Cannonbridge (22 page)

Swaine-Taylor, subject to whatever strange enslavement it is which holds him so tightly, struggles to catch every part of that blizzard of money, performing a desperate jog in his frantic efforts.

“You may go now, Mr Collins,” says Cannonbridge against this thoroughly grotesque performance. “Tell your master that the rumours that flock about him even now shall soon solidify into infamy and scandal. Tell him that he shall be dead within the year. Your own career will end in failure and disgrace.”

The last of the notes flutters to the floor. Swaine-Taylor snatches it up and clasps it, together with the rest of the booty, to his chest. A single, shrill whimper escapes him.

Cannonbridge arches an eyebrow and says to Mr Collins: “You look as though you have a question forming upon your lips.”

“Yes, sir.” Wilkie’s voice is trembling slightly. “Before I take my leave of you, I have to ask you this.”

“Go on.”

“Why? Why this squalor and degradation? You are rich and famous and, in certain quarters, somewhat inexplicably in my view, greatly admired. You could live almost anywhere you chose. Why dwell in this place of darkness and sin?”

Cannonbridge seems to think for a moment before replying. “Because,” he says, at length, “this is not where I live. Not truly. Rather it is where I hide.”

He pauses. Collins does not interrupt.

“You see,” the saturnine man continues, “I feel—have always felt—that I am pursued. There is a shadow at my back. I have glimpsed it from the corner of my eye all of my remarkable existence. And it seems now... to be growing... more distinct.”

“I...” Collins finds—unusually, if not uniquely—that he has no notion at all of what to say. He merely gazes at the curious figure of his host, of the manservant now sunk to the ground, still clutching his money.

Cannonbridge says quietly “Go” and, when Collins does not immediately begin to move, shouts: “Get out!”, screams “
Get out!
”

And without hesitation and without looking back Mr Wilkie Collins takes to his heels and all but runs from that place of wickedness, down that crepuscular corridor, back over the threshold, up the treacherous path and out into the vile alley beyond. He does not begin to calm himself until he is in a cab and crossing the river once more. And, as he sits, shaking and ill at ease in that shuddering vehicle, he wonders—he shall always wonder—whether it was indeed his imagination which caused him to see, when he glanced back just at the moment when the house had disappeared from view, a bristling, many-sided shadow shuffle with terrible purpose by the door of Matthew Cannonbridge.

NOW

I
T IS GROWING
dark again (too soon, Toby thinks, too soon, as though there has been but a sliver of true day), former Corporal Gillingham has gone, muttering troubled apologies, and Dr Judd is alone with Gabriela again. They have made it as far as Inverness where, on her credit card, they have booked into a Holiday Inn for the night, into a beige twin room, the homogeneity of the place curiously comforting after the stark horror of the dawn. A solitary lamp provides brackish illumination.

They are lying on their single beds, separated by a patch of caramel-coloured carpet not more than one foot wide, both of them fully dressed and both exhausted. The television is on, its sound muted, as an advert for razor blades plays out in soundless idiocy.

Both seem to be on the cusp of a sleep born of profound physical fatigue, although their minds still race and churn.

“Have you any theories?” Toby asks. “About what it might have been? The... guardian?”

Gabriela sighs. “I can’t seem to focus on it. When I try to remember... it’s as if my memory recoils at the thought of it. Like it just refuses to focus on what we saw.”

“I know just what you mean.”

“Perhaps...”

Toby breathes in the clean antiseptic smell of the hotel room, finds himself hunkering down on the inexpensive, though scrupulously laundered, linen. “Yes?”

“Maybe there are some things the mind just refuses to remember in full. Like a self-preservation mechanism. Like it’s protecting itself somehow.”

“You could be right. It’s... I don’t know... Do you remember that chapter in
The Wind in the Willows
? It’s one that people tend to forget. They meet Pan. Remember? They meet the great god Pan.”

But Gabriela isn’t listening to him anymore. She is staring at the television screen. The adverts are over, replaced by the news, the endless rounds of information which fill the channel for twenty-four hours a day. There has been no sign of Toby’s image so far. Instead, there is a horribly familiar likeness on the screen—a nineteenth century photograph, a saturnine man dressed in black.

