The Liberators (4 page)

‘OK,' said Miranda. ‘Three . . . two . . . one.'

Felix pushed at something, and switched his torch off, pulling Ivo with him.

Light flooded Ivo's eyes, making him blink in the shock. He took in a large, cold, institutional-looking room, with stacks of containers placed around the edges – dozens of them, all piled up higgledy-piggledy, with papers and tools and bits of old electrical equipment pouring out of them. The space was about the size of a classroom, and there were doors at both ends of it. A few fire extinguishers provided a splash of violent colour against the uniform whiteness of the walls. The lighting was fluorescent and bright, casting long shadows over the mass of objects. There were desks, and office chairs, and even what must have been an old computer – a large, cabinet-like thing with spools of tapes and many incomprehensible switches. Ivo half expected it to turn itself on and start buzzing, like some haunted machine, but thankfully it remained still.

‘Pretty cool, huh?' said Felix, running into the middle and flopping on to a chair, releasing puffs of dust. ‘God knows what Perky was doing down here. This place has been abandoned for
years
,' he said, holding up a desk diary that said 1965.

‘Maybe there's a whole network,' said Miranda.

‘I think it's, like, something to do with the Cold War,' said Felix. ‘You know, bunkers and stuff, and biological warfare and nuclear weapons.'

‘Weapons of mass destruction,' said Miranda.

‘You're a weapon of mass destruction,' said Felix. Ivo laughed.

‘That's right, Ivo, laugh at Felix. He is
so
funny I can hardly contain myself.'

Miranda grimaced and sat down. Felix leaped up and grabbed the back of her chair, spinning her around faster and faster, Miranda shrieking with delight. ‘Spin me too!' said Felix, jumping on another, and Ivo did, and soon they were all laughing.

‘What was that?' said Felix suddenly, stopping himself with his feet. Ivo's snorts died down. Miranda came to a creaky halt. They fell silent. A rhythmic, clanking noise was coming from nearby: noise like people walking. The three looked at each other for a second. Unease had slithered into the marrow of their bones. Ivo could feel warning signals flashing through his body, as if he were a small mammal that could sense the presence of a hawk above him. He obeyed those signals instinctively.

‘Come on, hide,' said Ivo, surprised at himself, dragging Miranda and Felix behind a stack of large boxes that stood next to the entrance they'd come in by. Ivo pulled them down just as the doors on the other side of the room were flung open, and they heard the marching of feet and the murmur of voices. Through a crack between the boxes, Ivo could see the shapes of some figures. He motioned to Felix and Miranda to keep quiet. Miranda shrunk down next to her brother, who put his arm around her.

They watched as the figures came into the centre of the room, and heard somebody throw themself into a chair. ‘So,' said a voice, ‘we eliminated Blackwood.' An ecstatic cry filled the air, coming from many people's throats, sounding like a pack of hounds. ‘One more gone! But . . .' and the voice changed a little, became a little entreating, ‘he did not have the Koptor.' The word shot through Ivo's brain like a bolt.

‘It has been lost. Now,' he said, over mutterings, ‘there is nobody to blame for this. It was to be expected. So we will set our best agents on it, and perhaps we ourselves will take an interest if there are no developments. We must find it! Perkins, I will entrust this to you.' There was silence after he spoke. Then, hesitantly, someone said, ‘Will you show us?'

‘Ah. You want to know what it feels like? To be free?'

Ivo could feel expectancy in the air.

‘Yes,' came Perkins' voice and others added their assent.

‘Well . . . it would not be good to spoil it now, would it? Maybe, just a little . . .' The voice began to sing, sonorously, two syllables – a long ‘eee', and then ‘oh'. Eeeyoh, eeeyoh. It was a wonderful sound. It made Ivo's skin prick with pleasure. The other people in the room joined in. A strange light spilled out to where the three were hiding, and they slid further back. They could no longer see anyone. Ivo let the sounds wash over him, and into him, let the voice become a part of him. He could feel it stretching into every inch of his body. He was alive with it. Happiness coursed through him. He could see that Miranda and Felix were experiencing the same thing, and suddenly knew this was wrong, just like it had been on the tube. Don't give in, he commanded himself. Felix released Miranda and sprang forward and, alarmed, Ivo grabbed him and held him back.

