Kraken (35 page)

Down this way London felt like a city to which Marge had never been. She had thought the docklands all cleared out, bleached with money. Not this alley in gobbing distance of the Isle of Dogs, though. These felt like moments from some best-forgotten time burped back up, an urban faux pas, squalor as aftertaste.

Where the fuck am I?
She looked again at her map. To either side were warehouses scrubbed and made flats for professionals. A channel of such buildings was parted as if grudgingly, an embarrassed entrance onto a cul-de-sac of much grubbier brick and potholed pavement. A few doors, a pub sign swinging.
THE OLD QUEEN
, it said in Gothicky letters, and below it a pinch-faced Victoria in her middle years.

It was the middle of the day. She’d have thought twice about walking into that streetlet at night. Her shoes got instantly filthy on its puddly surface.

The small pub bottle-glass window made the light inside seem dingy. A jukebox was playing something from the eighties, which as always with tracks from that decade registered in her head as a test. She hesitated: “Calling All the Heroes,” It Bites. Grizzled drinkers muttered at each other, in clothes the same colours as everything else. People glanced up at her, back down again. A fruit machine made a tired electronic whoop.

“Gin and tonic.” When the man brought it she said, “Friend of mine told me some collectors meet here.”

“Tourist?” he said.

“No. Sounds up my street, is all. I was wondering about joining.” The man nodded. The music changed. Soho, “Hippychick.” Whatever happened to Soho?

“Fair enough. Be a bastard of a tourist to get here, anyway,” he said. “They ain’t in yet. Normally sit over there.”

She took her place in the corner. The customers were subdued. They were men and women of all ethnicities and ages but a generally obscured air, as if the room had been painted with a dirty paintbrush. A woman drew in her spilt drink. A man talked to himself. Three people crowded around a table in one corner.

I think I’ll have my next birthday here
, she thought coldly. The music wandered on: “Funky Town,” the Pseudo Echo version.
Holy shit
, “Iron Lung,” Big Pig.
Kudos for that, but you can’t catch me with these. You’ll have to up your game
—Play Yazz, “The Only Way Is Up”—
and then you’ve got me for my wedding party
.

She watched the woman draw pictures on her tabletop, now and then adding little splashes of her beer to the picture. The woman looked up and thoughtfully sucked the dirty beer from her finger. Marge looked down, revolted. On the table the beer picture continued to self-draw.

“So what you been in?”

Marge stared. Two men in their forties or fifties swaggered suspiciously toward her. One man’s face was set and impossible to read: the other, who spoke, changed expressions like a children’s entertainer.

“Say that again?”

“Brian says you want to play. What you offering? You scratch my soul, you know, I’ll scratch yours. Tit for tat, darling. So what you been in? We all like a bit of theology here, love, no need to be shy.” He licked his lips. “Give us an afterlife, go on.”

“Sorry,” she said slowly. “I didn’t mean to be misleading. I’m here because I need some help. I need some information and someone told me … I need to ask you some questions.”

There was a pause. The man who had said nothing remained quite impassive. He straightened slowly, turned and walked out of the pub, putting his untouched drink down on the counter as he went.

“Fucking bloody Nora,” said the other quietly. “Who the fuck you think you are? Coming in here …”

“Please,”
Marge said. The desperation in her voice surprised even her, and stopped him speaking. She kicked out the chair opposite, gestured him to sit. “Please, please, please. I really need help. Please sit down and listen to me.”

The man did not sit, but he waited. He watched her. He put a hand on the back of the chair.

“I heard that someone …” she said. “I heard that maybe one of you knows something about the squid cult. You know the squid’s gone, right? Well, so’s my lover. Someone took him. And his friend. No one knows where they are, and it’s something to do with this, and I need to talk to them. I need to find out what’s going on.”

The man tipped on his heels. He scratched his nose and glowered.

“I know some things,” Marge said. “I’m in this. I need help for myself, too. You know …” She lowered her voice. “You know
Goss and Subby?
They came and hassled me.” The man opened his eyes wide. He sat then, and leaned toward her. “So I need to find the squid people because they’re sending people like that to bloody terrorise me …”

“Keep it quiet,” he said. “Goss and buggeryfucking Subby? Holy bloody Ram’s bollocks, girl, it’s a wonder you’re still walking. Look at you.” He shook his head. Disgust or pity or something. “How’d you even get here? How’d you find this place?”

