sleet between them. Gentle began to follow, but the fall had left him aching in every joint, and he knew the chase was lost before he’d hobbled three yards. He pushed himself on, however, reaching one side of Fifth Avenue as Pie’oh’pah made the other. The street between them was empty, but the assassin spoke across it as if across a raging river.

‘Go back,’ he said, ‘or if you come, be prepared

Absurd as it was, Gentle answered as if there were white waters between them:

‘Prepared for what?’ he shouted.

The man shook his head, and even across the street, with the sleet between them, Gentle could see how much despair and confusion there was on his face. He wasn’t certain why the expression made his stomach churn, but churn it did. He started to cross the street, plunging a foot into the imaginary flood. The expression on the assassin’s face changed: despair gave way to disbelief, and disbelief to a kind of terror, as though this fording was unthinkable, unbearable. With Gentle halfway across the street the man’s courage broke. The shaking of the head became a violent fit of denial, and he let out a strange sob, throwing back his head as he did so. Then he retreated, as he had before, stepping away from the object of his terror -Gentle - as though expecting to forfeit his visibility. If there was such magic in the world - and tonight Gentle could believe it - the assassin was not an adept. But his feet could do what magic could not. As Gentle reached the river’s other bank Pie’oh’pah turned and fled, throwing himself over the wall into the park without seeming to care what lay on the other side: anything to be out of Gentle’s sight.

There was no purpose in following any further. The cold was already making Gentle’s bruised bones ache fiercely, and in such a condition the two blocks back to Jude’s apartment would be a long and painful trek. By the time he made it the sleet had soaked through every layer of his clothing. With his teeth chattering, his mouth bleeding and his hair flattened to his skull he could not have looked less appealing as he presented himself at the front door. Jude was waiting in the lobby with the shame-faced doorman. She came to Gentle’s aid as soon as he appeared, the exchange between them short and functional: was he badly hurt? No. Did the man get away? Yes.

‘Come upstairs,’ she said. ‘You need some medical attention.’

3

There had been too much drama in Jude and Gentle’s reunion already tonight for them to add more to it, so there was no gushing forth of sentiment on either side. Jude attended to Gentle with her usual pragmatism. He declined a shower, but bathed his face and wounded extremities, delicately sluicing the grit from the palms of his hands. Then he changed into a selection of dry clothes she’d found in Marlin’s wardrobe, though Gentle was both taller and leaner than the absent lender. As he did so Jude asked him if he wanted to have a doctor examine him. He thanked her but said no, he’d be fine. And so he was, once dry and clean; aching, but fine.

‘Did you call the police?’ he asked, as he -stood at the kitchen door watching her brew Darjeeling.

‘It’s not worth it,’ she said. ‘They already know about this guy from the last time. Maybe I’ll get Marlin to call them later.’

‘This is his second try?’ She nodded. ‘Well, if it’s any comfort, I don’t think he’ll try again.’

‘What makes you say that?’

‘Because he looked about ready to throw himself under a car.’

‘I don’t think that’d do him much harm,’ she said, and went on to tell him about the incident in the Village, finishing up with the assassin’s miraculous recovery.

‘He should be dead,’ she said. ‘His face was smashed up … it was a wonder he could even stand. Do you want sugar or milk?’

‘Maybe a dash of Scotch. Does Marlin drink?’

‘He’s not a connoisseur like you.’

Gentle laughed. ‘Is that how you describe me? The alcoholic Gentle?’

‘No. To tell you the truth, I don’t really describe you at all,’ she said, slightly abashed. ‘I mean, I’m sure I’ve mentioned you to Marlin in passing, but you’re … I don’t know … you’re a guilty secret.’

This echo of Kite Hill brought his hirer to mind.

‘Have you spoken to Estabrook?’ he said.

‘Why should I do that?’

‘He’s been trying to contact you.’

‘I don’t want to talk to him.’ She put his tea down on the table in the lounge, sought out the Scotch and set it beside the cup. ‘Help yourself,’ she said.

‘You’re not having a dram?’

‘Tea, but no whisky. My brain’s crazed enough as it is.’ She crossed back to the window, taking her tea. ‘There’s so much I don’t understand about all of this,’ she said. To start with: why are you here?’

‘I hate to sound melodramatic, but I really think you should sit down before we have this discussion.’

‘Just tell me what’s going on,’ she said, her voice tainted with accusation. ‘How long have you been watching me?’

‘Just a few hours.’

‘I thought I saw you following me a couple of days ago.’

‘Not me. I was in London until this morning.’

She looked puzzled at this. ‘So what do you know about this man who’s trying to kill me?’

‘He said his name was Pie’oh’pah.’

‘I don’t give a fuck what his name is,’ she said, her show of detachment finally dropping away. ‘Who is he? Why does he want to hurt me?’

‘Because he was hired.’

‘He was what?’

‘He was hired. By Estabrook.’

Tea slopped from her cup as a shudder passed through her.

‘To kill me?’ she said. ‘He hired someone to kill me? I don’t believe you. That’s crazy.’

‘He’s obsessed with you, Jude. It’s his way of making sure you don’t belong to anybody else.’

She drew the cup up to her face, both hands clutched around it, the knuckles so white it was a wonder the china didn’t crack like an egg. She sipped, her face obscured. Then, the same denial, but more flatly: ‘I don’t believe you.’

‘He’s been trying to speak to you to warn you. He hired this man, then changed his mind.’

‘How do you know all of this?’ Again, the accusation.

‘He sent me to stop it.’

‘Hired you too?’

It wasn’t pleasant to hear it from her lips, but yes, he said, he was just another hireling. It was as though Estabrook had set two dogs on Judith’s heels - one bringing death, the other life - and let fate decide which caught up with her first.

‘Maybe I will have some booze,’ she said, and crossed to the table to pick up the bottle.

