Cannonbridge (7 page)

“A man may make his own destiny,” says the boy. “A man can outwit fate.”

“Do you think so?”

An earnest nod. “I do.”

Cannonbridge seems to brighten. “Then perhaps I shall. And perhaps you will too. What I meant to say was that the debts of your father need not overwhelm you.”

“I hope that you are right,” says the boy and they walk on in a silence that now seems almost companionable, as if each has found some succour in the other.

Cannonbridge begins again. “In what I have seen of the future, Charles, you will endure. And not merely endure but
thrive
.You will write often and well.”

“Truly, sir?”

“Truly. But more than this I cannot say.”

“I see... then thank you, sir.”

They speak of many other things—of the city and the river, of shadows and money, of family, of fog, books, stories, the forging of myth. At last, they come to Camden Town, a place but lately claimed by the city, and along a freshly paved road to Number Sixteen, Bayham Street.

A pump stands opposite the house. Beyond it are lanes and open fields. Here there is still birdsong.

Cannonbridge takes a purse from his pocket, heavy with coin, and presses it into the boy’s hands.

He says: “I hope this may be of some help.”

The boy, proud, hesitates.

“Please. This... stuff. This
money,
it seems to make so great a deal of difference to people. It can be the difference—I have observed—between happiness and misery.”

The boy ducks his head. The purse, accepted, is slipped adroitly into a pocket.

“This will pass,” Cannonbridge says. “Remember that.”

“Will we meet again?” asks the boy.

“I think that we shall. Many years from now.” There is sadness in the man’s voice. “But when we do, if my suspicions are correct, I fear that I may be greatly changed. Our encounter may not be as happy or as providential as this.”

“You will be changed by... age, then, sir? By time?”

“By age, yes. But by something else also. And then, my boy...”

“Yes, sir?”

“You must not trust me. Do you understand? I shall not be benign.”

The boy nods gravely. “But can you not thwart it, sir? Whatever it may be. Surely you must try. You must try not to let yourself be so transformed.”

The man smiles sadly. “Goodbye, Charles. Thank you for your company and for the conversation.”

The boy holds the purse tightly in his pocket. “Thank you, sir.”

Cannonbridge turns and walks away.

For a time, Charles watches him go, curious, a little afraid and in no particular hurry to go inside to face the tears of his mother, the drawn and sullen faces of his siblings. For an instant before the author vanishes into the gloom, Charles is almost certain that he spies something in the visitor’s wake, something made of ebony, blacker even than the shadows, something more animal than man, something with eyes which shine in the darkness.

Then the illusion passes. Shivering, although it is not especially cold, Charles looks away and hurries to the front door, feeling oddly certain that he has just been made privy to some bleak and consequential secret.

As he knocks, from somewhere nearby, in a room in the house of a neighbour or from a passer-by on the street beyond (or so, at least, he tells himself), he hears, quite distinctly, the sound of evil laughter.

The door is opened by his mother, eyes red-rimmed from weeping and, all at once, Master Charles Dickens does not believe that he has ever been so glad to see her.

NOW

I
T IS A
week after the lecture and Toby Judd is trudging home in the early afternoon sun, feeling, through a haze of lunchtime beer, simultaneously light-headed and glum.

He has spent the past two and a half hours in a pub (where, to his mild disquiet, he is beginning to be known) with a couple of beers, a plate of lukewarm scampi and a bulging A5 notebook. Its pages are filled with scribbled ideas—with theories, plans and patient workings-out, with any number of notions about how the Cannonbridge Conspiracy might have come about, with innumerable speculations as to its purpose and intention. The seeds of true obsession are here, in that book, taking patient root.

Now, on this long suburban road, his little house comes into view and he notices, feeling queasily uncertain of its significance, that a police car is parked outside.

As Toby comes closer, the car doors open and two people step out, neither of them in uniform. One is an older woman, a few years senior to Toby, straight-haired and serious, the other, a man, not yet thirty, built like a rugby player, bull-necked and eager.

Both look determined and rumpled and the effect is that of a headmistress and a junior member of staff who share an out of hours interest in violence. Toby is almost upon them.

“Dr Toby Judd?” This is the woman, firm yet discreet.

“Yes?” The word comes out in a croak. Toby, wondering if they can smell the alcohol on his breath, has never craved as much as he does now a packet of mints.