“Someone told me about it …”

“Marvellous, isn’t it? Someone bloody told you.” He shook his head. “We go to all the trouble. No one’s even supposed to know this
blahdclat
place exists.” He used the patois adjective, though he was white and his accent snarlingly Cockney. “This is a secret street, mate.”

“It’s right here,” she said, and waved her map.

“Yeah and that should be the only place it is. D’you know what a trap street is? You know how hard it is to sort out that sort of thing?” He shook his head. “Listen, love, this is all beside the point. You shouldn’t be here.”

“I told you why I came …”

“No. I mean, if Goss and Subby are after you, you should not
be
here. If you got left alive it’s just because they din’t care about you, so for Set’s sake don’t get them caring about you.”

“Please just tell me about the squid cult. I have to find them …”

“‘Squid cult.’ What are you
like?
Which you talking about? Khalkru? Tlaloc? Kanaloa? Cthulhu? It’s Cthulhu, ain’t it? Always is. I’m just fucking with you, I know what you’re talking about. Church of God Kraken, isn’t it?” He looked around. “They ain’t nothing to do with Goss and Subby. Say what you like about the teuthists, doll, they don’t run with that kind of company. Don’t happen. Let me tell you something. I don’t think they know what’s up any more’n you do. It ain’t them took the kraken. Too holy for them to touch, or something. But they ain’t even
looking
for it, if you can believe that.”

“I don’t care about any of that. I just want to know what happened to Leon and Billy.”

“Sweetheart, whatever it is going on it’s all much too prickly for my bloody taste. None of us has gone anywhere near the teuthies since this kicked off. We’ll keep it nice and bloody simple, thank you very much indeed. Spider-gods, Quakers, Neturei Karta, that sort of shit’ll do me. Alright, maybe you don’t get as many points for those scriptures, but …”

“I don’t understand.”

“Nor should you, deario. Nor should you.”

“I heard you knew something about these people …”

“Alright
listen,”
he said. He chopped the tabletop with his hand. “We ain’t going to have this conversation. I ain’t going down this road.” He sighed at her expression. “Now look. I already told you everything I know, which is bugger-all, granted, but that’s because that’s what the Kraks know. If you’re …” He hesitated. “You won’t thank me for
helping
you know. Helping.” He sighed. “Look if you really want to get yourself into this shit—and I do mean
shit
because that’s what you’ll end up in—there are people you should talk to.”

“Tell me.”

“Alright look. Jesus, girl, is this your first time on this side of things?” He sank all of his drink in one impressive swallow. “Rumours. Tattoo done it, Grisamentum’s back and done it, no one done it. Well that’s no help. So if I wanted to find out, and I do not, I’d think about who
else
might have claim on something like that? And think it’s their business?”

He waited for an answer. Marge shook her head.

“The sea. I bet you the sea might have ideas. Wouldn’t surprise me if the bastard ocean might have a little something to do with all this. Stands to reason, right? Taking back what’s its? Render unto sea, sir.” He cackled. Marge closed her eyes. “And if it
didn’t
, probably wishes it had and has a clue who did.”

“I should talk to the sea?” Marge said.

“God, woman, no need to sound so miserable about it. What,
all
of it? Talk to its ambassador. Talk to a flood-brother. Up at the barrier.”

“Who are …”

“Now now.” He wagged his finger no. “That’s your bloody lot, alright? You’ve done well enough to get here. If you insist on getting eaten you can go a bit further; it ain’t my job to walk you through. I don’t need that on my conscience, girl. Go home. You won’t, will you?” He blew out his cheeks. “For what it’s worth, I’m sorry about your boy, alright? And for what it’s worth, which in my professional opinion isn’t a bloody lot, I’ll pray for you.”

“Pray to what?” Marge said. He smiled. The jukebox played “Wise Up Sucker” by Pop Will Eat Itself.

“Fuck it,” the man said. “Tell you what. What’s the point collecting stuff you don’t use? I’ll pray to all of them.”

Chapter Forty-Five

“S
O
S
IMON’S DOING ALRIGHT
,” D
ANE SAID
. “G
ETTING OVER GHOSTS.”

