‘What do you mean, she’s gone to the theatre?’
It was barely noon, but the day had darkened so much it felt like dusk. Just when it seemed a thaw might be on the way, the air had turned even colder and new flakes of snow had begun to drift from the leaden sky. Hawkins and I arrived back at the house shivering and stamping our boots. I’d been looking forward to a bowl of soup and perhaps an afternoon snooze before dinner with the Sherwoods – but Hope’s news had scuppered those plans.
She’d been playing with her doll’s house in her room when I’d stuck my head round the door. She and her new toy had been inseparable since she’d unwrapped it on Christmas Day. She was so engrossed in her game she didn’t notice me enter. I watched her for thirty seconds or so with a mixture of affection and concern. The way she played with the little wooden figures, creating individual voices for each character, I found so touching that tears welled in my eyes. A couple of months ago she’d have been incapable of this. Creative play would have been incomprehensible to her. She’d come on in leaps and bounds since then, but I was still reluctant to allow her to take that extra step of mixing with other children. It wasn’t that I didn’t think Hope wouldn’t behave herself or know how to handle the situation; it was that I didn’t trust other kids to accept her as we did. I didn’t want her to be made fun of, or to be made to feel like a freak because of her mechanical arm. I didn’t want her to feel she was something to be gossiped about, or feared, or stared at.
Eventually I cleared my throat, and she looked up. In the flat, dead light of the increasingly gloomy day her face looked grey and lifeless, her eyes a washed-out blue set deep in the hollows of their sockets. For a shocking instant I got the impression her skin had become translucent, that I could see the skull beneath it. I forced a smile.
‘Having fun?’
She nodded and grinned, which, rather than dispelling the notion, made her face look even more skull-like.
Trying to push away the image, I sat on the bed and we chatted for a while. Just general stuff: how she was feeling, how she’d slept, what she’d been doing today. I asked her where Clover was, and felt my stomach clench when Hope told me she’d gone to the theatre. More sharply than I meant to, I asked her what she meant.
‘What’s the matter, Alex?’ she asked in alarm, as if she felt she’d done something wrong.
I put a hand on her head to reassure her. Her hair felt damp, the skull beneath it radiating heat.
‘Nothing,’ I said. ‘Sorry. I’m just… surprised, that’s all.’
* * *
Ten minutes later Hawkins and I were again trundling through the snowy London streets in a hansom. It turned out a messenger boy had arrived forty minutes earlier, with a note from Horace Lacey saying that he wanted to see us as soon as possible.
The note had been waiting for us on the hall table when we’d come in, but I’d missed it. It was pinned beneath a glass paperweight, along with a scrawled note from Clover: Thought I’d better pop along. See you there! Once Mrs Peake had drawn Lacey’s note to my attention, I compared it to the earlier one we’d received from the theatre manager. The handwriting was the same, but whereas the language in the first note was flamboyant, this second one was concise, even terse:
Dear Mr Locke
Please attend to me at the Maybury Theatre at your earliest convenience.
I have urgent news to impart.
Yours
Horace Lacey
‘What do you think?’ I’d asked Hawkins as we were waiting for the cab.
Hawkins had peered at the note as intently as if he was willing a hidden message to reveal itself beneath the one on the paper.
‘In my opinion this was written in haste, sir. Perhaps in a state of excitement.’
‘Or fear?’
Hawkins’ steely grey eyes regarded me. I could imagine him wearing that same unflappable expression as he prepared to perform death-defying stunts with the Flying Bencziks every night. ‘Possibly.’
Despite my anxiety, the rocking of the cab and the shushing of the wheels through the snowy streets lulled me to sleep. I was so exhausted it was like being anaesthetised. For a good thirty seconds after Hawkins shook me awake I had no idea where I was.
‘We’re here, sir,’ he said as I blinked in confusion.
‘Where?’
‘The Maybury Theatre.’
I peered out of the cab window, but all I could see was a fresh layer of snow on the glass. As my senses returned I realised I could hear snow pattering on the roof above us.
‘Is it night?’ I asked.
‘Early afternoon, sir,’ replied Hawkins, pushing the door open. ‘The weather is closing in again, I fear.’
He wasn’t wrong. But at least the cold air and swirling snow helped blow the cobwebs away. Asking the cab driver to wait (he peered at us mournfully from beneath the brim of a hat topped with an inch-thick layer of snow), we ran up the snowy steps to the main doors.
‘Should we knock, sir?’ asked Hawkins, raising his cane.
Noting that the doors weren’t quite flush with one another, I leaned my weight against the left-hand one and it opened immediately.
‘No need.’
‘Perhaps Miss Clover left it open to allow us easy access?’
‘Perhaps,’ I said. ‘Though in my time we’d call that a best-case scenario.’
Despite my fluttering stomach, there was no immediate sign that anything bad had happened. The lobby with its threadbare carpet and wide steps looked the same as it had the last time I’d been here. What was perhaps odd was that there was no sound coming from the auditorium. Shouldn’t the Guiding Light Players be rehearsing? Wasn’t their play due to start in a week or so? Then again, maybe this was their lunch break. Or maybe today’s rehearsal had been postponed due to the snow.
