Pastworld (11 page)

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Chapter 17

The Fantom looked at the corpse laid out on the big round enamel table. The body had been hastily stripped and vaguely washed in some sort of disinfectant. The limbs were outstretched and arranged as he had ordered in the manner of Vitruvian man, the celebrated image by Leonardo da Vinci. He approached the table almost nervously. He was half expecting Jack, such a very familiar figure to him, to sit up and say something, to remind him of his oh-so-carefully-learned numbers perhaps.

‘Is it really you, Jack?’ he said quietly. He went and stood directly over the body, close to the head. ‘What a mess you’ve let yourself get into. Haven’t been seeing too well lately, I hear.’ He stopped, paused in his flow as if the corpse might reply in that familiar gruff voice. ‘Supposing you were to say something.’ He looked down at the stubbled throat. He quickly produced a straight razor. He slashed right through the throat, almost severing the head. There was a little blood.

Now there could only be silence.

He put down the razor. His Gladstone bag, full of all his other instruments, was on a side table, and a bright oil lamp was hooked on to a pole and shone down clearly on the pale dead flesh like moonlight. He noted the burn scars visible on the hands and the lower arms and all across the bloated torso. The skin looked dark and toughened like the outside of some over-roasted leg of lamb.

‘Tut tut,’ he said, ‘that’ll teach you to play with fire. This won’t take long, Jack old friend, I promise. Just a quick look – I owe you that at least. I’m only after the heart of the matter. I have to be sure, you see. Not that you
do
see.’ And he coughed and made a little suppressed laugh.

He used a surgeon’s scalpel to make the necessary Y incision from the shoulders down to the pubic bone. Soon the rib cage was exposed and the body looked more like something from a Smithfield market wagon. He looked down at the sad, mushy face and the staring eyes. ‘No point in closing them now, eh, Jack?’ he said.

Eventually he removed Jack’s heart and weighed it on a butcher’s scale. ‘The weight of the human heart, thirteen ounces,’ he said. ‘You have a heavy heart, and so you should after what you did to me – sorry, tried to do to me, to
us
.’ He lifted the slippery heart and put it to one side on the zinc-topped table.

The Fantom stitched up the autopsy wounds as well as he could; the stitches were not neat but they would do. He straightened the figure and finally, in a sudden and unlikely act of sympathy, or perhaps some misplaced sense of mercy, he shut Jack’s staring pale eyes, pressing them lightly with his fingers. He went out into a dingy, long tiled corridor. An armed ragged man stood guard under a hanging oil lamp. The empty hospital hand cart stood against the wall, draped in bloodied sacking. The Fantom pulled a folded piece of paper from his pocket and handed it over. ‘This ad will run in the early morning edition of the
London Mercury
. It’s all arranged, and paid for, and this is the place. Take it. Just dress him as we discussed and go.’

They returned to the room and the ragged man transferred the body on to the hand cart and wheeled it away back down the long corridor.

The Fantom went back into the light and looked long and hard at the heart sitting on its own under the glare of the oil lamp.

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Chapter 18

Caleb watched the water as it dripped off the bricks and down into the dank puddles at his feet. He had been silent for so long, his mouth would hardly open.

‘They’ll kill me if they find me,’ he said quietly.

There was no answer.

He had to go, and go now. He went and peered out of the dark archway and into the bleak street. There were no signs of any of the ragged men. There were some street sellers on the other side of the road. He stepped back into the shadow of the arch. He closed his eyes and waited. He heard footsteps pass close to him. He stood stock-still, with his eyes closed. He counted in his head, and tried to be exact in his seconds. One one thousand, two one thousand. Someone had once told him that this was the way to measure a proper second. It had been his father, of course, being a precise man. The image of his father’s punched face swam back to him again. Three, one thousand, four, one thousand. He calmed himself, then opened his eyes and walked straight out from under the wet arch and back into the street.

