Pastworld (4 page)

‘I should hold tight if I were you,’ he said. ‘Our horse may be skinny, but she’s fast. Why was the ragged man after you?’

I looked at the narrow back of the harlequin blankly. I was unsure now of anything and anyone – I had been rescued, saved, but by who?

‘Well,’ I said, ‘my guardian had warned me not to go out on my own. He said that someone meant me harm. I took no heed though and went out alone. The next thing I knew, that man had grabbed hold of me.’

‘Don’t worry, you’ll be safe with us,’ said the harlequin. ‘We know those ragged men, only too well. Why would anyone want to do you harm? I wonder. From your clothes you don’t look like a Gawker – you’re a cast native, a dweller?’

‘I’ve lived here all my life,’ I said, puzzled. What was a cast native?

‘A native then, just a bit off your usual beat,’ he said with a smile.

I sat alone in the back of the wagon while it rattled away. When we finally came to a stop, it was already dark. There was an odd brackish smell, which, I discovered as I climbed warily out of the wagon, was from the river Thames. The horse was let out of its shafts and stood chewing out of a feed bag. We had fetched up under some trees, in what appeared to be an enclosed park. One or two simple tents and some other wagons were pitched around us under the wide branches. There was a small fire, which gave off more smoke than flames. A pot was hung over it, and I could smell something cooking and the smell reminded me of how hungry I was.

Jago sat on the front step of the wagon. He seemed to be only a little older than myself, and he was petting the white dove, which shone bright next to his copper-coloured skin. He looked over and smiled at me. One of the other harlequins was standing a little way from the fire. He had a spoon balanced on his nose. He flipped his head up and the spoon suddenly twisted up in the air end over end, and then it landed back on his nose, balanced just as before. He extended his arm, dropped the spoon down into his hand and held it out to me.

‘Have something to eat,’ he said, and winked at me. I took the spoon warily, as if half expecting it to jump out of my hand and back up on to the harlequin’s nose.

Jago smiled, stretched forward with the dove now sitting happily on his shoulder and ladled something out of the pot on to a plate and handed it to me. It was a kind of aromatic stew, with yellow rice; it smelled wonderful. There were pale shapes of what turned out to be chicken in the middle of it. I wolfed it down fast. It stung my tongue and there was heat in it from spices. Then he held out a mug of tea, and I went to drink it, but he thought better of it and he took the cup and threw the tea on to the fire so that the ashes hissed. Then he filled the mug again, this time from a dark bottle.

‘Try that instead,’ he said.

‘Mm, it’s bitter,’ I said, ‘sour too.’

‘It’s just beer, plain old English Ale.’

I sipped at the liquid again. I had never tasted beer before. I sat down near the fire, which by now had faded down to a few wisps of smoke. Then Jago took the cup of beer back from me and drank down the rest himself.

‘I’m Jago,’ he said, and wiped his thin hand across his mouth.

I nodded. ‘I thought you were. My name is Eve,’ and I took his hand in mine for a moment. I had never seen or touched skin so dark before.

A passenger airship passed over the trees, low enough for the passenger gondola to almost touch the treetops. The wind from the propellers thrashed the leaves back and forth. The lights shone down across the tents that were pitched among the trees.

‘A lovely name, for a lovely girl,’ Jago said. He looked up at the airship. ‘And still they come,’ he added, watching the airship as it passed over us. His narrow face broke into a grin and I saw how neat and white his teeth were. ‘I wonder why you have been sent to me, Eve.’

‘I have run away to join your circus,’ I said.

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* Ledger content. Unless otherwise stated the transcribed ledger/chronicle is in the original, all handwritten on antique wove paper in sepia-coloured ink.

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Chapter 3

OBSERVATION ROOM 1,

BUCKLAND CORP. COMMS CENTRE 6.40 A.M.

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Sgt Charles Catchpole was drinking a strong coffee, his first of the day, and looking at the image of Pastworld on the Comms screen. Dawn was breaking over the shadowy city. It was a view that never failed to engage him. The rows of yellow gaslights were softened, blurred by the machined fog. The muffled barges, and the haze of steam from the gasworks, all made a subtle picture, an aubade worthy of J. M. Whistler. Catchpole’s dreamy gaze was interrupted when the alarm signal lit up, a sudden flicker of light, and movement on the bank of screens at the workstation.