There was no reason why we shouldn’t have called out in the hope of attracting attention, but I was cautious. There was something not right about that note. If Lacey had written it out of fear – if he’d thought himself in danger, for instance – wouldn’t he have vacated the premises, even jumped in a cab and come to see us rather than sitting tight and waiting for us to go to him? And if the situation wasn’t urgent, why had his note been so curt? He was an obsequious man, he liked to make a good impression – so why had he dispensed with the sycophantic language he’d used previously?
‘Let’s take it slowly and quietly,’ I murmured to Hawkins, and pointed to the left-hand turning at the top of the wide steps. ‘We’ll go round the outside of the auditorium to the back, check out the dressing rooms and the yard.’
‘Understood, sir.’
I drew my howdah and led the way. I’d feel a fool if it turned out I was overreacting, and ended up scaring Lacey half to death, but better that than be caught unawares.
I ascended the stairs and edged through the arched opening. Only around half the wall lamps were lit along the curved corridor ahead, presumably to save money, which meant the interior of the theatre was gloomy. Patches of darkness quivered between the evenly spaced oases of light cast by the flickering gas flames. Most of the doors lining the left-hand wall were murky rectangles, whereas the openings on the right, leading into the main auditorium, resembled gaping black mouths.
I stopped at the first of these and peered through. The auditorium was dark and utterly silent. The stage at the far end was not visible at all. All I could see of the interior were the vague, shadowy outlines of seats in the two or three rows closest to where I was standing. I was aware that anything could be lurking in that darkness, no more than a few metres away, and I wouldn’t be aware of it until it moved or made a sound. Gripping the howdah more tightly I moved on, Hawkins panther-silent behind me.
After a few more steps I halted and sniffed the air. ‘Can you smell that?’
‘I can, sir,’ Hawkins replied. ‘A stale odour, like old mushrooms.’
I nodded, my heart beating faster, and peered into the shadows. Was he here waiting for us? Willoughby? Was this a trap?
Maybe it wasn’t only him. Maybe, despite the silence, we were surrounded by the Wolves of London. I tried to swallow, but my throat felt like it was filled with tissue paper. My muscles slowly tightened as I anticipated an eruption of movement, pictured nightmarish creatures swarming from every nook and crevice, every opening, every clot of darkness.
Should I shout? Call out a challenge? Bring them into the open?
At least I didn’t feel tired any more. Adrenaline overload, I thought. I’d probably crash like a KO’d boxer later.
If there was a later.
There was nothing to do but keep moving forward. At each doorway I came to, each opening on my right, I paused, tensing, half anticipating an attack.
The theatre stayed silent. If there was anything here it was biding its time.
The mulchy smell grew stronger. My stomach coiled in response. I tried to breathe through my mouth, but that was almost as bad. It felt as though a bitter sort of dampness, a cluster of microscopic spoors or particles, was settling on my lips. Perhaps I was being poisoned.
‘Sir?’ Hawkins’ voice was a hiss in the dimness.
I glanced at him, and saw that he was indicating a door on our left.
A door that was standing ajar.
Was it significant? An invitation? A challenge? I raised my left hand, urging caution, and steadied my right hand with the gun in it. I crept towards the door, and as I did so the mushroom stench grew stronger until it was almost overwhelming.
Blinking, hoping my eyes wouldn’t water and blur my vision, I pushed the door slowly open.
Nothing moved. A wedge of feeble light crept into the room, dimly illuminating a small section of it. I stood on the threshold, peering, trying to make sense of what I could see. A table? No, a desk. Solid and heavy, like much of the furniture from this period. Probably mahogany.
But what was propped behind the desk? I got the impression of something spindly but top-heavy. A tangle of sticks? An effigy of some kind? A scarecrow?
‘One moment, sir,’ Hawkins whispered. ‘I have a box of lucifers…’
He leaned his cane against the wall and reached into his pocket. Seconds later there came the scrape and flare of a match. The sharp, sulphurous tang of it was far preferable to the sour, mushroomy stench that hung heavily in the air. But sadly it was all too brief, quickly swamped by the more dominant odour.
Hawkins stepped up beside me and raised the match. Orange light swelled into the room, pushing back the dark, revealing what was slumped behind the desk…
‘Fuck!’ I blurted and took an instinctive step back, bumping into Hawkins. He dropped the match and the light winked out. As he fumbled for another, I bent double, pressing a hand to my stomach, and released a long gasp of air.
Although I’d only seen it for a split second, the terrible image of Horace Lacey lolling in the chair behind his desk was already branded on my mind. Even if I never saw it again – which wasn’t likely, as already I could hear the soft rattling of matches as Hawkins extracted another from the box – I doubted I’d ever forget the sight. The theatre manager was dead, his glazed eyes staring out at different angles beneath half-closed lids, his mouth hanging open. But it wasn’t this that had shocked me; it was the fact that beneath his head, which was intact, he had been nothing but a skeleton. His clothes and flesh – every layer of muscle and fat, every internal organ – had simply gone. Below the bloody stump of his neck Lacey had quite literally been stripped to the bone.
