V 02 - Domino Men, The (26 page)

Soon afterwards, Barnaby arrived to take us home.  Miss Morning and I clambered wearily into the cab but Jasper elected to stay behind, clinging to what was left of Steerforth with a disturbing tenacity.

As we drove, I saw that Dedlock’s whitewash team had already moved in — a phalanx of people in what looked like full-body anoraks, the personification of unsqueamish efficiency with their scrubbing agents and wire brushes, their sponges, sprays and tweezers.  The street was lined with polyester bags the size of coffins, zipped up snugly to hold the dead.

We were negotiating the circle of Trafalgar Square when a van screeched past us, speeding toward the seat of power.  I caught a glimpse of its passengers — more killers, tooled up and bristling with eager death.

“Jackboots,” Miss Morning murmured.  “Dedlock’s reserves.  The chase goes on.”  She yawned and settled back in her seat, bleakly deferential to defeat.

We were too exhausted and distraught for much conversation, but as Barnaby drove us through the glum streets of Elephant and Castle, Miss Morning muttered:  “I’ve seen them.”

“What?  I’d been staring out of the window, doing my best to forget.

“Whilst the rest of you were gone.  I saw them.  They were watching it all.”

“Who was watching?”

“The three,” she whispered.  “The three are moving again.”

“What are you talking about?”

“You know them, Henry.  The Englishman.  The Irishman.  The Scotsman.”  Even after all the lurid horrors of the night, at this I felt a peculiar frisson of disgust.

I turned my face away from the old woman and stared through the window.  All I could see was my own reflection in the glass — a haggard, weary man with pity and accusation in his eyes.

Dawn was skulking over the horizon and the fog was just beginning to lift when Barnaby dropped me back outside the flat in Tooting Bec.

I let myself in, set the alarm to give me four hours’ sleep, unpeeled my clothes and sank gratefully into bed, wriggling under the cocoon of the duvet, hugging it close for comfort.

When I woke again it seemed like mere minutes had passed, although the officious chirrup of my alarm insisted that it was past eight o’clock and that I had less than an hour to present myself at the Eye.

To my surprise and delight, Abbey was in my bed.  She gave a little groan at the alarm.

“Thanks,” she said when I switched it off.  She moved close to me and wrapped her arms around my chest.

“You’ve come back.”

“Of course I’ve come back.”

I kissed her on the forehead and I think my hand may have inadvertently brushed against her breasts.  She gave a husky sigh of pleasure.

“Oh, Joe,” she murmured.

For a moment, I wondered if I had imagined it, but then she said it again, quite clearly, as though to leave me absolutely no room for doubt, no merciful space for self-delusion.  “I can’t believe you’ve come back, Joe.”

“Joe?”  I wondered aloud.  “Who’s Joe?”

When I looked again, Abbey’s eyes were fluttering shut, her lips slightly parted as though in provocation for a kiss, and the last good thing in my life had just begun to dribble away.

For the first time in his long and privileged existence (with the regrettable exception of an indiscretion during his university freshers’ week, kept from the media only by the application of an improbably large donation from the royal purse) the Prince of Wales woke up the following morning without the faintest idea of where he was or why.

As soon as he came to after a peculiarly troubling dream (something about a little boy and a small gray cat) he felt the first flailings of panic.  Struggling into an upright position, he surveyed the room in which he had woken — small, functional, yet dimly familiar.  Beside him, on the floor by the sofa on which he had presumably passed the night, was a little heap of items which had nothing whatsoever to do with his life, stock props from the horror reel of someone else’s existence — tourniquet, syringe, a vial of bubble-gum pink liquid.  It was around this time that the prince realized that he was wearing nothing more than his boxer shorts (florid, festooned with hearts and pineapples, purchased by Silverman at Laetitia’s request).  Arthur had no memory of having stripped off his clothes and realized that someone must have done it for him.  It was only when he noticed Mr. Streater, face-down on the bed and dressed in a silver thong which flossed insouciantly between his buttocks, that Arthur Windsor remembered the sight of the needle, the fizz of the liquid in his veins.

His emotions upon this realization were complex.  Naturally, there was shame, a certain amount of humiliation and a large portion of self-chastisement, but there was also — and this was something that the prince was able to admit to himself only much later, when events had sucked him in, seemingly beyond the point of no return — a sneaking, secret pleasure, the shuddering joy of the forbidden.

Arthur retrieved his clothes from where Streater had abandoned them on the floor and began to dress himself.  As he struggled on with his shirt, he noticed the neat, professional puncture mark on his left arm — the first, we are grieved to have to tell you, of the many which were to come — and felt a spasm of disgrace and self-pity.  More than once his eyes drifted across the room and alighted upon Mr. Streater’s bottom, the smoothly pert contours of which he compared to his own sagging, hemorrhoid-ridden posterior and felt a swell of sadness.

Taking care to close the door as softly as possible, the prince tiptoed from the room and headed back toward his own.  Aware of his wretchedly disheveled appearance, he moved as fast as he could, keeping his head down low, praying he would attract no attention.  Relieved to find that there was no one on guard outside his quarters, the prince locked himself inside, took a shower and tried to make himself presentable, whilst all the while a hideous lust was dragging at his soul, hectoring, pleading, begging to get it what it needed.

The prince felt a flare of concern.  Where was Silverman?  Why had he not come to find him last night?  And, worst of all, why was he not here now, to dress him?  Arthur Windsor could count the number of times in his adult life when he had been forced to clothe himself on the fingers of a single hand.