“I thought it must be you, sir.”

“You did?”

“Of course I recognise you, sir.”

“Really?”

“From the video, sir.”

“What video?”

“It might be easier if we took this inside, sir. I’m Detective Inspector Nia Cudden. This is Sergeant Isaac Angeyo.”

The man nods and both of them briefly flourish identity cards (so swiftly that they might just as easily have been bus passes or driving licenses).

“Oh,” says Toby. “Hello, then.”

“Have you got a minute for a quiet word, sir?”

“Of course.”

“Yes. Thank you, sir.”

Toby starts fumbling for the keys, pulls them out, drops them.

Sergeant Angeyo, who has yet to speak, bends down, picks them up and hands them back.

“Thank you.” Dr Judd walks towards the door then, remembering his manners, turns back to his companions. “I’m terribly sorry,” he says. “I haven’t had a chance to tidy for a while. You’ll have to forgive the mess.”

“No problem, sir. I’m sure we’ve seen worse. Just lead the way.”

T
HE MILK IN
the fridge is rancid so Toby can only offer them black coffee or green tea. To his mild relief, they decline both. Once Toby has cleared away the detritus (the guests are too polite to mention the dust and the dirt), the two police officers sit together on the sofa while Toby perches on the room’s only chair. He is about to ask what this is all about when Cudden, with the patient deliberation of a woman who knows from experience that mistakes are more likely if things are done at speed, says: “Tell us, Dr Judd. Do you know a man named Russell Spicer?”

Toby shakes his head. “No. I don’t believe I do.”

The officers exchange looks of professional scepticism.

“Perhaps you’ll recognise his face, sir.”

This is Sergeant Angeyo, speaking for the first time. His voice is low and earnest with a hint of a rural burr, a strange suggestion of the countryside in this place of concrete and gravel. He takes a photograph from his jacket pocket and passes it to Toby, face down.

Turning it over, Dr Judd sees a man from his recent past gazing back at him—skinny, unshaven features, a wild-eyed intensity. Something rises in his chest. “I know him.”

“We thought you might, sir.”

“He came to my lecture. He spoke to me afterwards. He was... enthusiastic about my ideas.”

“And you’d never met him before?”

“No. No... However did you know that we’d met?”

“He was the one who filmed you, sir.” The policewoman speaks these words as if their meaning is self-evident.

“What do you mean ‘filmed me’?”

“He was the one who videoed you, sir. On his phone.”

“What?”

“He put you up on YouTube, sir.”

“I’m sorry. But I can’t quite seem to process this.”

Another glance of jaded scepticism is traded between the officers of the law.

“He filmed me,” Toby says carefully, struggling to understand, “and put the video on YouTube. Why? For goodness’ sake, why?”

“I imagine he wanted to try to spread the word, sir. But it’s found a... different audience. Your
meltdown
, sir. The video’s gone viral.”

Toby is aware that he is sounding pitifully like an echo. “Viral?” He understands the meaning of the term, of course, in this context but somehow he cannot help but slip back to its older, original sense. He considers infection and the spreading of disease.

“All around the world, sir. Everyone’s been clicking on it—on you, sir—over and over. That’s the way it is now, isn’t it? That’s the speed of fame in the twenty-first century. The speed of life, really.” The policewoman sucks in a breath. “You didn’t know?”

“No. No absolutely not. I mean... I remember now... He had his phone out before him, but I never...”

“Sergeant? Show the man, would you?”

The young man slides a slender black device from his pocket, taps at the screen and presents it to Toby with something approaching a flourish.

There, before him, is Toby’s lecture in miniature or, at least, its later, more emotive section. The show. He sees himself: red-faced and ranting, a comic lunatic, baggy-trousered and absurd. He peers, half-horrified, half-fascinated by this homunculus version of himself, this pixelated demagogue, this weird, demented gnome.

“Tens of thousands of hits, sir. You’re something of a celebrity. You remember the man with the dog, sir? ‘Fenton?
Fenton!
’ You’re at least as famous as him.”

On the screen, the tiny, warped reflection of Dr Tony Judd struts and yelps and bellows out his theories.

“Please,” says Toby, winded. “Please put it away now.”

