Imajica

2

It was cruel, of course, to bring someone of Estabrook’s age out on a cold day, and make him climb a hill, but Gentle knew from experience you took whatever satisfactions you could along the way. And Parliament Hill had a fine view of London, even on a day of louring cloud. The wind was brisk, and as usual on a Sunday the hill had a host of kite-fliers on its back, their toys like multi-coloured candles suspended in the wintry sky. The hike made Estabrook breathless, but he seemed glad that Gentle had picked the spot.

‘I haven’t been up here in years. My first wife used to like coming here to see the kites.’

He brought a brandy flask from his pocket, proffering it first to Gentle. Gentle declined.

The cold never leaves one’s marrow these days. One of the penalties of age. I’ve yet to discover the advantages. How old are you?’

Rather than confess to not knowing, Gentle said: ‘Almost forty.’

‘You look younger. In fact you’ve scarcely changed since we first met. Do you remember? At the auction? You were with her. I wasn’t. That was the world of difference between us. With; without. I envied you that day the way I’d never envied any other man; just for having her beside you. Later, of course, I saw the same look on other men’s faces - ‘

‘I didn’t come here to hear this,’ Gentle said.

‘No, I realize that. It’s just necessary for me to express how very precious she was to me. I count the years I had with her as the best of my life. But of course the best can’t go on forever, can they, or how are they the best?’ He drank again. ‘You know, she never talked about you,’ he said. ‘I tried to provoke her into doing so, but she said she’d put you out of her mind completely - she’d forgotten you, she said - which is nonsense of course - ‘

‘I believe it.’

‘Don’t,’ Estabrook said quickly. ‘You were her guilty secret.’

‘Why are you trying to flatter me?’

‘It’s the truth. She still loved you, all through the time she was with me. That’s why we’re talking now. Because I know it, and I think you do too.’

Not once so far had they mentioned her by name, almost as though from some superstition. She was she, her, the woman; an absolute and invisible power. Her men seemed to have their feet on solid ground, but in truth they drifted like the kites, tethered to reality only by the memory of her.

‘I’ve done a terrible thing, John,’ Estabrook said. The flask was at his lips again. He took several gulps before sealing it and pocketing it. ‘And I regret it bitterly.’

‘What?’

‘May we walk a little way?’ Estabrook said, glancing towards the kite-fliers, who were both too distant and too involved in their sport to be eavesdropping. But he was not comfortable with sharing his secret until he’d put twice the distance between his confession and their ears. When he had, he made it simply and plainly. ‘I don’t know what kind of madness overtook me,’ he said, ‘but a little time ago I made a contract with somebody to have her killed.’

‘You did what?’

‘Does it appal you?’

‘What do you think? Of course it appals me.’

‘It’s the highest form of devotion, you know, to want to end somebody’s existence rather than let them live on without you. It’s love of the highest order.’

‘It’s a fucking obscenity.’

‘Oh yes, it’s that too. But I couldn’t bear … just couldn’t bear … the idea of her being alive and me not being with her…’ His delivery was now deteriorating; the words becoming tears. ‘… She was so dear to me …’

Gentle’s thoughts were of his last exchange with Judith. The half-drowned telephone call from New York, which had ended with nothing said. Had she known then that her life was in jeopardy? If not, did she now? My God, was she even alive? He took hold of Estabrook’s lapel with the same force that the fear took hold of him.

‘You haven’t brought me here to tell me she’s dead.’

‘No. No,’ he protested, making no attempt to disengage Gentle’s hold. ‘I hired this man, and I want to call him off-’

‘So do it,’ Gentle said, letting the coat go.

‘I can’t.’

Estabrook reached into his pocket and pulled out a sheet of paper. To judge by its crumpled state it had been thrown away then reclaimed.

‘This came from the man who found me the assassin,’ he went on. ‘It was delivered to my home two nights ago. He was obviously drunk or drugged when he wrote it, but it indicates that he expects to be dead by the time I read it. I’m assuming he’s correct. He hasn’t made contact. He was my only route to the assassin.’

‘Where did you meet with this man?’

‘He found me.’

‘And the assassin?’

