The Last Werewolf (33 page)

Outside, London goes about its business like a virile degenerate old man. By the fire’s light I sit in the window seat with a straight Macallan (two bottles remain from a case of twelve) and a Camel, watching the traffic—sudden halts and surges like blood through a complex valve—and the self-involved comings and goings of humans. As always most are full of energy, riddled with their own details, asimmer with schemes and regrets, fears, secrets, hungers, sins. Occasionally love. A very young dark-haired couple came out of a deli, not dreamily or holding hands or in any way obviously rapt but deep in conversation and glimmering with the shared wealth of each other. My in-love heart tautened to see it. In love. Oh, indeed I have the condition. Verily, reader, I am fully, absurdly sick. Life, grinning like a great white, is enjoying the joke: Years of incrementally getting ready for death and now all he wants is life. Come on, Jake, you’ve got to laugh.

I can’t. Not with my in-love heart on perpetual pleading duty, inwardly audible at every gap in my self-distraction:
Please … Please … Please …
There are specifics—please don’t let them hurt her; please let me see her again; please let me find out where they’re holding her—but this pleading is an emotional whole greater than the sum of its parts, addressed to the God who isn’t there, to the benignly indifferent universe, to the spirit of Story, who we know these days has a soft spot for the dark ending.
Please … Please … Please …

My inner dead are asleep, sleeping very badly, dreaming of release. Love, it appears, has the power to force them under. They toss and turn. Their murmur builds, threatens a swarm into wakefulness, dies back. Love’s crude spell holds them down, just. Arabella’s ghost endures in seared wakefulness, knowing something’s over. I keep turning away from her. I keep turning my face away. For the first time in a hundred and sixty-seven years a hundred and sixty-seven years ago doesn’t seem like yesterday. For the first time in a hundred and sixty-seven years the present matters more than the past.

It’s seemed, these thirteen days, that I’ve left real time behind, drifted
into a suspension or loop where seconds bulge and minutes warp, taking their normal shape only when I hear Talulla’s voice on the phone.

•

It’s seemed. Until a couple of hours ago. Ellis has been.

I was pouring myself a drink when the library door opened and he entered, smelling of wet London. He had a painful-looking stye on his left eye and was wearing an excess of ChapStick. The effect was of a creepily humanised waxwork. “Wouldn’t mind keeping you company with one of those, Jake,” he said, before taking the armchair opposite the couch, which received him with a leather gasp. “It’s miserable out there.” I poured a second Scotch and handed it to him, suppressing a shudder when our fingertips met at the glass. “Jiminy,” he said, after slug and lip-smack. “That’s better.”

The impulse to do violence to the man was powerful, reflexive and held absolutely—Talulla on her bunk, eyes wide in the TV light, trying to see through the wall, the night, the unknown miles, to me—in check. I put another log on the fire, pokered it a bit, pointlessly, then sat down on the couch, facing him. Obedience. You keep her alive with obedience.

“Okay,” he said. “Operational instructions. Two days from now, on Wednesday morning at nine a.m. precisely you ring the WOCOP office in Marylebone on this—here: It’s a completely clean phone with a trace blocker. Don’t mix it up with the other one. Grainer will be at the office. You won’t get him, obviously, you’ll get the usual bullshit from whoever’s on reception. You tell them to give Grainer the message to call you on the clean number in one hour, then you hang up. Grainer will call.”

“How do you know?”

“Jeez, Jacob, just
listen
, will you? He’ll call because you’re all he fucking
thinks
about. You think I’m making this up as I go along?”

“Okay, okay.”

“I’m under pressure, dude.”

“Okay. I’m sorry.”

He closed his eyes for a moment. Held the heel of his hand against the stye. “When he calls you, you set the meet. Full moon’s Friday, moonrise
18:07. This you know, obviously. Don’t let him change the location. Wales. Your forest, okay? We’re set up for that. You head out for the Pyrenees or someplace and we’re screwed. Got it?”

“Got it. When do I see Talulla?”

No reply. The blood drained from my scalp. My knees and hands were adrenaline-rich, giddily ready to do something. There was nothing I could do. “I have to see her,” I said. Then added, with no need to pretend careful desperation, “Please. For God’s sake.”