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Chapter 19

Bible J, the dip, was to some by outward appearance perfectly respectable. He was the personal assistant to Mr William Leighton, aesthete, dealer and collector, who lived in an historic house in Fournier Street, Spitalfields. In truth Bible J was also a hardened little thief, a common pickpocket. He was a magician with his hands, a virtuoso conjuror with his fingers. He could lift a wallet, or a coin purse, without the victim discovering the loss until it was much too late. He had lived rough on the streets of Pastworld for a good half of his eighteen years. However, inside of him there was at least a kernel of sympathy. There were also traces of a warm, almost sentimental heart, and above all there was a sense of humour and a winning charm. He was not like the other feral boys he had run with on the streets when he was younger. They had been hard-faced, ruthless, swift to beat or kick, or to use a knife, who made ideal recruits when they were older as the Fantom’s ragged men. There was some tenderness about Bible J. He could spot someone in real trouble; he recognised anguish, and he would act accordingly. He had brought the odd waif and stray back to the Fournier Street house, where they had been fed, given a little money, helped on their way.

He had waved loaded revolvers at bank tellers during robberies. He had fired at the Fantom’s ragged men high among the tangle of rooftops and chimneys. He had been pursued many times by Buckland Corps Cadets and police officers. He had been listed as Wanted, and been the subject of posters and proclamations, but had never yet actually killed anyone, and had never yet been caught. Being caught after all was a serious matter in Pastworld.

On Halloween night he was to be seen walking purposefully among the late groups of partygoers and stragglers. He was often dressed as a smart and personable young man about town, but tonight he was wearing his butcher boy cap and ‘raggy’ dip’s clothes that he had worn for a day or two now. Indeed had been wearing them since he had narrowly missed being recognised and sliced up by the Fantom, who, for some reason, had not registered who Bible J was. He would surely dine out on that one soon, and just wait till Mr Leighton found out that the Fantom was back on the streets. He wouldn’t like that at all.

There were some drunks heading, or staggering rather, down the hill towards the big railway station junction at Clapham. Bible J lost himself among them with intent, like a wolf among a fold of sheep. He slipped through the jolly groups, assessing them, rattling pockets, slipping off watches and rings, stuffing them all into his poacher’s pockets. He padded through them, light on his feet, and then quickly turned off on to a quiet side road. It was dark and empty, and had a string of wan, flickery gas lamps, which were spaced so far apart that there were long stretches of darkness between the pools of light. This was a perfect escape route. He set off, walking quickly with his head down. Another figure was walking ahead of him. A youth of about his own age, nicely dressed too. Bible J walked behind him for a few paces as quietly as he could. He didn’t much like dipping off someone as young as himself. A boy who might be fitter and run faster than him. He drew alongside him. He studied him from the side.
Black hair, white face
, he thought. The boy made no acknowledgement of Bible J, just kept walking, his face as pale as one of the Halloween skull masks he had seen everywhere on the streets. Bible J leaned over and tapped him on the arm. The boy stopped, frozen on the spot. He kept his eyes down, and his head tucked under his collar.

‘Got a copper or two for us, mate?’ Bible J said in his best cheerful-sounding voice.

The boy stared back at Bible J in silence.

‘You all right, mate?’ Bible J said. ‘You look like you’ve seen a bleeding ghost. Mind you, that’s not hard tonight though, eh, whole place is groaning with ’em.’ Bible J looked around the street, and as if to confirm the idea he waved his arms up and down, imitating the movements that ghosts were supposed to make.

The boy nodded; nodding, it seemed, was all he could manage.

‘About those few little coins then, smudger,’ said Bible J brightly.

‘Coins?’ the boy answered.

‘Looks to me like you must have some on you, mate.’ He reached forward and shook the boy’s fine top coat. The boy stepped back as if he had been shot.

‘Ooh, steady on, no harm meant,’ and Bible J advanced again, smiling, his arms raised, his palms outwards, empty.

‘You must be a Gawker,’ he said. ‘All dressed up like that,’ he added quizzically.

The boy nodded, casting his eyes down once again.

‘Got lost on a murder trail, did you, or what?’ Bible J asked, walking backwards now down the hill, keeping pace in front of the boy, who had set off again.