‘I met him somewhere south of the river, I don’t know where. It was dark. I was lost. Besides, he won’t be there. He’s gone after her.’

‘So warn her.’

‘I’ve tried. She won’t accept my calls. She’s got another lover now. He’s being covetous the way I was. My letters, my telegrams, they’re all sent back unopened. But he won’t be able to save her. This man I hired, his name’s Pie-’

‘What’s that, some kind of code?’

‘I don’t know,’ Estabrook said. ‘I don’t know anything except I’ve done something unforgivable and you have to help me undo it. You have to. This man Pie is lethal.’

‘What makes you think she’ll see me when she won’t see you?’

‘There’s no guarantee. But you’re a younger, fitter man, and you’ve had some … experience of the criminal mind. You’ve a better chance of coming between her and Pie than I have. I’ll give you money for the assassin. You can pay him off. And I’ll pay whatever you ask. I’m rich. Just warn her, Zacharias, and get her to come home. I can’t have her death on my conscience.’

‘It’s a little late to think about that.’

‘I’m making what amends I can. Do we have a deal?’

He took off his leather glove in preparation for shaking Gentle’s hand.

‘I’d like the letter from your contact,’ Gentle said.

‘It barely makes any sense,’ Estabrook said.

‘If he is dead, and she dies too, that letter’s evidence whether it makes sense or not. Hand it over, or no deal.’

Estabrook reached into his inside pocket, as if to pull out the letter, but with his fingers upon it he hesitated. Despite all his talk about having a clear conscience, about Gentle being the man to save her, he was deeply reluctant to hand the letter over.

‘I thought so,’ Gentle said. ‘You want to make sure I look like the guilty party if anything goes wrong. Well, go fuck yourself.’

He turned from Estabrook and started down the hill. Estabrook came after him, calling his name, but Gentle didn’t slow his pace. He let the man run.

‘All right!’ he heard behind him. ‘All right, have it! Have it!’

Gentle slowed but didn’t stop. Grey with exertion, Estabrook caught up with him.

‘The letter’s yours,’ he said.

Gentle took it, pocketing it without unfolding it. There’d be plenty of time to study it on the flight.

CHAPTER SIX

1

Chant’s body was discovered the following day by 93-year-old Albert Burke, who found it while looking for his errant mongrel, Kipper. The animal had sniffed from the street what its owner had only begun to nose as he climbed the stairs, whistling for his hound between curses: the rotting tissue at the top. In the autumn of 1916 Albert had fought for his country at the Somme, sharing trenches with dead companions for days at a time. The sights and smells of death didn’t much distress him. Indeed his sanguine response to his discovery lent colour to the story when it reached the evening news, and assured it of greater coverage than it might otherwise have merited, that focus in turn bringing a penetrating eye to bear on the identity of the dead man. Within a day a portrait of the deceased as he might have looked in life had been produced, and by Wednesday a woman living on a council estate south of the river had identified him as her next-door neighbour, Mr Chant.

An examination of his flat turned up a second picture, not of Chant’s flesh this time, but of his life. It was the conclusion of the police that the dead man was a practitioner of some obscure religion. It was reported that a small altar dominated his room, decorated with the withered heads of animals forensics could not identify, its centre-piece an idol of such explicitly sexual a nature no newspaper dared publish a sketch of it, let alone a photograph. The gutter press particularly enjoyed the story, especially as the artifacts had belonged to a man now thought to have been murdered. They editorialized with barely concealed racism on the influx of perverted foreign religions. Between this and stories on Burke of the Somme, Chant’s death attracted a lot of column inches. That fact had several consequences. It brought a rash of right-wing attacks on mosques in Greater London, it brought a call for the demolition of the estate where Chant had lived, and it brought Dowd up to a certain tower in Highgate, where he was summoned in lieu of his absentee master, Estabrook’s brother, Oscar Godolphin.

