“Oh bloody hell,” said Wati.
As if it weren’t in trouble enough, the UMA had to act as babysitter for this suddenly bereft little messiah. But Billy had not obeyed his injunction to raise the metal lid out of the street, with intricate finagling and a strength he had not had a few weeks before, to slip into the undercity. Instead, Billy had paused, clenched without clenching, and felt time hesitate and come back, moving like a shaken blanket. He had told Wati to come with him, rather, and gone and stolen a phone. He had taken the innermost doll of a Russian doll set from some shop, held it, not his foolish Kirk, though he had kept that, up to his eyes, and said to Wati, “Here’s what we need to do.”
“OF ALL THE LITTLE TOERAGS WE EVER HAVE TO DEAL WITH,” BARON said, “the bastarding Chaos Nazis are the ones I hate most.”
He stood between Collingswood and Vardy. He was scratching his face furiously, anxiously. They crowded around each other to look through the reinforced glass into a hospital room, where a bandaged man was shackled by tubes, and by shackles, to a bed. A machine tracked his heartbeat.
“You actually said ‘toerags,’” Collingswood said. “Are you auditioning for something?”
“Alright,” he said vaguely. He sniffed. “Arseholes.”
“Fuck’s sake, boss,” Collingswood said. “Up your game. Shitfoxes.”
“Bastards.”
“Spitfish, boss. Fucklizards. Little cuntwasps. Munching wanktoasters.” Baron stared at her. “Oh yeah,” Collingswood said. “That’s right. I got game. Say my name.”
“Tell me,” Vardy interrupted. “What precisely do we have from them? There were several of them, correct?”
“Yeah,” said Baron. “Five in various degrees of injuredness. And the dead.”
“I want to know exactly what they saw. I want to know exactly what’s happening.”
“You got ideas, Vardy?” Collingswood said.
“Oh, yes. Ideas I have. Too bloody many. But I’m trying to put all this together.” Vardy stared at the man in the bed. “This is the Tattoo. We heard he was employing headsmen. I wasn’t expecting it to be this lot.”
“Yeah, bit of a breach of protocol, isn’t it?” Baron said. “CNs are a bit out of polite company.”
“Has he worked with them before?” Collingswood said.
“Not that I know of,” Vardy said.
“Has Grisamentum?”
“What?” He looked at her. “Why would you say that?”
“Just I was looking at all them files on your desk, of Tat’s associates. And you’ve got Grizzo’s as well. I was wondering what’s that about?”
“Ah,” he said. “Well, true. Those two… They move in lockstep. Always did, while Grisamentum was around. Which as we now bloody know-are we agreed?-it appears he still is. Associates of one could well be associates of the other.”
“Why?” said Collingswood. “That don’t make no sense. They hated each other.”
“You know how this bloody works,” Vardy said. “Friends close, enemies closer? Bought off, turncoat, whatever?”
She wagged her head. “If you say so, blood. I don’t know,” she said. “Griz’s bunch lurved him, didn’t they. His crew were all mad loyal.”
“No one’s so loyal they can’t be bought,” said Vardy.
“I forgot what a mad bunch he was cavorting with in the end,” Collingswood said. “Griz. I was looking at them files.” Vardy raised an eyebrow at her. “Doctors, doctor-deaths… Pyros, too, right?”
“Yes. He did.”
“And you reckon some of them are working with the Tattoo now, right?” Vardy hesitated and laughed. That was not like him.
“No,” he said. “It turns out not. But no reason not to check.”
“So you’re still chasing them up?”
“Yes I bloody am. I’m chasing all of them, every lead, until I know for an absolute bloody certainty that they’re not involved in the squid thing, either with Grisamentum, or with the Tattoo. Or as independents. You do your job, I’ll do mine.”
“I thought your job’s to channel the spirit of nutty god-bothering and write up holy books.”
“Alright, you two,” Baron said. “Settle down.”
“Why the bollock can’t we find the squid, boss? Who’s got it? This is getting stupid.”
“Collingswood, if I knew that I’d be commissioner of the Met. Let’s at least try to map who’s who in this mayhem. So we’ve got the Chaos Nazis, our wanktoasters-thank you, Constable-among recent employees of the Tattoo. Along with everyone else in the city.”
“Not everyone,” Collingswood said. “There’s gunfarmers about, but they’re on some other dime. No one knows who, and no one’s feeling very safe about that.”
“Well that’s got to be our squidnapper, surely,” said Vardy. “So who’s paying them?”
“Can’t track it. They’ve gone into hush mode.”
“So get it out of them,” Baron said.
“Boss, what do you think I’m trying to do?”
“Splendid,” said Baron. “It’s like a Zen koan, isn’t it? Is it better or worse if holy visionary shooters are fighting against us alongside Chaos Nazis, or against them and we’re in between? Answer that, my little bodhisattvas.”
“Can we please,” said Vardy, “establish what’s going on here with that chap? Did any of them tell us anything?”
“Certainly,” said Baron. “He had to finesse how quick I got him to roll over, so under guise of glorying in the chaos he would bring by terrifying me with the truth, a-blah-dy blah-dy blah, this little bugger sang like the most beautiful nightingale.”
“And?” said Vardy.
“And Dane Parnell is not having a good time of it. They snaffled our exile, sounds like. That much he saw”-he pointed through the window with his chin-“before passing out. Which leaves little lost Billy out on his tod in the city. Whatever will he do?”
“Yeah, but he ain’t exactly helpless, though, is he?” Collingswood said. “I mean, just pointing out…” She waved her hand at the savagely wounded man. “It ain’t as if Billy’s got nothing fighting his corner, is it?”
“Vardy,” said Baron. “Care to give us your opinion?” He made a big show of opening his notebook, as if he didn’t remember everything about the description he was about to give. “‘It was a bottle, policeman, you law-worm, we brought chaos to each other, you scum, etc…’” he read, deadpan. “I’m going to editorialise. I’ll trim the epithets and skip to specifics. ‘It was a bottle. A bottle that came at us. It bit with a skull. Its arms were bones. It was a real glass enemy.’ I like that last line, I have to say.” He put the notebook away. “So, Vardy,” he said. “You must have thoughts.”
Vardy had closed his eyes. He leaned against the wall and puffed out his cheeks. When at last he opened his eyes again he did not look at Baron or Collingswood: he stared intently through the window at the crippled Chaos Nazi.
“We know what that’s about, right?” Baron said. “Let me rephrase. We’ve no idea what it’s about. No one does. But we’ve a reasonable notion of what it bloody is that swooped in and swept young Harrow away.”
“Alright, I’m going back to the museum,” Vardy said. “See if I can make a little more sense of this. Just once,” he said with abrupt savagery, “in a goddamn while, it would really be a pleasure if the goddamn world worked the way it’s supposed to. I am tired of the universe being such a bloody aleatory frenzy all, the bloody, time.”
He sighed and shook his head. Gave an abashed, tight brief smile at Collingswood’s surprise.
“Well,” he said. “Really. Come on. Why the bloody hell is an angel of memory protecting Billy?”
BUT NOT PROTECTING DANE, WHICH FACT WAS WHAT HAD HIM NOW woozily half waking, strapped in a horribly cramping position that it took him a long time to identify as a crooked cruciform. He was attached like an offering to a rough man-sized swastika. He did not open his eyes.