He sat on the bed, reached for the telephone and dialed Silverman’s private number.  It rang incessantly without reply.  Confused, the prince rang through to the Clarence House switchboard.

“Hello?”  The voice was young, female and, like the majority of her generation, tinged with the taint of estuary.

“This is the Prince of Wales.”

“Good morning, sir.”

“To whom am I speaking?”

“This is Beth, sir.”

“Ah yes.”  The prince had a vague memory of false nails and hoop earrings.  “Good morning to you, Beth.  I’m trying to get through to Mr. Silverman.  But he doesn’t seem to be picking up his telephone.”

One moment, sir.”

There was a click and a pause before Beth spoke again.  “His private line’s working fine, sir.  I’ll look into it and get back to you.”

“Many thanks to you, Beth.  I’m most grateful.”

“Thank you, sir.”

The prince set down the receiver, paced, vacillated, chewed his fingernails, watched the little hand on his watch go 360 degrees, then picked up the telephone again.  He tapped in a number which rang interminably before it was answered.

His wife sounded out of breath.  “Who is this?”

“Laetitia?”

“Arthur?  Is that you?  Where have you been?”

Strangely, Arthur thought he heard a male voice on the other end of the line.  His wife’s breathing seemed to grow heavier.  “Darling?  What are you doing?”

“Nothing.  I’ve just woken up.”

“Nothing?  Is that the truth?  Is there something going on I don’t know about?”

“Of course not.  I told you.  Anyway, shouldn’t I be the one asking you that question?”

Arthur heard what sounded like a grunting sound on the other end of the line.  “I rang to ask for your help,” he said, disgust pushing its way into his voice.

“I’m so sorry, Arthur.  This isn’t really a good time.  I don’t feel at all well.  I’ve got to go.”

Without warning, the line went dead.

Forced, without Silverman, to make his own decisions, the prince had picked out a charcoal-colored suit and was dallying by the mirror, trying everything he could to make himself appear less pop-eyed and exhausted, when the telephone rang again.

“Laetitia?”

“It’s Beth here actually, sir.”

“Beth?”

“We spoke a moment ago, sir.  I’m calling from the switchboard.”

“Beth!  Of course.”

“I’ve located the whereabouts of Mr. Silverman, sir.”

The prince brightened.  “Splendid.  Where is he?”

There was a moment’s hesitation.  “He’s in the Princess of Wales’s quarters, sir.  He’s with your wife.”

Arthur crept along the corridor which led to the large suite of rooms occupied by his wife, unsure of what he would say to her, struggling, like some Canute of infidelity, to hold back the tides of suspicion.  The prince was not a man who sought or thrived on confrontation.  If things had turned out differently, we suspect that he would have said nothing at all and done his best to ignore the telltale signs, perhaps returning to his apartment to wallow in melancholia.  But, as you shall see, that is not how events unfurled.

When the door to his wife’s suite was unlocked from the inside, Arthur scurried back along the corridor, pressed himself flat against the wall and peered around the corner.

The door opened and Silverman strolled out, chased by the laughter of the prince’s wife.  He tried to remember the last time he had made Laetitia laugh like that and came to the knife-twist conclusion that he never had.  Not once.

Silverman was saying something impossible.  It was hard to tell at such a distance and the prince was no lip-reader, but it looked like an invitation.  An invitation and a promise.  The equerry winked in a manner which we can only think of as salacious.

“It’s got to be our secret.”  This was Laetitia, calling from inside.

The equerry snorted, winked again, closed the door and swaggered away down the corridor, upon which the prince had no choice but to emerge from his hiding place.

The man did not even have the decency to seem embarrassed.  “Good morning, sir.”

“What were you doing in my wife’s quarters, Silverman?”

“She required my advice, sir.”

“Your advice?”

“That’s correct, sir.”

The prince looked at his old friend and now saw no treachery in his face, no skullduggery or lecherous deceit.  “I needed someone to dress me and you weren’t there.”

“I’m so sorry, sir.  I was on my way.  You are not usually awake so early.”

“What time is it, Silverman?”

“Barely seven, sir.”

“Barely seven?  Good God.”

“Is everything all right, sir?  Is there anything I can attend to?”

“Of course not,” Arthur snapped.  “How can everything be all right?  I needed you to dress me and, as you can see, I’ve had to do that myself.”  Without giving the equerry a chance to reply, the prince turned on his heel and stalked back to his rooms.

Inside, for a heartbeat, the mask slipped.  He collapsed on his bed and let out a moan, the doomed cry of an animal dying in a trap.  Then he collected himself, took a deep breath, reached for the phone and waited for his last true friend to speak.

“Yeah?”

“Mr. Streater.  So glad you’re awake.”

“Just got up.  What can I do you for?”

“Please.  Come to my rooms.  I need you.”

“Sure.  I’ll get dressed.  Be right over.”

“And Mr. Streater?”

“Yep?”

“Bring me some ampersand.”

Down the telephone line, the prince could almost hear Mr. Streater’s smile.

At nine
A.M.
, the last of the Directorate gathered in the Eye for a council of war.

When the pod doors opened and Miss Morning and I walked inside, Jasper was already waiting.  He was wearing the smug, self-satisfied expression of a man who’s just had a long-cherished dream rubber-stamped by someone who can actually make it happen.  I didn’t like that look, as you can imagine.  I didn’t like it at all.