2

In the 1780s, when Highgate Hill was so steep and deeply rutted that carriages regularly failed to make the grade, and the drive to town sufficiently dangerous that a wise man went with pistols, a merchant called Thomas Roxborough had constructed a handsome house on Hornsey Lane, designed for him by one Henry Holland. At that time it had commanded fine views: south all the way to the river; north and west over the lush pastures of the region towards the tiny village of Hampstead. The former view was still available to the tourist, from the bridge that spanned the Archway Road, but Roxborough’s fine house had gone, replaced in the late thirties with an anonymous ten-storey tower, set back from the street. There was a screen of well-tended trees between tower and road, not sufficiently thick to conceal the building entirely, but enough to render what was already an undistinguished building virtually invisible. The only mail that was delivered there was circulars, and official paperwork of one kind or another. There were no tenants, either individuals or businesses. Yet Roxborough Tower was kept well by its owners, who once every month or so gathered in the single room which occupied the top floor of the building in the name of the man who had owned this plot of land two hundred years before, and who had left it to the society he had founded.

The men and women (eleven in all) who met here and talked for a few hours and went their unremarkable ways, were the descendants of the impassioned few Rox-borough had gathered around him in the dark days following the failure of the Reconciliation. There was no passion amongst them now, nor more than a vague comprehension of Roxborough’s purpose in forming what he’d called the Society of the Tabula Rasa, or the Clean Slate. But they met anyway, in part because in their early childhood one or other of their parents, usually but not always the father, had taken them aside and told them a great responsibility would fall to them: the carrying forward of a hermetically protected family secret, and in part because the Society looked after its own. Roxborough had been a man of wealth and insight. He’d purchased considerable tracts of land during his lifetime, and the profits that accrued from that investment had ballooned as London grew. The sole recipient of those monies was the Society, though the funds were so ingeniously routed, through companies and agents who were unaware of their place in the system, that nobody who serviced the Society in any capacity whatsoever knew of its existence.

Thus the Tabula Rasa flourished in its peculiar, purposeless way, gathering to talk about the secrets it kept, as Roxborough had decreed, and enjoying the sight of the city from its place on Highgate Hill.

Kuttner Dowd had been here several times, though never when the Society was assembled, as it was tonight. His employer, Oscar Godolphin, was one of the eleven to whom the flame of Roxborough’s intent had been passed, though of all of them surely none was so perfect a hypocrite as Godolphin, who was both a member of a Society committed to the repression of all magical activity, and the employer (Godolphin would have said owner) of a creature summoned by magic in the very year of the tragedy that had brought the Society into being.

That creature was of course Dowd, whose existence was known to the Society’s members but whose origins were not. If it had been, they would never have summoned him here and allowed him access to the hallowed Tower. Rather they would have been bound by Roxborough’s edict to destroy him at whatever cost to their bodies, souls or sanity that might entail. Certainly they had the expertise; or at least the means to gain it. The Tower reputedly housed a library of treatises, grimoires, cyclopaedias and symposia second to none, collected by Roxborough and the group of Fifth Dominion magi who’d first supported the attempt at the Reconciliation. One of those men had been Joshua Godolphin, Earl of Bellingham. He and Roxborough had survived the calamitous events of that midsummer almost two hundred years ago, but most of their dearest friends had not. The story went that after the tragedy Godolphin had retired to his country estate, and never again ventured beyond its perimeters. Roxborough, on the other hand, ever the most pragmatic of the group, had within days of the cataclysm secured the occult libraries of his dead colleagues, hiding the thousands of volumes in the cellar of his house where they could, in the words of a letter to the Earl, ‘no longer taint with unChristian ambition the minds of good men like our dear friends. We must hereafter keep the doing of this damnable magic from our shores.’ That he had not destroyed the books, but merely locked them away, was testament to some ambiguity in him, however. Despite the horrors he’d seen, and the fierceness of his revulsion, some small part of him retained the fascination that had drawn him, Godolphin and their fellow experimenters together in the first place.

