SEVEN

THE BOYS IN TAUPE

 

 

I EMERGED INTO the great cathedral of the entrance hall. The hole in the ceiling, high above me, seemed to be calling for my attention. I ignored it. What was at the top of Angel Tower? Was it watching me now?

“There he is!”

I recognised the piping voice of Honey Peppers. At the same time I saw the large shape of a Quantifier pushing through the crowd towards me. I guessed I was wrong when I assumed that the Daddio had no power here in Angel Tower. Men in dark suits tumbled across the floor, scattered like skittles, bowled over by the huge mass of the Quantifier. For the umpteenth time that day I didn’t bother to argue, I simply turned and ran for the huge revolving door. I spun through it and found my way out into the daylight.

“Captain Wedderburn!”

Miss Elizabeth Baines was waiting outside in a blue gingham dress. She waved a hand at me.

“Later!” I called, and I ran off up the street, heading towards the railway station. Never let it be said the Captain James Wedderburn couldn’t outrun a six-year-old girl, a love-lorn woman and a thirty-five-stone man.

Another Quantifier was waiting by the steps of the railway station. He began to lumber towards me and I turned and made to run on up the street, only to find still more people blocking my way.

“Everything all right here, sir?”

I found myself face to face with Dream London’s finest: the Boys in Taupe.

“Excuse me, officers!” I said. Behind them, the first Quantifier paused and stepped back into the crowd. The Daddio’s men obviously didn’t feel quite so confident on this territory.

“Why, it’s Captain James Wedderburn!” said one of the browncoats. His long tunic was decorated in silver and contained many, many pockets for accepting the numerous bribes and gifts that enable Dream London justice to function.

“Hello there, er... Officer Morrison, isn’t it?”

“That’s right, sir!” He turned to his companion. “Captain Wedderburn here runs a little business over on my old beat. You might remember me talking about it?”

“Captain Wedderburn of Belltower End!” said the other officer, grinning the grin of one who shortly expects to be on the receiving end of someone’s largesse. “Who doesn’t know Captain Wedderburn?”

Who didn’t, I wondered? I was beginning to think all of Dream London knew who I was better than I did. The serifs on Rudolf Donati’s words seemed to have broken off underneath my skin... Nonetheless, I affected a careless bonhomie, all the harder given the look Honey Peppers was giving me in the distance.

“I was just heading back there now as it happens, officers. Perhaps you’d like to accompany me? The girls at Belltower End always appreciate the attention of the Boys in Taupe. It makes them feel so much more secure.”

The two police officers looked at each other.

“Not on our beat, sir,” said Officer Morrison, pulling a sad face.

“... but perhaps,” suggested the other, “perhaps if we were to walk with you part of the way there? We could maybe come and see you another time?”

“Of course,” I said.

We set off down the street together. It was the end of the morning, and the sun was high in the sky, and it seemed that it too was following the path of Captain James Wedderburn.

 

 

THE OLD BILL accompanied me to the railway station by the Aviaries. Golden orioles and scarlet tanagers fought in cages, cheered on by the excited spectators who pushed forward through the clouds of dusty red and yellow feathers.

“They always get excited when there’s a big match coming,” said Officer Grove. “Who do you support, Jim? The Hammers or the Armoury?”

“I support the winning team,” I said, and the pair of them laughed. I plunged my hand into my pocket and pulled out two pieces of candy.

“Here you go, boys,” I said. “A little present.”

“Thank you,” said Officer Grove.

“And I was just wondering. Do officers always carry the Truth Script with them whilst on duty?”

“We do.”

“Do they ever get lost?”

They looked at each other.

“Occasionally, sir,” said Officer Morrison.

“And do the officers get into trouble when they get lost?”

“Oh yes,” said Officer Grove. He looked at his partner. “Though there are ways that can be mitigated. With the right... understanding.”

“I see.” I smiled.

“Do we have an understanding, officers?”

The looked at each other again. The briefest of nods were exchanged.

