Jago (80 page)

A doorway that should have contained a stout oak door was hung with multi-coloured love beads. The unmistakable, dead-sweet smell of
kif
wafted through the rippling curtain. Low Indian music was playing, not the
filmi-filmi
rot from flock-wallpaper curry-houses but classical sitar.

Taking out a knife, Lytton parted the curtain. He went through, beckoning Orlando to follow.

The room was a wreck, lit by an open fireplace where the red embers of former furniture burned and a three-foot-tall lava lamp in the shape of Dan Dare’s rocket. On a Sultanate pile of tasselled cushions sprawled a very thin man, his long tumble of ringlets coal-dark, his moustache and eyebrows black threaded with white. He wore a candy-striped swallowtail coat, orange velvet knee-britches, hand-painted Constable landscape waistcoat and silver-buckled, stack-heeled Clark’s shoes. A froth of cherry-crimson cravat bubbled out from his diamond-pointed collar.

In his hand was the mouthpiece of a hookah, which bubbled beside him. On the bare floor-boards by his cushions were an ice-bucket jammed with bottles of champagne and a Derry & Tom’s hamper of preserves and game-meats.

‘Richard Jeperson,’ said Lytton.

‘Who’s that fellow?’ asked the foppish stoner, hand-shading his unfocused eyes. He was high as a kite. ‘Isn’t it Cap’n Lytton, Hero of Harpenden, Saviour of St. Albans? War’s over, don’t ch’know. Don’t have to take any more orders. Country’s reunited, parliaments devolved. Big celebratory confab coming up at the Dome, peace and love and hugs and harmony all round. For the lion shall lay down with the lamb, the yokel will shake hands with the city gent, and the Scouser will snog the Scot. Hurrah hurrah huzzah hoolay!’

Jeperson overbalanced on the cushions and sprawled, dropping his hookah-pipe. He reached for it and Lytton kindly stepped on his hand.

‘I think you’ve had enough, Jeperson.’

‘Do you really? I probably agree with you. But it’s not been an easy decade, has it? Just look at the old place. I’m the only one left, you know. The others have all gone, to the Lord Mayor Elect or the bloody Prime Minister. My girl Vanessa upped and joined the Libertarian Demagogues. What do you think of that, eh? Dratted shame. When it all fell apart, I was chairman of the Ruling Cabal of the Diogenes Club, heir to the sainted Beauregard and the underrated Winthrop. I thought I ought to stay, just in case. We’re only here because the old country needs us from time to time, and we don’t mind getting our fingers dirty. Well, not much.’

Orlando couldn’t make out Lytton’s expression. Getting on that bus had transported him to an alternative reality where everyone knew more than he did, except for that one vital thing only he knew. He could only hope to understand the iceberg-tip of every conversation.

‘You’re needed again, Jeperson.’

Steel sparked in Jeperson’s eye.

‘I trust your judgment, Lytton. It’s a shameful waste, but would you kindly sober me.’

‘All right.’

Lytton took his boot off Jeperson’s hand and let the man get to his knees. Jeperson looked up like a supplicant, and spread his arms. Lytton plucked two champagne bottles out of the ice-bucket, and popped the corks with his thumbs. They ricocheted against the ceiling.

‘Mind the clobber, would you. It’s a new suit.’

Lytton emptied frothing, icy bubbly over Jeperson’s head. The man roared and shook his head, splashing the wallpaper as his hair whipped the champagne off.

‘Now,’ said Jeperson, leaping up, lassitude washed away, ‘there’s a stash of Colombia’s second finest product about somewhere. A serious caffeine infusion is called for. See if you can scout out the coffee-pot, young fellow. A shame to put the last of the Victorian silver into the grate, but this is, as usual, an emergency.’

Orlando found the pot and Jeperson came up with a tin of brown ground. The Master of the Diogenes Club set about making the strongest, thickest, best coffee Orlando had ever tasted. A single swallow made his heart contract like a bruised fist.

‘Lytton, what is all this about? And who is this ill-made little fellow?’

‘This is Orlando Boldt. And he has something to tell you.’

‘Then, tell me he must. Noble Orlando, spiel away.’

He felt compelled to look both ways, as if there might be concealed listeners. Lytton and Jeperson gave subliminal nods of approval.

‘I just wanted to catch a bus,’ he began.