Dowd shivered with unease as he stood in the plain hallway of the Tower, knowing that somewhere nearby was the largest collection of magical writings gathered in one place outside the Vatican, and that amongst them would be many rituals for the raising and dispatching of creatures like himself. He was not the conventional stuff of which familiars were made, of course. Most were simpering, mindless functionaries, plucked by their summoners from the In Ovo - the space between the Fifth and the Reconciled Dominions - like a lobster from a restaurant tank. He, on the other hand, had been a professional actor in his time; and fêted for it. It wasn’t congenital stupidity that had made him susceptible to human jurisdiction, it was anguish. He’d seen the face of Hapexamendios Himself, and half-crazed by the sight had been unable to resist the summons, and the binding, when it came. His invoker had of course been Joshua Godolphin, and he’d commanded Dowd to serve his line until the end of time. In fact, Joshua’s retirement to the safety of his estate had freed Dowd to wander until the old man’s demise, when he was drawn back to offer his services to Joshua’s son Nathaniel, only revealing his true nature once he’d made himself indispensable, for fear he was trapped between his bounden duty and the zeal of a Christian.

In fact Nathaniel had grown into a dissolute of considerable proportions by the time Dowd entered his employ, and could not have cared less what kind of creature Dowd was as long as he procured the right kind of company. And so it had gone on, generation after generation, Dowd changing his face on occasion (a simple trick, or feit) so as to conceal his longevity from the withering human world. But the possibility that one day his double-dealing would be discovered by the Tabula Rasa, and they would search through their library and find some vicious sway to destroy him, never entirely left his calculations. Especially now, waiting for the call into their presence.

That call was an hour and a half in coming, during which time he distracted himself thinking about the shows that were opening in the coming week. Theatre remained his great love, and there was scarcely a production of any significance he failed to see. On the following Tuesday he had tickets for the much-acclaimed Lear at the National, and then two days later a seat in the stalls for the revival of Turandot at the Coliseum. Much to look forward to, once this wretched interview was over.

At last the lift hummed into life and one of the Society’s younger members, Giles Bloxham, appeared. At forty, Bloxham looked twice that age. It took a kind of genius, Godolphin had once remarked when talking about Bloxham (he liked to report on the absurdities of the Society, particularly when he was in his cups) to look so dissipated and have nothing to regret for it.

‘We’re ready for you, now,’ Bloxham said, indicating that Dowd should join him in the lift. ‘You realize,’ he said as they ascended, ‘that if you’re ever tempted to breathe a word of what you see here the Society will eradicate you so quickly and so thoroughly your mother won’t even know you existed?’

This over-heated threat sounded ludicrous delivered in Bloxham’s nasal whine, but Dowd played the chastened functionary.

‘I perfectly understand,’ he said.

‘It’s an extraordinary step,’ Bloxham continued, ‘calling anyone who isn’t a member to a meeting. But these are extraordinary times. Not that it’s any of your business.’

‘Quite so,’ Dowd said, all innocence.

Tonight he’d take their condescension without argument, he thought, more confident by the day that something was coming that would rock this Tower to its foundations. When it did, he’d have his revenge.

The lift door opened, and Bloxham ordered Dowd to follow him. The passages that led to the main suite were stark and uncarpeted, the room he was led into the same. The drapes were drawn over all the windows, the enormous marble-topped table that dominated the room lit by overhead lamps, the wash of their light thrown up on the six members, two of them women, sitting around it. To judge by the clutter of bottles, glasses, and over-filled ashtrays, and the brooding, weary faces, they had been debating for many hours. Bloxham poured himself a glass of water, and took his place. There was one empty seat: Godolphin’s. Dowd was not invited to occupy it, but stood at the end of the table, mildly discomfited by the stares of his interrogators. There was not one face amongst them that would have been known by the populace at large. Though all of them had descended from families of wealth and influence, these were not public powers. The Society forbade any member to hold office or take as a spouse an individual who might invite or arouse the curiosity of the press. It worked in mystery, for the demise of mystery. Perhaps it was that paradox - more than any other aspect of its nature - which would finally undo it.

At the other end of the table from Dowd, sitting in front of a heap of newspapers doubtless carrying the Burke reports, sat a professorial man in his sixties, white hair oiled to his scalp. Dowd knew his name from Godolphin’s description: Hubert Shales; dubbed the Sloth by Oscar. He moved and spoke with the caution of a glass-boned theologian.

‘You know why you’re here?’ he said.

‘He knows,’ Bloxham put in.

‘Some problem with Mr Godolphin?’ Dowd ventured.

‘He’s not here,’ said one of the women to Dowd’s right, her face emaciated beneath a confection of dyed black hair. Alice Tyrwhitt, Dowd guessed. ‘That’s the problem.’