The boy shook his head, and stopped dead again on the pavement. Bible J stopped too.

‘Coppers, tanners, any coins left at all, any moolah, splosh, dosh, shillings?’ Bible J asked, keeping his big, friendly winning smile on his face.

The boy suddenly pushed his hand into his trouser pocket, like someone in a trance. He pulled out a big handful of coins. They sat in the palm of his hand, a mound of heavy copper and silver.

Bible J let out a low whistle. ‘That’s the stuff,’ he said. ‘How much you got there? You and me, we could live like kings on that for a good while.’ He poked around among the coins held out on the boy’s trembling palm.

‘You’re nervous, ain’t you?’ Bible J said. ‘Let’s see how much you got altogether then.’

Bible J took a handful of the coins and counted them fast, skimming through them, muttering the names and amounts under his breath. After a while he looked up, still smiling. ‘There’s more than enough there for a nice big fat lamb chop and gravy dinner for two, and plenty of change left after, if you know the right place.’

The boy nodded. ‘Could you help me?’ he said quietly.

‘Good idea, mate,’ said Bible J. ‘Thank you, I will join you. I don’t mind if I do. First sensible thing you’ve said to me all night.’ He laughed and added, ‘I’m starving. Follow me, come on, I won’t bite, I promise.’

‘I need help,’ the boy said more insistently.

The smile faded from Bible J’s face, his posture slumped a little. ‘You in trouble?’ he said with a sigh.

‘Yes,’ said the boy, lifting his head high for the first time his eyes bright, his face pale and wet.

‘Big trouble, little trouble?’ Bible J asked, knowing what the answer would be.

‘Big trouble,’ said the boy.

‘Very big?’

‘Very big.’

Bible J resigned himself. Here was another waif and stray to look after for a while. Why did he allow himself to get involved. He seemed to seek them out by some special process, as if he was drawn to them.

The boy let himself be taken around the base of the station mound, through the last throngs of laughing partygoers in their Halloween costumes. Bible J said, ‘Tell me all about it later. Stick with me and you’ll be all right,’ and he carried on, jingling the coins in anticipation of the meal they would soon be able to eat.

Figures rushed past them on the pavement, shoved against them, and the boy just let them buffet him, slip past him, turn him this way and that, as if all the strangely dressed teeming people were just another part of the weather.

Further along on a dimly lit street far from the station, the boy stood and watched while Bible J chose a cigar from a glass case at a tobacconist’s kiosk.

‘Want one?’ he asked, turning to the boy and smiling.

‘No,’ the boy said.

Then later still, on a more brightly lit street, they stopped in front of a white and gold fronted Lyons Corner House restaurant. It glowed with warm and friendly amber light, which blurred out into the chilly fog from the steamed-over windows. Bible J nodded to the boy. ‘Here we go.’ He pushed hard against the spring and opened the restaurant doors.

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Chapter 20

Inspector Lestrade of Scotland Yard changed out of his ridiculous costume, and refreshed himself. He had not enjoyed the Corporation Halloween party. He washed in his private washroom, and then shaved his cheeks, using a freshly stropped razor. He felt better now, cleaner. He studied his face in the glass over the sink, while the suds and water ran out. He was tired, and he looked it. It had been a long day. His office was calm and quiet now, which was just as he liked it, and it was late enough for him not to be bothered by anyone. A single foolscap-sized brown envelope lay on his desk. It was labelled as confidential and was fastened with a wax seal and a loop of string. He sat at the desk, broke the official seal, and unwound the string from the brass nub in the flap. Some file entries, two or three full-plate photographs, mostly of startled-looking young adults and children with dirty faces, the usual thing – slates with numbers chalked on.

‘Blessed are the poor,’ he muttered. He looked through the file pictures with care, just as he looked through dozens of similar files almost every day. There was always a chance that he would see that unique and beautiful face. The lost girl, the one he had seen only once or twice but had never forgotten. There was, however, nothing among the pictures to detain him. He replaced the file, relooped the string. There was a knock at the door.