Ellis exhaled, heavily. The brightness, the look of heightened sensuality, was, I now saw, exhaustion. I hadn’t realised he was so near the edge. “Oy, Jake,” he said, shaking his head, like a benevolent rabbi I’d disappointed with my weak will. “Impatience. Seriously. I know this is hard for you …” He glazed over. Drifted a moment. Went through something in his impenetrable interior … “Actually I
do
know this is hard for you. I’m sorry. I’m not using my imagination. That was my New Year’s resolution, you know. Work on standing in the other fellow’s shoes. That and to read one poem every day.”

The feel of the poker I’d used was still phantomly there in my hand. Perfect for splintering a human skull. I didn’t move.

“Okay, listen,” he said. “The hotel you stayed at in Caernarfon, the Castle Hotel. You’re booked in there Thursday night. Same room. The room that overlooks the street. You get there Thursday and wait for my call. You stay in the room. You don’t go anywhere or see anyone. No hookers, nothing.”

Again I thought of Maddy—or Poor Maddy, as she’s become in my lately sentimentalised memory, her terrible comprehension (and flawed denial) when Grainer had said, He’s a werewolf, honey. On the back of which flashback something suddenly nagged—but I had no time for it.

“You’ll bring her to the room?” I said.

“No, Jake, we won’t bring her to the room. You just check in and wait.”

“Don’t fuck with me, Ellis. Seriously. I’m not—” I stopped. Ellis sat very still, the awful long-fingered white hands at rest on his knees. “Sorry,” I said. “Sorry. The feelings. God dammit.”

He rolled his head on his neck a couple of times, easing tension. I held
my tongue between my teeth. To my good fortune Russell appeared in the doorway. Ellis looked up.

“Land Rover went past again, sir,” Russell said. “You told us to let you know.”

“Okay,” Ellis said. “Get a trace on the plate. It’s probably nothing.”

“On it, boss.”

“And tell Chris I’m coming out, will you?”

“Roger that.”

“What Land Rover?” I asked, after Russell had gone.

“It’s nothing,” Ellis said. “Been seen twice. Now three times. Probably just a local resident. These guys are getting bored.” He swallowed the last sip of his drink and leaned back in the chair, for a moment turned his face to the fire and watched the buckle and snap of the flames in the hearth. “We’ll do a slow drive-by, Jake. You’ll see her. You’ll talk to her on the phone. That’s it. Don’t push it. This is a favour. This is goodwill. In lieu of future cooperation.”

“I understand. But Ellis?”

He looked at me.

“I want to level with you about something.”

The blond eyebrows raised. Eyes lapis lazuli buttons. “You do?”

“Yes. Listen, and don’t flip out: I know they’re not going to release Talulla. Wait—” when he opened his mouth to protest. “Wait. Hear me out. Don’t say anything till I’ve finished. You and I both know the eggheads want her in the lab. I’m buying that you want werewolves back, but not that people like Poulsom are going to take their chances with natural selection. I know the odds are I’ll never see her again, even if I survive Grainer—unless you take me in too. Look, for all I know that’s the plan anyway. I off Grainer for you and your boys are waiting with tranqs and a cage. In which case fine. In which case go ahead. If the only way I get to live out my days with Talulla is as her fellow lab rat then so be it. I’d rather share her fate than live without her. Now you can laugh if you want to.”

He didn’t laugh, but the eyebrows were a long time coming down. Eventually, he smiled. “I’ll tell you what, Jake,” he said. “I like you. I really do. You’ve got the clarity. So many of the fuckers I deal with are
just blundering around in a
fog.
” He shrugged. “Of course you’re right. They want to keep her until they know transmission really works. They want to get the numbers up to fifty in captivity, then everyone gets out and the game begins again. Frankly, I don’t know why they bothered trying to sell you anything else. I was against it. Won’t be like that when—” He stopped himself.
Almost
blushed.
When I’m in charge
, he’d been going to say.

“And me?” I said. “What’s supposed to happen?”

“They want you, too, of course, if we can get you in safely.”

“Then
get
me in safely, will you?”

He stared at me with what looked like collusive delight. “That I can promise you, Jake. You have my word on it.”

Operationally there wasn’t much to go over. I’d given him the Beddgelert location soon after arriving here and he’d prepared an Ordnance Survey map showing a half-mile radius around the spot where, a hundred and sixty-seven years ago, my life as a werewolf began. I was to stay within it. The bodyguard wasn’t going with me to Wales. Ellis thought there was a good chance Grainer would put surveillance of his own in the area once I’d made the call: A glimpse (or word) of me in the company of WOCOP personnel and he’d know something was afoot. The climate of paranoia was extreme. Therefore Thursday morning a private car would pick me up and drive me, alone, directly to Caernarfon. Yes, I’d be exposed for a few hours at the hotel, but it was unavoidable. Ellis himself would be with Grainer.

