Chaos Magic (4 page)

Chapter 6

THE VERTICAL ABYSS

High in the spiral vortices of the gyre three men were seated around a mirrored table; they were drinking shots of green absinthe from ice thimbles. Today the London weather had delivered a thick band of low cloud that shrouded the city far below them. From the eerie they usually enjoyed a clear view of the western skyscape that was on this occasion denied to the human ants far below - however the raptors were in turn unable to watch the activities of their prey in real time and instead had to rely on the concave power of the table’s mirrored surface that caught and delivered the flash and glint of the spectral energies that they sought to capture, enslave or extinguish at whim.

Eddie Brocade, Simon Magus and another, set aside their glasses and studied the mirror – it was cloudy. Brocade sighed and took a Faberge snuffbox from his pocket and after taking a generous pinch passed it anticlockwise around the table. Before the cloud had interrupted their view they had been watching a flock of starlings – tens of thousands of the tiny denizens of the western skies had flocked together at dusk and were inscribing a pattern, many patterns – pivoting around an invisible and seemingly fluid point, gathering and then banking and plunging again and again until the trio of watchers were quite dizzy, but it was here that their collective interest lay, because the birds were in the grip of the gyre – a field of energies that formed and marked a point of ingress - a portal to the Mauve Zone.

After a while it had become obvious that the axis around which the flock were inscribing elliptical circuits was the spire of a church; a ruined chapel on a scrap of waste ground in one of those abandoned and hidden corners of west London that inexplicably exist – overgrown and neglected for decades, seemingly invisible to councils and developers alike.

Brocade spoke.

“I’m guessing the police are too dumb to reach any of our people who were at last nights working.”

He turned to the man on his right and in doing so showed his handsome profile – his good looks only slightly marred by the flicker of a tick that afflicted his right eyelid.

“What do you think, Sergei?”

This was not his companions real name but was a standing joke between them that stemmed from the eponymously named Sergei being no
Einstein
– but perhaps being an
Eisenstien
: Sergei Eisenstien being the director of many classics of the Russian cinema such as ‘Ivan the Terrible’ and ‘Battleship Potemkin’; and this man, having once directed a couple of pornographic films back in his home city of St Petersburg, wishing to make his mark as a serious film-maker. This was a convolution too far for anyone and everyone except Brocade, who delighted in this circuitous nickname.

‘Sergei’ was slow to answer. He had watched many episodes of ‘the Sweeney’ and believed that he knew the capabilities and mind-set of the Metropolitan Police Force as well as any man. He set aside the snuffbox and quickly licked his thin lips, a lizard tongue darting out in a nanosecond – a freeze frame would have shown it to be forked at the tip, having undergone some surgical modification several years earlier.

“Who knows? – especially if we got a squealer in the pigpen. Check it out, Brocade; you are supposed to be the enforcer around here.”

At this point the so-far-silent Simon Magus stood up and reached for his cane, constructed of some dark hardwood with a brass dragon’s head for a grip. He swung round and brought the stick down across Sergei’s skull and then continued to rain blows down until the man’s scalp and face were a bloody mess. The first strike knocked him unconscious and so there was no attempt to fend off the onslaught, which continued until Eddie Brocade stepped between them and caught the bloodied cane in mid swing.

“It’s enough,” he said quietly.

Above this tableau was a cathedral of glass – a vaulted atrium that soared in deep penetration of the sky – now packed with a million tiny pinpricks of stellar light, but neither man looked upwards.

“Fucking incompetent Russian piece of shit,” said Simon Magus as he walked away from his handiwork. “Get the fuck rid of him. And bring me someone who knows about this Z girl and her sorry father.”

“Okay, boss,” said Brocade whilst checking his jacket for blood spatter.

Chapter 7

DEBRIS AND WHITE POWDER

Some boys from a nearby council estate found the body three days later. This time a black girl whose good looks were impossible to verify as the rats had been at her. Detective Z felt nauseous when he got to the scene and was shown the corpse; the stink of death on the breeze, swirling through the long grass and bushes, the tainted molecules lodging in his nostrils.

It was a wilderness behind an abandoned smelting works somewhere in the arse-end of Paddington, where she had fetched up. Across the road stood a Victorian gothic church – also derelict. There was a dilapidated security fence, that would deter nobody and beyond he could see that the heavy studded church doors were ajar.

Again he had been on the scene first, before the heavy hitters arrived, just him and a couple of uniformed constables. The meeting with Daren Sprawl had somehow provided him with a completely new frame of reference; one that he was admittedly unwilling to adopt, but nevertheless was now stubbornly redirecting his investigative intuition. He looked up at the church spire; slates were smashed or missing but it still looked impressive against the leaden west London sky. A few starlings were gathered on the high metal cross right at the top. He crossed the road, climbed through a hole in the fence and pushed the door wide.

