Imajica Part 4

Nor was he alone in his ignorance. Judith had once confided that she too had an uncertain grasp of the past, though she'd been drunk at the time and had denied it vehemently when he'd raised the subject again. So, between friends lost and friends forgotten, he was very much alone this Sat.u.r.day night, and he picked up the phone when it rang with some grat.i.tude.

"Furie here," he said. He felt like a Furie tonight. The line was live, but there was no answer. "Who's there?" he said. Still, silence. Irritated, he put down the receiver. Seconds later, the phone rang again. "Who the h.e.l.l is this?" he demanded, and this time an impeccably spoken man replied, albeit with another question.

"Am I speaking to John Zacharias?"

Gentle didn't hear himself called that too often. "Who is this?" he said again.

"We've only met once. You probably don't remember me. Charles Estabrook?"

Some people lingered longer in the memory than others. Estabrook was one. The man who'd caught Jude when she'd dropped from the high wire. A cla.s.sic inbred Englishman, member of the minor aristocracy, pompous, condescending and- "I'd like very much to meet with you, if that's possible."

"I don't think we've got anything to say to each other."

"It's about Judith, Mr. Zacharias. A matter I'm obliged to keep in the strictest confidence but is, I cannot stress too strongly, of the profoundest importance."

The tortured syntax made Gentle blunt. "Spit it out, then," he said.

"Not on the telephone. I realize this request comes without warning, but I beg you to consider it."

"I have. And no. I'm not interested in meeting you."

"Even to gloat?"

"Over what?"

"Over the fact that I've lost her," Estabrook said. "She left me, Mr. Zacharias, just as she left you. Thirty-three days ago." The precision of that spoke volumes. Was he counting the hours as well as the days? Perhaps the minutes too? "You needn't come to the house if you don't wish to. In fact, to be honest, I'd be happier if you didn't."

He was speaking as if Gentle would agree to the rendezvous, which, though he hadn't said so yet, he would.

It was cruel, of course, to bring someone of Estabrook's age out on a cold day and make him climb a hill, but Gentle knew from experience you took whatever satisfactions you could along the way. And Parliament Hill had a fine view of London, even on a day of lowering cloud. The wind was brisk, and as usual on a Sunday the hill had a host of kite flyers on its back, their toys like multicolored candies suspended in the wintry sky. The hike made Estabrook breathless, but he seemed glad that Gentle had picked the spot.

"I haven't been up here in years. My first wife used to like coming here to see the kites."

He brought a brandy flask from his pocket, proffering it first to Gentle. Gentle declined.

"The cold never leaves one's marrow these days. One of the penalties of age. I've yet to discover the advantages. How old are you?"

Rather than confess to not knowing, Gentle said, "Almost forty."

"You look younger. In fact, you've scarcely changed since we first met. Do you remember? At the auction? You were with her. I wasn't. That was the world of difference between us. With; without. I envied you that day the way I'd never envied any other man, just for having her beside you. Later, of course, I saw the same look on other men's faces-"

"I didn't come here to hear this," Gentle said.

"No, I realize that. It's just necessary for me to express how very precious she was to me. I count the years I had with her as the best of my life. But of course the best can't go on forever, can they, or how are they the best?" He drank again. "You know, she never never talked about you," he said. "I tried to provoke her into doing so, but she said she'd put you out of her mind completely-she'd forgotten you, she said-which is nonsense, of course." talked about you," he said. "I tried to provoke her into doing so, but she said she'd put you out of her mind completely-she'd forgotten you, she said-which is nonsense, of course."

"I believe it."

"Don't," Estabrook said quickly. "You were her guilty secret."

"Why are you trying to flatter me?"

"It's the truth. She still loved you, all through the time she was with me. That's why we're talking now. Because I know it, and I think you do too."

Not once so far had they mentioned her by name, almost as though from some superst.i.tion. She was she she, her, the woman: an absolute and invisible power. Her men seemed to have their feet on solid ground, but in truth they drifted like the kites, tethered to reality only by the memory of her.