He stood to pour for her but his motion was enough to stop her in her tracks, and he realized she was afraid of him. He handed her the bottle at arm’s length. She didn’t take it.

‘I think maybe you should go,’ she said. ‘Marlin’ll be home soon. I don’t want you here

He understood her nervousness, but felt ill treated by this change of tone. As he’d hobbled back through the sleet a tiny part of him had hoped her gratitude would include an embrace, or at least a few words that would let him know she felt something for him. But he was tarred with Estabrook’s guilt. He wasn’t her champion, he was her enemy’s agent.

‘If that’s what you want,’ he said.

‘It’s what I want.’

‘Just one request? If you tell the police about Estabrook, will you keep me out of it?’

‘Why? Are you back at the old business with Klein?’

‘Let’s not get into why. Just pretend you never saw me.’

She shrugged. ‘I suppose I can do that.’

‘Thank you,’ he said. ‘Where did you put my clothes?’

They won’t be dry. Why don’t you just keep the stuff you’re wearing?’

‘Better not,’ he said, unable to resist a tiny jab. ‘You never know what Marlin might think.’

She didn’t rise to the remark, but let him go and change. The clothes had been left on the heated towel rack in the bathroom, which had taken some of the chill off them, but insinuating himself into their dampness was almost enough to make him retract his jibe, and wear the absent lover’s clothes. Almost, but not quite. Changed, he returned into the lounge to find her standing at the window again, as if watching for the assassin’s return.

‘What did you say his name was?’ she said.

‘Something like Pie’oh’pah.’

‘What language is that? Arabic?’

‘I don’t know.’

‘Well, did you tell him Estabrook had changed his mind? Did you tell him to leave me alone?’

‘I didn’t get a chance,’ he said, rather lamely.

‘So he could still come back and try again?’

‘Like I said, I don’t think he will.’

‘He’s tried twice. Maybe he’s out there thinking: third time lucky. There’s something … unnatural about him. Gentle. How the hell could he heal so fast?’

‘Maybe he wasn’t as badly hurt as he looked.’

She didn’t seem convinced. ‘A name like that … he shouldn’t be difficult to trace.’

‘I don’t know, I think men like him … they’re almost invisible.’

‘Marlin’ll know what to do.’

‘Good for Marlin.’

She drew a deep breath. ‘I should thank you though,’ she said, her tone as far from gratitude as it was possible to get.

‘Don’t bother,’ he replied. ‘I’m just a hired hand. I was only doing it for the money.’

4

From the shadows of a doorway on 79th Street, Pie’oh’pah watched John Furie Zacharias emerge from the apartment building, pull the collar of his jacket up around his bare nape, and scan the street north and south, looking for a cab. It was many years since the assassin’s eyes had taken the pleasure they did now, seeing him. In the time between the world had changed in so many ways. But this man looked unchanged. He was a constant, freed from alteration by his own forgetfulness; always new to himself, and therefore ageless. Pie envied him. For Gentle time was a vapour, dissolving hurt and self-knowledge. For Pie it was a sack into which each day, each hour, dropped another stone, bending the spine until it creaked. Nor, until tonight, had he dared entertain any hope of release. But here, walking away down Park Avenue, was a man in whose power it lay to make whole all broken things; even Pie’s wounded spirit. Indeed, especially that. Whether it was chance or the covert workings of the Unbeheld that had brought them together this way, there was surely significance in their reunion.

Minutes before, terrified by the scale of what was unfolding. Pie had attempted to drive Gentle away, and having failed, had fled. Now such fear seemed stupid. What was there to be afraid of? Change? That would be welcome. Revelation? The same. Death? What did an assassin care for death? If it came, it came; it was no reason to turn from opportunity. He shuddered. It was cold here in the doorway; cold in the century too. Especially for a soul like his, that loved the melting season, when the rise of sap and sun made all things seem possible. Until now, he’d given up hope that such a burgeoning time would ever come again. He’d been obliged to commit too many crimes in this joyless world. He’d broken too many hearts. So had they both, most likely. But what if they were obliged to seek that elusive spring for the good of those they’d orphaned and anguished? What if it was their duty to hope? Then his denying of their near-reunion, his fleeing from it, was just another crime to be laid at his feet. Had these lonely years made him a coward? Never.

Clearing his tears, he left the doorstep, and pursued the disappearing figure, daring to believe as he went that there might yet be another spring, and a summer of reconciliation to follow.

CHAPTER EIGHT
1

When he got back to the hotel Gentle’s first instinct was to call Jude. She’d made her feelings towards him abundantly clear, of course, and common sense decreed that he leave this little drama to fizzle out, but he’d glimpsed too many enigmas tonight to be able to shrug off his unease and walk away. Though the streets of this city were solid, their buildings numbered and named; though the avenues were bright enough, even at night, to banish ambiguity, he still felt as though he was on the margins of some unknown land, and in danger of crossing into it without realizing he was even doing so. And if he went, might Jude not also follow? Determined though she was to divide her life from his, the obscure suspicion remained in him that their fates were interwoven.

He had no logical explanation for this. The feeling was a mystery, and mysteries weren’t his speciality. They were the stuff of after-dinner conversation when, mellowed by brandy and candlelight, people confessed to fascinations they wouldn’t have broached an hour earlier. Under such influence he’d heard rationalists confess their devotion to tabloid astrologies; heard atheists lay claim to heavenly visitations; heard tales of psychic siblings, and prophetic deathbed pronouncements. They’d all been amusing enough, in their way. But this was something different. This was happening to him, and it made him afraid.

He finally gave in to his unease. He located Marlin’s number, and called the apartment. The lover-boy picked up. He sounded agitated, and became more so when Gentle identified himself.

‘I don’t know what your Goddamn game is -’ he said.

‘It’s no game,’ Gentle told him.

