“Simon, you’re beginning to give me a very bad feeling about this.”
“I’ve lost my hand. I’ve had three ribs broken. My balls have been burned to buggery. I don’t want to lose my bonce, that’s all.”
Josh stared at him narrowly. “You’re telling me the truth here, right?”
Simon shrugged, and looked down at the kitchen floor.
“You’re telling me the truth here, right? There are no Hoodies waiting for me up on the third floor? Nancy’s safe and well?”
“I brought you here – what more do you want? I almost died, because of you!”
Josh went up to him and laid his hand on Simon’s shoulder. Under his coat, his shoulder felt like chicken bones. “Yes, you did, and I’m sorry.”
He took Abraxas and walked out of the kitchen, into the corridor beyond.
It wasn’t difficult to locate the third floor. The corridor led to a huge, high-ceilinged hallway with a highly-polished floor of white and tawny marble. A sweeping flight of stairs led up to the first-floor landing, with nude bronze figures holding up torches on the newel-posts. Abraxas had difficulty crossing the hallway: it was so shiny that his paws kept slipping, and he made a loud scrabbly sound until he managed to reach the other side. “You should wear Keds,” Josh admonished him, and he let out a thin, suppressed whine.
They climbed the stairs to the first-floor landing, where huge dark oil paintings hung: portraits of famous benefactors and doctors. Abraxas was panting again. Ella had kept him in her apartment for most of the day so he wasn’t very fit. Josh almost had to drag him up the next flight of stairs, and at the bottom of the third flight he refused to move, and sat on his haunches whining.
“Come on, Abraxas, you can’t stay here. We have to go find Nancy.”
He heard echoing voices in the hallway below. Footsteps, and people laughing. “Come on, Abraxas, for Christ’s sake! We have to go find Nancy!” The footsteps began to mount the stairs, and there was even more laughter.
Abraxas still refused to budge. Josh tried pulling the leash, but he sank his shoulders lower to the floor and frowned up at him, defying him to try to pull him bodily up the next flight of stairs. The footsteps were climbing higher, and the voices were so clear that Josh could actually hear what they were saying.
“… plenty of new supplies, and without any risk whatsoever …”
“… don’t have to be squeamish …”
“… who’s squeamish …?”
Josh came back down the stairs and sat close to Abraxas. “You are going to come up these stairs with me, and you are going to be alert and hot and ready to trot whenever you’re told. Do you understand that?”
There was a moment when he knew that Abraxas had agreed to do what he was told. It was hard to tell exactly how he knew; but he felt something pass between them – not spiritual perhaps, but certainly empathetic. That weird understanding between one species and another.
“Come on,” he said, and climbed the stairs, and Abraxas came bounding up after him.
He walked along the third-floor corridor, looking for 313. The corridor was decorated with Regency-striped wallpaper, maroon and cream, and it smelled like a stuffy, second-rate hotel. There were crystal wall-lights all the way along, but two out of three of them had broken, or needed new bulbs, and so the corridor was filled with occasional pools of darkness.
Room 309, Room 311 … He turned the corner and it was only then that he realized what a fool he had been. Right ahead of him, silhouetted against the next wall-light, were three Hooded Men and two dog-handlers. Another man was standing behind them, right under the light – pale-faced, with greased-back hair, wearing a navy-blue blazer with brass buttons. He laughed out loud as Josh appeared.
“Look at this! Didn’t I tell you! Here he is! Aren’t the Yanks the stupidest race on earth! He trusted Simon Cutter! He bloody well trusted him! And here he is!”
The Hoodies’ dogs jumped against their chains and barked at Abraxas in hysterical fury. Abraxas barked angrily back, tugging Josh forward. But Josh managed to heave him back, and grab hold of his collar, and pull his head back.
“I’m going to let you off the leash,” he said. “You’re going to run, and you’re going to save yourself. Now, go!”
Just then, he heard the steel-sliding sound of a sword being drawn, right behind him. A sharp point jabbed into the back of his neck.
“You are under arrest,” said one of the Hooded Men. “You are charged with heresy, treason, murder, conspiracy to murder, subversion and insurrection.”
Josh didn’t move, but he unbuckled Abraxas’ collar, and before the Hooded Man could stop him, Abraxas went tearing off along the corridor with his claws scrabbling on the floor.
“Send a dog after it?” asked one of the dog-handlers, his own dog straining at the chain so hard that it was standing up on two legs, and whining like an acute asthmatic.
“Forget it,” said the Hooded Man. “We have what we wanted – don’t we, Mr Winward?”
“Screw you,” Josh retorted. “You don’t have any jurisdiction over me or anybody else who doesn’t live in this screwed-up London of yours. I want to see Nancy. I want to see her now. If you’ve hurt her – by God, even if you’ve even touched her. I don’t care what you do to me, I’m going to murder all of you, one by one.”
“I think you’re being a little optimistic, don’t you?” asked the Hooded Man. “There are many of us, and there is only one of you. And besides, this is our world, not yours. You have nowhere to run to. No friends, no hiding places. Ella Tibibnia is dead – we killed her. John Farbelow is dead – we killed him. Fifteen more subversives were eliminated on the very same day. Mrs Marmion’s mother, Ranjit Singh – many, many more. We rule all of these different existences, Mr Winward, and we keep very good order.”
“I want to see Nancy,” Josh insisted. He felt hopeless and exhausted and his teeth ached furiously, but his sole purpose was to find Nancy. Even if she were dead already.
The man in the blue blazer came up to him and offered his hand. “Allow me to introduce myself. Frank Mordant. You and I could do business together.”
“What?” Josh retorted. “You’ve got your fucking nerve. You murdered my sister. You personally murdered my sister!”
“Oh, come on, Mr Winward, it wasn’t like that at all. We were fooling around a little. You know what it’s like, the boss-secretary relationship? She said she wanted to try this restricted breathing thing.”
“I don’t believe a goddamned word of it. You murdered her.”
“I’m sorry. I know you don’t want to believe it, but it’s true. One minute we were going at it hammer and tongs. The next minute, she went all blue and I had to call the ambulance. Dead on arrival, I’m afraid.”
“You’re out of your mind. Julia would never try anything like that.”
“I know she was your sister, and you knew her very much better than I did. But our brothers and sisters don’t always tell us everything about their private inclinations, do they?”
“So who mutilated her? Who emptied her out?”
“It was all in a very good cause,” said Frank Mordant, taking his arm. Josh immediately twisted himself free. “When your sister Julia died, another was able to carry on living.”
“You took all of her organs without any kind of permission, and then you just dumped her body in the river.”
“Actually, no permission was required. Living here, in this London, she was subject to all of our laws. Vital organs can be taken from the dead at the discretion of the surgeon in charge. It’s quite humane, when you think about it. And don’t tell me it doesn’t happen in your world, too.”