As a second match rasped and flared, I braced myself to look again. I vowed to examine the body as clinically as I could, to concentrate on the fact that Clover might need our help (I tried not to dwell on the fear that what had happened to Lacey might have happened to her too), and that any information we could arm ourselves with might prove useful.
I managed it… more or less. The most astonishing thing about Lacey’s corpse was how thoroughly the meat had been removed. There were a few errant shreds of flesh clinging to the skeleton, but for the most part the bones were perfectly white, almost gleaming, as if they had been sucked clean.
There was also very little blood. That was the other surprising thing. In the split second before I’d knocked Hawkins’ first match from his hand, my impression had been that there was blood everywhere. But when I looked again, I realised that although the walls and desk were spattered with it, there was nothing like the eight pints that the average human body contained.
So whatever had killed and presumably devoured Lacey had done so with astonishing speed and ferocity. We’d come to the same conclusion about the prostitute’s death, of course, but in that instance we hadn’t seen the body. Witnessing the damage rather than just being told about it was a whole different ball game. It made the impossible real – more so when it was likely the killer was still close.
Or killers. Because yet again what Lacey’s corpse made me think of was a school of savage airborne piranhas. As the light from Hawkins’ second Lucifer guttered out, I stepped back out of the room.
‘There’s nothing we can do for the poor sod,’ I said. ‘We need to find Clover.’
It was a relief to pull the door shut and trap some of that mushroomy stench inside. Not all of it, though. It trailed us down the corridor like tendrils of fog – or tenacious vines that had latched on to us and wouldn’t let go. Its persistence made me wonder whether the stench itself, or some invisible thing within it, was the killer. If so, was it sentient or merely a weapon? Was it at this moment sizing us up, waiting for the right moment to attack, to unravel us in an instant? I imagined a kind of mutant Ebola, its power, its voracity, magnified to inconceivable proportions. If that was what we were up against there was nothing we could do. Our fate was sealed.
We reached the end of the curving corridor. In front of us was the door that led to the dingy, oil-lit area lined with dressing rooms. Was that where we’d find Clover? And maybe Willoughby too? Sprawled like some vast, gluttonous king on his throne, awaiting our arrival?
I tried the door. It was locked. I glanced at Hawkins, raising my eyebrows in surprise. If this was a trap, I would have expected our route to be unimpeded. I opened my mouth to speak – but just as I did so the dark openings on our right, which led into the auditorium, bloomed with light.
I jerked and spun round, pointing my howdah at the nearest opening. I expected things to pour from them: Tallarian’s nightmarish conglomerations of flesh and metal; flying piranhas with vast mouths and jagged teeth; monsters with tentacles and wings and too many eyes.
But nothing happened. Nothing but the fact that somewhere in the auditorium someone had turned on the lights.
From the angle and the subdued glow I guessed the illumination was coming from the stage. I moved silently towards the nearest opening, Hawkins behind me. Pressing myself against the wall beside the wide arch, I took a peek around the corner. The stage was down on my left, faced by sloping rows of seats. From here, with the rest of the auditorium in darkness, it reminded me of the mouth of a furnace fed by a wide conical chute.
There was a wooden chair in the centre of the stage and Clover was sitting in it, slumped forward. She wasn’t moving. I hoped she was simply unconscious. The fact she hadn’t fallen off the chair suggested she was tied to it, but from where I stood it was impossible to tell. I couldn’t see anyone else, but the message was clear:
Come and get her if you dare.
My stomach clenched to see her so exposed and vulnerable, but I felt a measure of relief too. Although I couldn’t say for certain whether she was alive, at least she hadn’t suffered the same fate as Lacey, who had clearly been deemed surplus to requirements.
My prime suspect for Lacey’s murder and Clover’s capture was, of course, Willoughby, though perhaps I was jumping to conclusions and there was more to this situation than met the eye? Whoever he, she or it turned out to be, however, I wondered how effective my howdah would be against them.
Turning to Hawkins I said, ‘We should approach the stage from opposite sides of the auditorium. I’ll go in this side and crawl down using the seats for cover, and you can do the same from the other side. What do you think?’
Hawkins was as imperturbable as ever. Nodding slowly he said, ‘I don’t suppose that we’ve arrived here undetected, but it’s as workable a plan as any. May I make one suggestion, though, sir?’
‘Go for it.’
‘Please allow me to draw the attention of our enemy while you remain concealed. With luck my presence will be sufficient to entice the blackguard from hiding, which may allow you to take a potshot at him.’
‘You really think he’ll be that gullible?’
‘Frankly? No. But I still believe it’s worth a try. Is it not better to make a heroic stand whilst endeavouring to rescue a maiden fair than to sneak away with one’s tail between one’s legs and leave said maiden to a grisly fate?’
There were times when I didn’t know whether Hawkins was being entirely serious; times when his choice of words seemed a parody of the ultra-English persona he had adopted, and at the same time to hint at a gallows humour so black it was impenetrable. I looked at him quizzically.