‘You just keep away from this apartment -’

‘I’ve no intention -’

‘- because if I see your face, I swear -’

‘Can I speak to Jude?’

‘- Judith’s not -’

‘I’m on the other line,’ Jude said.

‘Judith, put down the phone! You don’t want to be talking with this scum.’

‘Calm down, Marlin.’

‘You heard her, Mervin. Calm down.’

Marlin slammed down the receiver.

‘Suspicious, is he?’ Gentle said.

‘He thinks this is all your doing.’

‘So you told him about Estabrook?’

‘No, not yet.’

‘You’re just going to blame the hired hand, is that it?’

‘Look, I’m sorry about some of the things I said. I wasn’t thinking straight. If it hadn’t been for you maybe I’d be dead by now.’

‘No maybe about it,’ Gentle said. ‘Our friend Pie meant business.’

‘He meant something,’ she replied, ‘but I’m not sure it was murder.’

‘He was trying to smother you, Jude.’

‘Was he? Or was he just trying to hush me? He had such a strange look

‘I think we should talk about this, face to face,’ Gentle said. ‘Why don’t you slip away from lover-boy for a latenight drink? I can pick you up right outside your building. You’ll be quite safe.’

‘I don’t think that’s such a good idea. I’ve got packing to do. I’ve decided to go back to London tomorrow.’

Was that planned?’

‘No. I’d just feel more secure if I was at home.’

‘Is Mervin going with you?’

‘It’s Marlin. And no he isn’t.’

‘More fool him.’

‘Look, I’d better go. Thanks for thinking of me.’

‘It’s no hardship,’ he said. ‘And if you get lonely between now and tomorrow morning

‘I won’t.’

‘You never know. I’m at the Omni. Room 103. There’s a double bed.’

‘You’ll have plenty of room then.’

‘I’ll be thinking of you,’ he said. He paused, then added: ‘I’m glad I saw you.’

‘I’m glad you’re glad.’

‘Does that mean you’re not?’

‘It means I’ve got packing to do. Goodnight, Gentle.’

‘Goodnight.’

‘Have fun.’

He did what little packing of his own he had to do, then ordered up a small supper: a club sandwich, ice-cream, bourbon and coffee. The warmth of the room after the icy street and its exertions made him feel sluggish. He undressed, and ate his supper naked in front of the television, picking the crumbs from his pubic hair like lice. By the time he got to the ice-cream he was too weary to eat, so he downed the bourbon - which instantly took its toll - and retired to bed, leaving the television on in the next room, its sound turned down to a soporific burble.

His body and his mind were about their different businesses. The former, freed from conscious instruction, breathed, rolled, sweated and digested. The latter went dreaming. First, of Manhattan served on a plate, sculpted in perfect detail. Then of a waiter, speaking in a whisper, asking if sir wanted night; and of night coming in the form of a blueberry syrup, poured from high above the plate, and falling in viscous folds upon the streets and towers. Then, Gentle walking in those streets, between those towers, hand in hand with a shadow, the company of which he was happy to keep, and which turned when they reached an intersection, and laid its feather finger upon the middle of his brow, as though Ash Wednesday was dawning.

He liked the touch, and opened his mouth to lightly lick the ball of the shadow’s hand. It stroked the place again. He shuddered with pleasure, wishing he could see into the darkness of this other, and know its face. In straining to see, he opened his eyes, body and mind converging once again. He was back in his hotel room, the only light the flicker of the television, reflected in the gloss of a half-open door. Though he was awake the sensation continued, and to it was added sound: a milky sigh that excited him. There was a woman in the room.

‘Jude?’ he said.

She pressed her cool palm against his open mouth, hushing his enquiry even as she answered it. He couldn’t distinguish her from the darkness, but any lingering doubt that she might belong to the dream from which he’d risen was dispatched as her hand went from his mouth to his bare chest. He reached up in the darkness to take hold of her face and bring it down to his mouth, glad that the murk concealed the satisfaction he wore. She’d come to him. After all the signals of rejection she’d sent out at the apartment - despite Marlin, despite the dangerous streets, despite the hour, despite their bitter history - she’d come, bearing the gift of her body to his bed.

Though he couldn’t see her, the darkness was a black canvas, and he painted her there to perfection, her beauty gazing down on him. His hands found her flawless cheeks. They were cooler than her hands, which were on his belly now, pressing harder as she hoisted herself over him. There was everywhere in their exchange an exquisite synchronicity. He thought of her tongue, and tasted it; he imagined her breasts, and she took his hands to them; he wished she would speak, and she spoke (oh, how she spoke), words he hadn’t dared admit he’d wanted to hear.

‘I had to do this …’ she said.

‘I know. I know.’

‘Forgive me …’

‘What’s to forgive?’

‘I can’t be without you, Gentle. We belong to each other, like man and wife.’

With her here, so close after such an absence, the idea of marriage didn’t seem so preposterous. Why not claim her now, and forever?

‘You want to marry me?’ he murmured.

‘Ask me again another night,’ she replied.

‘I’m asking you now.’

She put her hand back upon that anointing place in the middle of his brow. ‘Hush,’ she said. ‘What you want now you might not want tomorrow

He opened his mouth to disagree, but the thought lost its way between his brain and his tongue, distracted by the small circular motions she was making on his forehead. A calm emanated from the place, moving down through his torso and out to his fingertips. With it, the pain of his bruising faded. He raised his hands above his head, stretching to let bliss run through him freely. Released from aches he’d become accustomed to, his body felt new-minted; gleaming invisibly.

‘I want to be inside you,’ he said.

‘How far?’

‘All the way.’

