The Doomsday Machine (Horatio Lyle) (16 page)

And any creature with the power or the inclination to pick up even the slightest trace of his thoughts would have heard something like this:

. . . evil . . . so evil . . . why do they do this? They never mean well, they never do . . . all things end badly when they are here, all things . . .

. . . so sorry . . .

. . . had to be told, he had to know, couldn’t live, grow like that, couldn’t keep it from him, had to know, had to be told, he had to find out, my father . . .

. . . so sorry . . .

. . . duty! My duty, the lands, the name, the honour, the estate; an example, set an example, marry and grow old and do duty . . .

. . . and do the right thing . . .

. . . don’t look away . . .

. . . the right thing for the right reason . . .

With that conclusion, Thomas Edward Elwick straightens up, pulls on his best pair of white gloves, tilts his hat straight on his head, and prepares to go out into the world, and do his duty. The right thing, for all the right possible reasons.

 

And as the sun dissolves on the western horizon, and the servants hide in terror round the corner of the kitchen door, Teresa Hatch sings a quiet tuneless, rhymeless, little song as she plays with the saucepans, and it goes like this:

‘Three parts saltpetre and stir, stir, stir early in the mornin’ . . . dash of phosphorus just for spice and let it hiss, mind the fumes and . . . where’d the mag . . . magnes . . . where’s the thing what has the metal what goes all black in the air? Carbon carbon carbon smoke! Potassium chloride stir two three and sugar for the fuel and just a pinch of sodium bicarbonate and stir vigorously,
poof
! Oh damn, too much smoke, too much . . . where’s the window gone?’

‘Tess, what the hell is going on here?’ Lyle’s voice in the thickening gloom.

‘Nothin’, nothin’, just . . . checking the recipe is right.’

‘Mister Lyle, is your cooking always like this?’ Lin’s curious tones, mingled with a cough.

‘No, Miss Lin, it is not bloody always like this! Well, except when Thomas cooks . . . but even then.’

‘What exactly are you trying to make?’

‘Smoke, miss.’

‘I would never have guessed.’

‘If you would never have guessed in
that
way,’ growls Lyle, ‘why did you bother asking?’

‘Tell me,’ says Lin, running one hand down a list of handwritten recipe books, only some of which are for food, ‘what other kind of devices can you make?’

In his basket in the corner, Tate chews idly on his Special Bone, the only bone in the world that he’ll ever chew on until next week’s leg of lamb, thank you kindly, the bone which he will take to bed with him and sleep with his paws stretched warily across, just in case any fool should dare come in the middle of the night and try to take it from him. He ignores the billows of smoke as Tess flaps them out of the window, rubbing his nose against the tip of the bolt projecting from the crossbow-like device next to the doggy basket, and contemplates bones come from dinosaurs.

Some time and a few miles later, Horatio Lyle looked up, past a volume of wig and the scowl of two bailiffs, into the face of the judge, a man so conscientious in his job he goes to all the hangings he sentences, even when it’s raining. Lyle said:

‘Erm . . . I dunnit.’

‘You done what?’ boomed the judge. ‘I do not appreciate being summoned on such irregular business!’

Constable Charles edged forward. ‘This is . . . uh . . . John Smith -’ a frown on the judge’s face like a cliff face - ‘John “Slasher” Smith, notorious uh . . . cattle rustler.’

‘A cattle rustler?’ demanded the judge, one eyebrow raised.

‘That’s right.’

‘Thank you so much,’ muttered Lyle.

‘I thought the suspect was from Dulwich!’

‘Ah, yes, well, I branched out, didn’t I?’ said Lyle hastily. ‘City bred I may be, but cattle! Cattle cattle cattle! I mean . . . cattle! I just find myself looking at cattle and thinking . . . I mean . . . I think . . . cattle cattle cattle! Oh, and cows - cows are like cattle, aren’t they? So, yes, there I am, in a field, I suppose, that’s where you get cattle and I just think . . . cattle . . . they’re just so . . . so . . .’ he deflated, ‘rustleable.’

There was a stunned silence in the small room, the antechamber to the court. ‘Look, I said I dunnit, can’t we get on with this, I’ve got a schedule to meet?’

‘Do you
want
to go to prison, young man?’

Lyle hesitated, not entirely sure how to answer. ‘Uh . . .
no
?’ he suggested, hoping it was the right reply.

‘Do you appreciate the gravity of your crime?’