He put his styrofoam cup down on the desk top, pressed the lid carefully back into place. He brought up the image, selected it as a central feature and ran it across six of the smaller screens. A pursuit spy, one of the newer Espion cameras, was transmitting a movement-triggered image, from a restricted zone.

He reached forward for the alert signal tag. He checked the coordinates and zoomed in on the image. Immediately, Catchpole switched to a Code Orange. This would automatically trigger interest from DI Hudson in his cubicle down the corridor. He kept the live Espion feed up, minimised it and noted the earlier mech circuit pattern as well. It wasn’t a minute before his partner, Hudson, appeared. The bright bank of screens reflected as intense blue squares across his wraparounds as he entered the room.

‘What you got?’ said Hudson as he eased his bulky frame into a chair by Catchpole’s desk. He sat with his arms folded in a ‘this had better be good’ stance.

‘Well, look at this.’ Catchpole tapped the central panel of screens with his coffee stirrer.

‘About fifteen minutes ago I noticed that one of the sentinel mechs had been activated on this circuit loop. I checked back on it and read the timeline, and it wasn’t a malfunction, it was an intruder. A minute later an Espion camera was triggered by exceptional movement, and this feed has been coming in ever since.’ Catchpole brought it up on to the main screen again. In green-tinted night vision, they watched the picture of the upper level of the old Tower 42 building. A figure in a billowing cloak stood still and high on the ruined top.

Hudson said quietly, ‘Let’s get a closer shot and go for a match.’

Catchpole moved his hand across the screen on the console and the image shifted, sparked for an instant with little flickers of white and then settled. A masked face with bright shining circles for eyes came into close view.

‘God it looks like him all right,’ Hudson said. ‘He’s back.’

The image of the masked figure’s head froze onscreen. Catchpole shifted the still image away into a separate window.

Hudson was right; it certainly looked like him.

Catchpole shifted his hand again and focused in on the figure. On the closer image the ‘o’ shape of the mouth was clearly defined behind the thin mask as he calmly breathed in and out.

‘He’s holding something,’ said Hudson. ‘Check it.’

Catchpole focused on what was held in the figure’s hands. While they watched, the figure placed the object very carefully on a flat iron protrusion, the top edge of a girder, just above his head.

‘Oh God,’ said Hudson.

Then the figure vanished; he simply stepped off the edge of the building.

‘Now,’ Catchpole said, ‘who else would do that?’

‘Looks like he’s really back,’ Hudson said. ‘Better get hard copy of this. Print it all up and we’ll take it over to the Inspector on the next flight.’ At the mention of the Inspector, Catchpole’s spirits rose. If pursuit was back on, officially, that would mean a visit to Pastworld, and a change of outlook, a change of clothes of course, a change of era, and perhaps even a change of everything else as well . . .

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Chapter 4

The Fantom looked down at the rat. ‘Well, they know I’m here now all right,’ he said. He shone the lamp up through the ruined ceiling. The lamp light picked out a ladder. The Fantom tested it for weight, then climbed swiftly up. He pulled himself on to the remaining support beams into the windy darkness above. The pigeons flew through one of the great gaping holes into the sudden freedom of the open air.

He continued up among the broken roof beams and the huge rivet-studded metal girders. He crossed a fragile timber platform that bowed and buckled under his weight.

From his position he looked down from the full height of the tower. He stood uncertainly for a moment on the very edge of a steeply curved iron support. The sad moan of the foghorns rose again from the river somewhere below. The dawn breeze ruffled his cloak, so that it billowed out in a swirl. He removed the bag from his shoulders and placed it at his feet, then he pulled out a gold watch on a chain from his waistcoat pocket and checked the time. He waited, watching the second hand – waited for the artificial sun to rise behind the clouds.

Far below him, under the cobbles and the stone, underneath the tangled map of streets, the city changed gear; the secret systems shifted and, perfectly on cue, a light grew in the sky.