* * *

‘Arachnid, I don’t take seriously,’ said Jeperson. ‘Not since the
News of the Screws
exposé of his fling with the buxom orange-seller. Even the Diana devouts are embarrassed by a clown like that. And Pea-Soup Daine’s a jumped-up criminal, whose unusual personal habits hardly make him more interesting than the average Maltese crime boss of Soho or Heathen Chinee tong-master of Limehouse. But Deacon Crowe’s the worst man in England, a festering sore in the government who works the Prime Minister like a Punch and Judy Man works a glove puppet. Not that Strawjack’d appreciate the comparison, for he’s vowed to slap a ban on such disgraceful violent entertainments. Mr Punch, apparently, is a disastrous role model for the kiddiewinks. The ruin you see around you is at least three-fourths the work of Strawjack Crowe, who has personally been dismantling all that stands in the way of his iron vision of an England chained to the pews. Did you know that when he was Overseer of Liverpool, he had the Cavern Club fire-bombed? I’m not surprised to discover he associates with such low people as Arachnid and Daine, but he’ll be thinking all the while of how to get shot of them.’

Orlando had only told Jeperson as much as he had told Lytton. Now he came to it, he still didn’t know if he should say any more. Would he be safer if the secret were shared? Or might he still be able to cut a deal with Crowe, to stay out of the way until whatever was in the offing had come to fruition. The England Jeperson described might look askance at the likes of Goodman Orlando Boldt, but more prohibitions meant more black markets. Strawjack Crowe wanted bans on Britpop, chocolate humbugs, pet cats, tobacco, all spirituous liquours, Windmill girls, bingo and lotteries, spices and relishes, Sunday football, street-vendors of all kinds, the wireless after nine o’clock and any live music. Fortunes could be made in a world like that, where the most God-fearing citizen would be the slave of some harmless pursuit reclassified as an illicit vice.

‘Go on, Orlando,’ said Lytton. ‘Tell it all. Who was this prisoner?’

There had been a beseeching in the man’s eyes, a plea for help from this accidental co-passenger. Orlando had been trying not to remember it.

He could not lie to himself. Crowe’s Britain would be briefly a paradise, but he wouldn’t last long. He’d be ear-clipped, face-branded, cat-lashed and finally hung at Tyburn and put on show down at Execution Docks. Rotting corpses dangling in cages would be just about the only entertainment Strawjack Crowe would still permit.

‘Whittington,’ he said.

‘The Lord Mayor Elect?’ queried Jeperson ‘Impossible. This close to the Mayor-Making Ceremony at the Dome and the formal treaty with the Parliament of the Marches, he’s in public practically all the day and night long.’

‘It was him,’ Orlando insisted. ‘I’ve seen Whittington before, up close. I was in New Malden when he saw off the sheep-worriers. He can’t be mistaken for anyone.’

Jeperson didn’t argue any more.

Orlando was almost afraid about that. He was hoping that the man could come out with an explanation. The bus had been carrying a group of celebrity lookalikes to the Gaiety Theatre for a contest, and ‘Whittington’ was being nobbled by his stage rivals.

‘You will pardon me,’ said the Master of the Diogenes Club.

They were in a meeting room, which had obviously been abandoned in haste. Filing cabinets had their draws pulled out and were full of the ash of destroyed documents. Jeperson swept the upright cradle phone off the table and tossed it into a corner, but dug out a canvas bag with a field telephone. He hooked the thing up to a wall-jack and cranked the handle. Then he dialled a number and turned away from them, walking into a corner and huddling to have a conversation.

Orlando looked at Lytton.

Now the secret was out, things should be different between them. Ideally, they could both leave, go their separate ways. Whatever the big picture was, it was Jeperson’s business, an affair of state.

Orlando had good tips on the dogs. And a shipment of poppers coming in on a freighter from Spain. He had favours to collect, debts to pay, pots to stir and doxies to duck. He wanted to get back to his life, where Watchmen and coppers didn’t like him much but weren’t ordered to kill him on sight.

Lytton had reloaded his gun and filled all the loops on his ammo belt, out of the Diogenes Club’s stash. Otherwise, he was no different. He wasn’t tired and he wasn’t excited.

Jeperson hung up.

‘The Lord Mayor Elect has cancelled all his appointments until the Mayor-Making, pleading a sore throat. But he is very much in evidence, shaking hands and nodding.’

‘It’s not him,’ said Orlando.

‘No,’ Jeperson agreed. ‘It’s not.’

‘What’s Crowe up to?’ asked Lytton.