“So Wati said,” Billy said. “He coming?”

“Strike’s not going well,” Dane said. “He’s a touch bloody busy.”

It was early daylight and they were near where the London Stone throbbed. Between buildings. Dane made little military hand motions the meanings of which Billy did not know. He followed Dane up onto a low wall, a complicated dance between cameras.

On their way Dane had told opaque teuthic homilies. Kraken did not steal fire from any demiurges, did not shape humans from clay, did not send baby kraken to die for our sins. “So Kraken was in the deep,” Dane had said. “Was in the deep, and it ate, and it took it, like, twenty thousand years to finish its mouthful.”

Is that it?
Billy did not insist on exegesis.

Dane moved faster and more gracefully than a man of his bulk should. Billy found this climb easier than the last one, too. He could see only roofs in all directions, like a landscape. They descended toward an internal yard full of cardboard boxes softened by rain into vaguely vectoral brown sludge.

“This is where they come to smoke. Take out your weapon,” Dane said. He held his pistol.

The first person out was a young man, who caned a cigarette and sniggered into his mobile phone. The second a woman in her forties with some stinking rollup. There was a long wait after that. The next time the door opened, it was Saira Mukhopadhyay, wrapped in smart scarves.

“Ready,” Dane whispered. But she was not alone. She was chatting to an athletic guy lighting a Silk Cut. “Arse,” said Dane.

“I’ll take him,” Billy whispered. “We haven’t got long,” Billy said. They could hear the conversation.

“Alright,” Dane said. “Do you know how to … set your phaser to stun?” They couldn’t help it: they giggled. Billy pushed his glasses up his nose. He could not have made this jump a few weeks before, phaser in his hand, a pitch down into a hard but controlled landing. He stood and fired. The big man spun across the yard and went down in the rubbish.

Here was Dane dropping beautifully behind Saira. She heard him, but he was already on her. He backhanded her into the bricks. She braced herself. Where her fingers clenched, they squished the bricks as if they were Plasticine.

Saira hissed, literally hissed. Dane smacked her again. She looked at him with blood on her lip. It had been easy to forget that for Dane this was sacred fervour.

“Steady, man,” Billy said.

“Not many people could port something that size out of there,” Dane said. “But you know that. We know who got it out of there, and we know what you dangled to make him do it. I don’t like it when someone steals my god. It gets me all fucking twitchy.
What did you
do? What did Al Adler have to do with all this? The end of the world’s coming, and I want to know what you did with my
god.”

“You know who you’re bloody talking to?” she said. “I’m a Londonmancer …”

“You’re living a dream. The London heart stops beating, you know what’s going to happen? Fuck all. London don’t need a heart. Your mates know what you been doing?”

“That’s enough.”

Fitch had entered the yard. They stared at him as he closed the door behind him. He stood by Saira, in the path of Dane’s weapon.

“You think I should be in a museum,” he said. “Might be. But museum pieces have their uses, right, Billy? You’re
almost
right about me, Dane. See, when you don’t have the knack you used to, you’re no threat. So people tell you things.”

“Fitch,” said Dane. “This is between me and Saira …”

“No it is not,” Fitch said. He squared all pugnacious, then withered. “She just handled the money. You want to know what happened, talk to me.”

“I
SHOUT,” HE SAID, “AND THE OTHERS’LL BE HERE.”

Things flew overhead. Edgy birds. He glanced at them, and from where Billy stood, the perspective looked wrong.

“You took it?” Dane said.

“If you were still a Krakenist, I’d not be talking to you,” Fitch said. “But you aren’t, and I want to know why. Because you’ve got him.” He nodded at Billy. “And he’s the one who knows what’s going on.”

“I do not,” Billy said. “Not this again.”

“Why don’t you want the Krakenists to know what’s going on?” said Dane. “We … they … ain’t London’s enemies.”

“I know how they want to get rid of their holies. And I know where that sort of thing leads.”

“What? They aren’t even looking for it, let alone getting rid of it,” Billy said.

“I wish you was right, Fitch, but you ain’t,” Dane said. “The church ain’t doing anything.”

“Why do
you
want the kraken?” Fitch said. “I’ve got no business seeing anything in the guts these days. They just sit there squelching. But there it was. Fire. First time since I don’t know how long, and oh my London what I did see.”