Pastworld (9 page)

Someone held Caleb now, tight from behind.

‘Murder!’ shouted a coarse voice. ‘Look what he’s done.’

Caleb struggled while someone wrenched Caleb’s mask from his head. He could not believe what had just happened. Now he watched as his father was punched hard too and fell straight down in the dirt and wet.

The cold rain streamed in Caleb’s eyes. He struggled against whoever held him, not knowing what else to do. Someone screamed. Caleb saw the shiny silver blade on the ground at his feet. He saw the ground and the blind man’s spilled blood, mingling with the rainwater. He saw his father in his pathetic skeleton-printed suit sprawled in a puddle. A ragged man bent down to Caleb’s father, and lifted him up in a headlock. Then pointed an accusing finger at Caleb. ‘Trick or treat tonight, and this young blighter’s killed ’em both,’ he called out to whoever would listen among the crowd.

Caleb was trapped.

A carriage stopped and then another. Confused voices shouted, ‘Blood! Look someone’s really hurt here.’ Caleb struggled harder against the arms that held him. He whipped his head wildly from side to side. He looked for some support among the crowd of people that had gathered round. Then his father shouted out, ‘Run,’ and got smashed in the face for it. His father lifted his head to Caleb again. ‘Run,’ he croaked again. ‘Run, boy, run while you can.’

The broad young man with the umbrella struck his father again and harder this time. In that instant Caleb decided. He swung his boot back hard and it connected with the shadowy figure who was holding him. The figure yelped and for a moment his grip loosened; it was enough. Caleb took his chance. He ran straight out and across the busy road, between all the carriages. He ran fast, sliding and dodging the wheels and horses, and he kept looking straight ahead.

.

Chapter 13

OBSERVATION ROOM 1,

BUCKLAND CORP. COMMS CENTRE 10.37 P.M.

.

DI Hudson watched the recording of the whole incident as it unfolded in repeat on the Espion feed screens. There was only the one camera, so it was a confused set of images. Once the camera pulled further back from the boy he had a clearer view. Hudson replayed the stabbing part, back and forth, studying the blind man’s collapse, looking for the moment the blow was struck and exactly who had struck it. He enlarged and resolved that section of the image in greater detail. Finally he saw the ragged man dig the knife point hard into the blind man’s chest. ‘Ouch,’ he said aloud to the screen. He watched the Gawker being struck in the face, knocked down and held in the arms of the young tough behind him. Then he watched the skull mask ripped from the youth’s face, watched him kick out and run off across the road and into the crowd and there the camera lost him. Three of the ragged men ran off after him, two stayed with the body, two more dragged the man in the skeleton suit back along the pavement. The Espion camera had been kept on track until they reached a waiting hansom cab with closed curtains. The door of the cab opened, and the slumped figure of the man in the suit was pushed inside. Hudson glimpsed a masked face through the open door. He froze the image and stored it, one more piece of evidence for the Inspector. One of the ragged men turned and noticed the needle-sized Espion camera. His hand reached out and for a second it filled the bank of screens, and then the image dissolved in a fizzing snow of white and green sparks; the camera was down. The screen went black.

Hudson alerted Charlie Catchpole and when he arrived showed him the attack.

‘I already ran a check on the two victims. The man we presume kidnapped is Lucius Brown. Turns out he’s on the big A list, an original Buckland imagineer, once a real Corporation bigwig. The knife victim, who looks as if he’s blind, we have no match for, not so far anyway. There’s no connection we can find. The boy witness, the one you can see running away just there, is Caleb Brown, age seventeen, son of Lucius. Both came in here on personal invitation – Buckland freedom passes, the works.’

‘Has anyone picked up the body of the victim yet?’

‘Well, about ten minutes ago a cab ambulance arrived at the scene,’ Hudson said, ‘and I quote: “The body has gone,” and we know what that means.’

‘Sold to a bootleg murder tour,’ Catchpole said.

‘Exactly,’ said Hudson, ‘and of course no sign of the boy. He’s gone to ground if he has any sense. Anyway, this is the bit you have to see.’ He rolled the sequence with the cab and paused at the glimpse of the masked figure inside.

‘Add that to yesterday’s incident, the tower leap, the severed head, the missing heart?’

‘What would the Fantom’s interest be in this man Brown though?’ Catchpole said.

