19

THE BUTCHER AND THE SHUFFLEHEADS

t was a new persona, not one I’d seen before. In this form he could pass for a distant relative of the pirate’s, shorter and skinnier, thinner-faced and pointy-chinned with wild straggles of silver-streaked black hair jutting from under his lopsided top hat. The long dark coat flapped at his shins as he steered me back along deserted Camden High Street. The soles of his bright red, oversized clown boots crackled on the pavement.

‘Not meaning to rush you,’ he said. ‘You’re in no fit state, but that’s why we should hurry. This won’t wait until we return to headquarters. There’s no time. We’ll have to improvise.’

‘What’s happening, Mr October?’ I said. ‘Where are we going?’

‘Not far. There’s a little place around the corner, an office we keep for times like this. The poison running through your veins has to be tackled soon, not later.’

‘How serious is it?’ I was scared to ask.

He shook his head and somewhere in the recesses of his clothing he discovered a black leather doctor’s bag, which he slid out to carry at his side. It bumped against his leg as we went.

‘Potentially lethal,’ he said, ‘but its effects are reversible. How long since you were first exposed?’

‘Dunno. Maybe a week. I suppose it was when—’

He hushed me, glancing away. ‘Wait. We’ll continue this in a moment. See there. . .’

Two figures on the far side of the high street were keeping pace but not looking towards us. Their outlines were familiar but their faces fell into shade. If these weren’t the same two spies I’d been seeing all week they looked pretty close.

‘See how bold they’re becoming,’ he said. ‘They’ve kept to the dark ever since their defeat, but now they’re gaining confidence. They’re starting to come out. This way, quickly.’

He led me off the high street along a short alleyway and on through a tangle of residential rows with pink and blue painted walls, up one street and down the next. Faint and breathless, I had to strain to keep up, and he kept slowing to encourage me on, the anxiety clear on his face. Whoever those followers were, we needed to lose them.

‘Along here, not much further,’ he said, turning onto a mews of cottages with doors that opened straight onto the cobbled street. This place had the same out-of-time feel as the alley outside Pandemonium House, and I wondered if, like Eventide Street, it was far off the map.

‘So far so good,’ he said, rattling a large bunch of keys and unlocking a door on the right. ‘They’re still behind us, but they know we’re on to them so they’ve gone into hiding. Follow me.’

We stepped inside a low-lit entrance hall, which brightened as he adjusted the hissing flame of a gas lamp whose light bloomed up the bare plaster walls. The floor was cluttered with office materials, file boxes and dusty manuals and tall piles of books. A rusty bicycle with a missing wheel leaned against the wall below an uncarpeted wooden staircase.

‘Excuse the state of the place,’ he said, keeping the front door open a crack to peek outside, then locking and bolting it after him. ‘The work just keeps piling up. This way.’

At the end of the hall he ushered me through a door on the left. The room we entered was as fusty and old as the receipts office, but it clearly had a different purpose. The ceiling-high shelves were stuffed with medical texts and journals, books on anatomy, toxins and surgical procedures. At the far side, near the curtained window, was a handbasin with a paper towel dispenser and a trolley bed with a pillow but no sheets. A mahogany desk and two chairs stood by the near-side wall under a medicine cabinet and a variety of medical posters which showed diagrams of male and female bodies with vital organs colour-coded in soft pastel greens, purples and pinks.

‘Take a seat, boy,’ he said, planting his bag on the desk. He removed his long coat, under which he wore waist-high trousers and a checkered waistcoat buttoned to the throat. Finding nowhere to hang the coat, he draped it over his chair.

‘Who were those two following us?’ I asked.

‘Who do you think? But never mind them – we have to get started.’

He began rooting through the cabinet, scattering bottles and blister packs of pills to the floor. Finding what he wanted, he returned to the desk and poured a dense deep green liquid from a narrow bottle into a thimble-sized measuring cup and pushed it towards me.

‘Drink this. It will stall the effects while we find a way to reverse what the toxin is doing.’

Lifting the tiny cup between my thumb and forefinger, I sniffed at it, then downed it in one. It didn’t have the bitter medicinal aftertaste I’d expected, but a sharp minty flavour with a slight burn and long aftertaste.

‘Not so terrible, is it?’ he said. ‘Something like crème de menthe, but I don’t expect you’ll have tasted that at your age.’ He seated himself, less flustered now. ‘So tell me about the poison. You were saying, before we were rudely interrupted. . .?’