“And here we are,” said Officer Morrison. “We’ll see you on your train, sir,”

He reached out and shook my hand. I felt a scrap of paper there.

“And I’ll see you soon,” I replied with a wink.

I climbed the steps to the station and rode the train back to the Egg Market, where I made my way to the Laughing Dog.

“Where’s Bill?” I demanded.

The barman gave me a look of bored contempt.

“She’s upstairs with a client.”

“Which room?”

“None of your business. You wait down here until she’s ready.”

I reached across the bar and grabbed him by his greasy leather lapels.

“I said, which room?”

He looked at me, blinking rapidly. “Room 5.”

“Thank you.” I let go of him, then wiped my hands across the front of his jacket before running up the stairs and slamming open the door.

A man lay naked on the bed, face down, crying. Bill sat, fully clothed in a chair, reading a book.

“Wedderburn!” she said, without looking up. “Wait your turn...”

“You.” I pointed to the man on the bed. “Get out.”

The man had turned to look at me, his face a picture of misery.

“But I...”

“I said, get out.”

I took hold of his arm and manhandled him from the room, then I returned and scooped up his clothes, grimacing at the filthy state of his underpants, and threw them out after him.

“I never realised you were that attracted to me,” said Bill, closing her book. “Well, get undressed and start crying.”

“Don’t make jokes,” I said. “You’ve set me up. You, the Cartel, everyone!”

“Why do you say that?” Bill’s face was unreadable. Whatever emotions she was feeling at the moment, she wasn’t letting on to me.

“You let me think that I was walking into that tower undercover. It turns out that everyone in there knows who I am!”

“Nonsense,” she said.

I’d had enough of this. I pulled the piece of paper that Officer Morrison had given me from my pocket and handed it to her.

“What’s this?” she said, reading it. Too late. She obviously hadn’t recognised what it was. She did now.

“You bastard,” she said.

“Ain’t it the truth?” I smiled. “Now, tell me. You set me up, didn’t you? Everyone knows who I am.”

“Wouldn’t you be disappointed if it was any other way? You love the cult of Captain James Wedderburn! You even talk about yourself in the third person!”

She made it sound like a fault. But Captain Wedderburn doesn’t like to be distracted. I leant forward and lowered my own voice.

“Okay. Why did you send me in there?”

“To find out what was going on.”

The look she gave me made it clear that she didn’t think much of my question.

“But they know who I am!”

She rolled her eyes.

“Of course they know who you are! Angel Tower was going to invite you in there anyway. We just got to you first, put you to work for the good guys.”

That silenced me. Bill was still showing no emotion. She was a cold woman. A competent woman.

“They were going to invite me in anyway?” I said, softly.

“Of course. They’ve been working their way down the hierarchy. First the big fish, then the middle rankers. This past month they’ve invited in all the small time criminals. All the little Napoleons. Hollis, the Devenport Twins, Howling Woolfe, Sweet Sweetlove. All of them have been asked up the tower. It was inevitable that you would be asked, too.”

“Sweetlove?” I said. “Wasn’t he found dead inside an egg in Dream London Zoo?”

“He was.”

“Hollis and Howling Woolfe are doing all right for themselves, though,” I said thoughtfully. “But the Devenports have gone missing...”

Bill smiled.

“There’s a turf war being fought in this city between the gangs and the Daddio. I’d guess that Angel Tower is helping things along.”

I thought about Saturday night, how Luke Pennies had accused me of burning down his buildings, how I’d met both the Cartel and the Daddio’s Quantifier.

“You don’t think I’m special at all,” I said. “You’re just using me.”

Bill’s mouth creased. Finally, the emotion was breaking through. She began to laugh. And laugh and laugh. She seemed to almost lose control of herself.

“You thought... You didn’t...”

She wiped the tears that formed at the corners of her eyes. I waited patiently for her to regain control of herself.

“Of course we’re using you!” she said. “And you didn’t guess? Are you upset? You’re an arch manipulator yourself!”

“Me? How dare you!”