‘I want to see!' he hissed at Ivo. ‘Get off me.' Ivo shook his head and pinned Felix's arms to his sides. Miranda, who had shut her eyes, opened them. Taking in the situation, she too put her arms around Felix and held him back. Felix struggled a little. He kicked out, and a box almost toppled over, but the people in the room were too wrapped up in their chant and did not notice.

Time expanded. Ivo became aware of the ache in his calves from crouching. He put his hand to the floor to support himself. At last the chanting came to an end and the ecstatic feeling ebbed from the room, like the last rays of the sun behind a hill.

‘There. You see.'

A murmur of wonder passed through the group.

‘Now, let us go.'

Ivo waited until the last footstep had gone, and then released Felix. The lights went out.

‘What the hell did you do that for?' snarled Felix.

‘Stay quiet,' Ivo whispered. ‘Hold on to each other's jackets. Keep together. Follow me.' Ivo felt his way to the wall and edged round it, knowing that the door was near. He soon found it and reached up for the handle, opening it with barely a sound. He crawled into the tunnel, feeling Miranda behind him. Once through he stood up and helped Miranda to her feet, Felix hot on their heels.

In total silence they stumbled back through the tunnel, torches blurring and jittering in front of them. The journey seemed to take for ever. Miranda fell, Felix caught his arm on a nail in the wall, Ivo tripped and banged his head.

Only when they emerged out into the freezing street and had closed the heavy doors did Ivo feel he could speak. He rubbed his hands together, ignoring the cold in his bones. It had begun to drizzle slightly. Felix was still glaring at him.

‘I was enjoying that! Why did you stop me?'

‘It . . . it was dangerous!'

Felix growled in anger and turned to go, thrusting his hands deeply into the pockets of his jacket, striding on ahead, his eyes fixed upon the ground. Ivo noticed he was shaking. Miranda, glancing apologetically at Ivo, said, ‘Come on, we have to follow him. I've seen him like this before. He'll calm down soon.' They kept a few paces behind Felix, who stalked on angrily. They crossed the Marylebone Road and made their way back into Charmsford Square. Felix, fiddling with the latch, flung open the door and stomped inside, scaring the fish as he entered; Miranda and Ivo went after him, into the kitchen.

‘Jeezus,' said Felix as they came into the clean, bright, stainless-steel kitchen, with its table shaped like an hourglass and its two enormous fridges. The three of them were very dirty, their hands filthy with black dust. Ivo's jeans had a rip in them, and Felix was bleeding, whilst Miranda had lost one of her bracelets. They washed in the sink. Miranda automatically put on the radio and poured glasses of orange juice, her briskness hiding her anxiety. Tinny, cheerful pop music filled the room. Felix rootled around in a cupboard for plasters, and eventually found some, muttering under his breath, ‘You can never find anything in this damn house.'

‘What the hell were they doing?' said Miranda finally. Her eyes were wide and afraid, liquid like a hunted animal's.

‘I don't know what it is but it's happened to me before,' Ivo said hesitantly. ‘On the tube. It's the same, the hysteria, the . . . I don't know, the elation. That's why I . . . that's why I stopped you.' He caught Felix's eye and saw a softening in him.

Miranda suddenly sat down, trembling, spilling orange juice. Felix comforted his sister silently, the two of them sharing each other's confusion.

‘We've got to find out what's going on. This Blackwood guy. Who was he? You still got the paper?' asked Felix, a little brusquely. ‘That feeling . . . it was amazing. We have to find out more about it. Perkins . . . to think that he was hiding that all the time! I wouldn't have thought it of him, the little runt.'

Ivo nodded, though he was a little alarmed at Felix's enthusiasm for the feelings that had overcome them in the underground room. He pulled the newspaper out of his rucksack, scanning the articles. ‘It says Blackwood's name, and that he lived in Kensington.'

‘We have to go there,' said Felix.