The last few days had been hell for Detective Z.
I was late and I missed her
- these were the words that were branded into his consciousness since his tardy arrival at Waterloo Bridge and his frantic attempts to locate Lorna, all without success. And yet he was sure that she had been there, only yards away perhaps. Since then he felt within himself the awakening of a most unfamiliar emotion: hope.

The pews were gone, slabs of wire mesh replaced the stained glass windows, even sections of the parquet floor were stripped-out to be repurposed in a fancy villa along Ladbroke Grove. But the centre of the floor area was free from debris and there a dusting of white powder attracted the detective’s attention. In one place there was a pattern – a little like the designs that the baristas etched into the froth of his morning flat-white coffee. He took out his phone and fired off a couple of photos of the design. Then he took a little of the dust on his finger – it was fine white powder that clung to the dampness of his palm. He took some on the blade of his penknife and placed it into a clear plastic evidence bag. Then he left the church and made his way back to the place where the woman’s body still lay.

Over the next week the investigations dragged on – the women’s’ identities remained unknown and toxicology tests proved inconclusive; the unspoken imperative of the Chief Superintendent seemed be to limit any talk of a serial killer on the loose in the capital which might find its way into the press. Detective Z did not in fact return to Waterloo Bridge and he sank into a strange enervated depression that he hid from all around him, in case they might think that his ‘old trouble’ had returned.

And so it was only on his day off, when returning home from the supermarket and reaching into the pocket of his overcoat to get his keys, that his chilled fingers encountered an unfamiliar object. Pulling it out, he stared at the yellow plastic item – it was a computer memory stick but not one that he had ever seen before.

He put it on the kitchen table and it was only whilst stowing away the groceries that he recalled he had not worn this overcoat since the day, a week ago now, when he had gone hunting for Lorna. He abandoned the baked beans and soup cans and went into the living to switch on his laptop. But when he plugged in the stick and clicked on the files, all he got was a screen full of program code. He turned off the machine and went back to the kitchen chores.

Chapter
8

BLOOD AN
D ECTOPLASM

Eddie Brocade knelt down and sniffed the top of Sergei’s head. The dead Russian smelt terrible; an overpowering stink of some low concoction, and worse overlaid with the fainter odor of another sweeter fragrance. To Eddie this was a sin beyond the one of merely wearing cheap and nasty cologne – it was commingled with another perfume indicating a series of grossly inharmonious perfume choices. Sickened he stood up and stepped back whilst the two leather-jacketed foot soldiers rolled up the carpet with Sergei within and took the whole bloody mess away.

As a young man Eddie had wanted to be a perfumier, but life and the inability to speak French fluently had pushed him down another road. He had however once worked at a men’s fragrance concession in a London department store, it had not lasted. Back then he was called Edward Spratt and had eventually changed his surname by deed-poll to Brocade in the belief that to be named after a pilchard could be nothing but a hindrance to a person wishing to be taken seriously in the fragrance industry, or any other.

He noticed that one of the ice thimbles that contained the absinthe shots that they had been drinking had not been accurately thrown into the ice bucket – it had melted into a fluorescent green puddle underneath the table. A mop and bucket had been used to sluice the tiled area on which the carpet had lain; he took it and used it to soak up the spillage, then got the elevator down to the basement to supervise the disposal of Sergei.

Halfway through the descent he became bored with the idea and brought the lift to a halt, before stepping out. The security guard took a step back as Eddie passed by; everybody knew him on this level because this was the Intelligence Operation of
the
Blake Organisation
, his personal fiefdom where he had built up over many years the deep and distant tentacles of influence and control that the oranisation required. This area was the brain of the ‘vampire squid’, as the employees ironically referred to their workplace. He was here to see his latest protégé, the head of ‘special projects’, Agim Volte. Eddie stuck his head in an office door. Agim was speaking into his computer and so his visitor sat down across from him and waited.

“No, don’t copy me into anything – I want you to go and see the guy and tell him face to face. Get in his shit and explain how it works around here, and then come and tell me how you got on. Make the sale but leave no trail,” Agim said into the microphone of the headset he wore, which he then took off and placed on the desk before standing up and working his head side to side, like a boxer.

“Mister Brocade.”

He held out his hand.

“It’s Eddie,” said Eddie taking the proffered hand and then indicating that his protégé should sit back down.

“It’s your old girlfriend, the Z girl.”

“She was never my girlfriend, I just brought her over.”

Eddie waved his hand in a ‘whatever’ gesture.

“Well it’s not so much her, we can’t even find her, in fact. It’s her loser father, the policeman, he is sniffing around – anyway sort-it-the-fuck-out for me.”

He got up and stalked out; he had confidence in Agim despite knowing very little about him. He had, however, always impressed Eddie with his choice of aftershave.