‘It started about a week ago, but I didn’t know it was poison then. I thought I had the flu.’

‘Yes, of course. An insidious thing, a slow, systematic, airborne dosage.’ Finding a small notepad and pen in his desk, he scribbled something in an illegible hand. ‘And you said this came by way of a cactus plant?’

‘I didn’t say. Did Kate tell you that?’

‘Her report was very thorough.’

‘So where is she now? I thought she’d be with you.’

‘She did what she had to and went home,’ he said. ‘Like you, she isn’t allowed to work all hours.’ He frowned at his notes, scribbled something else. ‘I’ve heard of these cacti. They don’t exist in this world. The enemy bring them in from the dark territories they call Abhorra. This particular genera, toxi-poloxi, is native there.’

I moved restlessly on my chair. ‘Well, I wouldn’t know about that.’

‘You wouldn’t, and no matter. I’m certain it’s the source, though, so at least we know what we’re up against. But think hard now, boy . . . could the poison have been delivered in any other way?’

I shook my head. ‘Not that I know of.’

He scribbled on. ‘So you weren’t fed anything, given anything to eat or drink against your will. You didn’t eat at Vileheart’s house, did you?’

‘No, but. . .’ I stopped, feeling the trace of a memory fluttering just out of range.

‘No unusual foodstuffs, concoctions or medicines?’ he went on.

‘Wait a minute.’ Suddenly it came to me, even though I’d been semi-comatose in a darkened room at the time. ‘Vileheart’s friend, Dr Rosewood.’

‘What about him?’

‘He saw me at the house this afternoon, gave me an injection, he said to take my temperature down.’

A light snapped on behind his beady eyes. This was significant. Dropping the pen, he rounded the desk and was on me in a flash, feeding me a thermometer, shining a pen-torch into my eyes while his thumb pinned my lids open.

‘Confound it,’ he sighed.

‘Why? What’s wrong?’

‘Well, obviously that was no ordinary doctor but Vileheart’s accomplice, and the injection he gave you was more of the same – a more concentrated dosage of mescahydrocarciomyathalate.’

‘Mesca what?’

‘No matter. There’s less time than I thought.’ He rounded the desk to take up the pen again. ‘How do you feel? I don’t mean just generally. How do you feel this very minute?’

In truth I couldn’t tell. The wasted, heady feeling had never been far away all day. At the edge of my sights the small room was gently warping like a reflection in a hall of mirrors.

‘Funny,’ I said. ‘Just funny. Like everything’s distorted.’

‘And the headache and the sickness?’

‘Not so bad, but still there.’

He jotted this down, then looked at me again. Under his clenched brow the small dark eyes shone like a rat’s, and his skinny chin twitched.

‘What else?’

‘Not sure.’ The room was turning more violently. ‘Look, can’t you fix me up for a few hours? While we’re sitting here we could be looking for Mum. That’s why I wanted you.’

‘First we have to fix you, then we’ll fix the mere . . . the woman . . . your mother,’ he said, and I blinked at him uncertainly. ‘As you are now, boy, you’re no help to her at all, and no use to the Ministry against such a great and dangerous enemy.’

‘Then who. . .’ The words rolled slow and thick off my tongue. A line of communication had been severed somewhere between my vocal chords and my brain, and I couldn’t be sure what I’d say next. ‘But how . . . but when . . . but can’t you send someone to find her?’ I managed to ask.

‘It’s all in hand,’ he said.

Another thought, or part of a thought, was trying to reach me. There was something here – either in the room itself or in something he’d just said – that didn’t add up.

‘Where’s Lu?’ I asked.

‘Pardon?’ The small eyes were still and unblinking.

‘If this is so urgent, where’s Lu? Where’s your transport? How will we get from here to wherever Mum is without transport, and what about the other stops on your list?’

‘That’s not your problem. Our priority is to deal with what’s happening to you before it gets out of hand.’

‘But we should help Mum first. I’ll take my chances.’

‘You’re delirious,’ he said. ‘Here, come with me. We need to get you settled before I begin.’

He was right. I was close to fainting, too weak to help anyone. When he took my arm I obediently followed to where he was leading me. The room and everything in it drifted in and out with his voice. A stomach cramp doubled me up.

‘What was it you gave me to drink?’ I asked sleepily.