A look of incredulity passed across Lyle’s face, although he quickly tried to suppress it behind a more pained expression of tortured consideration and moral self-scrutiny. ‘Cattle rustling?’ he squeaked.

‘The livelihoods you may have ruined?’

‘Uh . . .’

‘The souls you may have destroyed - have you not considered the corruption of your own being, the words our Saviour shall say to you at Judgement Day?’

‘Can’t say it crossed my mind. But,’ Lyle clasped his hands in supplication, despite the ferocity of the judge’s glare, ‘should you feel as how I must answer my crimes, m’lord, dear m’lord, I’d be such a model prisoner, I would, if only I had a chance in a model prison, a prison where I could contemplate my sins, like . . .’

‘Are there any witnesses?’

‘Witnesses?’ Charles nearly choked.

‘Witnesses? Oh yes, witnesses, there’s . . .’ began Lyle.

‘Silence!’ Lyle found himself instinctively hanging his head in the face of fifty years of practised legal bark. ‘Who is the witness? ’

‘A young . . . woman . . .’ Charles’s face would have been well camouflaged in a strawberry bush. ‘And a couple of . . .’ his last word was unintelligible.

‘A couple of what?’

‘
Children
.’

‘Children? What kind of children?’

And from the door a voice that didn’t need fifty years of legal training in order to bark, a voice that had learnt the art of projecting itself pompously across rooms and ballrooms and battlefields through the simple process of genetic inheritance, rang out. ‘Not
children
, sir! I am Thomas Edward Elwick, and I demand the respect due to one of my position!’

And the judge, even if in his youth he’d harboured notions of fighting for the poor against the rich and the weak against the strong, was nothing if not shrewd. He looked up into the face of Thomas Edward Elwick, which was radiating aristocratic rudeness and good breeding, and found himself saying, ‘My lord! This is an honour!’

Thomas smiled a tight little smile. ‘The honour, your lordship,’ he replied, executing a bow with just a hint of Italian flourish that in other circles would have been mocking, ‘is all mine.’

 

Lastly, Old Man White sat, waiting.

Someone said, ‘Do you think he’ll do it?’

‘Hm?’

‘Are you all right, sir?’

‘Oh yes, fine, fine. What was the question?’

‘Do you think he’ll do it? Will Lyle get into the prison?’

‘Oh, I think so,’ said Old Man White. ‘Yes. I’d be very surprised if he didn’t.’

‘And let
him
out? What if we’d told him that -’

‘I doubt he’d have gone in,’ sighed Old Man White. ‘Mister Lyle is, I feel, morally naive enough to risk breaking into the prison for what he believes to be a good cause. But if he knew exactly
who
he is breaking in for, I suspect even his sense of righteousness would have been somewhat underwhelmed.’ Old Man White sighed. ‘I feel like a cigar. Good for the health, steadies the head, clears out the lungs.’

‘So I’m told, sir.’

‘Yes. Maybe a quick cigar before bedtime. Although perhaps it would be more appropriate to wait and see how Mister Lyle reacts once he gets inside. Dammit, a cigar now. One here or there can’t hurt, can it?’

 

Darkness outside Pentonville Prison was a patchy affair, not entirely sure of itself, but putting in a good attempt. Away from the pools of light from the few lamps on the street, the darkness was heavy as syrup, almost impeding movement as it stealthily followed behind the warders’ steps. Tonight, poor Bob Steerwell was on duty, marching round and round the outside of the tall prison walls, as much to keep warm as in obedience to his superior’s command. He didn’t bother to notice which wall he was marching round now: the darkness and the brick and the silence were the same wherever he went. After a while there was no meaning even to the regular chiming of the new church bell down on the Holloway Road, a street growing fatter with every year as it wound its way towards Archway and the tunnel out of the city. Two, three bells - didn’t particularly matter.

Bob Steerwell rounded another corner of the wall and contemplated bread and dripping, and marvelled that even his missus’ bean soup, a thin grey concoction, was beginning to look attractive as he continued on patrol.

‘Oi, mister!’

A girl, clearly one of the local street children, was standing a few paces off. In each hand she held a bag almost the same size as she was. She smiled an uneasy smile.

‘You lost, missy?’ asked Bob, reasonably enough.