"I've done a terrible thing, John," Estabrook said. The flask was at his lips again. He took several gulps before sealing it and pocketing it. "And I regret it bitterly."

"What?"

"May we walk a little way?" Estabrook said, glancing towards the kite flyers, who were both too distant and too involved in their sport to be eavesdropping. But he was not comfortable with sharing his secret until he'd put twice the distance between his confession and their ears. When he had, he made it simply and plainly. "I don't know what kind of madness overtook me," he said, "but a little while ago I made a contract with somebody to have her killed."

"You did what what?"

"Does it appall you?"

"What do you think? Of course it appalls me."

"It's the highest form of devotion, you know, to want to end somebody's existence rather than let them live on without you. It's love of the highest order."

"It's a f.u.c.king obscenity."

"Oh, yes, it's that too. But I couldn't bear... just couldn't bear bear... the idea of her being alive and me not being with her..." His delivery was now deteriorating, the words becoming tears. "She was so dear to me..."

Gentle's thoughts were of his last exchange with Judith: the half-drowned telephone call from New York, which had ended with nothing said. Had she known then that her life was in jeopardy? If not, did she now? My G.o.d, was she even alive? He took hold of Estabrook's lapel with the same force that the fear took hold of him.

"You haven't brought me here to tell me she's dead."

"No. No, No," he protested, making no attempt to disengage Gentle's hold. "I hired this man, and I want to call him off."

"So do it," Gentle said, letting the coat go.

"I can't."

Estabrook reached into his pocket and pulled out a sheet of paper. To judge by its crumpled state it had been thrown away, then reclaimed.

"This came from the man who found me the a.s.sa.s.sin," he went on. "It was delivered to my home two nights ago. He was obviously drunk or drugged when he wrote it, but it indicates that he expects to be dead by the time I read it. I'm a.s.suming he's correct. He hasn't made contact. He was my only route to the a.s.sa.s.sin."

"Where did you meet this man?"

"He found me."

"And the a.s.sa.s.sin?"

"I met him somewhere south of the river, I don't know where. It was dark. I was lost. Besides, he won't be there. He's gone after her."

"So warn her."

"I've tried. She won't accept my calls. She's got another lover now. He's being covetous the way I was. My letters, my telegrams, they're all sent back unopened. But he won't be able to save her. This man I hired, his name's Pie-"

"What's that, some kind of code?"

"I don't know," Estabrook said. "I don't know anything except I've done something unforgivable and you have to help me undo it. You have to. You have to. This man Pie is lethal." This man Pie is lethal."

"What makes you think she'll see me when she won't see you?"

"There's no guarantee. But you're a younger, fitter man, and you've had some... experience of the criminal mind. You've a better chance of coming between her and Pie than I have. I'll give you money for the a.s.sa.s.sin. You can pay him off. And I'll pay whatever you ask. I'm rich. Just warn her, Zacharias, and get her to come home. I can't have her death on my conscience."

"It's a little late to think about that."

"I'm making what amends I can. Do we have a deal?" He took off his leather glove in preparation for shaking Gentle's hand.

"I'd like the letter from your contact," Gentle said.

"It barely makes any sense," Estabrook said.

"If he is is dead, and she dies too, that letter's evidence whether it makes sense or not. Hand it over, or no deal." dead, and she dies too, that letter's evidence whether it makes sense or not. Hand it over, or no deal."

Estabrook reached into his inside pocket, as if to pull out the letter, but with his fingers upon it he hesitated. Despite all his talk about having a clear conscience, about Gentle being the man to save her, he was deeply reluctant to part with the letter.

"I thought so," Gentle said. "You want to make sure I look like the guilty party if anything goes wrong. Well, go f.u.c.k yourself."

He turned from Estabrook and started down the hill. Estabrook came after him, calling his name, but Gentle didn't slow his pace. He let the man run.

"All right!" he heard behind him. "All right, have it! Have it!"