‘Come,’ he said.

DI Hudson, as a tough professional detective, had little use for the imagination and even less for the dream of the past. He was a company man to his fingertips, just as Sgt Catchpole was, but Hudson found Pastworld police work insanely inefficient, and maddening. It was hampered by what were to him artificial constraints. He looked out of the porthole and felt depressed at the sight of the city at night – the yellow lamplight and the fog. He never wanted to spend any time there, had never allowed himself to really understand its appeal or get the feel of it.

His colleague, Sgt Catchpole, on the other hand, felt a sense of rising excitement and a sort of secret homecoming relief every time they were flown across to the Pastworld side. He was a romantic. The sight of the lights blurred and softened by fog, even machined fog, struck him as beautiful in a way that Hudson would never understand. Sgt Catchpole welcomed the exhilarating feeling of being immersed in history. The sensation of actually stepping back in time. He felt changed by it, and he was changed a little more each time he went in.

When they crossed into Pastworld by airship, any information or files that they carried with them had to be meticulously authentic. Photographs were permitted, but only in a correct period format, there could be no emailing of images, no computers, no moving images at all, and no telephones. There was a form of telegraph, and occasional pockets of electricity in Pastworld, but most of it was hidden ‘below stairs’ with all the rest of the enabling technology. All of the police methods, once on the Pastworld side, had to be authentic to the time and place as well. There was a network of security cameras, but they were very well hidden. The Buckland Corporation restricted such security matters and devices as much as they possibly could. Authenticity of experience was everything. A year or so ago Hudson had managed, through fierce lobbying, to introduce the tiny flying Espion transmitter security cameras. They were the size of a sewing needle, and in appearance much like the body of a dragonfly. They were more or less invisible in the London fogs. They could be remotely controlled from Buckland Security, and were triggered by ‘exceptional activity’. They transmitted their images back direct to the Comms Centre but nothing at all to Scotland Yard itself. The images would be analysed, and acted on if serious enough.

Hudson and Catchpole cleared arrivals quickly and were soon climbing the stairs to the office. Hudson knocked on the door, feeling self-conscious as usual in costume.

For Inspector Lestrade it was sometimes worth the strain, the frustration and the sheer oddness of living and working in Pastworld to see the discomfiture of his support staff and detective officers from the Outside, when they had to cross over to Pastworld side. The Inspector ushered Hudson and Catchpole in with an amused and surprised smile on his face. The fact that they were both here, so late and with no prior appointment or letter of arrangement, gave the inspector a little shift inside, a lurch of excitement in the pit of his stomach. Why were they here – perhaps, perhaps . . . ?

‘Well, this is a surprise. Do sit down, gentlemen. Make yourselves comfortable,’ the Inspector said, maintaining the formal manners appropriate to the illusion that he lived in.

They took their seats. Hudson dropped a large brown paper envelope on to the desk.

‘He’s back,’ Hudson said, reaching up and pulling at the collar at his throat.

Before he opened the envelope the Inspector said, ‘You are sure?’

‘Sure as we can be. There was the body found in Shoreditch. Severed limbs, missing heart, he left the head at the top of Tower 42,’ Catchpole said. ‘These are pictures from the Espion cameras in here. Looks like it’s him, not a copycat.’

The Inspector opened the envelope and pulled out the first sheaf of pictures and flicked through the images of the tower, the masked figure, his sudden death-defying jump.

‘So it would seem then,’ the Inspector said, not looking up but laying the pictures out in sequence across his desk. He picked out a large reading glass from his desk drawer and looked closely, comparing. ‘It looks like our gentleman all right,’ he said.

‘There’s more,’ said Catchpole, and he indicated the envelope where there were other photographs, the ones that showed the murder of the blind man and the abduction of Lucius Brown.

‘The figure you see there in the dark frock coat, the one printed over with the skeleton pattern, has been positively identified.’

‘I can see exactly who it is, Sergeant, thank you,’ the Inspector raised his free hand and continued to study the pictures. ‘It is Lucius Brown, one of our first imagineers, a very senior and founding executive of the Buckland Corporation.’