The girl’s grin widened and turned just a little nasty. Bob felt a tap on his shoulder and half-turned, to look into a pair of bright green, world-filling, darkness-vanquishing eyes. He heard a voice like wind chimes, like breeze across a forest floor, picking up the dry leaves as it moved; like the sound the first raindrop must have made, falling from the first cloud when the earth was new. ‘Good evening, Mr Policeman, sir. Don’t you think you should go and check the bottom of the road for a bit, to see if it’s clear?’

‘The . . . bottom of the road?’ he heard himself say. Or perhaps it wasn’t him, perhaps it was some other consciousness that made his lips move. It was very hard to tell, hard to look away, hard to blink, hard to breathe.

‘Yes. Maybe down at King’s Cross, perhaps there’s something for you to do? I’d hate to think of you catching cold up here, not tonight.’

‘I suppose . . .’

A long hand in a white silk glove patted him on the shoulder. ‘Good man,’ murmured Lin Zi. ‘I knew you’d be co-operative.’

Bob Steerwell staggered like a drunkard into the fog.

Tess watched him go, then turned to Lin with a worried frown. ‘Not as how I’m not thinkin’ this is a useful trick what you got goin’, miss,’ she began.

‘But?’ suggested Lin.

‘But . . . you sure you ain’t just a
little
evil?’

‘You said we needed to remove the policeman. I removed the policeman. What appears to be the problem?’

‘Nothin’, nothin’! Just . . .a bit unortho . . . unorthod ... just a bit weird seein’ you do it an’ all.’

‘You don’t trust me?’

Tess gaped at the question. ‘’Course not! Don’t be daft!’

Lin sighed patiently. ‘So much for breaking down the cultural boundaries. Would you like a biscuit?’

Tess hesitated.

‘It’s got raisins in it.’

‘It ain’t poison?’

Lin looked surprised. ‘No. At least, I don’t think so. I did once make the mistake of using a bakery where they adulterated the flour with chalk, which I thought was cheeky, but I’m confident that this is the whole thing, the complete and utter biscuit.
Unless
,’ she said suddenly, so loudly that Tess jumped, ‘you mean,
I’d
poison the biscuit in order to kill people with it!’

‘Uh . . . yes. That’s what the poison thing is usually about.’

‘Oh, nononono! Absolutely not! Why waste the time with poison when you can just talk people into walking off a cliff?’

Tess retreated into the darkness. ‘Maybe I’ll just . . . go without, miss.’

‘Was it something I said?’

 

Horatio Lyle had seen all kinds. He’d seen prisons built one rotten, rusted bar at a time from ancient fortresses whose lower floors flooded each winter with stagnant water from the Thames, through which even the rats didn’t dare waddle. He’d seen prisons built in towers where the stairs were so rickety that even the warders tiptoed up and down them, for fear of collapse. He’d seen debtors’ prisons, cages full of the destitute and their families, visited only by the local pastors; he’d seen the hulks somewhere off the Norfolk coast, chained to the sea floor and melting away, a plank at a time, where a diet of eel and potato was rowed out every week by the local smith and his boy; he’d seen the prison ships to Australia; the murderer’s chair where men would sit all day, every day, under a hood; the ice baths of the asylums; the gallows being tested on a cold foggy morning ready for the day’s load - Horatio Lyle thought he’d witnessed it all.

Tonight, however, he was discovering that he’d been wrong.

Certainly, the place was an improvement to the first four senses. The usual prison smell - one of rotting teeth, mouldering clothes, rat-nibbled bread, blocked pipes and overflowing excrement - was absent. Indeed, the only strong odour was a faintly unpleasant one of cleaning products, scrubbed with hard brushes into the floor and, as it seemed, into the rough white walls themselves. There was also the musty smell of the basement, drawn up through metal vents that theoretically helped cool the place in summer and brought warmth up from the furnaces in winter. So far, so good. His skin, when he cautiously prodded the mattress on the bed at one end of the high white cell, didn’t immediately burn with the migration of a small nation of fleas, and the blanket didn’t carry the lingering smell of dead skin or the suspicious stains of nameless bodily fluids that Lyle associated with life and, more commonly, death in Her Majesty’s prisons. There was no direct sign of anything in the room, animal, mineral or vegetable, that there should not have been. Although there was no other source of light in the cell, the copper basin in the wall gleamed from the moonlight above the fog that occasionally washed through the courtyard in billows like rumpled grey silk. The air tasted unusually clean for London, a layer of purity just above the ever-present haze of smoke.