‘One of us, and maybe, if I’m unlucky again, two of us, may soon have the job of finding out,’ said Hudson. ‘Time to visit Lestrade and show him what we’ve got.’ He fingered his neck, already imagining the stiff collar, the hard stud at the throat, the constricting waistcoat.

.

Chapter 14

FROM EVE’S JORNAL

.

‘You’ve never heard of the Fantom?’ Jago asked me.

‘No, I don’t think so,’ I replied, but inside an odd memory had stirred. It was of Jack muttering the word ‘phantom’ as he read, bent close over the newspaper.

‘The Fantom comes and goes like a shadow,’ said Jago. ‘He’s our local Pastworld bogeyman, a really terrifying figure. He either travels up high among the roofs and chimneys, or he somehow moves out of sight underground. He’s an odd mixture, an old-time, daring show-off master criminal. He wears a mask and he’s as agile as a cat. Now he’s a throat cutter, a disemboweller, a tearer-out of hearts, a decapitator as well. They say he controls all the unofficial begging, and much worse that goes on in the city. He’s the Roi des pauvres, king of the ragged men and of the wider criminal underclass. He’s too clever to get caught, he’s the very best at what he does. They even sell ballad sheets about him in the markets.’

I sat listening to Jago in horror, imagining someone tearing out a heart, a human heart. Jago clicked the horse into action, and we were off again. ‘There are big rewards out for him but no one has ever claimed them, no one has ever turned him in – he’s that elusive. The poor look up to him in a strange sort of way. They have invested him with this legendary folklore status and now even with supernatural powers. He jumps from buildings and high places. He does what in the last century would have been called ‘base jumping’. He once fell during a rooftop pursuit and floated down to the ground on a scarlet parachute.’

We were near the river, surrounded by a series of warehouses and wharf buildings which rose up like bad teeth on either side of us. Jago slowed the horse, and the wagon came to a halt.

‘We’re going to meet up tomorrow with the rest of our family,’ Jago said.

‘Family,’ I said, trying the sound of the word in my mouth. It was a word I had hardly used before. At least it felt that way.

‘We call them our family. They are a tribe of ragtag and bobtails really. Street entertainers like ourselves, a loose collection, Gypsies, poor young runaways, all sorts. We’re a very broad family, we don’t ask questions and we don’t discriminate.’

‘Runaways like me,’ I said.

‘Runaways just like you,’ he said. ‘You are welcome to stay with us, Eve. We can protect you, if you feel that you need it, and looking at you I think you do.’ He looked me over, as if inspecting me for the first time. I felt his eyes all over me. ‘Do you know we might even make something of you, if you’d like us to. You have a dancer’s physique – you could be useful. We could train you and you could earn your keep while you’re with us,’ said Jago. ‘Or of course I could just take you back to where you came from if you’d prefer.’ He reached over and gave me a squeeze on the wrist. His thin hand was cold, but felt very strong.

‘I have never danced ever,’ I said, and then surprising myself, ‘I should very much like to dance. I have never walked on a rope, and I should very much like to walk on a rope.’

‘Well, then you shall,’ said Jago with a smile, and he clicked the horse into life again.

I sat beside Jago and watched the passing buildings. Everything was in a state of disrepair, was ruined even. The street lights were mostly dark and there was no sign of life.

‘It’s very dark,’ I said.

‘We’re off the beaten track, on an unsupervised, undesignated route. One of the cracks in the perfect facade, the cracks we like to slip through. This area is awaiting completion or restoration, whatever the Corporation call it. Looks bleak, doesn’t it, but don’t worry, we are safe. I may be slight but I am fit and strong and besides I am well armed.’ He patted the seat beneath us and so I presumed he had a weapon hidden there.

‘Jack, my guardian, never told me about the reality of this place,’ I said. ‘He kept me in as much as possible, and we always went outside together. I thought all this time that we were living in London under the reign of Queen Victoria.’

Jago smiled. ‘There are other undesignated places, wild tracts of woodland and deep forest not far from the city where we sometimes go and refresh ourselves in the real open air under real trees.’

None of this explained why Jack never mentioned a word of this to me in all of our quiet attic life together. I had accepted the world I lived in as the only real world, which it was of course for me. But why had Jack kept me hidden? Jago had no answers to that. Jack sounded eccentric to him, perhaps even a little mad. Why would anyone lock a young girl away in an attic and keep her in ignorance of where she really was?

.

‘Come on, wake up, sleepy head.’ It was Jago’s voice.

