He stood in the front garden of the sea’s embassy-it was dark, his clothes were dark, no light glinted on his glasses, and he knew he could do this unseen-and threw the phone as hard as he could, which was hard, now, into the darkness over the roofs. He did not hear it land. At last, as he sat by the step of the house, he heard a swill of water in the pipes below his feet. Another bottle was pushed from the letter box.
The sea told him where the Chaos Nazis were. It said that was where its help would end. That it would not be intervening, could not take any sides. It was closing in on time for daylight. Billy leaned forward on his knees and rested his forehead on the door.
“Now listen,” he said. “Listen a minute. You can’t get in there, can you, Wati?” Billy said.
“No figures in that house.”
“Listen, sea,” Billy said. “See here, sea.” He smiled tiredly. “That’s the sort of thing’s helped get us where we are now, people wanting to stay neutral.” He felt some recognition. He felt as if he remembered this. As if he’d been in the sea only days before, or nights before, in fact, at night, in the night, as he dreamed those ink dreams. He put his hand on the door. He knew this place.
“What is it you want to stay neutral about? You want to stay out of a war. This wouldn’t be London versus you-that’s not what we’re up against. So what is it? Chaos Nazis? I don’t believe it. The Tattoo? Does a gang boss really frighten you?”
Oh, snap! Did that kind of petty psychology work on the fucking ocean? Nothing ventured, Billy thought, nothing ventured. What else did he have? Two weapons he did not understand and a polybodied trade unionist. There was nothing but silence from inside the embassy.
“So what is it? Protocol? Niceties? I’m going to say this. I’m going to beg.” Billy was already on his knees. “Please. So you mess up some balance of power? So what? You know what’s coming. The fire and end of it all. I bet this fire burns seawater too. Dane’s going to fix it, though, you know. So if you don’t want everything to burn, if you don’t want London to burn, if you don’t want the sea to burn… help me.”
“DO YOU KNOW WHAT HAPPENS NOW?” COLLINGSWOOD SAID. JASON Smyle wheezed. A few cosmetic knacks, a little unnatural dermatological intervention, and his skin looked quite untouched, all his bruises glamoured away.
“What happens now is this,” she said. “You’ve broken various laws, but as well you bloody know they’re oddball laws. They’re like the constitution, they ain’t written. What that means is you go into the other court system. Which means whatever I want it to mean.” She was less than half Jason’s age. She leaned back and put her feet on the table. “So your cooperation will be greatly appreciated. So.” She twanged briefly into ridiculous American. “One mo’ ’gain. What was you after, coming here? Where’s Billy? And where’s the squid?” But they had been over this many times, and no amount of cajoling or threatening elicited any more.
“I swear, I swear, I swear,” Jason kept saying, and she believed him. He did not know. All he knew was the number Billy had given him, that he had surrendered immediately. That was it. Collingswood glanced through the mirror and shook her head. She left the room and joined her colleagues.
“So what have we got?” Baron said. “It’s all a bit of a turn-up for the books, isn’t it?”
“And you believe him,” Vardy said.
“Yeah,” said Collingswood. “Yeah. So…”
“So,” said Baron. “So our man Billy is not an abductee at all. Is in fact collaborating with a known member, now exile, of the Church of God Kraken. It turns out our ingénue isn’t so ingenuous after all.”
“What is it with this fucking Stockholm Syndrome?” Collingswood said. “Is Billy, what’s her name, fucking Patty Hearst?” She looked at Vardy.
“Possible,” he said. “This whole thing stinks of belief to me. I take it we got nothing from the number he gave us?”
“Nah. Belief in what?”
“In something.”
“Alright children, alright,” Baron said. “So, we thought we were looking for a captive, but it turns out we’re looking for a fugitive. Vardy, you better fill Collingswood in on Cole.”
“Who’s that?” she said. “What did he do? Or she. Was it she? Can I play?”
“A pyromancer,” Baron said. “Ex-associate of Griz.”
“Pyro?” Collingswood narrowed her eyes. “Isn’t it fire that people keep seeing? Vardy?”
“… Yes, it is. Sorry, I just… I’m…” He chewed his knuckle. Baron and Collingswood blinked at this unusual hesitation. “A pyromancer, a squid from the museum, an end of all things, it’s… there’s something close. I just have to parse the faith of it.”
SO WHAT WAS UP WITH MARGE? HER BEST LEAD HAD GONE TO nothing.
She had new priorities. She believed all these strangers who kept telling her she was in danger, that she was drawing dangerous attention to herself, that she needed protection.
Don’t you know what a trap street is? the cult collector had said, and no she had not, but a moment online sorted that. Invented streets inserted into maps to right copyright wrongs, to prove one representation was ripped off from another. It was hard to find any definitive lists of these spurious enmapped locations, but there were suggestions. One of which, of course, was the street on which the Old Queen was.
So. Was it that these particular occult streets had been made, then hidden? Their names leaked as traps in an elaborate double-bluff, so that no one could go except those who knew that such traps were actually destinations? Or were there really no streets there when the traps were set? Perhaps these cul-de-sacs were residues, yawned into illicit existence when the atlases were drawn up by liars.
Well, either way. Those were obviously the streets to investigate. Marge looked for more names.
Chapter Fifty-Four
THE CHAOS NAZIS HID NOWHERE IN PARTICULAR. JUST AN EMPTY building. There was no metaphoric logic to its whereabouts, no cosmic pun: it was just isolated enough and empty enough and easy enough to break into and recustomise from the inside-soundproofing and such-and then to protect that it had been chosen. It was in the far east of London, in a zone depressed enough that not many people took a lot of notice of stuff. It had a deep basement where Dane was being tortured and where Chaos swastikas were cranked and turned. It was near a garage.
The Nazis were alone and unsupervised. An outsourced resource, subcontracting being as fashionable in gangland as in the rubble of Fordism. The Tattoo had told them, vaguely, to continue what they were doing, and to try to extract something, some hint, from Dane, as to where Billy and the kraken were.
Inside, it was decked in memorabilia from the Reich, guaranteed-spattered with genuine spatters, blood, brains, gauleiter cum. Candles in niches beside icons of various deviltry, smoke-damaged posters of Nazi bands and pictures from the camps. Exactly what you would expect.
The Chaos Nazis stood, patchwork fascist fops, all glitz, spandex, leather and eagles. They eyed Dane. He was tied behind a rack of crusted tools. His rack had turned to put a bit more tumourous life in him, so he had eyes and teeth, though not all his teeth, and he could breathe through his nose though it was broken. They had only brought him back a couple of hours ago, had not really got started again yet. He stared at them, alternately spat and raged, and slumped and tried to go into himself.
“Look,” said one. “His lips are moving. He’s praying to his snail again.”
“Stupid Jewish snail scum,” said another.
“Woof,” the dogman Nazi said.
“Where’s Billy, you scum?”
“Where’s the squid?”
“Your dead squid won’t save you.”
They all laughed. They stood in the windowless room. They hesitated. “Stupid Jew,” said one. They laughed again.