“It’s a long story, Josh. But don’t worry. Everything’s going to be fine.”
Another face turned around from the front seat. It was John Farbelow, his thistledown hair concealed beneath an old black beret, his chin prickly with white stubble. “Welcome back, Josh,” he told him. “That little exercise tested our resources, I’ll have to admit. But we couldn’t let the Hoodies have you, could we?”
“You’ve been here before?” Josh asked Ella. “You know these people?”
“I was born here, Josh. Brought up here.”
“I don’t get it. The séance … the letter … why did you bother with any of that?”
“I’m sorry,” said Ella. “I have to confess that I put you both at risk. But like I told Nancy, I didn’t really know how genuine you were. The Hoodies have agents and informers absolutely everywhere.”
“Well … our informers aren’t bad, either,” said John Farbelow, with a satisfied smile. “We knew which car Josh was going to be traveling in; we knew approximately when; and the rest was just a case of being totally violent.” He paused, and lit a cigarette. “The dray was good, though, wasn’t it? I mean, what’s anybody going to do when they see eight tons of best bitter hurtling toward them?”
Ella playfully tugged his beret down at the back. “You know as well as I do that it was a fantastic piece of planning. You did well, John. And so did all the rest of you. Thanks.”
They kept speeding north-westward – jolting down sidestreets, bouncing through mews and garage blocks and private driveways and parks. The rain was lashing down harder still, and it was so dark inside the Pierce-Arrow that they could hardly distinguish each other’s faces.
“How’s Nancy?” asked Josh. “She didn’t come back with you, did she?”
“Nancy’s great. She’s back at your hotel, resting.”
“How are we going to get back?”
“The Farringdon door,” said John Farbelow. “It isn’t used very often, because it’s difficult to find. The Hoodies will probably think that you’ve gone back to Star Yard.”
“I didn’t tell them anything,” said Josh. “They knew your name already; and they knew that Simon Cutter had taken us to see you.”
“You can’t keep any secrets in the resistance,” John Farbelow replied. “There’s too much bribery, too little faith. Anyhow, I wouldn’t have blamed you if you’d blabbed. Nobody can take more than two or three hymns on the Holy Harp. My friend Michael died when they did it to him. Heart attack. And of course the Masters of Religious Observance never take the blame. ‘Death by natural causes in the course of routine judicial questioning.’”
They reached the corner of Farringdon Street and Bowling Green Lane. It had suddenly stopped raining, even though the gutters were flooded and cars were still swishing past them in clouds of spray. Josh was helped out of the car and across the street, with John Farbelow and Ella following close behind. They passed a sandwich shop on the corner, with steamed-up windows and a sign advertising Craven A cigarettes – “the only cigarettes that don’t hurt my throat”. Just past the sandwich shop was a narrow alleyway which Josh would never have noticed if it hadn’t been pointed out to him. It was less than three feet wide and looked like nothing but a crevice in between the sooty black buildings.
“Right to the end,” said John Farbelow. They walked about thirty or forty feet, where the crevice came to an end. Bricked up. Blank. Josh leaned against the wall, his mouth throbbing and his whole body tingling with pain.
John Farbelow knelt down and took three stubby church candles out of his pocket. “They say that the doors go right back to the days of the Druids. They made them so that they could escape from the Romans.”
Ella glanced nervously back along the alleyway. “Can we hurry, John? You never know who might have been following us.”
“Oh, there’s always somebody following us. Always somebody ready to sell their soul for seven-and-six.” He lit the candles one by one, and crossed himself. “There – that should take you over. Good luck, Ella, and pray for us, won’t you?”
Ella held him tight. “You don’t know how much I appreciate what you’ve done, John.”
“It was nothing. It was time that we shook them up a bit, anyway. Time we drew some blood. They won’t be so damned complacent now that we’ve given Master Thomas Edridge an extra smile.”
He grasped Josh by the elbow, supporting most of his weight, and led him toward the candles. Josh felt so weak that he didn’t know if he was going to be able to stumble, let alone jump. But John Farbelow picked him up bodily, held him a foot off the ground, so that his legs dangled, and then physically threw him over the candles into the end of the alleyway. He fell heavily on to the ground, in a mess of wet leaves and pigeon-droppings. He didn’t shout out, because of masculine pride; but he lay on his face for a moment, biting his tongue so hard that he could taste blood.
“Come on, Josh! Up!” John Farbelow shouted at him. “Ella’s coming through!”
Josh managed to grip the brick wall and drag himself on to his feet. As he did so, Ella came bounding across the candles and almost collided with him.
“Let’s go, quickly,” she urged.
Josh lifted his hand in greeting to John Farbelow; and John Farbelow, as he turned his back, gave him a wry, dismissive salute.
“Where do we go from here?” he asked Ella, looking around. “This still looks like a dead end.”
“Oh, there’s always a door, everywhere,” said Ella. At the very end of the alleyway there was a narrow crevice in the brickwork, barely wide enough for a cat to squeeze through.
“We can’t go through there.”
“It’s the only way. Well, it’s not the only way. You could jump back over and give yourself up.”
“Ella, confined spaces give me panic attacks. I mean, serious panic attacks. How far does it go, this gap in the wall?”
“Fifteen feet, not much longer.”
“Fifteen feet, Jesus. What happens if I’m wedged?”
“You won’t be wedged. I’ll push you out ahead of me.”
“What happens if you get wedged?”
“What are you trying to tell me here, that I’m overweight?”
“I didn’t mean that. But you have to admit that you’re curvy.”
“Oh, I see. Now my ass is too big.”
“Your ass is perfect. But that’s a real narrow gap there. And I don’t want to end up a skeleton, jammed solid between one world and the next.”
Ella took hold of both of his hands and kissed him. “You’re making excuses, Josh. You’re hurt. You need to get back to reality. Just force yourself through. Don’t panic, it’ll make you breathe more deeply, and your lungs will expand. Take shallow breaths and tell yourself that you’re going to keep on going, and that nothing’s going to stop you.”
Josh took two or three very deep breaths, then a succession of shallow breaths. “OK … I think I’m ready.”
He pressed his back flat against the brick wall and pushed himself into the crevice. Now that he was in it, he could see the end of it, but it looked a very long way off, as if he were viewing it down the wrong end of a telescope. More like fifty feet than fifteen. All the same, he pushed himself sideways, his clothes scraping harshly against the brickwork, almost hopping with his feet to keep himself going.
Ella followed him, and the two began their slow, arduous journey from one side of the universe to the other. It didn’t take long before their knuckles were scraped raw, their feet ached, and they were gasping for lack of oxygen. For Josh, the struggle was even worse, because his teeth ached and his body ached, and he could barely find the strength to move himself along.
“Don’t give up,” Ella panted. “It’s not far now.”