Ivo nodded. He had to make sense of what had happened on the tube, and of what Blackwood had said: ‘
Koptay thurson
.' The man who led the chant had mentioned something called a ‘Koptor' – did that have something to do with it? And they were setting their agents after it . . . Ivo wondered whether to mention the strange object Blackwood had given him, but it didn't seem like the right time. He somehow didn't want Felix and Miranda to think that he was any more implicated in this than they were. It was enough, for now, to have them on his side. How strange, he thought, that one moment you can be sitting in a café, quietly drinking tea, and the next you have been plunged into something beyond undersanding and terrible.

They made plans to meet, and Felix and Miranda promised to keep an eye on Perkins. Ivo left the house slowly, his thoughts twisting and jumbling.

.

Chapter Four

It wasn't raining any more, and in the pure winter sunlight the houses looked almost unreal, as if they were in a television adaptation. Ivo half expected a horse and carriage to come trundling round the corner. Some houses had already put Christmas wreaths on their doors, and he could see into drawing rooms with cards filling up mantelpieces, and presents jostling for position under trees spilling their needles on to carpets. Here and there the sound of carols rippled from windows.

As he walked across the square to Number 43, Ivo wondered how deeply Perkins was involved with the murder. It could be a coincidence that he had been there at the station. But not that he had been in the underground room. Perhaps Perkins was after the thing Blackwood had given him – if Perkins was in league with Blackwood's killers, then Ivo would have to be very careful. He felt sure he could trust Felix and Miranda – he was positive that they would tell him immediately if they found anything out. He had liked them both immediately – Miranda with her hair blonde like the sun, and Felix with his eyes like burnt toast.

It was now just after lunch. He'd been away from the house for almost three hours. He quietly inserted his latchkey, pushed open the shiny door to Number 43, and went in; Lydia didn't hear Ivo coming up the stairs, engrossed as she was in painting her new client, so Ivo managed to sneak in without mishap. Juniper had settled on his duvet, and as he shooed her off, she hissed at him, baring her claws. ‘Leave it, Juniper,' he said, and he slipped into his warm bed, and for the next three hours or so he dozed, haunted by what he'd seen. He knew that it was all connected and that he was now inextricably linked to this odd series of events, and he fell asleep, fighting against the nightmares which scratched at his mind like a cat at a piece of furniture.

When Jago came up at about seven and sat concernedly at the end of his bed, Ivo was gently snoring.

‘Ivo . . . Ivo, old boy, wake up,' Jago was saying. ‘Supper's at eight and we've got a guest.'

Ivo woke, startled, and glanced about him. ‘It's all right, old horse, it's all right,' said Jago. ‘Are you up for some supper? Don't feel you have to. But it might do you good, and Lydia would like you to meet her guest. You know what Lydia's like. Well, you don't. But you will soon.'

‘Who is it?' said Ivo blearily, trying to wipe away the imprint of Blackwood's severed hand, which had burst on to the cinema screen of his memory.

‘Some chap called Julius Luther-Ross. Don't know anything about him. Appeared from nowhere, suddenly he's everywhere. Don't know anyone who went to school with him – or university. You'd think he was a Kennedy from the way Lydia bangs on about him.'

Jago's Blackberry whirred and beeped; he picked it up and spoke commandingly into it. When he hung up, he smiled at Ivo. ‘Another crisis averted.'

Ivo scrabbled for his rucksack and found the page in the Londoner's Diary. ‘Is this him?'

Jago took the paper from him, his hawk-like features screwing up in a thoughtful expression. ‘Julius Luther-Ross. Yes, that's it. Odd name. Not one I know. Not Scottish, that's for sure. Not related to any Rosses I've ever heard of. Bags of money though. Don't know where it came from. Not the city. Lydia's painting his brother. Of course, Julius is helping her with this enormous party that she's throwing at the National Gallery.' He said the last sentence with weary irony; Jago always pretended not to like whatever it was that Lydia got up to, but he inevitably ended up enjoying things much more than she did. ‘You don't have to come down if you don't want to,' said Jago, genuine sympathy in his voice; his Blackberry vibrated again and he swore. ‘Damn these people all to hell. Hello?' he spoke once more into it, issuing instructions with the swiftness and concision of an army officer.