‘Are you sure you’re Hungarian?’
He responded with a stream of guttural, Eastern European sounding words.
‘That’s easy for you to say,’ I muttered. ‘What does it mean?’
‘It is the beginning of my country’s national anthem. The poetic translation, as opposed to the literal one, is thus:
O, my God, the Magyar bless
With thy plenty and good cheer!
With thine aid his just cause press,
Where his foes to fight appear.’
‘Very nice,’ I said. ‘Very appropriate.’
A thin smile appeared on his face. ‘Ours is a just cause, sir. Let us hope that it is enough to win the day.’
He turned and hurried back along the corridor. I gave him a couple of minutes to get into position, then I bent low and slipped through the arched opening. I scuttled across to the seat closest to me – the last one on row R – and crouched beside it. As I paused, looking around, even craning my neck to peer into the shadows above to make sure nothing on the balcony or in one of the boxes was about to drop on me, I was suddenly struck by how totally and crazily my life had changed in the space of a few months. At the beginning of September I’d been gearing up for another year of teaching, of looking after my youngest daughter, of hoping I’d be able to juggle work and home and keep everyone I cared about happy. And now my life had flipped upside down and inside out, and I was a completely different person. I barely recognised the man I’d once been, and that saddened me more than I could say. His life, his simple ambitions, seemed unattainable to me now. Even though I was straining every sinew to become that man again, in my heart of hearts I doubted it would ever happen. How could it? I’d come too far, seen too much. I was a murderer, and a marked man, and however this whole crazy business worked out I would never be safe and normal again. Yet I still clung to that hope, because… well, because there wasn’t anything else I could cling to. I had to believe I would get the obsidian heart back, and then Kate, and then my life. If I didn’t believe that, then nothing would be worth anything ever again.
I shook the thought free and began to crawl towards the stage. I was pretty sure I was shielded by the rows of seats, but it was so quiet in the auditorium I had no guarantee my scuffling progress couldn’t be heard from one end of the room to the other.
Although adrenaline was racing through my system, by the time I reached row H I was knackered. I was tense and scared, my heart was pounding, and even though the temperature inside the theatre wasn’t much higher than it was in the streets, I was sweating, my skin crawling with an almost feverish heat.
I paused, took several deep breaths, and decided that perhaps now was a good time to raise my head above the parapet, check what was going on. When I did so, nothing seemed to have changed. Clover was still slumped on her chair and her attacker (Lacey’s killer?) was still out of sight. I glanced to my right, along the row of seats to the other side of the auditorium, but there was no sign of Hawkins. Neither could I hear anything, which I told myself was a good thing – because if I couldn’t hear Hawkins, then maybe our enemy couldn’t hear me.
I knew if I was going to rescue Clover I’d have to venture into the open sooner or later, but I was determined to put that off for as long as possible. Or maybe I wouldn’t need to show myself. Maybe Hawkins’ plan would work and by using himself as a decoy we’d be able to turn the tables. I wondered, if the opportunity arose to pull the trigger, whether I’d actually be able to shoot someone, and what it would feel like if I did. I might only get a split second to think about it and do it – in which case, could I be decisive enough, clinical enough?
After a few moments I felt able to carry on. I crawled down to row A, and once I was there, facing the left-hand corner of the stage, I eased myself into as comfortable a position as I could and waited for Hawkins to make the first move. I pointed the gun vaguely at the stage, though not at Clover. Now that I was close enough, I was relieved to see that, although she was unconscious, she was definitely breathing.
A minute passed. I shifted position, my left foot starting to go numb. Had something happened to Hawkins? It sickened me to think he might have encountered Lacey’s killer.
Shuffling back slightly, I peered along the narrow aisle between the first two rows, trying to make out any movement at the far end. I guessed that would be where Hawkins was hiding if he’d made it. Could I see something? The dark bulk of a figure, crouched out of sight as I was? Or was my mind playing tricks? Was I only seeing what I wanted to see?
‘The game is up, Mr Locke. Please rise to your feet without delay, and then throw your weapon into the darkness behind you. If you fail to do so, your pretty wife will be slaughtered where she sits.’
Though I froze, it didn’t surprise me that it was Willoughby’s voice that rang out through the auditorium. Even though I was pressed into the shadows of the seats on my right, and there was no way I could be seen from the stage, I felt like a rabbit in the headlights. I was about to obey when it struck me that Willoughby might have spotted Hawkins and mistaken him for me – in which case, if Hawkins could keep his face concealed…
‘Without delay, Mr Locke,’ Willoughby repeated, his voice hardening. ‘And the same goes for your companion. I shall count up to three, and if, by that time, you have not risen to your feet, Mrs Locke will die. One…’
I scrambled upright.
‘Stop!’
On the far side of the auditorium, I was aware of another dark shape rising too.
‘The weapon, Mr Locke,’ Willoughby reminded me. I quickly scanned the stage, wondering if a quick shot fired in his direction might send him scrambling for cover, allowing us to grab Clover. But there was no sign of him. If he was standing in the wings he was taking care to remain out of sight. With a sinking heart I turned and flung the howdah into the dark mass of seats behind me. I heard it hit something with a thump and clatter to the floor.