At the right moment he stood up tall and pulled something out of the bag at his feet. He held it very carefully in his hands and allowed time for it to be seen, for they would surely be watching now. Then he reached up and put the severed head on to the girder above him with its blood-shocked grin facing outwards. He slipped the bag back across his shoulders. Then, with his tall figure haloed by light, he climbed with care up the last few feet to the pinnacle of the ruined dome. He stood grudgingly admiring the beauty of the perfect sunrise. He looked across at the wheeling birds over the river, at the view of the whole city. He took it all in, his eyes aqua blue and sharp behind his mask. He raised his arms and held them out wide. He spoke out loud, ‘Alas, poor Yorick,’ and laughed, and after that he counted in perfectly measured seconds, ‘One, one thousand, two, one thousand, three, one thousand,’ and so on under his breath, as someone had once taught him. When he reached the number ten, his figure, perfectly silhouetted against the orb of the bright, newly risen electric sun, simply stepped off the skeleton dome, straight out into freefall through the cold morning air . . .

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Chapter 5

A circus wagon pulled away from one of the busy market squares and turned off into the thoroughfare. A ragged man, tubercular-looking, with a long neck and skinny limbs, picked himself up from a cold, wet puddle of snow melt. He had been close to his prize, close enough to touch her. He walked away like some dripping, bedraggled scarecrow, back through the crowd of warm, bundled-up and mostly indifferent Gawkers. Some of them laughed as he passed. One or two even tried to give him coins, they had enjoyed his performance as the patsy to the conjuror so much.

The ragged man had no desire to end his life cut into pieces, with his heart removed like the others before him. He had a difficult decision to make. He had the choice of reporting his sighting of her now and letting the message travel up the chain of command or he could walk back to the place where he had first seen her. He knew that there was a good chance that there he might find the secondary prize, her guardian.

It was a cold day and he shivered as he walked, his wet rags hanging heavy on his frame. He was lucky that at the moment his tattered boots were still just watertight. If he caught sight of the guardian too, it would surely mean a reward. Not the first prize but something substantial. She had been outside all on her own and that must mean that the guardian would be trying to find her, or at least have raised some sort of alarm. Better still, there was always the chance that she might come back. In which case, he would be able to take her and him together, there and then. Simple.

The pie seller’s pitch was not far from the red postbox where he had first seen her. He made his way back there. He felt bitter at the way she had been taken from him after he had been so close, and by a dirty conjuring trick too. He would know that conjuror anywhere, and if he ever saw him again he would finish him. When he finally reached the postbox he saw that it was half hidden under a fall of fresh snow.

Opposite was a row of dark shops, some with bowed window fronts, and all with beautifully lettered fascias in gold script, or decorated capitals. The row of shops offered everything from groceries and ironmongery to ladies’ fine hats. There were modest lodgings and rooms above the shops. Their hipped roofs and red chimney pots peeped out in patches under the settling snow. The street looked like a Christmas card, which is just how it had been planned. The beggar set himself to wait. He stood as still as he could, shivering. His feet were numb, and his hands looked blue-white under his half-mittens. He did not have to wait for very long.

An agitated-looking man wearing spectacles and carrying a white stick soon appeared at the top of the short flight of steps from the lodgings entrance beside the grocer’s shop. The man was untidily dressed. He wore no overcoat, just a woollen scarf around his throat and a tweed jacket. The ragged man watched the figure struggle down the icy steps of the lodging house, one hand firmly on the iron rail, the other probing with the white stick. The man’s head jerked from side to side as he looked up and down the still busy street. The ragged man watched him until he had reached the middle of the pavement, then he moved away from the postbox and fell in step, shuffling through the snow at a safe distance behind the blind man. The beggar watched as the blind man stopped people in the street, asked them something and then moved on. Finally the blind man reached the public house on the corner, the Buckland Arms, and went inside.