He tried to divide the darkness and catch some glimpse of her response, but his sight was a poor explorer and returned from the unknown without news. Only a flicker from the television, reflected in the gloss of his eye and thrown up against the blank darkness, lent him the illusion of a lustre passing through her body, opaline. He started to sit up, seeking her face, but she was already moving down the bed, and moments later he felt her lips on his stomach, and then upon the head of his cock, which she took into her mouth by degrees, her tongue playing on it as she went, until he thought he would lose control. He warned her with a murmur, was released and a breath later swallowed again.

The absence of sight lent potency to her touch. He felt every motion of tongue and tooth in play upon him, his prick particularized by her appetite, becoming vast in his mind’s eye until it was his body’s size: a veiny torso and a blind head lying on the bed of his belly wet from end to end, straining and shuddering, while she, the darkness, swallowed him utterly. He was only sensation now, and she its supplier, his body enslaved by bliss, unable to remember its making or conceive of its undoing. God, but she knew how he liked to be pleasured, taking care not to stale his nerves with repetition, but cajoling his juice into cells already brimming, until he was ready to come in blood, and be murdered by her work, willingly.

Another skitter of light behind his eye broke the hold of sensation, and he was once again entire - his prick its modest length - and she not darkness but a body through which waves of iridescence seemed to pass. Only seemed, he knew. This was his sight-starved eyes’ invention. Yet it came again, a sinuous light sleeking her, then going out. Invention or not it made him want her more completely, and he put his arms beneath her shoulders, lifting her up and off him. She rolled over to his side, and he reached across to undress her. Now that she was lying against white sheets her form was visible, albeit vaguely. She moved beneath his hand, raising her body to his touch.

‘… Inside you …’ he said, rummaging through the damp folds of her clothes.

Her presence beside him had stilled; her breathing lost its irregularity. He bared her breasts; put his tongue to them as his hands went down to the belt of her skirt, to find that she’d changed for the trip, and was wearing jeans. Her hands were on the belt, almost as if to deny him. But he wouldn’t be delayed or denied. He pulled the jeans down around her hips, feeling skin so smooth beneath his hands it was almost fluid; her whole body a slow curve, like a wave about to break over him.

For the first time since she’d appeared she said his name, tentatively, as though in this darkness she’d suddenly doubted he was real.

‘I’m here,’ he replied. ‘Always.’

‘This is what you want?’ she said.

‘Of course it is. Of course,’ he replied, and put his hand on her sex.

This time the iridescence, when it came, was almost bright, and fixed in his head the magic of her crotch, his fingers sliding over and between her labia. As the light went, leaving its afterglow on his blind eyes, he was vaguely distracted by a ringing sound, far off at first but closer with every repetition. The telephone, damn it! He did his best to ignore it, failed, and reached out to the bedside table where it sat, throwing the receiver off its cradle and returning to her in one graceless motion. The body beneath him was once again perfectly still. He climbed on top of her and slid inside. It was like being sheathed in silk. She put her hands up around his neck, her fingers strong, and raised her head a little way off the bed to meet his kisses. Though their mouths were clamped together he could hear her saying his name -‘… Gentle? Gentle…? - with the same questioning tone she’d had before. He didn’t let memory divert him from his present pleasure, but found his rhythm; long, slow strokes. He remembered her as a woman who liked him to take his time. At the height of their affair they’d made love from dusk to dawn on several occasions; toying and teasing, stopping to bathe so they’d have the bliss of working up a second sweat. But this was an encounter that had none of the froth of those liaisons. Her fingers were digging hard at his back, pulling him on to her with each thrust. And still he heard her voice, dimmed by the veils of his self-consumption:

‘Gentle? Are you there?’

‘I’m here,’ he murmured.

A fresh tide of light was rising through them both, the erotic becoming a visionary toil as he watched it sweep over their skin, its brightness intensifying with every thrust.

Again she asked him: ‘Are you there?’

How could she doubt it? He was never more present than in this act; never more comprehending of himself than when buried in the other sex.

‘I’m here,’ he said.

Yet she asked again, and this time, though his mind was stewed in bliss, the tiny voice of reason murmured that it wasn’t his lady who was asking the question at all, but the woman on the telephone. He’d thrown the receiver off the hook, but she was haranguing the empty line, demanding he reply. Now he listened. There was no mistaking the voice: it was Jude. And if Jude was on the line, who the fuck was he fucking?

Whoever it was, she knew the deception was over. She dug deeper into the flesh of his lower back and buttocks, raising her hips to press him deeper into her still, her sex tightening around his cock as though to prevent him from leaving her unspent. But he was sufficiently master of himself to resist, and pulled out of her, his heart thumping like some crazy locked up in the cell of his chest.

‘Who the hell are you? he yelled.

Her hands were still upon him. Their heat and their demand, which had so aroused him moments before, unnerved him now. He threw her off, and started to reach towards the lamp on the bedside table. She took hold of his erection as he did so, and slid her palm along the shaft. Her touch was so persuasive he almost succumbed to the idea of entering her again, taking her anonymity as carte blanche and indulging in the darkness every last desire he could dredge up. She was putting her mouth where her hand had been, sucking him into her. He regained in two heart-beats the hardness he’d lost.

Then the whine of the empty line reached his ears. Jude had given up trying to make contact. Perhaps she’d heard his panting, and the promises he’d been making in the dark. The thought brought new rage. He took hold of the woman’s head and pulled her from his lap. What could have possessed him to want somebody he couldn’t even see? And what kind of whore offered herself that way? Diseased? Deformed? Psychotic? He had to see. However repulsive, he had to see!