Then the image shifts and below the perky smile of the newscaster rolls a ticker tape of information.

‘The Cannonbridge Gala,’ it reads, ‘Growing list of dignitaries confirmed to attend. Event to be held tomorrow at the heart of Canary Wharf.’

“Good grief,” Toby breathes. “I’d lost track... I’d quite lost track of time. It’s tomorrow, isn’t it? It’s happening tomorrow?”

The woman fumbles for the remote. “Looks that way. Why do I get the feeling that everything’s about to snap violently into place?” She locates the controller, stabs at a button and the room is filled with the babble of rolling news with the rise and fall of the journalist’s robotic delivery. The words “greatest British author” are mentioned as are “politicians, pop stars, the great and the good”, as are “the best of our island nation” as, Toby notes, with something strangely almost like nostalgia, is “Dr J J Salazar.”

He is about to say something—anything—to the tired yet beautiful woman who lies almost within touching distance of him when another sound interrupts the chatter of the set: the shrill peal of a telephone.

There is such a device on the cabinet next to Gabriela’s side of the bed. She frowns and, without thinking, picks it up and places the cheap-looking receiver to one ear.

“Yes?” She frowns again. “He’s here.” She looks over. “Toby? It’s for you.”

“Reception?” he asks hopefully, though he knows, of course, that it isn’t, that, given what his life has become, it can’t be anything so prosaic as that.

He gets up, hurries over, accepts the call. “Who is this?”

The line is crackly, the voice on the other end female and unfamiliar. “Dr Toby Judd?”

“Yes,” he says. “Who are you?”

“My name is Jenny Blessborough.”

“What?”

“I understand that you’ve been investigating my grandfather’s work.”

“Yes. But how did you possibly—”

“Judd, you need to get out of that hotel room. We are waiting for you outside. We’re in the white van. Looks like it needs a clean. You need to take your girlfriend and get out of there at once.”

“Why? I mean, why should we possibly trust you? Even if you are who you say you are?”

“There’s a man on your trail. A man named Mr Keen. Until now he’s only been watching and biding his time. But the order’s obviously been given.”

“Who? What order?”

“The order to take you in. We’ve seen his car. We’ve seen the Saab. For all we know, he might already be inside the hotel. So I say again: you need to get out of there now.”

And the phone goes dead.

“Who was that?” Gabriela is on her feet, tense and alarmed.

“She said her name was Blessborough...”

“What? What on earth did she want?”

“She said there’s someone after us. And that she’d be waiting for us outside. And that—”

Too late. He is interrupted before he can say more, not this time by any electronic sound but by something far earthier and utterly unmistakable. The door to their room is kicked—literally kicked—open with a single, contemptuous gesture and there is a man standing on the threshold, a neat and smiling man whose eyes seethe nonetheless with insanity. He grins with gruesome relish. And he is chewing, Toby realises, chewing something soft.

“Dr Judd,” says the man with murderous certainty, but rather too loud, as if his hearing is obscured in some way and he is no longer certain of the volume of his speech. “Get on the floor now. You–” He points at Gabriela. “You do the same.” Almost nonchalantly, he reaches into his jacket pocket and pulls out a long, serrated knife.

My God,
thinks Toby,
my God, but there’s something... there’s something
encrusted
on the blade.

He is surprised by what happens next although he ought, perhaps, not to be.

Wordlessly, wasting no time nor giving her opponent any opportunity to react, Gabriela rushes at the man in the doorway, throwing her whole body hard against him. Even so, the knifeman does not fall but only stumbles. She takes advantage of this momentary distraction by forcing the blade from his hand and onto the hotel floor.

“Run!” she shouts. “Toby! Run!”

The fight begins in earnest then, vicious hand-to-hand combat. Gabriela striking with supple, determined art, the stranger parrying her blows with the sick delight of the professional who discovers a worthy opponent at last after months of encountering only amateurs, dilettantes and pushovers.

“Run!” the woman shouts again. “I’ll follow! I promise. This is too important. You need to get away.” At this speech, the man laughs—a thick, glutinous chuckle.

“I can’t... Can’t leave you to this.”

“Go, Toby! Go!”