That evening Agim left the
Vertical Abyss
at eight-thirty. The glass and titanium priapism, so named, was constructed in a spot and in a manner as to allow a straddling of alpha and beta, heaven and hell to some. How this was accomplished is a deep matter, suffice to say a conjuration had been performed and also it’s obverse. This had achieved a fracturing of the electromagnetic sheath that protects, corrects and cradles the light and dark channels through which all existence flows.

This building and its artificial meridian formed the centerpiece of
the Blake Oranisation’s
achievements. The architects had provided their Tower of Babel with points of entrance and exit for the many thousand of workers to use, but also hidden points of departure for those who worked in the shadows to expedite acts of gory espionage, and more. Depending on which door you took – it was either a step into the light or a grotesquely rendered facsimile where entropy ruled; the latter was the world that Agim chose, he had been here many times before.

Traffic was sparse in
beta world; he crossed the River at Blackfriars Bridge and then followed the southern bank of the Thames all the way to Mortlake; it took a little over an hour. The reason for the light traffic was because in beta world fuel was rationed. Also checkpoints, that were set up at various locations in order to prevent flashpoints of dissent igniting with the associated looting and settling of gang vendettas, discouraged all but the most dedicated motorists from taking to the streets.

Agim knew that Eddie Brocade’s visit was a bad sign. It meant that a glitch of some kind had registered at the highest level of
the Blake Organisation
; that Lorna and her father were identified as an irritant blip on someone’s radar.

Agim was, in fact, desperate to see Lorna. He had kept away these last eighteen months, as he had burrowed deeper and risen higher within the oranisation, a sleeper in the matrix,

scheming to destroy the very behemoth he rode. And now, having ascended to such a lofty echelon, here he was being dispatched to report on and neutralize himself, and the resistance cell that he had founded -
Ah, the irony
, he though, turning into Powder Keg Alley and killing the engine.

He sat in the van for a while listening to the engine ticking as it cooled down. He was, in an effort to remain anonymous, using an old tradesman’s vehicle for tonight’s sojourn;
Pimlico Plumbers
it said on the side in faded blue lettering. No one questions an honest workman going about his business – even if half of London was burning and the other half in semi-lockdown. After five minutes he walked briskly down the ancient pathway to the Thames; there were no joggers, cyclists or dog-walkers on the towpath as he stood and stared sightlessly across the river.

He was not foolish enough to think that he could approach Lorna directly, but he hoped that by just coming to this once familiar place, she would intuit his presence and find him within the Loa. He put his message into a capsule, sealed it and cast it into a tributary of the mystical stream of trans-dimensional energy that was the Loa.

Lorna, it is time, the final phase is imminent and we must position ourselves accordingly for the storm that is to come. Within the Loa, find me within the Loa.

As Agim retraced his steps he saw a figure leaning against the side of the van. Alerted to a potential danger his senses sharpened, he consciously relaxed his taut body and prepared to play the part of a slightly drunk plumber heading home after an after-work bevy with his mates. He was, however, fully prepared to strike low and hard if necessary. As he got closer the figure pushed away from the van and turned to face him.

“You can’t park here, mate. You’ll have to pay the lonesome.”

“Wassat?” answered Agim genuinely flummoxed.

“The fine, the lonesome pine, for your illegal vehicle here.”

Agim saw something move in the shadows by the churchyard wall; that did it. With his thumbnail his slid a micro switch on the key fob in his pocket. The van suddenly sprang to life, lights ablaze and klaxon sounding a metallic edged voice bellowed –
step away from the vehicle and place your hands behind your head, step away
– repeatedly. Meanwhile Agim hauled his department issued stun gun from his shoulder holster shouting:

“On your knees, gentlemen.”

He caught a glimpse of the lead hoodie’s neck tattoo as the non-compliant youth spun around and then legged it down the alley, his ‘assistant’ close behind. Agim switched off the racket and climbed into the cab, cursing under his breath:
cover blown – let’s go home
.

* * *

A mile down river Lorna was not picking up Agim’s message; she was fighting for her life. She had found a unique way to pay her way since she had fetched up in beta world: cage fighting. The sport of mixed martial arts was the single biggest sporting attraction – televised and avidly followed by the masses, with attendance of live events a popular pastime and women’s fights having equal billing.

They were still testing one another out; early in round-one her opponent – Chloe ‘Cold Fury’ Andretti – had attempted a take down but Lorna had used her own bodyweight to slam Chloe against the cage and then twisted free, so for now they traded kicks and punches – neither girl landing anything of particular consequence. Hardly much of a show for the crowd in the Babadrome this evening, but Lorna knew that Chloe was rated as being fast, strong and mean and that the fireworks would not be long in coming. Music - massive slabs of staccato synth and distorted guitar designed to urge the crowd into frenzy and the fighters into attempting something audacious – began to build, indicating that the end of the round was approaching and with it the commercial break where the sponsors aimed to recoup their costs. Both girls ended the round on their feet – breathless but unbloodied; they glared at one another theatrically and returned to their respective corners.