‘So I see,’ Dowd said.

‘Where the hell is he?’ Bloxham demanded.

‘He’s travelling,’ Dowd replied. ‘I don’t think he anticipated a meeting.’

‘Neither did we,’ said Lionel Wakeman, flushed with the Scotch he’d imbibed, the bottle lying in the crook of his arm.

‘Where’s he travelling?’ Tyrwhitt asked. ‘It’s imperative we find him.’

‘I’m afraid I don’t know,’ Dowd said. ‘His business takes him all over the world.’

‘Anything respectable?’ Wakeman slurred.

‘He’s got a number of investments in Singapore,’ Dowd replied. ‘And in India. Would you like me to prepare a dossier? I’m sure he’d be -’

‘Bugger the dossier!’ Bloxham said. ‘We want him here! Now!’

‘I’m afraid I don’t know his precise whereabouts. Somewhere in the Far East.’

The severe but not unalluring woman to Wakeman’s left now entered the exchange, stabbing her cigarette in the ashtray as she spoke. This could only be Charlotte Feaver; Charlotte the Scarlet, as Oscar called her. She was the last of the Roxborough line, he’d said, unless she found a way to fertilize one of her girlfriends.

‘This isn’t some damn club he can visit when it fucking well suits him,’ she said.

‘That’s right,’ Wakeman put in. ‘It’s a damn poor show.’

Shales picked up one of the newspapers in front of him and pitched it down the table in Dowd’s direction.

‘I presume you’ve read about this body they found in Clerkenwell?’ he said.

‘Yes. I believe so.’

Shales paused for several seconds, his sparrow eyes going from one member to another. Whatever he was about to say, its broaching had been debated before Dowd entered.

‘We have reason to believe that this man Chant did not originate in this Dominion.’

‘I’m sorry?’ Dowd said, feigning confusion. ‘I don’t follow. Dominion?’

‘Spare us your discretion,’ Charlotte Feaver said. ‘You know what we’re talking about. Oscar hasn’t employed you for twenty-five years and kept his counsel.’

‘I know very little,’ Dowd protested.

‘But enough to know there’s an anniversary imminent,’ Shales said.

My, my, Dowd thought, they’re not as stupid as they look.

‘You mean the Reconciliation?’ he said.

That’s exactly what I mean. This coming midsummer - ‘

‘Do we have to spell it out?’ Bloxham said. ‘He already knows more than he should.’

Shales ignored the interruption, and was beginning again when a voice so far unheard, emanating from a bulky figure sitting beyond the reach of the light broke in. Dowd had been waiting for this man, Matthias McGann, to say his piece. If the Tabula Rasa had a leader, this was he.

‘Hubert?’ he said. ‘May I?’

Shales murmured: ‘Of course.’

‘Mr Dowd,’ said McGann, ‘I don’t doubt that Oscar has been indiscreet. We all have our weaknesses. You must be his. Nobody here blames you for listening. But this Society was created for a very specific purpose, and on occasion has been obliged to act with extreme severity in the pursuit of that purpose. I won’t go into details. As Giles says, you’re already wiser than any of us would like. But believe me, we will silence any and all who put this Dominion at risk.’

He leaned forward. His face announced a man of good humour, presently unhappy with his lot.

‘Hubert mentioned that an anniversary is imminent. So it is. And forces with an interest in subverting the sanity of this Dominion may be readying themselves to celebrate that anniversary. So far, this’ - he pointed to the newspaper - ‘is the only evidence we’d found of such preparations, but if there are others they will be swiftly terminated by this Society and its agents. Do you understand?’ He didn’t wait for an answer. ‘This sort of thing is very dangerous,’ he went on. ‘People start to investigate. Academics. Esoterics. They start to question, and they start to dream.’

‘I could see how that would be dangerous,’ Dowd said.

‘Don’t smarm, you smug little bastard,’ Bloxham burst out. ‘We all know what you and Godolphin have been doing. Tell him, Hubert!’

‘I’ve traced some artifacts of … non-terrestrial origin … that came my way. The trail, as it were, leads back to Oscar Godolphin.’