He reached for the lamp a second time, feeling the bed shake as the harridan prepared to make her escape. Fumbling for the switch, he brought the lamp off its perch. It didn’t smash, but its beams were cast up at the ceiling, throwing a gauzy light down on the room below. Suddenly fearful she’d attack him, he turned without picking the lamp up, only to find that the woman had already claimed her clothes from the snarl of sheets and was retreating to the bedroom door. His eyes had been feeding on darkness and projections for too long, and now, presented with solid reality, they were befuddled. Half concealed by shadow the woman was a mire of shifting forms - face blurred, body smeared, pulses of iridescence, slow now, passing from toes to head. The only fixable element in this flux was her eyes, which stared back at him mercilessly. He wiped his hand from brow to chin in the hope of sloughing the illusion off, and in these seconds she opened the door to make her escape. He leapt from the bed, still determined to get past his confusions to the grim truth he’d coupled with, but she was already halfway through the door, and the only way he could stop her was to seize hold of her arm.

Whatever power had deranged his senses, its bluff was called when he made contact with her. The roiling forms of her face resolved themselves like pieces of a multi-faceted jigsaw, turning and turning as they found their place, concealing countless other configurations - rare, wretched, bestial, dazzling - behind the shell of a congruous reality. He knew the features, now that they’d come to rest. Here were the ringlets, framing a face of exquisite symmetry. Here were the scars that healed with such unnatural speed. Here were the lips that hours before had described their owner as nothing and nobody. It was a lie! This nothing had two functions at least: assassin and whore. This nobody had a name.

‘Pie’oh’pah.’

Gentle let go of the man’s arm as though it were venomous. The form before him didn’t re-dissolve however, for which fact Gentle was only half glad. That hallucinatory chaos had been distressing, but the solid thing it had concealed appalled him more. Whatever sexual imaginings he’d shaped in the darkness - Judith’s face, Judith’s breasts, belly, sex - all of them had been an illusion. The creature he’d coupled with, almost shot his load into, didn’t even share her sex.

He was neither a hypocrite nor a puritan. He loved sex too much to condemn any expression of lust, and though he’d discouraged the homosexual courtships he’d attracted, it was out of indifference not revulsion. So the shock he felt now was fuelled more by the power of the deceit worked upon him than by the sex of the deceiver.

‘What have you done to me?’ was all he could say. ‘What have you done?’

Pie’oh’pah stood his ground, knowing perhaps that his nakedness was his best defence.

‘I wanted to heal you,’ he said. Though it trembled, there was music in his voice.

‘You put some drug in me.’

‘No!’ Pie said.

‘Don’t give me no! I thought you were Judith! You let me think you were Judith!’ He looked down at his hands, then up at the hard, lean body in front of him. ‘I felt her, not you.’ Again, the same complaint. ‘What have you done to me?’

‘I gave you what you wanted,’ Pie said.

Gentle had no retort to this. In its way, it was the truth. Scowling, he sniffed his palms, thinking that there might be traces of some drug in his sweat. But there was only the stench of sex on him; of the heat of the bed behind him.

‘You’ll sleep it off,’ Pie said.

‘Get the fuck out of here,’ Gentle replied. ‘And if you go anywhere near Jude again, I swear … I swear … I’ll take you apart.’

‘You’re obsessed with her, aren’t you?’

‘None of your fucking business.’

‘It’ll do you harm.’

‘Shut up.’

‘It will, I’m telling you.’

‘I told you!’ Gentle yelled. ‘Shut the fuck up!’

‘She doesn’t belong to you,’ came the reply.

The words ignited new fury in Gentle. He reached for Pie and took him by the throat. The bundle of clothes dropped from the assassin’s arm leaving him naked. But he put up no defence; he simply raised his hands and laid them lightly on Gentle’s shoulders. The gesture only infuriated Gentle further. He let out a stream of invective, but the placid face before him took both spittle and spleen without flinching. Gentle shook him, digging his thumbs into the man’s throat to stop his windpipe. Still he neither resisted nor succumbed, but stood in front of his attacker like a saint awaiting martyrdom.

Finally, breathless with rage and exertion, Gentle let go his hold, and threw Pie back, stepping away from the creature with a glimmer of superstition in his eyes. Why hadn’t the fellow fought back, or fallen? Anything but this sickening passivity.

‘Get out,’ Gentle told him.

Pie still stood his ground, watching him with forgiving eyes.

‘Will you get out?’ Gentle said again, more softly, and this time the martyr replied.

‘If you wish.’

‘I wish.’

He watched Pie’oh’pah stoop to pick up the scattered clothes. Tomorrow, this would all come clear in his head, he thought. He’d have shat this delirium out of his system, and these events - Jude, the chase, his near rape at the hands of the assassin - would be a tale to tell Klein and Clem and Taylor when he got back to London. They’d be entertained. Aware now that he was more naked than the other man he turned to the bed, and dragged a sheet off it to cover himself with.

There was a strange moment then, when he knew the bastard was still in the room, still watching him, and all he could do was wait for him to leave. Strange because it reminded him of other bedroom partings: sheets tangled, sweat cooling, confusion and self-reproach keeping glances at bay. He waited, and waited, and finally heard the door close. Even then he didn’t turn, but listened to the room to be certain there was only one breath in it: his own. When he finally looked back, and saw that Pie’oh’pah had gone, he pulled the sheet up around him like a toga, concealing himself from the absence in the room, which stared back at him too much like a reflection for his peace of mind. Then he locked the suite door and stumbled back to bed, listening to his drugged head whine like the empty telephone line.