The Detective Inspector nods. “Sergeant.”

“Terrifying,” Toby murmurs. “Quite terrifying.”

Angeyo snaps shut the device, silencing the ranting little man, and stows the thing away in his pocket again.

“This Russell Spicer. He shot all that?”

“Yes, sir. In fact, sir...”

“Yes?”

“As far as we can tell... it was near enough the last thing he did.”

“The... last... thing?”

No trace of emotion on the policeman’s face now. “Before his death, sir.”

A twist of nausea in Toby’s gut. Two useless, identical syllables: “Oh. Oh.”

“We’re sorry, sir.”

“We didn’t mean to shock you.”

“I’m... well, it is shocking. But, I suppose, it’s not like I knew the man. We can’t have spoken for more than a couple of minutes.”

“He was obviously an admirer of yours, sir. We understand he shared some of your conspiracy theories.”

“I don’t like that phrase. But my
doubts
, yes. Yes, he seemed to share some of my
doubts
.”

Angeyo, leaning forward, interested: “I’ve watched the video, sir. Couldn’t quite seem to follow your argument.”

“Hmph. How well do you know Cannonbridge’s works, Sergeant?”

“GCSE English, sir. I know the basics.”

“Hasn’t anything ever struck you as odd about them?”

“In what way, sir?”

“They’re too consistent. Don’t you think? Too neat. And, frankly, nowhere near good enough. As though they’ve been made up by one man over the course of a month and not over a lifetime.”

“Can’t say it’s ever occurred to me, sir.”

“Think about it, Sergeant. Read them again. Look at the details of his life.” Toby, intense, makes eye contact. “
We are being lied to
.”

Cudden clears his throat, evidently a signal of some kind to her sergeant. “Well, thank you for your time, sir.”

Both officers get to their feet.

“Can I ask?” says Toby. “How did he die?”

The police exchange glances again.

“Found in a hotel room, sir. A Holiday Inn. Cut his own throat. Messy. No note.”

“I see.” Toby nods, more nauseous than ever. “Well, that’s very sad.”

Cudden, unsmiling: “Isn’t it?”

Toby swallows and murmurs, “Let me show you out.”

From the doorstep, Cudden strides towards the car, Angeyo hangs back, just long enough to lean in to speak to Toby the following words: “There were some... irregularities about the death, sir.”

“What are you saying?”

Sergeant Angeyo looks at him levelly for a moment. “I’m just saying be careful, sir.”

A shout. “Sergeant!”

Before Toby can respond, Angeyo nods once and strides off. The two police officers climb inside the car.

The engine starts and they drive away.

Toby watches, sick at heart and trembling. He is about to return to the sanctuary of his bedroom when he notices, from across the street, a sudden gleam of light, as of sunshine glinting on metal.

There is a car. A Saab. A dark, sleek, expensive machine. The slender silhouette of a man within. Toby squints against the sunlight but cannot make out the stranger’s features.

Again, a flash of light. Toby stares, his skin prickling, and in a moment of recklessness, considers running over to the vehicle, wrenching open the door and challenging the occupant to explain himself.

But then the car starts up and begins to pull away. Toby stares, still unable to make out the driver’s features. There is only a shadow behind the wheel.

The Saab disappears and the street is empty once more. Feeling very cold in spite of the warmth of the day, Toby, shivering, goes back inside, double locks the front door, pulls the chain across and goes to bed where he falls, eventually, into an uneasy sleep and dreams of shadows and dead men and impossible things.

1835

THE KITTIWAKE HOTEL

BOSTON

I
T IS AUTUMN
in Massachusetts. Cornhill has a sombre aspect as if it is in mourning. Tall, grey buildings. Everywhere, brown leaves and mud. Fine, resentful rain.

Nobody lingers out of doors. It has begun to darken and folk are hurrying home, their heads bowed, their collars turned up against the asperity of the weather, the gas lamps, fitful and fickle, serving less to illuminate the sidewalk than to render more complete those shadows which lie beyond the limitations of the light. All is subtle, quiet, discreet. All is order here and sullen peace. It is a world arranged according to the principles of the ruler and the compass, a city of the new, far from the murk and corruption of London. Looking upon it today, one would be hard pressed to imagine that it was ever the birthplace of revolution or that it once provided the spark for war.