‘It's all going down the chute,' he said after he'd hung up. Ivo noticed he looked tired. ‘Luckily we're all right, but after tomorrow . . . there's trouble in the air, Ivo. But don't worry about it. Still . . . it's going to be chaotic.' His phone rang, at the same time as his Blackberry, and he swore even louder. ‘Right,' he said, ‘I've got to go and deal with this. Do you think you'll be coming down?'

Ivo decided that he was definitely going to go down for dinner. He wanted to meet this Julius Luther-Ross, to see what it was that the rest of London saw in him.

‘Do I need to be smart?' asked Ivo.

‘Not really. Just . . . er, wash up a bit,' said Jago, ruffling him on the head, and then he left the room with an odd smile on his face, fielding both calls at once.

Ivo immersed himself in a shower in the bathroom that opened into his bedroom, the hot water enveloping him like a sheet, put on some clean clothes from the pile which had been thoughtfully placed on the green and gold ottoman that guarded the foot of his bed, did what he could with his hair (which meant flattening it with water) and about twenty minutes later he had stumbled down the stairs and slumped into the drawing room.

He was now sitting, very awkwardly, on the edge of a chair, a small glass of wine held between his hands. Lydia had given it to him as he entered. He rolled it between his palms, warming it. He liked the colour of red wine, so deep and dark and inviting. He had not been in the drawing room before, and he took the opportunity to look around it.

It was not over-formal, but cosy, with comfortable, straight-backed chairs with rather tatty upholstery huddled around the edges; a large table was bursting with art books and magazines; a baby grand piano stood in one corner, on whose top reclined several family photographs, including, Ivo noticed, one of his own mother and father holding him as a toddler. He had a silly smile on his face.

The wallpaper was blue and white and above the mantelpiece was a painting of which Jago was extraordinarily proud. It was always mentioned when people talked about Jago and Lydia Moncrieff. (‘You must see that painting they've got in their drawing room, it's by some Italian chap.')

It had been bought by one of Jago's (and Ivo's) enterprising ancestors on his Grand Tour of Europe. It was not an ‘old master', but had been done by somebody's pupil. It showed a young man leaping in the middle of a collection of nymphs, lions, satyrs and tigers; near them was a woman who stood at the edge of the painting, looking away, unaware of their presence. The colours were bright, the figures almost like in a photograph, every fold of their clothing and every leaf on their brows standing out sharp and clear.

To Ivo, the woman's face seemed extraordinarily sensitive, and it was almost as if he could feel what she did. She thought that she had been abandoned on the lonely sand; she thought her fate was to die alone. Ivo looked at the band of people coming up behind her, and wondered if it would be a better or worse fate to go with them.

‘Bacchus and Ariadne,' said Lydia quietly, noticing Ivo staring at the painting. She was sitting in the recesses of a plump armchair. ‘She was abandoned by Theseus, the man who she'd loved enough to betray her own family. She is about to be rescued by Bacchus. Rescued? Or imprisoned. Some say he turned her into a constellation – imagine! Wheeling through the blank depths of space for eternity, your consciousness transformed into something entirely other.' Her voice, lilting and strong, bore into Ivo. ‘Look at it more closely,' said Lydia. ‘Notice anything strange about it?'

Ivo got up and moved closer to the picture, holding his drink carefully so that it wouldn't spill. He inched towards the fireplace and peered at it. There
was
something strange about it – none of the other figures were touching the leaping young man, and if you looked at it from a certain angle, there was a negative version of him, just beside him, as if a figure had been painted out. Ivo noticed this double, and looked inquiringly at Lydia; but at that moment Jago came in, followed by someone else, and Lydia perked up enormously. Her whole body was animated, and she raised herself from her armchair, standing tall and straight, her arm outstretched and open in a welcoming gesture. Her face turned in an instant from lugubrious to sparkling, and her lips parted to form the words ‘Darling Julius . . .'

Ivo observed the man carefully. He was wearing a dark blue suit, with low-key pinstripes, and it looked as if every move he made was posed by a photographer. He was very still. His blond hair was not slicked back, but rather messy, although it did give the impression that it had been carefully arranged to look that way. His suit had obviously been made for him; his tie was knotted perfectly. It was blue silk and had little green vine leaves on it. His face was long and looked as if it would never run to fat. His skin was pale, unblemished, startling, like a dove's feathers, which made his eyes prominent – they were, thought Ivo, the colour of the wine in his glass; but then he saw that it must be a shadow falling across Julius's face, and when he turned his eyes again to Ivo, they were a normal shade of blue.