CHAPTER NINE
1

Oscar Esmond Godolphin always recited a little prayer in praise of democracy when, after one of his trips to the Dominions, he stepped back on to English soil. Extraordinary as those visits were - and as warmly welcomed as he found himself in the diverse Kesparates of Yzordderrex - the city state was an autocracy of the most extreme kind, its excesses dwarfing the repressions of the country he’d been born in. Especially of late. Even his great friend and business partner in the Second Dominion, Hebbert Nuits-St-Georges, called Peccable by those who knew him well, a merchant who had made substantial profit from the superstitious and the woebegone in the Second Dominion, regularly remarked that the order of Yzordderrex was less stable by the day, and he would soon take his family out of the city, indeed out of the Dominion entirely, and find a new home where he would not have to smell burning bodies when he opened his windows in the morning. So far, it was only talk. Godolphin knew Peccable well enough to be certain that until he’d exhausted his supply of idols, relics and jujus from the Fifth, and could make no more profit, he’d stay put. And given that it was Godolphin himself who supplied these items -most were simply terrestrial trivia, revered in the Dominions because of their place of origin - and given that he would not cease to do so as long as the fever of collection was upon him and he could exchange such items for artifacts from the Imajica, Peccable’s business would flourish. It was a trade in talismans, and neither man was likely to tire of it soon.

Nor did Godolphon tire of being an Englishman in that most unEnglish of cities. He was instantly recognizable in the small but influential circle he kept. A large man in every way, he was tall and big-bellied; bellicose when fondest, hearty when not. At fifty-two he had long ago found his style, and was more than comfortable with it. True, he concealed his second and third chins beneath a grey-brown beard that only got an efficient trimming at the hands of Peccable’s eldest daughter Hoi-Polloi. True, he attempted to look a little more learned by wearing silver-rimmed spectacles that were dwarfed by his large face but were, he thought, all the more pedagoguish because they didn’t flatter. But these were little deceits. They helped to make him unmistakable, which he liked. He wore his thinning hair short, and his collars long, preferring for dress a clash of tweeds and a striped shirt; always a tie; invariably a waistcoat. All in all, a difficult sight to ignore, which suited him fine. Nothing was more likely to bring a smile to his face than being told he was talked about. It was usually with affection.

There was no smile on his face now, however, as he stepped out of the site of the Reconciliation - known euphemistically as the Retreat - to find Dowd sitting perched on a shooting-stick a few yards from the door. It was early afternoon but the sun was already low in the sky, the air as chilly as Dowd’s welcome. It was almost enough to make him turn round and go back to Yzordderrex, revolution or no.

‘Why do I think you haven’t come here with sparkling news?’ he said.

Dowd rose with his usual theatricality. ‘I’m afraid you’re absolutely correct,’ he said.

‘Let me guess: the government fell! The house burned down.’ His face dropped. ‘Not my brother?’ he said. ‘Not Charlie?’ He tried to read Dowd’s face. ‘What: dead? A massive coronary. When was the funeral?’

‘No, he’s alive. But the problem lies with him.’

‘Always has. Always has. Will you fetch my goods and chattels out of the Folly? We’ll talk as we walk. Go on in, will you? There’s nothing in there that’s going to bite.’

Dowd had stayed out of the Retreat all the time he’d waited for Godolphin (a wearisome three days) even though it would have given him some measure of protection against the bitter cold. Not that his system was susceptible to such discomforts, but he fancied himself an empathic soul, and his time on Earth had taught him to feel cold as an intellectual concept, if not a physical one, and he might have wished to take shelter. Anywhere other than the Retreat. Not only had many esoterics died there (and he didn’t enjoy the proximity of death unless he’d been its bringer), but the Retreat was a passing place between the Fifth Dominion and the other four, including, of course, the home from which he was in permanent exile. To be so close to the door through which his home lay, and be prevented by the conjurations of his first keeper, Joshua Godolphin, from opening that door, was painful. The cold was preferable.

He stepped inside now, however, having no choice in the matter. The Retreat had been built in neo-classical style: twelve marble pillars rising to support a dome that called for decoration, but had none. The plainness of the whole lent it gravity, and a certain functionalism which was not inappropriate. It was, after all, no more than a station, built to serve countless passengers and now used by only one. On the floor, set in the middle of the elaborate mosaic that appeared to be the building’s sole concession to prettification but was in fact the evidence of its true purpose, were the bundles of artifacts Godolphin brought back from his travels, neatly tied up by Hoi-Polloi Nuits-St-Georges, the knots encrusted with scarlet sealing wax. It was her present delight, this business with the wax, and Dowd cursed it, given that it fell to him to unpack these treasures. He crossed to the centre of the mosaic, light on his heels. This was tremulous terrain, and he didn’t trust it. But moments later, he emerged with his freight, to find that Godolphin was already marching out of the copse that screened the Retreat from both the house (empty, of course; in ruins) and any casual spy who peered over the wall. He took a deep breath and went after his master, knowing the explanation ahead would not be easy.

2

‘So they’ve summoned me, have they?’ Oscar said, as they drove back into London, the traffic thickening with the dusk. ‘Well, let them wait.’

‘You’re not going to tell them you’re here?’

‘In my time, not in theirs. This is a mess, Dowdy. A wretched mess.’

‘You told me to help Estabrook if he needed it.’

‘Helping him hire an assassin isn’t what I had in mind.’

‘Chant was very discreet.’

‘Death makes you that way, I find. You really have made a pig’s ear of the whole thing.’

‘I protest,’ said Dowd. ‘What else was I supposed to do? You knew he wanted the woman dead, and you washed your hands of it.’

‘All true,’ said Godolphin. ‘She is dead, I assume?’

‘I don’t think so. I’ve been scouring the papers, and there’s no mention.’

‘So why did you have Chant killed?’

Here Dowd was more cautious in his account. If he said too little, Godolphin would suspect him of concealment. Too much, and the larger picture might become apparent. The longer his employer stayed in ignorance of the scale of the stakes, the better. He proffered two explanations, both ready and waiting:

‘For one thing, the man was more unreliable than I‘d thought. Drunk and maudlin half the time. And I think he knew more than was good for either you or your brother. He might have ended up finding out about your travels.’

‘Instead it’s the Society that’s suspicious.’

‘It’s unfortunate the way these things turn out.’

‘Unfortunate, my arse. It’s a total balls-up is what it is.’

‘I’m very sorry.’