Gentle slowed but didn't stop. Gray with exertion, Estabrook caught up with him. "The letter's yours," he said.

Gentle took it, pocketing it without unfolding it. There'd be plenty of time to study it on the flight.

6

Chant's body was discovered the following day by ninety-three-year-old Albert Burke, who found it while looking for his errant mongrel, Kipper. The animal had sniffed from the street what its owner only began to nose as he climbed the stairs, whistling for his hound between curses: the rotting tissue at the top. In the autumn of 1916, Albert had fought for his country at the Somme, sharing trenches with dead companions for days at a time. The sights and smells of death didn't much distress him. Indeed, his sanguine response to his discovery lent color to the story, when it reached the evening news, and a.s.sured it of greater coverage than it might otherwise have merited, that focus in turn bringing a penetrating eye to bear on the ident.i.ty of the dead man. Within a day a portrait of the deceased as he might have looked in life had been produced, and by Wednesday a woman living on a council estate south of the river had identified him as her next-door neighbor, Mr. Chant.

An examination of his flat turned up a second picture, not of Chant's flesh, this time, but of his life. It was the conclusion of the police that the dead man was a pract.i.tioner of some obscure religion. It was reported that a small altar dominated his room, decorated with the withered heads of animals that forensics could not identify, its center-piece an idol of so explicitly s.e.xual a nature no newspaper dared publish a sketch of it, let atone a photograph. The gutter press particularly enjoyed the story, especially as the artifacts had belonged to a man now thought to have been murdered. They editorialized with barely concealed racism on the influx of perverted foreign religions. Between this and stories on Burke of the Somme, Chant's death attracted a lot of column inches. That fact had several consequences. It brought a rash of right-wing attacks on mosques in greater London, it brought a call for the demolition of the estate where Chant had lived, and it brought Dowd up to a certain tower in Highgate, where he was summoned in lieu of his absentee master, Estabrook's brother, Oscar G.o.dolphin.

In the 1780s, when Highgate Hill was so steep and deeply rutted that carriages regularly failed to make the grade and the drive to town was sufficiently dangerous that a wise man went with pistols, a merchant called Thomas Roxborough had constructed a handsome house on Hornsey Lane, designed for him by one Henry Holland. At that time it had commanded fine views: south all the way to the river; north and west over the lush pastures of the region towards the tiny village of Hampstead. The former view was still available to the tourist, from the bridge that spanned the Archway Road, but Roxborough's fine house had gone, replaced in the late thirties with an anonymous ten-story tower, set back from the street. There was a screen of well-tended trees between tower and road, not sufficiently thick to conceal the building entirely, but enough to render what was already an undistinguished building virtually invisible. The only mail that was delivered there was circulars and official paperwork of one kind or another. There were no tenants, either individuals or businesses. Yet Roxborough Tower was kept well by its owners, who once every month or so gathered in the single room which occupied the top floor of the building, in the name of the man who had owned this plot of land two hundred years before and who had left it to the society he founded. The men and women (eleven in all) who met here and talked for a few hours and went their unremarkable ways were the descendants of the impa.s.sioned few Roxborough had gathered around him in the dark days following the failure of the Reconciliation. There was no pa.s.sion among them now, nor more than a vague comprehension of Roxborough's purpose in forming what he'd called the Society of the Tabula Rasa, or the Clean Slate. But they met anyway, in part because in their early childhood one or other of their parents, usually but not always the father, had taken them aside and told them a great responsibility would fall to them-the carrying forward of a hermetically protected family secret-and in part because the Society looked after its own. Roxborough had been a man of wealth and insight. He'd purchased considerable tracts of land during his lifetime, and the profits that accrued from that investment had ballooned as London grew. The sole recipient of those monies was the Society, though the funds were so ingeniously routed, through companies and agents who were unaware of their place in the system, that n.o.body who serviced the Society in any capacity whatsoever knew of its existence.