The door of the public house was firmly closed. The ragged man could smell sour, vinegary beer fumes and the winter warmer, Buckland punch. The glass panel on the door had etched and engraved patterns all over it, protecting the privacy of the Gawkers. There were slivers and gaps in the pattern, little bevels and edges of clear glass. The ragged man put his reddened eye to one of the clear sections and looked in. The bar was crowded with Gawkers, men in bowler hats and checked tweed jackets, men in cloth caps and white muffler scarves, women sitting laughing together at round marble-topped tables, all red-faced and fiercely jolly in the warm amber-lit interior. The ragged man shivered, and pulled his dirty scarf tighter about his neck. The blind man went from person to person, from table to table, all along the side of the saloon bar, even talking through the little hinged and bevelled windows that opened into the public bar on the other side. He asked his question. With each answer came a shake of a head. Finally the blind man turned away from the bar, making as if to leave. The ragged man dodged back from the heavy doors. His excitement rising, he ran lightly ahead and waited in the middle of the pavement where he was sure to be accosted. A gust of warm air and a spiral cloud of fine sawdust from the floor billowed out with him as the blind man pushed through the door and retraced his steps.

The blind man came up to the ragged man, the white stick held out in front of him prodding the skim of snow on the treacherous pavement. ‘Excuse me, friend,’ he said, ‘I’m looking for a girl.’

‘That’s what they all say,’ the beggar replied, baring his yellow teeth as he gave a shifty little laugh.

‘No, I’m serious,’ said the blind man. ‘You can see well, I have no doubt, sir, so please try and help me. She’s my only daughter, you see, and she’s gone and run away, the silly girl. She’s seventeen, and a very slender girl, and bright-eyed. Have you perhaps seen her?’

‘I wish I had, I really do,’ said the ragged man. The cheeky cockney laugh was absent now, replaced with a sense of threat. He moved closer so that for a moment the blind man and the ragged man stood facing one another in the middle of the still busy pavement.

‘Tell you what, spare me a copper coin,’ the beggar said, ‘and I’ll help you find her.’

The blind man peered at him closely and then reached his free hand forward and felt for the beggar’s arm. He felt ragged clothes, he felt the texture of coarse and tattered greasy fabric. Then the blind man sniffed, and even through the cold air, he picked up a stale and unwashed smell.

‘Oh,’ said the blind man quietly, ‘you’re one of them,’ and he backed off fearfully, his black boots slipping a little on the icy cobbles. ‘I have no coins,’ he said matter of factly, ‘nothing to give you today, I’m afraid.’

‘Tight-fisted like the rest of your type,’ the ragged man said, his voice now a knife in the air. ‘I hope for your sake you find that girl.’

‘I hope to God you don’t,’ the blind man muttered under his breath.

The ragged man stood in the shelter of a shop doorway. He pulled a packet of cigarette papers and a little rough leather pouch of tobacco out of an inner pocket. He rolled himself a cigarette. He struck a match against the brickwork and lit up, his face rosy in its sudden flare. He breathed in the warm smoke, coughed a little and rubbed his bony hands together. He settled to wait, smoking and watching the steps that led to the blind man’s lodgings.

Within an hour the blind man let himself out of the door. Turning awkwardly, he stumbled down the steps once again supporting himself on his cane. The ragged man stepped out of the doorway. The blind man held a white envelope in his free hand, held it free of his flapping coat, his chin tucked down to hold his scarf in place. He made his way slowly, warily, towards the postbox. The ragged man moved quickly into place a few yards from the postbox. The blind man drew nearer. The ragged man walked forward directly into his path and bumped against him just enough, nudging at the arm that held the envelope – just enough to dislodge it from the blind man’s nervous grip so that it fluttered down to the ground and sat on the snow, white on white. The blind man called out in anguish. The ragged man picked up the envelope at once. It had an address written across it in large childish-looking writing.

‘I am so sorry,’ the ragged man said, smoothing his voice, ‘you seem to have dropped this. Here, allow me to post it for you, sir.’ The ragged man quickly tapped the iron mouth of the postbox with the edge of the envelope to make it sound as if he had dropped it in.

‘There! It’s away now for you, and just in time for the last post too,’ he said, slipping the envelope into his own pocket.

‘Did you post that for me?’ said the blind man. ‘Well, thank you, sir, that’s very kind, I’m sure.’ The blind man stood still and stared after the retreating stranger. He could make out only a dark shape against the white like an upside-down exclamation mark. He sniffed the air suspiciously, but this time he smelled only the lingering smoke of the man’s cigarettes. He made his way carefully back to his lodgings, tapping his way with the cane across the skim of snow as fast as he dared. He had posted the letter, the alarm had been sounded.