“Oh come on, Jim. You call yourself Captain to try and dignify what you do, but what are you really?”

“I look after my girls!”

She said nothing. I’d heard her implied accusation before, of course, but for some reason this time it struck home. What was it that Miss Merchant, my secretary on the Writing Floor, had said to me? That I was a Queen. A master manipulator. And I was. But now it didn’t seem such a compliment. It seemed grubby. Shoddy.

“I’m not just a pimp,” I said. I lowered my voice, looked at the floor. I spoke in serious tones. “You’ve only been here a few days. You don’t know what it’s been like here. Women lost their jobs. Some had no one to support them. I looked after them, gave them a place to live, let them earn a livelihood.”

I gazed at her, one professional to another. And I realised just how outclassed I was by the professional in front of me. Bill had read the Truth Script and turned it to her advantage. She was using the truth as a weapon.

“You put them on the game,” she said.

“Sorry, Bill. I don’t accept that. All my girls are adults. They made their choice. You have to take responsibility for your own actions.”

“I agree with you there, Jim.”

I smiled at that, more confident. She tilted her head.

“Tell me, what’s MTPH?”

My eyes narrowed.

“What do you want to know that for?”

“I was interested. The girls here talk about it.”

“It’s a drug,” I said. “A Dream London drug. Like Blue Glass, or Speckle. Or Cherry Pie. Have you ever tried Cherry Pie? Everything you eat tastes wonderful afterwards.”

“I don’t want to talk about Cherry Pie,” said Bill. “I want to talk about MTPH. Do you give it your girls?”

Who was interrogating who here?

“Some of them take it, yes.”

“Do you give it to them?”

“Hey, they’d only buy it from someone else! At least from me they get the real thing, uncut.”

“And at a reasonable price?”

“I don’t make a profit on it. It comes out of their takings.”

“You’re a saint in human form.”

“Hey, if it makes things easier...”

“What does MTPH do?”

“I’ve got some here,” I said, pulling out one of my little striped candies. “Try some for yourself.”

“I don’t need to. I know what it does.” She curled her lip. “Maybe you should read the Truth Script, Jim. Can you really be that unaware about yourself?”

Bill’s voice was steely cold again. I felt uneasy.

“I’ve got nothing to hide. MTPH helps the girls,” I said. “It helps them to get on with the job. Not all their clients are Adonises, you know.”

“Go on, Captain Wedderburn. How does it help them?”

She leant forward on her toes at this, gazing up at me with green eyes.

“It helps them to enjoy themselves,” I mumbled.

“Enjoy themselves? How?”

“It gives them empathy with their client.”

She was silent now, just staring at me. Leaving a conversational hole for me to fill.

“It helps them to feel what their client feels,” I added. “Their client’s pleasure becomes their pleasure.”

“And if their client despises them?

“Why should they do that? Why pay to go with a girl they despise?”

“That’s part of the attraction, isn’t it?”

“Only if you’re of a certain sort of mind.”

“So you admit that some men are of that sort of mind? And some of them will use the services of your women?”

“Well, perhaps...”

“So if the women have taken MTPH, and they feel that loathing directed against themselves, what then?”

I saw there was no use in lying.

“Then they will feel that loathing, and they will enjoy it. They will come to loathe themselves.”

She said nothing else, just stared at me.

“But that hardly ever happens,” I said. It sounded weak, even to me.

“Are all the women who work for you happy?”

“Who’s really happy in this city?” I countered.

“Answer the question!”

“They’re happy enough.”

But I thought of Sweet Sue who had walked into the Thames, and Lovely Annabel and Karen and Amelia who had just lain in bed and refused to get up.

Bill was gazing at me as if she could read my thoughts.

“And you complain when you say that you’ve been manipulated, Captain Wedderburn?”

There’s nothing like attacking someone else’s weaknesses when you know that you’re in the wrong.

“Yes, I do say that I’ve been manipulated,” I countered. “What exactly do you think that you’re playing at, sending me into Angel Tower like that?”

Bill Dickenson smiled.