‘Don’t question what I’m doing,’ he said. ‘This is for your own good.’ The next few words after that were lost.

The soft mattress on the trolley was as welcoming as a real bed. As he helped me onto it I realised how badly I needed sleep, how long it had been since I’d slept properly. But an alarm was sounding in my brain. As I tried to sit up I realised I couldn’t because of the first strap he’d secured across my chest. Now he was tying a second strap around my legs.

‘For your own protection,’ he said. ‘A precaution to keep you from hurting yourself.’

‘Mr October, please. . .’ I began, and it was only then that everything began to make sense. ‘You’re not – you’re not Mr October, are you?’

‘Don’t be silly.’ He worked at the straps until three of them held me fast, then looked at me inquiringly, head cocked to one side. ‘Who else would I be?’

‘Dunno, but you’re not him, that’s all I know.’

‘Delirious, as I said. Why would you think that?’

‘Because of what you said, nearly said about Mum. What did you nearly call her?’

‘I don’t recollect. Probably nothing. In your present state you must have misheard.’

I lunged at him. The straps held me down. ‘You said, “mere”.’

‘I said what?’

‘You said, “mere” and then stopped yourself. You were about to call her a mere mortal.’

He sniffed and stroked his chin. ‘See how the toxin does its devious work, first attacking the body, then the mind. If you’ll be quiet for a minute we may still be able to do something about it.’

Now he brought the black leather bag and set it on the trolley by my feet and started fishing around inside it. A clink of metal objects did nothing to calm my nerves.

‘Prove it,’ I cried, rocking under the constraints. ‘Prove to me you’re Mr October.’

‘And how am I supposed to do that?’ he said, rifling through the bag. ‘You know who I am.’

‘No, I don’t.’

‘This is preposterous.’

‘Show me something else,’ I said, nearly choking. My mouth had become arid, bone dry. ‘Show me someone else, another of your faces, and I might believe you.’

‘If you insist.’

He did change then, only a little, not enough to convince me, only enough to plunge a needling terror into my heart. The thin jaw-line hardly wavered, the gaunt cheeks sucked inwards, and across his face came a slowly spreading grin, big-toothed and stretching from ear to ear.

‘Seems you’re as sharp as they say,’ said Professor Adolphus Rictus, number one on the Ministry’s Most Wanted list. ‘It’s true, there’s no denying it. But now the time for talk is done.’

He swept from the bag the tools he’d been searching for – surgical instruments of some kind, one in each hand. In his left he held what looked like a chrome-clawed eagle’s foot with gleaming needle-sharp talons, and in his right a long, silver, two-pronged fork. The instruments were alive in his grasp, quivering and stabbing the air, twinkling in the light.

‘See how excitable they are,’ Professor Rictus said. ‘They know a good strong soul when they scent it.’

‘Let me up,’ I cried. ‘Let me out!’

That was the furthest thing from his mind. The chilling grin broadened, dominating his entire face as he bent over me.

‘You’ve been a long way today, boy,’ he said, ‘but you have no idea how far you still have to go. Shall I take you the rest of the way now?’

Gasping and snorting under the straps, I couldn’t take my eyes off those hideous surgical tools as he swiped one against the other like a butcher honing his knives. The fork’s prongs flickered. The claw-handed instrument flexed its talons, which squirmed like serpents on a gorgon’s head. Professor Rictus eyed them with a gleeful grin.

‘Lucky I found you first,’ he said. ‘Then again, I suppose you’re past believing in luck. It’s hard to believe in anything at all when your own kind turn against you.’

Again he swished the tools together, and they twitched with pleasure, eager to begin the work.

‘What?’ I said. ‘Who turned against me?’

‘The Ministry of Pandemonium, of course. You’ve heard their silence. I heard it too, many generations ago. The Ministry’s silence is the most dreadful sound imaginable.’

‘You murdered Miss Webster’s brother. You murdered loads of good people.’

The instruments collided again, and I heard a low tremble of thunder somewhere.

‘Murder?’ Professor Rictus said. ‘I’d say that’s a bit harsh.’

‘You stole Mr Webster’s soul.’

‘Among others, yes.’

‘Then you killed him. It amounts to the same.’

‘I acquired his life force, but after that he gave up of his own accord. You’d be surprised by how many mere mortals continue on without their souls, dead in life. Not much of an existence, it must be said, but he didn’t even try.’