“Gabriela, I—”

“Run! I beg you. Run! Now!”

Toby hesitates, thinking that he should stay, knowing that he ought by rights to at least try to help but then he sees the fierce command on the woman’s face and he does as he is told. Filled with regret and shame, he leaves them battling on, each offering the other no respite nor any possibility of mercy.

He runs, down the corridor, down the stairs and into the soulless lobby. As he sprints, he hears, in short succession, the guttural sound of male pain and then a woman’s high cry. He stops, hesitates, thinks about going back. Then, remembering the Sergeant’s order, runs on.

Outside the hotel, a white van is waiting, engine running, door open.

The window is wound down, the driver, a stout, dark-haired woman in early middle age, leaning anxiously out.

“Hurry up!” she shouts. “Come on!”

Panting, his little body jolted onwards by fresh adrenaline, Toby clambers inside the van almost without thinking. He glimpses a couple of mattresses, a few boxes and, in the shadows, a low, prone, motionless shape.

The driver calls back. “Close the door!”

“No,” Toby gasps. “We’ve got to wait... for Gabriela...”

“Was she with Keen?”

“I... I think so. Yes.”

The driver snarls. “Then, the chances are, she’s dead. Now close the damn door!”

Without waiting for her instruction to be obeyed, she floors the accelerator and the van speeds hectically, desperately, away, leaving in its wake, it seems to Toby, something vital, something irreplaceable.

Something of his heart.

1888

SCOTLAND YARD

LONDON

A
S HIS
S
ERGEANT
unlocks the door to the cell, Inspector Frederick Abberline of the London Metropolitan Police allows himself, for the first time in months, the tiniest suggestion of a smile.

A small, side-whiskered man, just on the cusp of plumpness, Abberline steps inside, the Sergeant trotting behind him. In fact, the room is not exactly a cell although, with its blank walls and single chair, bolted to the ground, its bars upon the windows, its locks and guard without, it would be a connoisseur indeed of such accommodation who might feel confident in parsing the difference. Abberline looks down towards the man who is at present assisting them with their enquiries—tall, saturnine, clad fashionably in black, he sits with a galling insouciance on that solitary seat. Nonetheless, the Inspector feels a small surge of triumph at the thought that, after all the tribulations and obstructions of recent weeks, they have at last succeeded in bringing the man here, thwarting his well-connected allies and his own considerable will and summoning him for questioning.

“Sergeant?” says Abberline to his companion. “Leave us a while.”

“Sir?” The note of disapproval in his voice is unmistakable.

The Sergeant is a good man but he is a stickler for orthodoxy and a martyr to the rulebook. He has yet to learn the necessity of those occasional circumventions of protocol and reorderings of procedure which are sometimes vital to ensure that true justice is done.

“We need a moment alone,” Abberline says and still the subordinate gazes concernedly in his direction. “The responsibility’s mine, lad. Not yours.”

Reluctantly satisfied, the Sergeant nods and withdraws. The door slams shut behind him and a violent clatter of the turning of locks and the drawing of bolts ensues. There is silence for a moment in this cell that is not quite a cell.

The man in the chair (not the prisoner, Abberline reminds himself, for the fellow is not yet formally that and remains, technically, a mere member of the public) is looking up at him with amusement quite apparent on his face.

Abberline looks down and smiles back at him, seemingly affably enough, holding the expression for a few taut seconds before suddenly collapsing his demeanour into one of brutal disapprobation—a trick which has, in the past, unsettled many a thief, cracksman and cutthroat.

With this particular suspect, however, it seems to move him not at all.

“Mr Cannonbridge,” says Abberline, moving behind the chair now so as to remind its occupant who possesses control in this long-expected encounter.

“Inspector,” breathes the suspect softly, still and unperturbed.

“I imagine you understand why we’ve had to bring you in like this.”

“No doubt you have suspicions, Fred,” says the black-clad man with wholly inappropriate good cheer. “You strike me as the kind of man who would nurse dozens of the things without having the faintest notion as to what to do with them.”

“Kind of you to say so, sir. But why don’t you tell me to what you think these suspicions of mine, of which you hold me to be so fond, might pertain?”