‘I know you are, Dowdy,’ Oscar said. ‘The point is, where do we find a scapegoat?’

‘Your brother?’

‘Perhaps,’ Godolphin replied, cannily concealing the degree to which this suggestion found favour.

‘When should I tell them that you’ve come back?’ Dowd asked.

‘When I’ve made up a lie I can believe in,’ came the reply.

Back in the house in Regent’s Park Road, Oscar took some time to study the newspaper reports of Chant’s death before retiring to his treasure house on the third floor with both his new artifacts and a good deal to think about. There was a sizeable part of him that wanted to exit this Dominion once and for all. Take himself off to Yzordderrex and set up business with Peccable; marry Hoi-Polloi despite her crossed eyes; have a litter of kids and retire to the Hills of the Conscious Cloud, in the Third, and raise parrots. But he knew he’d yearn for England sooner or later, and a yearning man could be cruel. He’d end up beating his wife, bullying his kids and eating the parrots. So, given that he’d always have to keep a foot in England, if only during the cricket season, and given that as long as he kept a presence here he would be answerable to the Society, he had to face them.

He locked the door of his treasure room, sat down amongst his collection, and waited for inspiration. The shelves around him, which were built to the ceiling, were bowed beneath the weight of his trove. Here were items gathered from the edge of the Second Dominion to the limits of the Fourth. He had only to pick one of them up to be transported back to the time and place of its acquisition. The Statue of the Etook Ha’chiit he’d bartered for in a little town called Slew, which was now. regrettably, a blasted spot, its citizens the victims of a purge visited upon them for the crime of a song, written in the dialect of their community, suggesting that the Autarch of Yzordderrex lacked testicles.

Another of his treasures, the seventh volume of Gaud Maybellome’s Encyclopaedia of Heavenly Signs, originally written in the language of Third Dominion academics but widely translated for the delectation of the proletariat, he’d bought from a woman in the city of Jassick, who’d approached him in a gaming room where he was attempting to explain cricket to a group of the locals, and said she recognized him from stories her husband (who was in the Autarch’s army in Yzordderrex) had told.

‘You’re the English male,’ she’d said, which didn’t seem worth denying.

Then she’d shown him the book: a very rare volume indeed. He’d never ceased to find fascination within its pages, for it was Maybellome’s intention to make an encyclopaedia listing all the flora, fauna, languages, sciences, ideas, moral perspectives - in short, anything that occurred to her - that had found their way from the Fifth Dominion, the Place of the Succulent Rock, through to the other worlds. It was a Herculean task, and she’d died just as she was beginning the nineteenth volume, with no end in sight, but even the one book in Godolphin’s possession was enough to guarantee that he would search for the others until his dying day. It was a bizarre, almost surreal volume. Even if only half the entries were true, or nearly true, Earth had influenced just about every aspect of the worlds from which it was divided. Fauna, for instance. There were countless animals listed in the volume which Maybellome claimed to be invaders from the other world. Some clearly were: the zebra, the crocodile, the dog. Others were a mixture of genetic strands, part terrestrial, part non. But many of these species (pictured in the book like fugitives from a mediaeval bestiary) were so outlandish he doubted their very existence. Here, for instance, were hand-sized wolves, with the wings of canaries. Here was an elephant that lived in an enormous conch. Here was a literate worm that wrote omens with its thread-fine, half-mile body. Wonderment upon wonderment. Godolphin only had to pick up the encyclopaedia and he was ready to put on his boots and set off for the Dominions again.

What was self-evident from even a casual perusal of the book was how extensively the unreconciled Dominion had influenced the others. The languages of earth - English, Italian, Hindustani and Chinese particularly - were known in some variation everywhere, though it seemed the Autarch - who had come to power in the confusion following the failed Reconciliation -favoured English, which was the preferred linguistic currency almost everywhere now. To name a child with an English word was thought particularly propitious, though there was little or no consideration given to what the word actually meant. Hence Hoi-Polloi, for instance; this one of the less strange namings amongst the thousands Godolphin had encountered.

He flattered himself that he was in some small part responsible for such blissful bizarrities, given that over the years he’d brought all manner of influences through from the Succulent Rock. There was always a hunger for newspapers and magazines (usually preferred to books) and he’d heard of baptizers in Patashoqua who named children by stabbing a copy of the London Times with a pin and bequeathing the first three words they pricked upon the infant, however unmusical the combination. But he was not the only influence. He hadn’t brought the crocodile, or the zebra, or the dog (though he would lay claim to the parrot). No, there had always been routes through from Earth into the Dominions, other than that at the Retreat. Some, no doubt, had been opened by Maestros and esoterics, in all manner of cultures, for the express purpose of their passing to and fro between worlds. Others were conceivably opened by accident, and perhaps remained open, marking the sites as haunted or sacred, shunned or obsessively protected. Yet others, these in the smallest number, had been created by the sciences of the other Dominions, as a means of gaining access to the heaven of the Succulent Rock.

In such a place, this near the walls of the Iahmandhas in the Third Dominion, Godolphin had acquired his most sacred possession: a Boston Bowl, complete with its forty-one coloured stones. Though he’d never used it, the Bowl was reputedly the most accurate prophetic tool known in the worlds, and now - sitting amid his treasures, with a sense growing in him that events on Earth in the last few days were leading to some matter of moment - he brought the Bowl down from its place on the highest shelf, unwrapped it, and set it on the table. Then he took the stones from their pouch and laid them at the bottom of the Bowl. Truth to tell, the arrangement didn’t look particularly promising: the Bowl resembled something for kitchen use, plain fired ceramic, large enough to whip eggs for a couple of soufflés. The stones were more colourful, varying in size and shape from tiny, flat pebbles to perfect spheres the size of an eyeball.