The thunder again. Or maybe not thunder, something more like a pounding knock. So far Professor Rictus seemed unaware of it.

‘Sad for you that it should come to this,’ he went on. ‘At least you may think that now. But you’ll see a glorious day before long, and then you’ll wish you’d joined us sooner.’

If I’d had any spittle I would’ve launched it into his face. ‘Wherever you take me, I’ll keep on fighting you. You’ll be sorry you ever thought of this.’

‘Tough talk for someone in your position,’ he leered, the corners of his grin now meeting the crow’s feet beside his eyes. ‘In time you’ll see reason and wonder why you let yourself in for this. You’ll be glad you were betrayed and thank the one who betrayed you.’

A feverish sweat ran into my eyes. ‘Who betrayed me? How? You’re lying!’

Professor Rictus steadied the eagle-clawed surgical tool. Its slender stem gleamed in the dingy room, and I braced myself for the first cut. The chromium talons flexed and tensed at my throat, then closed around my jacket zipper, easing the jacket open to my waist. Professor Rictus widened his eyes at the logo on my T-shirt.

‘So which Bad Saturday would that be?’ he said. ‘Last week’s or this one?’

‘Go to hell.’

‘Silence, please. I’m contemplating the first incision. And keep still, too. For your own sake it’s best if we make this as brief and painless as possible.’ His eyes were an insane match for his grin as he added, ‘But it won’t be painless, I promise you that.’

With the forked instrument he made a delicate movement in a straight line from the neck of my T-shirt to my solar plexus, slicing the material as if easing a knife through soft butter. The material separated with a faint ripping sound, but he hadn’t touched my flesh, not yet.

‘Well, it’s goodbye and hello,’ he said. ‘See you in our homeland when we’re done.’

He held both hungry twisting tools of torture aloft and ready.

Another growl of thunder resounded through the room. This time it was nearer and this time he heard it too. He froze, and the grin slipped a little. His gaze grew cautious and flashed from the door to me, then back to the door as it exploded inwards, bringing hinges and splintered chunks of door frame with it.

They were storming the surgery.

If the sight of the foursome at the doorway filled me with joy and wonder, it must have struck cold fear into Rictus’s heart. As his face fogged over, the deadly tools stopped moving, becoming worthless scrap metal objects in his hands.

‘Oh. . .’ he murmured. ‘Oh, rats.’

For a split second he looked torn two ways – stand his ground against what was coming or rip me to shreds anyway, just for the sake of it – but Lu was on him before he could blink. Tearing through the room like a lightning bolt, her face as seriously set as a mask, she delivered a forceful high kick that wiped the grin off Rictus’s face once and for all.

It did much more than that, too. The professor’s head spun a full ninety degrees on his shoulders until it faced backwards. His top hat went flying and he dropped the surgical tools. This happened so quickly I hadn’t even registered the others who’d come, but I saw the first of them now.

Tweaking his hat back on his head, Mr October flashed a silver tooth at me. Behind him were two indistinct figures standing in the shade in the hall. As Mr October started inside, Professor Rictus made his move, lurching at Lu with both arms outstretched while his turned-around face glowered back at me. Unable to see where he was going, he blundered past Lu, who stepped neatly aside, and thundered into a bookcase, bringing an avalanche of weighty reading matter down on himself.

The thickest and heaviest of the books, Discorporation: A Surgical Reference, landed squarely at Lu’s feet. She looked at it a moment before picking it up, straining under its great weight, and batted Professor Rictus around the head with all her might – and Lu had considerable might.

The massive blow swivelled his head back the right-way around, face forward. His eyes twirled in their sockets and he faced Lu with a sabre-toothed snarl.

‘Backwards . . . forwards . . . make your bloody mind up, will you?’

And he came at her again, catching her around the midriff with a tackle that brought the two of them careering over me and over the trolley bed to the floor with a crash that shook the room.

Mr October was meanwhile unfastening the straps, his fingers working speedily, his eyes searching my face with some concern.

‘The poison,’ I said.

‘We know. Don’t worry – our medical staff are ready and waiting.’

‘Is it bad?’

‘Bad enough, but we know what to do. We’ve seen this before.’

‘He said it was lethal.’

‘And why believe anything they tell you?’ Mr October said. ‘He’s nothing but a butcher with a liar’s tongue.’