For a second he did not seem to have noticed Ivo at all, and then he moved forward, fluidly, gracefully. He extended a hand, and Ivo leaped up.

‘This is my nephew, Ivo Moncrieff,' said Lydia vaguely, as if she had temporarily forgotten who he was, and Ivo found himself blushing slightly. But as Julius looked at him, Ivo's blush burned even deeper, for being under that gaze was like being on a stage and having the glare of footlights on you. Ivo's mind suddenly blanked.

‘Ivo – an excellent name,' said Julius, his tones soft and understated.

‘Why is that?' asked Ivo, in great confusion, blurting out the words before he'd thought about them.

‘Because ivy is the greatest plant – it lives by clinging to others, but in fact it has the most power. Slowly, it can bring down whole buildings. Is that not so, Lydia?'

‘Yes, Julius darling, it
is
rather like that, isn't it? Now let's all sit down and have a drink. Christine has made the most extraordinary cocktail with the most extraordinary name – you can't
think
what she's called it,' she continued chattering to Julius, pouring drinks from a jug.

Ivo was relieved that Julius had taken his skewering eyes off him, and sat down again unobtrusively.

He was rather left out of the conversation after that, and as they finished drinks and moved into dinner, he began to wish he hadn't said he would come down.
He could have been upstairs checking the news. He wanted to see if anything more about Blackwood's death had been reported, and to find out about what Blackwood had said to him.
Koptay thurson
. Odd sounds, not from any language that he knew of, he thought; it didn't sound like French or Latin. Maybe it was Scandinavian or something . . .

Dinner went on – there were five courses, one after the other, with wine filling Lydia's and Julius's glasses, glowing rich and dark. Jago, having to work early the next morning, despite it being a Sunday, abstained, but cheerfully made up for it by attacking each course with relish and having at least twice as much as anybody else. It was, thought Ivo, amazing that he could eat so much and yet be so thin.

By the end of the meal boredom was throbbing in his head like an ache. So he was extremely pleased when Lydia glanced over to him and said, ‘Now, darling, why don't you go on up to your room, Julius and I are going to talk shop.' Not, thought Ivo, that you've been talking anything else all night, but he didn't say anything, and got up hastily from his chair. He kissed Lydia goodnight, and Jago squeezed his shoulder; as he passed Julius, unsure, he offered him his hand. Julius turned slowly to look at him, and smiled, not taking the proffered hand; something clicked in Ivo, and he turned and fled up the stairs.

Halfway up he became aware of a flicker of movement ahead of him. What was it? He stalled in his tracks, one foot on the stair ahead, one foot perilously below; he clutched the banister. Could it be? He thought he saw a flash of red, yellow, blue and green bursting round the corner, the jacket he'd seen on the man at the tube station; suddenly it felt as if a ghost had walked out of his brain and he was trapped in a nightmare. He felt clammy and frightened.

‘Don't be stupid,' he said to himself. ‘Go and have a look. There won't be anything there.' He filled his lungs with air, and cautiously climbed the remaining steps on to the landing. The flash of colour had gone off around the corner. I have to see, he thought. Slowly, each step making very loud creaking noises, he trod down the passageway; there was only one door, and it was ajar.

It was the door to Lydia's studio. There was a light on in it, and a low hum of classical music – Lydia often liked to listen to the radio as she was working. She must have forgotten to turn it off.

He pushed open the door further, and then jerked back – was that a laugh? No, it was on the radio, a squawk of clarinet, a bristle of violin. He inched further into the room. There was the easel, not three feet away from him, and there was Lydia's stool, her brushes neatly put away, a cloth over the picture; and there was the armchair in which her subject sat.

For a moment Ivo stood paralysed, shots of fear flowing up his veins; there on the armchair, wrapped in the embroidered jacket, was a person – but his eyes were green, with no pupil or iris, just wholly, entirely green. His skin was mottled and liver-spotted and wrinkled and his hair was like a black horse's mane, falling and falling down his back, and the grin revealed teeth pointed like rusty nails.