Having set them out, Godolphin had second thoughts. Did he even believe in prophecy? And if he did, was it wise to know the future? Probably not. Death was bound to be in there somewhere, sooner or later. Only Maestros and deities lived forever, and a man might sour the balance of his span knowing when it was going to end. But then, suppose he found in this Bowl some indication as to how the Society might be handled? That would be no small weight off his shoulders.

‘Be brave,’ he told himself, and laid the middle finger of each hand upon the rim, as Peccable, who’d once owned such a Bowl and had it smashed by his wife in a domestic row, had instructed.

Nothing happened at first, but Peccable had warned him the Bowls usually took some time to start from cold. He waited, and waited. The first sight of activation was a rattling from the bottom of the Bowl as the stones began to move against each other, the second, a distinctly acidic odour rising to jab at his sinuses, the third, and most startling, the sudden ricocheting of one pebble, then two, then a dozen, across the Bowl and back, several skipping higher than the rim. Their ambition increased by the movement, until all forty-one were in violent motion, so violent that the Bowl began to move across the table, and Oscar had to take a firm hold of it to keep it from turning over. The stones struck his fingers and knuckles with stinging force, but the pain made sweeter the success that now followed, as the speed and motion of the multifarious shapes and colours began to describe images in the air above the Bowl.

Like all prophecy, the signs were in the eye of the beholder, and perhaps another witness would have seen quite different forms in the blur. But what Godolphin saw seemed quite plain to him. The Retreat for one, half-hidden in the copse. Then himself, standing in the middle of the mosaic, either coming back from Yzordderrex or preparing to depart. The images lingered for only a brief time before changing, the Retreat demolished in the storm of stones and a new structure raised in the whirl: the Tower of the Tabula Rasa. He fixed his eyes on the prophecy with fresh deliberation, denying himself the comfort of blinking to be certain he missed nothing. The Tower as seen from the street gave way to its interior. Here they were, the wise ones, sitting around the table contemplating their divine duty. They were navel-defluffers and snot-rollers to a man. Not one of them would be capable of surviving an hour in the alleyways of East Yzordderrex, he thought, down by the harbour where even the cats had pimps. Now he saw himself step into the picture, and something he was doing or saying made the men and women before him jump from their seats, even Lionel.

‘What’s this?’ Oscar murmured.

They had wild expressions on their faces, every one. Were they laughing? What had he done? Cracked a joke? Passed wind? He studied the prophecy more closely. No, it wasn’t humour on their faces. It was horror.

‘Sir?’

Dowd’s voice from outside the door broke his concentration. He looked away from the Bowl for a few seconds to snap: ‘Go away.’

But Dowd had urgent news. ‘McGann’s on the telephone,’ he said.

‘Tell him you don’t know where I am,’ Oscar snorted, returning his gaze to the Bowl.

Something terrible had happened in the time between his looking away and looking back. The horror remained on their faces, but for some reason he’d disappeared from the scene. Had they dispatched him summarily? God, was he dead on the floor? Maybe. There was something glistening on the table, like spilled blood.

‘Sir!’

‘Fuck off, Dowdy.’

‘They know you’re here, sir.’

They knew; they knew. The house was being watched, and they knew.

‘All right,’ he said. ‘Tell him I’ll be down in a moment.’

‘What did you say, sir?’

Oscar raised his voice over the din of the stones, looking away again, this time more willingly: ‘Get his whereabouts. I’ll call him back.’

Again, he returned his gaze to the Bowl, but his concentration had faltered, and he could no longer interpret the images concealed in the motion of the stones. Except for one. As the speed of the display slowed he seemed to catch - oh so fleetingly - a woman’s face in the mêlée. His replacement at the Society’s table, perhaps; or his dispatcher.

2

He needed a drink before he spoke to McGann, and Dowd, ever the anticipator, had already mixed him a whisky and soda, but he forsook it for fear it would loosen his tongue. Paradoxically, what had been half-revealed by the Boston Bowl helped him in his exchange. In extreme circumstances he responded with almost pathological detachment: it was one of his most English traits. He had thus seldom been cooler or more controlled than now, as he told McGann that yes indeed he had been travelling, and no, it was none of the Society’s business where or about what pursuit. He would of course be delighted to attend a gathering at the Tower the following day, but was McGann aware (indeed did he care?) that tomorrow was Christmas Eve?

‘I never miss Midnight Mass at St Martin’s-in-the-Field,’ Oscar told him, ‘so I’d appreciate it greatly if the meeting could be concluded quickly enough to allow me time to get there and find a pew with a good view.’

He delivered all of this without a tremor in his voice. McGann attempted to press him as to his whereabouts in the last few days, to which Oscar asked why the hell it mattered.

‘I don’t ask about your private affairs, now do I?’ he said, in a mildly affronted tone. ‘Nor, by the way, do I spy on your comings and goings. Don’t splutter, McGann. You don’t trust me and I don’t trust you. I will take tomorrow’s meeting as a forum to debate the privacy of the Society’s members, and a chance to remind the gathering that the name of Godolphin is one of the cornerstones of the Society.’

‘All the more reason you be forthright,’ McGann said.

‘I’ll be perfectly forthright,’ was Oscar’s reply. ‘You’ll have ample evidence of my innocence.’ Only now, with the war of wits won, did he accept the whisky and soda Dowd had mixed for him. ‘Ample and definitive.’

He silently toasted Dowd as he talked, knowing as he sipped it that there’d be bloodshed before Christmas Day dawned. Grim as that prospect was, there was no avoiding it now.

When he put the phone down he said to Dowd: ‘I think I’ll wear the herringbone suit tomorrow. And a plain shirt. White. Starched collar.’

‘And the tie?’ Dowd asked, replacing Oscar’s drained glass with a fresh one.

‘I’ll be going straight on to Midnight Mass,’ Oscar said.

‘Black, then.’

‘Black.’