“He’ll want you there?” I asked.

“He’s always said I’d be with him. I think he wants a witness. You have to understand, this is his whole life. The culmination.”

Mentally there was much going on. Chiefly file-rifling for who I’d need to contact and how to move the requisite fees fast, whether I’d be able to get past the phone and room taps at the Castle, but also stubborn currents of doubt that Ellis really had it in him to murder his mentor. Pointless currents of doubt. There was no other way to get to Talulla.

“Here’s the Marylebone office number,” Ellis said. “Wednesday, nine a.m. Okay?”

“Okay.”

He turned for the door.

“Ellis?”

“Yeah?”

“Is she really all right? I mean, no one’s done anything to her?”

He looked at me again. For a moment all veils fell and I could see what he really thought: that I’d been weakened, that in some fundamental way I’d let him down. As of course had Grainer. As of course had his mother before that. He was, I now realised, the most singularly alone human being I’d ever encountered. In the purified moment between us I saw his future, the rise to despotism, isolation, eventual madness, most likely suicide. All without love. We both saw it. And as if the universe was invested in proving there was no end to the perverseness of the heart (even the werewolf heart), I felt a flicker of pity for him. He felt it too—and in a reflex of terror shut it out.

“She’s fine, Jake,” he said. “She’s cool. I promise you. Stop worrying. You okay for supplies here?”

•

It’s three in the morning. The night-shift boys are at the nadir of their boredom. The fire in the hearth is low, hissed into occasionally by rain coming down the chimney. For days now I’ve been circling my predicament—our predicament, mine and Talulla’s—trying to will a better way out of it. There isn’t one. It’s a relief to accept it, finally. In thirty hours, with a prayer to the God who isn’t there, I’ll make the call to the Marylebone office.

T
HE BLOOD ON
these pages is mine.

T
HIS MIGHT BE
the last I write. If it is, I hope whoever finds this journal carries out my final wish (see inside front cover) and gets it to you, angel.

On Wednesday morning I made the call. Got the call back, from Grainer himself. The trick, I’d decided, was not to oversell it.

“Jacob,” he said. “I’m aghast.”

“I don’t want a conversation,” I said. “Friday moonrise. Have you got a pen and paper? Beddgelert forest, Snowdonia. OS Grid SH578488. You get what you wanted.”

“All things considered,” he said, “it’s really the only fitting—”

I hung up.

The day was a churning and excessively detailed nightmare. It rained, continuously, cold skirls blown and dashed by an icy wind. Brollies dislocated. Car headlamps came on. A drain in Earl’s Court Road blocked and made an iridescent black lake. The Hunger was a long-nailed hand raking my insides from gullet to anus. Desire, too. Oh, yes. Plans to hatch and a lovesick heart to comfort were matters of indifference to the pre-Curse libido, which, having reached apotheosis with Talulla last full moon was making it clear it would never again settle for less. I had to watch the booze, too, though by Wednesday evening the last of Harley’s Macallan was gone. Diminishing anaesthetic returns. I hadn’t left these rooms for more than two weeks. Perhaps a little craziness was setting in, but I was convinced I could feel Lula reaching out telepathically. Maddeningly just on the edge of clarity. I’d asked Ellis to let her call me but he’d claimed it was out of his hands. Said he’d stuck his neck out as it was to get me the drive-by.

My own phone had been confiscated and Harley’s disconnected. I had no doubt the two I now had from Ellis were bugged and alarmed, but it was a ticklish trial to resist taking the chance. Every hour was an hour I could have spent getting the mercenary ball rolling. As it was I’d have to
find a way of getting a clean line out from the Castle Hotel, which would be my only chance to act unwatched. I’ve had moral offsetting recourse to hired guns before. I used them against the Fascists in Spain, the Nazis in occupied France, the Khmer Rouge in Cambodia, the death squads in El Salvador, most recently against government forces and Janjaweed militia in Darfur—and in every instance absolutely
nothing
moves without money. A lot, up front. I have half a dozen SCOAs (Security Codes Only Accounts) in Swiss banks but even with my access and contacts setting up an operation in less than twelve hours would be a trip to the border of insanity. But it was all I had. I’d never see Talulla again without getting into WOCOP myself, and I’d never spring us without professional help from outside.