Thus the Tabula Rasa flourished in its peculiar, purposeless way, gathering to talk about the secrets it kept, as Roxborough had decreed, and enjoying the sight of the city from its place on Highgate Hill.

Kuttner Dowd had been here several times, though never when the Society was a.s.sembled, as it was tonight. His employer, Oscar G.o.dolphin, was one of the eleven to whom the flame of Roxborough's intent had been pa.s.sed, though of all of them surely none was so perfect a hypocrite as G.o.dolphin, who was both a member of a Society committed to the repression of all magical activity, and the employer (G.o.dolphin would have said owner owner) of a creature summoned by magic in the very year of the tragedy that had brought the Society into being.

That creature was of course Dowd, whose existence was known to the Society's members but whose origins were not. If it had been, they would never have summoned him here and allowed him access to the hallowed tower. Rather, they would have been bound by Roxborough's edict to destroy him at whatever cost to their bodies, souls, or sanity that might entail. Certainly they had the expertise; or at least the means to gain it. The tower reputedly housed a library of treatises, grimoires, cyclopedias, and symposia second to none, collected by Roxborough and the group of Fifth Dominion magi who'd first supported the attempt at the Reconciliation. One of those men had been Joshua G.o.dolphin, Earl of Bellingham. He and Roxborough had survived the calamitous events of that midsummer almost two hundred years ago, but most of their dearest friends had not. The story went that after the tragedy G.o.dolphin had retired to his country estate and never again ventured beyond its perimeters. Roxborough, on the other hand, ever the most pragmatic of the group, had within days of the cataclysm secured the occult libraries of his dead colleagues, hiding the thousands of volumes in the cellar of his house where they could, in the words of a letter to the Earl, no longer taint with unChristian ambition the minds of good men like our dear friends. We must hereafter keep the doing of this d.a.m.nable magic from our sh.o.r.es no longer taint with unChristian ambition the minds of good men like our dear friends. We must hereafter keep the doing of this d.a.m.nable magic from our sh.o.r.es. That he had not destroyed the books, but merely locked them away, was testament to some ambiguity in him, however. Despite the horrors he'd seen, and the fierceness of his revulsion, some small part of him retained the fascination that had drawn him, G.o.dolphin, and their fellow experimenters together in the first place.

Dowd shivered with unease as he stood in the plain hallway of the tower, knowing that somewhere nearby was the largest collection of magical writings gathered in one place outside the Vatican, and that among them would be many rituals for the raising and dispatching of creatures like himself. He was not the conventional stuff of which familiars were made, of course. Most were simpering, mindless functionaries, plucked by their summoners from the In Ovo-the s.p.a.ce between the Fifth and the Reconciled Dominions-like lobsters from a restaurant tank. He, on the other hand, had been a professional actor in his time; and feted for it. It wasn't congenital stupidity that had made him susceptible to human jurisdiction, it was anguish. He'd seen the face of Hapexamendios Himself and, half-crazed by the sight, had been unable to resist the summons, and the binding, when it came. His invoker had of course been Joshua G.o.dolphin, and he'd commanded Dowd to serve his line until the end of time. In fact, Joshua's retirement to the safety of his estate had freed Dowd to wander until the old man's demise, when he was drawn back to offer his services to Joshua's son Nathaniel, only revealing his true nature once he'd made himself indispensable, for fear he was trapped between his bounden duty and the zeal of a Christian.

In fact, Nathaniel had grown into a dissolute of considerable proportions by the time Dowd entered his employ, and could not have cared less what kind of creature Dowd was as long as he procured the right kind of company. And so it had gone on, generation after generation, Dowd changing his face on occasion (a simple trick, or feit feit) so as to conceal his longevity from the withering human world. But the possibility that one day his double-dealing would be discovered by the Tabula Rasa, and they would search through their library and find some vicious sway sway to destroy him, never entirely left his calculations: especially now, waiting for the call into their presence. to destroy him, never entirely left his calculations: especially now, waiting for the call into their presence.