The trolley rocked and skewed aside as Lu and the soul thief Professor Rictus slammed into it. Sitting upright, I leaned over to see Rictus holding Lu in a headlock, the strain of keeping her in place written across his vein-bulging temples. Lu was slippery, though, and in an instant she’d reversed the move, screaming from the effort as she locked her left hand to her right forearm and dug a knee into the small of his back.

‘Aren’t we going to help her?’ I said, eyeing Mr October’s companions as they came forward. ‘Aren’t they? And who are they, anyway?’

‘I’ll explain about them soon enough,’ Mr October said, ‘but honestly, does she look like she needs help? Let her have her moment. There’s a little family history here.’ He checked my eyes with a light as the professor had before him, then signalled me to open my mouth. ‘Wider. Say Ah.’

‘Ah.’

‘That’s good.’

‘What family history?’

The struggle continued. Seizing Professor Rictus by his straggling hair, Lu began smashing his face against the washbasin, time and again. There was a crunch of bone on porcelain, and one yellow tooth pinged off a water pipe.

‘Can you stay upright by yourself? Try swinging your legs round,’ Mr October said. ‘We’ve long suspected Rictus had some connection with the deaths of Lu’s family. To this day her parents and siblings remain off our radar and not on any record. We believe the mah-jong cheat who drove her father to such desperate ends – bankruptcy and suicide – was one of Rictus’s associates.’ As Lu hurled the battered surgeon across the room and another bookshelf exploded around him, Mr October added, ‘Lu believes this too, and has long sworn revenge, so it’s best to let her work it out of her system.’

Lu came around the trolley, snarling and trembling. I’d rarely seen her so focused or furious. Professor Rictus scrambled blindly about the floor as she advanced, her wrists making slight but rapid movements at her sides, movements I’d seen her make in combat before. Whatever the invisible weapons she was able to summon up were, I knew they were lethal.

‘Now I’ll destroy you,’ she told Rictus, but the bark of Mr October’s voice stopped her.

‘Lu! A reminder that destroying him isn’t possible, since strictly speaking he’s isn’t alive. All we can do is banish or bind his kind where they can do no more harm. Besides. . .’ He signalled the other two, who came forward to hoist Rictus to his feet. ‘We need to find out what he knows of the enemy’s plan. Take him to headquarters and punish . . . I mean interrogate him there.’ Then he said to me in an apologetic tone, ‘Not that I approve of Lu’s methods, young man. We should lead by example, although sometimes drastic times do call for drastic measures.’

Lu looked thwarted. She turned to Mr October with the pleading eyes of a little girl whose toys had been confiscated.

‘Just one more?’ she asked politely.

He waved her on. ‘Oh, go on, if you must. Just don’t give me that look.’

It was all the encouragement she needed. Without any physical warning, she lashed the heel of a hand into Rictus’s face, mashing his nose.

Professor Rictus sagged in the arms of the other two. He hissed and spat as they cuffed his hands, his features twisting and contorting to reshape themselves, but he hadn’t the strength to change.

I looked at the two stern shapes who held him. Apart from their smart dark overcoats and highly-polished shoes I could tell very little about them. Even at close range their faces were oddly blurred and unclear and when I squinted I hardly saw them at all.

‘Who are they?’ I asked Mr October. ‘I’ve been seeing these two everywhere, outside my home, on the high street just now. . .’

Mr October said, ‘They’re the Shuffleheads. No one knows their real names and no one knows what they look like. Their faces are ever changing to conceal their true identities – which makes them well suited to undercover work. It’s a hard skill to master, too. I tried it once and it made me queasy. Had to lie down for a while. They were assigned to watch you and your mother because we knew the enemy had singled you out. If not for these two we wouldn’t have found you tonight. It’s them you should thank, not us.’

The Shuffleheads nodded at me, courteous and efficient, their faces unreadable.

‘I’m Dan,’ said one.

‘I’m Don,’ said the other.

‘But not for long,’ they both said together.

‘Take him away, fellas,’ Mr October said, and Lu had to restrain herself from delivering a further crushing blow to the professor before they dragged him out. She sighed and turned back, giving me a little bow.

‘Sorry, got a bit carried away there,’ she said. ‘Are you OK, Ben?’

‘I am now. I will be.’

‘He will be as soon as the toxins are out of his system,’ Mr October said. ‘Better call ahead, Lu. Tell the medics we’re on our way.’