‘And your cane, sir,’ Willoughby said.
Hawkins was still a dark blur on the far side of the auditorium. My eyes registered no more than a rapid suggestion of movement, which was followed by the hollow rattling clatter of his cane falling among the empty seats.
‘Excellent. Now, gentlemen, if you would both take your places in the front row the performance can begin. Seats fifteen and sixteen will suffice, I think.’
Willoughby sounded confident and mocking – and why not? Feeling vulnerable, I stepped out in front of row A and walked along it until I found seat fifteen. I sat down, and a moment later Hawkins sat down beside me, a resigned almost weary look on his face.
For a few seconds nothing happened, and then Willoughby emerged from the wings on our right.
He appeared to be unarmed. Moving smoothly, even delicately, for a man of his bulk, he sauntered to the front of the stage and peered down at us. He looked smug and calculating. He looked like a performer in full command of his audience.
‘Now, gentlemen,’ he said, ‘perhaps you will enlighten me as to who exactly you are, and why you are taking such a singular interest in my affairs?’
I tried to bluff it out. ‘You know who we are. We’re helping the police. We’re investigating the murder that—’
‘Poppycock!’ boomed Willoughby. ‘You are no more a peeler than I, Mr Locke. From our mutual friend Mr Lacey I gleaned that you may more accurately be termed a man of business, though it appears that even in this sphere you are little more than a lucky investor, who makes a comfortable living by skimming the cream of profit from an admittedly impressive array of providers. But who are you really? What are you? Why have you been paying our Mr Lacey to remain alert for, as he termed it, “unusual occurrences”?’
So Lacey had been interrogated before he died. And tortured too? I didn’t want to know.
Sighing I said, ‘There’s no need to play games, Mr Willoughby. You know who I am.’
Willoughby was silent for a moment. Then, a little less confidently, he said, ‘So it’s true? The Society has tracked me down?’
I blinked. ‘What Society?’
His face twisted in anger. ‘Now who is playing games, Mr Locke? Please do not provoke me. It is far too late to profess ignorance.’
He stepped across to Clover’s chair, grabbed her hair in one meaty fist and yanked her head back. She groaned, but remained unconscious. I jumped to my feet.
‘Leave her alone! There’s no need for that!’
‘Sit down!’ screamed Willoughby. ‘Sit down or I swear I shall snap this whore’s neck and damn the consequences!’
I raised my hands and lowered myself back into my seat.
‘All right, take it easy. Let’s just talk like reasonable human beings.’
‘Human beings!’ he snorted. ‘Is that what we still are?’
I wasn’t sure how to respond to that, and he didn’t look as though he expected me to. Flapping a hand dismissively, he said, ‘So talk, Mr Locke. Talk for your lives and for my own. Tell me all that you know.’
I frowned. This wasn’t working out the way I’d imagined. Willoughby wasn’t behaving how I’d expect one of the Wolves of London to behave. He didn’t sound as though he’d lured us into a trap on their behalf, but as though he was running scared. I wondered what this mysterious ‘Society’ was. A rival group to the Wolves of London? There was only one way to find out.
I started to talk. I told Willoughby I didn’t want trouble; that all I wanted was to find the obsidian heart. I expected a reaction to that, but all he did was stare at me with bafflement and growing impatience on his face.
‘What nonsense is this?’ he growled, his fist tightening in Clover’s hair.
‘It’s not nonsense, I promise you.’ Choosing my words carefully, I said, ‘I didn’t come here looking for you, Mr Willoughby. I came because of what happened to the girl in the yard. Her death was… unusual. Impossible. The way she was killed was… beyond the means of any normal person.’
I held up my hands, as though pressing home my point.
‘The group I’m looking for is the only one I’m aware of capable of such things. They call themselves the Wolves of London, and they have something I want… something I need…’
‘This “obsidian heart” you spoke of?’
‘Yes. It’s the only thing that will allow me to find my daughter again. I’ve been scouring London for it, employing people to act as my eyes and ears. So you see, Mr Willoughby, I have nothing to do with this “Society” of yours. I’ve never even heard of them.’
‘Why don’t you tell us about them?’ suggested Hawkins. ‘Perhaps we can aid each other?’
Willoughby was silent, his eyes flickering from me to Hawkins and back again. I could tell he was wavering. I could tell that beneath his bluster and arrogance, he was scared shitless.
With a silent apology to Horace Lacey, and to the young girl slaughtered in the yard, I said, ‘Hawkins is right, Mr Willoughby. Perhaps we can help each other. I can’t believe that the Wolves and the Society are unrelated. So why don’t we trade our information? You look as though you could do with someone to talk to.’
Willoughby licked his lips. Untangling his fist from Clover’s hair, he took a couple of small, tottering steps backward. For a moment I thought we’d got through to him, thought that Hawkins and I had achieved – for the time being, at least – an uneasy truce.