“Well, as you were going to be summoned anyway, we thought we might as well give you the opportunity to help someone else for once in your selfish, worthless life.”

“Help someone else? What are you talking about!”

“I’m just saying that Angel Tower have got you sewn up. You’re an arch manipulator, and Dream London has a use for selfish people like you. Dream London is the place where the individual takes precedence over the group, after all.”

“Hey!” I said. “Hey. And since when did the group care about Captain Jim Wedderburn? Everything I’ve done in my life, I did it on my own.”

Bill laughed at that.

“Well fucking good for you!”

Without thinking, I raised my hand to her.

“Do you really want to try that?” asked Bill, and she gazed at me, sweetly. “I’m telling the truth, remember? You do that and I’ll really hurt you.”

Slowly, I lowered my hand.

“Now, Captain James, here’s something to think about. You’re going to go back to Angel Tower. That’s inevitable. Trust me on that. So, why don’t you ask yourself this? Are you going to go back there on your own, or are you going to do something to help us?”

I stared at her, almost shaking with anger.

“What’s in it for me?” I asked.

She snorted.

“I thought the Cartel had already offered you the freehold of Belltower End. Isn’t that enough for you? Just think of how much more money you can make when you don’t have to pay rent. You’ll be able to afford enough MTPH to enslave the female population of West London!”

“I told you, I don’t...” I calmed down. She was only baiting me. “Anyway,” I said. “What have the Cartel got to do with this? Do you know what it’s like in Alan’s house at night? If Alan is a representative of the Cartel, I don’t hold out much hope for them as a viable force.”

“You’re not kidding,” said Bill. “I told you, Dream London is not a place where groups function, it’s just a collection of selfish individuals. The Cartel was pretty effective to begin with, but Dream London has worked upon its members. Now it barely functions. None of the little groups in this place amount to anything. Do you have any idea the difficulty we’ve had trying to organise any sort of resistance?”

“Who’s we?”

“The Americans. The French. The rest of the fucking world. Do you know what it’s like out there? Do you think that life is going on as normal now that London has vanished into another place? People out there are terrified. The whole world is scared, and what do people do when they’re scared?”

“Go into denial?” I said.

“Yeah, they do that. Or they get angry. They get violent. People want this city destroyed, you asshole.”

I was shocked. She was right. I’d never really thought about it that way.

“Okay,” I said. “I take your point. But you’re wasting your time. There’s no point me going back to the Writing Floor in Angel Tower. I need to get to the Contract Floor.”

“The Contract Floor?” said Bill. “What’s that?”

“It’s where the unchanging documents are kept. The Writing Floor is where the changes are happening. There are people there who are writing the future.”

“Then surely that’s where we need to go,” said Bill. She nodded. “Yes. We could get them to change things back to how they were.”

I shook my head.

“That won’t work. Someone could just write it back again. All of this...”

I waved my arm around the room. “All of this is rooted in the land that was originally sold to... whoever. We need to get those deeds of ownership back.”

“Well, duh,” said Bill. “How do you suggest we do that?”

“By getting to the Contract Floor,” I said. “That’s where the deeds are kept.”

She stared at me for a moment, thinking.

I waved my hand in front of her face.

“Stop that,” she said.

“Hey, I’m surprised you didn’t figure that out for yourself,” I said.

“I’ve only been here a few days,” said Bill. “But you’re right, someone should have figured this out before.”

She lapsed into silence again.

I looked around the room, at the obscene pictures. Finally, Bill spoke.

“How long until this Truth Script wears off?” she said.

“About ten minutes,” I said. That was a lie. I had no idea how long it lasted for.

“Come on,” she said. “We’re going out.”

“Going out?” I said. “Why?”

“We’re going to ask for help. Oh, and James...”

“Yes?”

“You understand that I’m still under the influence of the script?”

“Yes.”

She leant closer to me and her eyes were so, so hard.

“If you ever do that to me again, I will kill you.”

She smiled as she said the words.

“Do you believe me?”