‘That’s right,’ said Hudson, surprised. ‘The knife victim is so far unidentified. We think he may be an illicit. Perhaps he was robbing them and they fought back. The boy that you can see here, and here –’ Hudson pointed his stubby fingers across the sheaf of pictures – ‘we identified him as Caleb Brown, only son of same Lucius Brown. At present he has been listed by a local Pastworld station as the prime suspect.’ He indicated the knife in the boy’s hand, the dark stain on his fingers. ‘You can see why.’ There was no response from the Inspector.

‘Well, sir?’ Hudson asked, as ever frustrated by the lack of urgency, the sense that there was another, slower time zone in operation, as indeed there was.

‘Well,’ said the Inspector, not wishing to show either the rising excitement or the sudden chill and dread in his heart, ‘I think you are right in your assumption. You did the right thing in bringing me all of this and so promptly. This sighting changes everything. No doubt someone has already issued Wanted posters of the boy. If we manage to bring him in, it will be for his own protection. If the locals find him, we will get him out safely. Obviously the boy is no killer. You can clearly see the scum around them are responsible. I intend to finish them for good at the earliest opportunity. I will need someone to work for me, someone I can trust absolutely on this case. I want them undercover right here in Pastworld from tonight. Things have just got serious. I need someone who can pass as authentic, who looks right in this place.’ He smiled at Hudson. ‘You’ll be glad to hear that you will be spared this time, DI Hudson.’ Hudson let out a quiet but relieved sigh. ‘You will go back on the next available transport. If you hurry there should be one out of the port in about twenty minutes. You will liaise with Catchpole here by post and carry out any research as necessary.’

After Hudson had taken his leave the Inspector said, ‘Right, Sergeant Catchpole, I cannot overemphasise how confidential this case has just become. I was here at the founding of this place, at its very inception, you might say. Abel Buckland is a personal friend of mine, as was our poor missing victim, Lucius Brown. Abel saw a way of saving the sharp and salty, the savoury life of old London. And he succeeded, perhaps a little too well, in founding this place. Just look around us. Millions live here, some rich, most poor. The past has become a sort of new frontier, a place which not only allows opportunies for a new class of entrepreneur but also for the return of bogeymen like our friend the Fantom.’

Catchpole said, ‘He seems almost supernatural.’

‘Perhaps he is,’ the Inspector said, with a smile, ‘and in a very odd way there is more to him than mere criminality. Since his first mysterious appearances and his daring crimes the Fantom has assumed a special place in the mythology of Pastworld. But he has an Achilles’ heel. I know more about him than I can tell you here. He feels a strong attraction towards a young girl. He senses a close bond, sundered somewhere in the past. The Fantom seeks this girl above all things and will stop at nothing to find her. The history of the girl will be found in another dossier altogether. Her guardian, another important early employee of the Buckland Corporation, is this dead victim. His body will at present most likely be hidden somewhere on an illicit murder trail, as it was not left at the scene in Clapham. You must find it and confirm the identity. Since her disappearance, it has been the greatest and express wish of the Corporation at the highest level that she should be found and retrieved safely. We must get to her before the Fantom does. Now I must add Mr Lucius Brown and his young son, Caleb to that list; they are central to our case. Nothing must get in the way of our finding them. As far as I am concerned, you must feel free to deal with the Fantom with extreme prejudice.

Lestrade went to the heavy compact iron safe that was bolted to the floor inside his coat cupboard. He dialled the combination, opened the thick door and pulled out a file and some envelopes. He tucked one of the envelopes into the back of the file and took it to his desk.

‘Read this dossier for a full background, strictly for your eyes only. Digest, understand, read between the lines then go and find Lucius, and his son.’ The Inspector reached out and shook Catchpole’s hand. ‘It is an important case, so don’t fail me, Sergeant Catchpole.’

After Catchpole had taken himself and the file off to his lodgings, the Inspector readied himself for another meeting, somewhere quite different, and with a far more difficult and demanding night-time audience.