I was shocked, therefore, when he muttered, ‘No, I can’t risk it. I will have to kill you – all of you. I will have to change my identity once more, start again elsewhere…’
With surprising spryness – or perhaps not so surprising, considering his background – Hawkins leaped to his feet.
‘Kill us?’ he scoffed. ‘And how do you propose to do that, sir? You are not even armed. I suggest that your energy would be better served in flight.’
‘Careful, Hawkins,’ I said, jumping up too and putting a hand on his arm. ‘I think there’s more to him than meets the eye.’
But Willoughby seemed to be having problems. He tottered back a couple more steps, swaying slightly, as if about to faint. His mouth dropped open, his eyes rolled up in their sockets, and he started to shake violently. His face turned red and he began to make guttural, choking sounds. His huge body spasmed violently with each ratcheting bark. He sounded like a cat coughing up fur balls.
‘He’s having a seizure,’ I said, thinking the stress must have been too much for him. ‘Maybe even a heart attack.’
Grabbing our chance, Hawkins and I rushed forward and clambered on to the stage. Although he was a good twenty years older than me, my butler was a damn sight more agile than I was. While I was still hauling myself up and over the wooden lip, Hawkins, having vaulted past me, was rising smoothly to his feet and striding towards Clover. She was coming round now, groaning, trying to raise her head. Behind her, having retreated almost to the back of the stage, Willoughby was shaking like a volcano about to erupt, his head a crimson balloon, his mouth yawning open.
Hawkins reached Clover at the same moment that something oozed from between Willoughby’s widely stretched jaws and hit the stage with a splat. I was clambering to my feet, and so only caught a glimpse of the thing as it emerged, but when it hit the wooden boards my head snapped up.
What the hell was it? My first thought was that Willoughby had coughed up one of his internal organs. I stared at him, expecting to see blood on his chin and waistcoat, his body crumpling to the floor like a downed zeppelin.
But he was still standing, his eyes rolled back so that only the whites showed. He was still making that awful furball noise too, his body heaving with each retching expulsion.
I looked at the thing that had come out of him. Hawkins had frozen in the process of untying the rope that secured Clover to the chair and was staring at it too. It was blue-grey and as smooth, wet and gleaming as a fresh liver. About the size of a clenched fist, it was roughly spherical in shape. At first it was inert – and then it moved! I felt a jolt go through me; I might even have cried out.
I guess what the thing really looked like was an ocean creature, a sea slug or something, but in that moment I thought of it only as a living, breathing tumour. Something nasty, poisonous, that might invade a human body and make its host ill, and have to be cut out before it could grow and spread.
It moved again, its gelid mass giving a weird lurching spasm, like a newborn taking its first gulp of air. Then it began to pulse and shudder, its blue-grey flesh rippling as thick, dark veins bulged on its surface.
And then, as if that wasn’t repulsive enough, a mass of spines suddenly sprang from its slick flesh like porcupine quills.
‘Fuck!’ I blurted, and even Hawkins cried out in surprise.
At the back of the stage Willoughby gave another choking heave, and a second blue-grey lump surged out of his mouth. Even as this one plopped wetly to the ground like a puppy in a placental sac, he heaved again, disgorging a third creature, and then, in quick succession, a fourth and a fifth.
I thought of the heart, of the way it could change form, become fluid. I thought of the spike that had extruded from its surface like the eyestalk of a snail, but which had turned instantly hard enough to puncture Barnaby McCallum’s skull as easily as if it were an egg.
Were these… things akin to that? Or were they the heart’s antitheses? Its nemeses even?
And then I thought of Horace Lacey and my original notion of airborne piranhas.
‘Fuck!’ I shouted again, stumbling forward and grabbing Hawkins’ arm. ‘It’s them! They’re the things that killed Lacey!’
Maybe I should have made the connection immediately, but connections are easy to spot when you’re observing events from afar. When you’re in the thick of it, with no time to do anything but react, it’s different. The obvious isn’t so obvious then.
Clawing at the knots securing Clover to the chair, and despairing that there were so fucking many of them, I yelled, ‘We’ve got to get her free! We’ve got to get out of here!’
I heard Willoughby cough up another of the creatures, and then another. My fingers were starting to bleed from my attempts to pick the knots apart. Beside me, Hawkins was working just as urgently, but with less panic. I heard another wet splat, then two more. I stole a quick glance at Willoughby. What I saw yanked a gasp out of me.
He had deflated. He’d become thin. But it wasn’t a healthy thinness. It was not only his clothes that now hung grotesquely loose on his bones, but his skin. His face looked as though it was melting, wattles and dewlaps of flesh swinging pendulously from his jawline, his mouth and eyes sagging at the corners. He looked like a waxwork under a heat lamp, or a child clothed in the flesh of an adult.
Appalling as this was, it didn’t horrify me as much as the creatures milling around his feet. There must have been two dozen of them now, maybe thirty. They were quivering and pulsing, as if girding themselves for action. Around half were bristling with porcupine-like spines; the rest still seemed to be acclimatising.
I renewed my attempts to untie Clover, but the knots were tight and many. I tried to focus on my task, but I was aware that half a dozen metres away the things that had killed Lacey and the girl in the yard were massing for attack.