I had been lost in a dream, floating high in the air on a great wave of red silk, a scarf that extended all the way across the night sky. The flap was pulled back. Grey light filtered in. It was cold. I was to meet the ‘family’. The warmth from inside the wagon was sucked out like breath into the frosty air. Snow was falling in big white flakes. I climbed out of the wagon. I stood shivering, wondering at the snow, wondering just how it was made, how high was the skydome that covered and surrounded us. We had stayed overnight in a square, something like the big market at Farringdon, but here the buildings were vacant, half destroyed. There was broken glass at the windows and old, tattered curtains flapped in the empty spaces. Our wagon was one of several, which were all drawn up in a loose half-circle; the horses steamed in the cold air. Jago had walked over to a group who stood together laughing and holding mugs of what I hoped was some good hot tea.

Among the group I could see a huge woman dressed in bright red, and next to her was an equally large man draped in a leopard-skin tunic, his arms so huge they looked like legs. Between them, standing on a barrel, was a tiny man about a third my height. He wore an enormously long pair of shoes – they measured at least two feet – and as he chatted and laughed with the others he lifted himself up and balanced improbably on tiptoes until he reached above their heads.

‘Come over, meet everyone, Eve, and have some breakfast,’ said Jago.

I walked over and stood among the group of odd-looking people. One woman had her back turned. She wore an elegant coat with a big fur collar. I was surprised when her collar moved independently and a bright pair of eyes looked back at me. The collar was a living animal – a familiar little spotted cat. It was the cat lady. The very one that Jack and I used to meet on our evening walks. I wasn’t anxious for her to notice me up close. She would surely tell Jack where I was and then I would be brought back and he would be in danger all over again. She was talking to another perfectly ordinary-looking woman; ordinary-looking in every way, except that she had a big dark beard. Nearly everybody was dressed in some exotic or eccentric costume.

Jago gave me a mug of tea, and it felt good to wrap my cold hands round it.

‘This is the whole circus. This is our part of the city and so far it is mercifully free of Corporation interference or any spy cameras, for now anyway. It’s a welcome sort of no-man’s-land, that’s what we call it.’

‘No-man’s-land.’ I rolled the words round in my mind, no-man’s-land. I looked around. There were clowns and harlequins, Pierrots and tumblers, acrobats and freaks of all kinds, not very much like the lithographed circus pictures in the books at home, with all the lions and tigers and bears.

‘Look, no Gawkers here either,’ Jago said. ‘Never seen one yet anyway. Only our people, our family.’

‘Family,’ I said, holding the mug of hot tea against my cold cheek. ‘Family.’

‘All of us,’ said Jago, ‘the big ones, the little ones, the strong ones, the weak ones, why even little Malcy over there on the barrel, we all look out for each other, like brothers and sisters, just like your Jack tried to look out for you, Eve. It’s horrible being on your own in here – it’s an old-fashioned dog-eat-dog kind of a place, but at least you can rely on us.’

I looked around at the friendly-looking crowd and nodded and then Jago grabbed me by the shoulders and pulled me into the very middle of the group. I stood there wrapped in the blanket, very nervous of them all gathered round me.

‘This is Eve,’ said Jago. ‘I rescued her from a ragged man and the streets. She hopes to be trained in the mysteries of our arts.’

They laughed and one cheery voice called out, ‘Good luck, love.’

The woman in red put her huge arm round my shoulder. ‘Welcome,’ she said, and squeezed me, which made me instinctively draw free, the blanket fell from my shoulders and I shivered.

The cat woman was next to her and she put her head on one side and said, ‘I’ve seen you somewhere before, my love. I wouldn’t forget a pretty face like yours.’

‘I don’t think so,’ I said.

The strongman interrupted. ‘She’s got the build for it, Jago. Dainty little feet, ain’t they?’

There was some more good-natured laughter at this. The strongman crouched down in the snow in front of me. ‘Don’t mind me, miss,’ he said. He held my arms tight, squeezing at my muscles, then patted me down, pressing at my body as he went, at my thighs and calves; he shaped my ankles with his fingers and thumbs as if I were a horse. I had never been touched like that before by anyone. I felt a flush of anger, of shame even, and something else, a spark, a thrill. Then he stopped and drew his hands away. He hesitated and looked at me a little oddly. If I had not known better, I would swear that a moment of doubt, almost of fear, had crossed his face as he held my gaze. Then he grabbed me again around my waist and lifted me off my feet and straight up into the air, as if I weighed no more than a feather. He hoisted me up into the gently spinning snowflakes above his head. I wobbled and waved my arms to steady myself. Jago was watching me intently and with a serious expression on his face, while the others around us were smiling.