‘Who can know? He’s the type who has five different plans going at once, weaving in and out of each other. Just like me, in fact. After the Mayor-Making, the Lord Mayor will be the only real balance in the country. A strong capital means that the Parliament of the Marches will settle in Oxford or somewhere, and be able to ratify treaties with the Welsh, the Scots and the Cornish. If London were to, say, fall apart, then there would be another civil war, a short and brutal one. Crowe might want to puppet-master the Lord Mayor as well as the Prime Minister, keeping his hands up Punch and Judy as it were, maintaining the squabble as a distraction. He’s got Arachnid in the mix to call on the Dianaheads, who are fanatics by nature and could well go Puritan, and he needs Daine and all his krewes—down to your old comrade-in-arms Rutland Stryng, Captain—on the street to apply the brute force he needs. Then again, he could intend something as blunt as having the “Mayor” discovered in the Savoy in bed with a Page 3 girl and Julian Clary, hoping for an orchestrated outburst of public morality which will end in him accepting a mass call, untroubled by the messy business of an electoral mandate, to become the new Lord Protector.’

‘Three days,’ said Lytton.

Orlando missed the point.

‘You are right, Captain.’ Jeperson evidently didn’t. ‘The Doppelganger Elect will show up at the Dome, for the Mayor-Making and the Ratification of the Treaty. Whatever Crowe is planning, that shindig is crucial.’

This was too huge to cope with.

Jeperson played with a quill, tapping the nib against his front teeth. He had shrugged off any drug daze, and was thinking faster than any man Orlando had ever known, and that included the most celebrated duckers and divers in the riskiest businesses in town.

‘We must find the true Lord Mayor Elect. They can’t ferry him around in a bus forever, and if they were going to all the trouble of trussing him up they won’t just have killed him and fed the body to the swine in the sewers. He’ll be clapped up in a dungeon somewhere, head wrapped in that BDSM hood you mentioned. Probably haven’t got everything they need out of the poor blighter yet. I voted for him, you know. He was the only candidate with a grasp of public transport. That’s what keeps a great city alive. The Diogenes Club is not what it was, and we can no longer call on our renowned network of agents or the favour of those in high places. We have been repudiated by everyone we served, the Parliament, the Assembly, the Crown. But we are not abandoned, not alone. Besides we three, there are others we can call on. A little battered perhaps, but aren’t we all.’

‘“We three”?’

Jeperson raised hawk-wing eyebrows. It had not occurred to him that Orlando might want to leave.

‘For self-preservation, if nothing else,’ said Jeperson.

‘Stryng’s a head-collector,’ said Lytton, impersonally. ‘If there’s a purse on you, he’ll keep trying for it. Even if there isn’t, he’ll have to take you down to keep his standing in the community. He’s never lost a quarry yet; if you become “the one that got away”, his career hits a major setback. Your only chance for safety is to see this through.’

Orlando remembered the bullet-hole eyes of Rutland Stryng.

The field-telephone rang; Jeperson answered it, listened, thanked, and hung up.

‘By the way, you’re both wanted for murder,’ he said.

‘The conductors?’ asked Lytton.

‘No, they’ll have been shadow folk, spirited away to unmarked graves without so much as a telegram to the wives. You two are sought for severe questioning in connection with the extermination of an entire patrol of the Pimlico Neighbourhood Watch. Shot the lot of em dead, including some dotty Dianahead whose mug is all over the
Standard,
along with glowering portraits of the desperate fiends. There are ballads on the street already about the dastardly deed.’

‘Stryng,’ said Lytton.

Jeperson shrugged and said, ‘Looks like you’re in with us, Goodman Boldt.’

Orlando saw no other way out of it. Damnation.

Jeperson produced a black book out of a concealed drawer.

‘I must have neglected to incinerate this.
Quel domage!’

With a long fore-finger, he turned the pages.

‘Dead, dead, dead, inactive, dead, retired, turned traitor, found Diana, incarcerated… all our favourite tools seem to be unavailable… two more deads, another retired, “head-hunted by the Yankees”, ugh! Inactive, permanently hospitalised, dead, ah-hah, here’s your name Goodman Boldt. Still at the crib in Streatham, I’ll wager? Under the name of McTavish? Didn’t think anyone knew that, did you? Dead, dead… a possibility. Richard Lionheart “Pitbull” Brittan. Frightfully thick, but patriotic. Remarkable in some ways. I’d prefer not to use him, but it seems we can’t be choosy. Dead, inactive, imprisoned, circus freak… this is fairly tiresome, isn’t it?’

Orlando had heard of ‘Pitbull’ Brittan. Seven feet tall, muscles like oak, a real ‘have-a-go’ hero. In fact, Orlando had once been an errand boy for a gent by the name of Skinner, whose dope ring this Brittan had single-handedly smashed. The fellow was an amateur, and tended to run off the leash. Orlando wouldn’t have bet on him against Lytton, let alone someone like Stryng.