Several possible courses of action spiralled through my head. Should Hawkins and I pick up Clover, chair and all, and carry her out between us? No, we’d be too slow, too hampered by our burden. Should we attack the creatures then? But how? By kicking them? Stamping on them? But what if that just invigorated them? Goaded them into retaliation?
Perhaps my best option was to look for my gun? I knew roughly where it had landed – or thought I did.
But no, I couldn’t abandon Hawkins and Clover, not even temporarily. If they were attacked while I was poking about in the dark, I’d never forgive myself.
The only thing to do, therefore, was stand shoulder to shoulder with my friends against whatever horror we were about to face. Whether we lived or died, the three of us would do it together.
Then another possibility occurred to me: what if I attacked Willoughby? Punched him senseless? Maybe the creatures were mentally linked to him in some way, and maybe, by knocking him out, it would neutralise them?
Much as the prospect of approaching the spiny, pulsing monstrosities repulsed me I decided it had to be worth a try. I blurted my intentions to Hawkins, but he shook his head.
‘Let me do it, sir. I’m more dispensable than you.’
‘Bollocks! Besides, it was me who got you into this. I should be the one to try and put it right.’
‘I wouldn’t be here at all if you hadn’t rescued me, sir. I owe you my life.’
‘No, you don’t!’ I said, appalled. ‘Don’t ever—’
‘Too late!’
The cry, shrill but slurred, came from Clover. Though still groggy, she was recovering quickly now. I glanced at her and saw her looking in Willoughby’s direction. I followed her gaze.
‘Oh, shit!’
While Hawkins and I had been arguing – swinging our dicks at each other, Clover would have said – Willoughby’s army of spiny, man-eating tumours had continued to rally themselves. Now, bristling with spines, they were turning in our direction. Or, considering they had no faces, they at least gave the impression they were.
‘Leave me,’ Clover muttered. ‘Just go.’
‘No way,’ I said.
She shoved at me angrily. ‘Don’t be a dick, Alex. There’s no point us all dying.’
‘We’re not leaving,’ I said. ‘We’ll fucking carry you if we have to.’
But then there was no more time to debate. With a horrible slithering sound Willoughby’s creatures surged towards us.
‘Call them off!’
The voice, harsh and rasping, echoed round the auditorium. At first I had no idea where it had come from, and then, as the advancing mass came to a sudden halt, I realised that Willoughby had the point of a large rusty knife pressed into his baggy-skinned throat. Standing behind him, holding the knife, his other hand clamped around the actor’s now bony shoulder, was a filthy figure in a ragged overcoat and battered bowler hat.
‘Mr Hulse,’ I said, almost laughing with relief. ‘Where did you spring from?’
‘Come in round the back, didn’t I? Been keeping my beady eye on him, just like you told me. I followed him here, then waited outside to see if he come out again. When he didn’t I took myself off for a pie; the snow was coming down fierce, and I was in need of something hot to keep me tripes from perishing. I got back in time to see you arrive in yer hansom. The way you run up them steps I thought: aye-aye. So instead of following through the front, I decides to go round the back. That way, I thought, if it comes to it, we can attack the problem from two sides, maybe catch our little fishy unawares.’ He winked. ‘And there you has it. Worked a treat.’
Although we weren’t out of the woods, I couldn’t help but grin. ‘Mr Hulse, you may have just saved our lives.’
‘Worth a bonus, I reckon.’
‘A big bonus,’ I agreed.
Hawkins was still working at Clover’s ropes. With a sudden yank he finally succeeded in loosening what must have been a major knot. The rope sagged around her middle, allowing her to tug her arms free. Moments later she manoeuvred her way out of the chair and stood up, then immediately staggered to one side. I grabbed her before she could fall.
‘Whoa,’ she said, clutching at Hawkins and me for support. ‘Still a bit punch drunk. The bastard chloroformed me just after I found Lacey. Caught me with my pants down. Not literally.’
Now that Clover was free, Hawkins had turned his attention to the mass of spiny tumour-creatures, which had flowed halfway across the stage and then stopped. They were poised, quivering, as though awaiting further instructions.
‘Clearly the creatures are beholden to Mr Willoughby,’ he muttered.
‘Which makes him the murderer,’ I said.
‘Please,’ Willoughby’s voice was almost as rusty as the knife at his throat, ‘let me explain.’
‘Explain murder? This’ll be good,’ said Clover.
‘Not murder,’ protested Willoughby. ‘Survival.’
Perhaps it was simply the knife, but along with his corpulence had gone the bluster and arrogance we’d become used to. The transformation from the man we’d seen bullying his fellow actors at yesterday’s rehearsal to the pitiful wreck before us now was startling. I wondered whether the creatures had something to do with that, whether they acted as storehouses for Willoughby’s viciousness – or, more to the point, whether they were living, breathing distillations of the more vile aspects of his character.