Later Jago set up the poles and strung the rope between them. The strongman helped him to secure the guy-ropes so that the poles were steady. I watched him practise walking across the rope, back and forth over and over. It still looked like something I wanted to do.

‘Could I try the rope, please?’ I said.

‘You can’t just start on the rope,’ Jago said. ‘There is more to it than just running and dancing along a straight line. It’s dangerous for one thing.’

‘Just let me try once, please,’

Jago looked at me seriously with his big dark eyes. ‘You really want to try it?’

‘Oh, please,’ I said.

The strongman encouraged him.

‘Go on then, Jago,’ he said. ‘Why not give her a go? She’s got the shape for it and she felt strong to me. I’ll catch ’er for you if she falls. Ha ha, pretty little thing like that.’

So Jago put a leather safety harness around my middle. He tested the buckles and the rope. The strongman lifted me up and I stood as straight as I could. I was high up on a tiny wooden platform at one end of the tightrope, at least fifteen feet up over the square. I was cold, and I nervously flexed my toes while Jago lifted me a little off the platform to test the support rope.

‘Remember, try not to look down,’ he said. ‘If you feel wobbly, just stand still and breathe slowly, and remember you’re safe, there is the harness and if you fall you’ll just swing on the safety rope, so don’t panic.’

By the time I was ready, some of the wagons had left, trailed off into another part of the city. The strongman had stayed to help Jago, and I could see him below, warming himself at a brazier. It was my own fault; I had begged to try the tightrope, I had wanted to try it, but it meant I must learn the hard way.

I stepped out on to the rope. I kept my feet close together, one behind the other in a straight line. I felt an instinctive need to curl my toes over and around the rope, but the rope felt too thick.

I swayed and I raised my arms straight out from my body, parallel to my shoulders, and I looked straight ahead to the other pole, twenty feet in front of me. I raised my leg and felt my weight shift suddenly on to the other leg. At first I couldn’t bring the other down in front of it and I began to wobble. I flailed my arms to keep my balance. Suddenly I was swinging free on the safety rope and my breath had been pushed out of me in a visible cloudy rush as the harness pulled up on my chest. I swung past Jago, who was standing at the top of the ladder, and he smiled at me as if to say, ‘I told you so.’ I felt a fresh determination and a little lurch in my stomach as I was lifted up and dumped back on to the platform.

‘Don’t panic,’ said Jago. ‘Just walk forward slowly, confidently, as if you were on a pavement, and you had to walk only on the cracks, one foot behind the other. Didn’t you play that as a child?’

‘Not that I remember,’ I said.

I stood for a moment hunched forward, breathing hard, with my hands on my knees. I straightened myself, and I tried again.

This time, emboldened by the smile from Jago and an appreciative whistle from the strongman, I launched myself at speed. I walked forward without thought, with my arms outstretched. I imagined that the rope at my feet was like a wide road opening up on either side of me. I would show Jago. I crossed the rope, and this time the sky didn’t turn over and the harness didn’t tighten.

‘That’s better, good, amazing, in fact,’ Jago said. ‘Try again but don’t try and run before you can walk.’

I spent the rest of that cold morning trying the tightrope over and over. The strongman watched me from below, huddled by the brazier, warming himself as Jago paid out the line. My tenacity and Jago’s patience had impressed him. Despite the cold, and the dangerous height, I was gaining confidence with every one of my simple walks along the rope. I lost count of the number of times I crossed it. Then Jago had a try. He climbed up the support rope and stood bouncing in the middle of the tightrope; he balanced on one leg and twisted his hips so that his body faced outwards. In one hand he held his brightly patched parasol. He flung the parasol up in the air so it turned over and over. He caught the parasol on his head as it fell and held it there, so that he stood balanced on one leg and with the parasol upside down on his upturned head. I was on the platform, shivering but impressed all over again by Jago’s skills. If I could only master a little of that skill, I thought, I might be allowed to stay with them, to hide for ever. Anything but go back to living a pretend life in fear in that little attic room. I had discovered something that I could do, and do well, and perhaps it would be my ticket to freedom and a new life.