That call was an hour and a half in coming, during which time he distracted himself thinking about the shows that were opening in the coming week. Theater remained his great love, and there was scarcely a production of any significance he failed to see. On the following Tuesday he had tickets for the much-acclaimed Lear Lear at the National and then, two days later, a seat in the stalls for the revival of at the National and then, two days later, a seat in the stalls for the revival of Turandot Turandot at the Coliseum. Much to look forward to, once this wretched interview was over. at the Coliseum. Much to look forward to, once this wretched interview was over.

At last the lift hummed into life and one of the Society's younger members, Giles Bloxham, appeared. At forty, Bloxham looked twice that age. It took a kind of genius, G.o.dolphin had once remarked when talking about Bloxham (he liked to report on the absurdities of the Society, particularly when he was in his cups), to look so dissipated and have nothing to regret for it.

"We're ready for you now," Bloxham, said, indicating that Dowd should join him in the lift. "You realize," he said as they ascended, "that if you're ever tempted to breathe a word of what you see here, the Society will eradicate you so quickly and so thoroughly your mother won't even know you existed?"

This overheated threat sounded ludicrous delivered in Bloxham's nasal whine, but Dowd played the chastened functionary. "I perfectly understand," he said.

"It's an extraordinary step," Bloxham continued, "calling anyone who isn't a member to a meeting. But these are extraordinary times. Not that it's any of your business."

"Quite so," Dowd said, all innocence. Tonight he'd take their condescension without argument, he thought, more confident by the day that something was coming that would rock this tower to its foundations. When it did, he'd have his revenge.

The lift door opened, and Bloxham ordered Dowd to follow him. The pa.s.sages that led to the main suite were stark and uncarpeted; the room he was led into, the same. The drapes were drawn over all the windows; the enormous marble-topped table that dominated the room was lit by overhead lamps, the wash of their light thrown up on the five members, two of them women, sitting around it. To judge by the clutter of bottles, gla.s.ses, and overfilled ashtrays, and the brooding, weary faces, they had been debating for many hours. Bloxham poured himself a gla.s.s of water and took his place. There was one empty seat: G.o.dolphin's. Dowd was not invited to occupy it but stood at the end of the table, mildly discomfited by the stares of his interrogators. Not one face among them would have been known by the populace at large. Though all of them had descended from families of wealth and influence, these were not public powers. The Society forbade any member to hold office or take as a spouse an individual who might invite or arouse the curiosity of the press. It worked in mystery, for the demise of mystery. Perhaps it was that paradox-more than any other aspect of its nature-which would finally undo it.

At the other end of the table from Dowd, sitting in front of a heap of newspapers doubtless carrying the Burke reports, sat a professorial man in his sixties, white hair oiled to his scalp, Dowd knew his name from G.o.dolphin's description: Hubert Shales, dubbed The Sloth by Oscar. He moved and spoke with the caution of a gla.s.s-boned theologian.

"You know why you're here?" he said.

"He knows," Bloxham put in.

"Some problem with Mr. G.o.dolphin?" Dowd ventured.

"He's not here," said one of the women to Dowd's right, her face emaciated beneath a confection of dyed black hair. Alice Tyrwhitt, Dowd guessed. "That's the problem."

"So I see," Dowd said.

"Where the h.e.l.l is he?" Bloxham demanded.

"He's travelling," Dowd replied. "I don't think he antic.i.p.ated a meeting."

"Neither did we," said Lionel Wakeman, flushed with the Scotch he'd imbibed, the bottle lying in the crook of his arm.

"Where's he travelling?" Tyrwhitt asked. "It's imperative we find him."

"I'm afraid I don't know," Dowd said. "His business takes him all over the world."

"Anything respectable?" Wakeman slurred.

"He's got a number of investments in Singapore," Dowd replied. "And in India. Would you like me to prepare a dossier? I'm sure he'd be-"

"b.u.g.g.e.r the dossier!" Bloxham said. "We want him here! Now!"

"I'm afraid I don't know his precise whereabouts. Somewhere in the Far East."