‘The Society did this to me,’ he wheedled. ‘In fear of my life, I joined their number, and was transformed into a… a ghoul, forced to gorge on misery, grief and terror, base emotions which in turn manifest as these vile forms that feed on human flesh. It is the only way I can be provided with the sustenance I need, the only way I can survive. It’s a miserable existence, but don’t you see? I have no option but to kill, and to keep on killing. I don’t wish to do it, but I must!’
He looked abject, but Clover sneered. ‘Oh, boo hoo! My heart bleeds. Who are you to think your life is worth more than the lives of the people you’ve killed? Of course you’ve got another option, you selfish bastard. You’ve always had another option. You should have killed yourself!’
Livid with fury, she took a lurching step towards him, as if intending to take a swing at him. I grabbed her arm.
‘Careful. Don’t get too close to those things.’
She glared at me – then almost instantly nodded and I felt her muscles relax.
‘Sorry, it’s just… he makes me sick.’
‘I know,’ I said. ‘Me too.’
Although I shared Clover’s revulsion, I didn’t want this to turn into a slanging match. All I wanted was information that might give us a possible route back to the heart and Kate.
‘Tell me about the Society, Mr Willoughby,’ I said. ‘Who are they? Where do they come from?’
Willoughby looked drained; his voice rose barely above a mumble. ‘I know precious little about them – and that, I swear, is true. Their full title is the Society of Blood. They are a clandestine organisation, and an itinerant one. They have no meeting house, no set location in which to conduct their affairs.’
‘How did you encounter them?’ asked Hawkins.
Willoughby began to shake his head, and then, with Hulse’s knife jabbing his throat, thought better of it.
‘I remember nothing of the encounter. I regret to say I was drunk and high on opium. Before becoming an actor I lived the life of a libertine, a lotus eater. Mine was a debauched existence. I sought no goal but my own gratification…’
‘So what’s new?’ muttered Clover.
‘There is an opium den in Limehouse, the Thousand Sorrows in Floral Court. It was there that I made the acquaintance of a man named Darnley, who spoke of the Society as if it were a paradise on Earth – a place in which a man might discover all the sinful pleasures he could imagine, as well as many that he could not. It was Darnley who enticed me to accompany him to one of the Society’s gatherings, which was where I encountered an individual known as the Dark Man, who transformed me into the lowly creature I am now.’
I gasped as if punched in the stomach.
‘The Dark Man? Who is he? What did he look like?’
Willoughby – as well as he was able with Hulse’s hand on his shoulder – shrugged.
‘I recall nothing of the encounter, nor of the process by which he changed me.’ His voice, already a mumble, became even more hushed. ‘But some claim he is the very Devil.’
Thrown by Willoughby’s mention of the Dark Man, who I had only ever previously heard referred to by Kate’s mother, Lyn, and who I had always assumed was simply her way of personalising her own psychosis, I tried to keep on track.
‘A while ago you accused Hawkins and me of being members of the Society. You said you were worried they had finally tracked you down. So does that mean you’re on the run from them, that you and the Dark Man don’t see eye to eye?’
Willoughby sighed. ‘The reason that the Dark Man altered me – the reason he alters anybody – was to make me an acolyte, one of a group whose numbers grow by the day. But I did not wish for that to become my fate, Mr Locke. I may be wicked, but I am not half so wicked as my pursuers.’
My mind was racing. The Society of Blood and the Wolves of London. Were they one and the same, a slippery, ever-shifting organisation with as many names as the Devil? And the Dark Man: who or what was he? Their leader? The spider at the centre of their web? Or were there many ‘dark men’? Was it simply a nominal title, a catch-all term?
‘What else can you tell me?’
Willoughby spread his hands, the skin on them wrinkled, ill fitting. ‘Nothing. That is all I know.’
‘What shall we do with him, Alex?’ Clover said.
Why ask me? I wanted to snap. I’m not your boss! But that would have been unfair.
‘He’s a murderer. We should hand him over to the police.’
‘No! I beg of you!’ Willoughby made a half-hearted attempt to pull away from Hulse, then squawked in pain as Hulse jabbed the knife harder into his scrawny throat, drawing blood.
Trying to stay calm, Willoughby said, ‘If I am in custody the Dark Man will find me. I beg you to let me go. If you do, I will disappear, go about my business quietly. You will never hear from me again, I sw—’
He was still speaking when Hulse slashed his throat. The cut was deep and swift and savage, and made a noise like serrated metal tearing through cardboard. Blood sprayed everywhere, jetting over the wooden boards of the stage and over Willoughby’s creatures, which instantly began to shrivel, to dissolve into powder, giving off a high, sickening, mushroomy stench. In less than the time it took for Willoughby’s emaciated body to hit the floor with all the grace of a sack of rocks, the creatures had become nothing but blue decay.
Shocked by the suddenness of Willoughby’s death, I could only stare at Hulse, who sniffed.
‘Pardon me,’ he said, ‘but it struck me that a feller like him ought not to be out and about in this world. Unnatural, he is. Fierce unnatural.’ He leaned over and wiped his blood-smeared knife on Willoughby’s jacket. ‘Besides which, my poor old ears had had enough of his whining. Getting on my nerves something rotten he was.’