“For God’s sake, it’s a clockwork toy in a greenhouse!”
“Joe. You are neck-deep in denial. All right? Here is the news. You switched on a machine, and you have no real notion of what it is. You are now pursued by the earthbound fiend who goes in the mortal realm by the name of Rodney Titwhistle, and the homunculus Cummerbund, men who are most probably employed—and let us be very clear about this, because hilarious though they are to look upon they are less funny than Typhoid Mary and more serious than the whole of Her Majesty’s Revenue & Customs—at the shadiest end of the non-deniable civil service. By the looks of things, they are the interface between the world which draws a pay cheque openly and the one which holds the key to the barn in Suffolk where they hide the corpses of people murdered by members of the royal family. These men do not have any notion at all of gadding about. They do not grab people for a lark. They have absolutely no sense of fun. So when I find that they are involved, and you tell me it’s all a ghastly mistake but you have no real notion of what’s going on, what I take away from that is that we are in even more trouble than it might at first appear. So please, go on.”
“They came to my shop this morning. They said they were from a museum. They wanted to buy everything. And then later, one of those monks was in my shop. A Ruskinite. He wanted… I don’t know. Whatever they wanted.”
“Which would be?”
“He said he wanted the Book of the Hakote. And everything which went with it.”
“Presumably the book brought to you by Billy.”
Joe nods his head. “And the tools, I suppose.”
Mercer picks up the phone again, and adds “Ruskinite” and “Hakote” to Bethany’s list. Then he turns back to Joe.
“Small mercies. Your uncharming callers wanted this Book et alii. Which you don’t have, though you were briefly in possession of a book which might have been it. I don’t like the capital letter, do you? Well. It’s not too much to assume that he wanted it because of what was happening in Cornwall. In which case—” The phone buzzes sharply. Mercer scoops it up and sighs. “Thank you. I’m afraid I anticipated… yes. Well, only just, to be honest. Thank you, Bethany.” He puts down the handset. “There’s been a massive police deployment in the West Country. I imagine when the smoke clears we’ll find someone’s paid a visit to your friend Ted. They’re very fast, Joe. They worried about the machine first and you second. I did the opposite, which is why you’re here. I suspect an hour later I wouldn’t have found you.”
“I know.”
“But if they had the book already, they didn’t really need your tools.”
“It would make things easier.”
“But not more than that.”
“No.”
“Is there anything else? More parts? An instruction manual?”
“No. I don’t know. Not that I ever saw.”
Mercer paces. “All right, go on.”
“I asked Fisher about the Ruskinites.”
“Fisher? Not the Fisher I’m thinking of who is a Night Market irregular?”
“Yes. I was worried.”
“I should think so, talking to a twerp like Fisher. What did he say?”
“That they’re a heavy mob. They scare the crap out of him. And something weird. He said one of them asked him something once about Napoleon. Some sort of riddle.”
“‘If I have the memories of Napoleon, but the body of Wellington, who am I?’”
“Yes! What does it mean?”
“It’s a philosophical puzzle. An unsolved one. The question is what constitutes identity. Is it the memory, the body, or some combination of the two? Very donnish. You seem to have fallen into a well-educated personal crisis.”
“How reassuring.”
Mercer bares his teeth. “Quite so. To finish… you found yourself in Billy Friend’s flat in Soho, where you discovered the body of your dear chum of many years, childhood mentor and fornicator, in a state of extremely dead. You are uncertain, at this point, whether you called for the myrmidons of the law in the person of the wheedler Patchkind—who is, by the way, a liar of the first class and has no nieces of any stripe. You gathered your resources, however, and summoned the font of wisdom which is Cradle’s to take charge of the emergency.”
“Yes.”
“Always assuming that one can be said to summon a font, which, on sober consideration, I find unlikely.”
At this attempt to lift the mood, Joe Spork has somehow had enough. He loves Mercer like a brother, but sometimes the plummy, playful verbiage is obnoxious. It conceals emotion. Actually, it mocks emotion, the better to pretend to be above it. Joe Spork jackknifes to his feet and grabs his coat. He has no clear idea of where he will go, but he wants out, out of this ludicrous mayhem and back to his old cosy life. Perhaps he will take a ship to India and open a shop in Mumbai. Perhaps he will shave his head and make clocks in a monastery, or marry a Muslim girl and move to Dubai, where they have a decent respect for clockwork and automata and the men who produce them. Perhaps he will just run through the wet, uncaring streets of London until this furious confusion abates. He doesn’t know what he will do, but being locked up in this cellar is no answer to what rides him, that much he is certain of. He wants Ari to sell him cat poison. He needs to call Joyce and tell her Billy Friend is dead. He needs to see his mother. He needs to sleep.
It would be very nice if someone would hug him, just for a minute.
He piles through the door into the front offices, with every intention of letting himself out and continuing in an approximate straight line until he can come to some arrangement with himself about what to do next. He is prevented from doing this by a toe.
The toe catches him in the upper-thigh region, quite hard, so that he jolts to a stop. In other circumstances, the presence of a toe in this area might well be erotic, even sexual, and indeed, it’s a very sexual toe. It is pale, and round; of perfect size—if one were so inclined—to slip into one’s mouth and suck. It is smooth and buffed, with the nail polished in a bright, glossy red, except for a slender strip of tiny black fishnet which has been set into the polish at the tip. It is a toe which knows the world, which has done the wicked, secret things other toes only fantasise about.
The toe is accompanied by four others in a bright patent-leather mule. The whole segment is then attached to a muscular but quite slender calf. Around the ankle is an item which briefly arrests his attention: a stylish women’s watch threaded on a narrow gold chain. It is pricey but not extortionate, with a single glinting crystal set at the top. He doubts that the designer ever intended it to be worn around the leg, but is reasonably certain that he or she would approve mightily of the effect. He also considers, briefly, that this woman either does not need to know the time or is able and willing to read the watch where it is, which implies a supple and frankly sexual movement of her body.
Above the calf is a strong but not offensive knee, and an upper leg which vanishes almost immediately into a grey pencil skirt. Joe adjudges this is technically a knee-length item, but the act of sitting has raised it to a more intriguing status. The leg has, as is customary, a mirror image on the other side, making a total of two, the matched pair belonging to a bold-eyed woman resting in the receptionist’s chair. She speaks.
“Sit, please.”
She smiles up at him, then, when he does not smile back, she scowls, and repeats the instruction. Joe, not really knowing why, perches himself on the edge of a modern red cloth stool, and wobbles. The woman in front of him gives an encouraging smile.
“Mercer asked me to wait around in case I was needed. This almost certainly isn’t what he had in mind, but that’s the thing with Mercer. His genius is extremely obscure, even to himself. Perhaps particularly.”