Angelmaker (76 page)

Joe peers at Arvin Cummerbund and wonders. “Sheamus,” the fat man keeps saying. Not “Shem Shem Tsien.” “Do you know what
Sheamus plans to do with the Apprehension Engine, now that he has the calibration drum?”

Arvin Cummerbund shakes his head. “He doesn’t have it. He’s very upset about that. He says he can’t switch the machine off unless he finds it.”

Joe Spork glances at Polly Cradle. She meets his eyes:
Yes, Joe. Follow that
. Joe raises one index finger: point of information. “He does. The escape con worked and I bubbled. I told him outright where to find it.” He searches Arvin Cummerbund’s wide face. “But he hasn’t passed that information on to you.”

“No.”

“I believe I know why. Do you know who—what—he is?”

“A monk. Obviously. A believer.”

“No. Or, not exactly.” And to Arvin Cummerbund’s growing alarm, Joe outlines the history of Sheamus, Shem Shem Tsien and Vaughn Parry so far as he knows it, from Edie’s time to the fake escape from Happy Acres, and the more he speaks, the more sallow and sick Arvin Cummerbund appears.

“I told Parry,” Joe says. “I worked it out, in that place. At the last minute, actually. I told him and then I realised he … wasn’t my friend. Because there was a moment when I thought the most wanted murderer in the country was my friend, or wanted to think so, because I was alone.”

He laughs.

Cummerbunds do not mist up. They are not in touch with their feminine sides. They do not emote. Nor do they yield to the sudden fear that they’ve been stitched up like a kipper and induced to conspire against the existence of mankind. They do not change allegiances or defect. On certain occasions, however, it may be as well to consider one’s position
vis-à-vis
the established lines of battle.

Joe Spork opens his hands, palms up. Big hands. Thug’s hands, perhaps. Craftsman’s hands. Not liar’s hands. “So there you have it,” he says.

Arvin swallows. “That’s … not ideal.”

“No.”

“No, I mean it’s very bad. They have a … an apparatus, at Sharrow House. We supplied the necessary materials and so on. It is supposed to control the bees. Bring them into line.”

“Put the genie back in the bottle.”

“Exactly. And give us access to the power source, possibly control the … truth aspect … of the whole thing. Not to mention keep a lid on our authorship of what has been a rather strained international incident. It’s rather hard to argue that the Russians can’t control their post-Soviet nuclear deterrent well enough if we … well. You see.”

“Yes.”

“But now,” Arvin Cummerbund admits, “I think maybe that isn’t quite what it will do. If Sheamus is Parry. If Parry is Shem Shem Tsien. If he has the calibration drum. If he has other plans, then … well, it’s … it’s not an area where other plans are a good idea.”

A moment later, it is apparent that Arvin Cummerbund has turned his coat entirely. The prospect of the Opium Khan in charge of the Apprehension Engine is so ghastly that it frees his better nature from the grip of professional habit, in a transformation which Polly suspects is the fast version of what Edie Banister went through months before. Very shortly, Arvin is enthusiastically offering his testimony on the various crimes of the Legacy Board, somewhat disappointed to find that the Spork party is not considering a suit for damages in the foreseeable future. He is able to command via the telephone blueprints for Sharrow House itself, delivered by courier to the Pablum Club, and declares himself willing to get hold of anything else which might be of service. Arvin explains that a Cummerbund, having made up his mind to do something, does it whole.

In earnest of which, appallingly, he abases himself before Abbie Watson and offers swathes of his own skin in replacement for Griff’s. Only the swift intervention of Polly Cradle prevents him from displaying a section of stomach he believes is particularly well-moisturised for her consideration, and Abbie, wide-eyed, assures him that this grisly act of contrition is unnecessary. Dr. von Bergen has pronounced all things good and Griff has no need of donor dermis.

From the name “Sharrow House” and the address in a rather rich bit of south-west London, Joe Spork had concluded that the headquarters of the Ruskinites must be a cool, grey-white neoclassical effort with the air of a Dickensian legal firm and a brass plaque. In his mind, he had conceded—indeed, had looked forward to—a significant police presence, some reinforced glass, and all manner of interior security precautions
like unto a foreign embassy in a hostile land. In other words, a building fundamentally intended as a dwelling which had been substantially adapted for use as a lair or secret base. Keyword: adapted—and in that adaptation, he had envisaged finding weaknesses. Gaps between the skirting board and the wall where a person of low moral fibre might reasonably pry open a board. Even holding the plans which Arvin Cummerbund provided and seeing that he was dealing with something rather different, Joe had cherished a dream of incompetence in his enemy’s precautions. He had with some confidence anticipated being able to gain entry via an unregarded loft space, to bribe a disaffected copper or blackmail an official, or,
in extremis
, simply blow the bloody doors off and make hay. Somewhere in the gamut of crime, from sneakthievery to bullion heisting, he had reckoned to find a technique of entry against which the Opium Khan and his minions had failed to guard. This is very much not that sort of house.

Sharrow House is—and has always been—a castle, or a keep.

On the open upper deck of a London tourist bus making a loop around London’s grand gardens, Joe Spork wears a Gore-Tex coat with a waterproof rain-cape, and across his back is a rucksack in the pattern of the Danish flag. He has fended off a gregarious Dutch couple intent on sharing their bag of sunflower seeds and pine kernels (the husband addressed him with a generous bellow of “Would you like to eat my nuts?”) and leaned on Polly’s shoulder through the interminable lecture on King Edward and Mrs. Simpson. They have seen Hampton Court and Kew, and now the bus, in the grey rain and orange-purple twilight, is crawling past Sharrow House.

“On our left,” the woman with the yellow umbrella says, “we see the Sharrow estate. Normally we like to go in there and feed the ducks and admire the remarkable blend of architectural styles”—this last as if announcing a death—“which is the result of the various changes in ownership of Sharrow House over the centuries. As you may know, Sharrow is one of London’s defensive structures, dating from the time of Henry VIII. During the Cromwellian period, it was besieged twice, but never captured.” Murmurs of approval from the bus. That’s the sort of behaviour one looks for in a castle—unless, of course, one wants to break into it.

Through Joe’s field glasses, Sharrow House is high and strange, with a single very tall spire in the centre, an abrupt Romantic fancy leaping from a sixteenth-century hall. On the plans, this looks like a bullseye. From here it has the feel of a spear, or a warning sign.

All around the main house, the later additions spread out, Victorian red brick and white stucco, even something a little Frank Lloyd Wright on one side of the roof, a floating wood-and-glass observatory—but all of them are sealed and solid, and Joe recognises the ethos of the Ruskinites, the real ones. Sharrow House has the same integrity and integration of design he saw in the
Lovelace
, the same strength. It has real defence in depth, too—a surrounding wall, guard posts, even a proper moat: a slick, greenish expanse clear two hundred feet wide, with a single narrow causeway leading to the main gate. Towards the back, there’s an ancient fortified box—consequence of a brief incarnation as an ack-ack command post during the Blitz—and a short stretch of rail leading to a blank wall; what used to be the castle’s ammunition dump. The lecture burbles on. “The House is presently the headquarters of a monastic order who specialise in church architecture and the care of orphans and the mentally ill, but these days those functions take place in purpose-built facilities elsewhere.”

Joe keeps his face carefully blank, recalling the white room. Yes.
Purpose-built
indeed. He watches a pair of shrouded figures shuffle across the grass, their steps slow and just a little wrong. Polly Cradle’s hand tightens on his shoulder, and he realises he has hissed, not a music-hall hiss, but an expulsion of air through clenched teeth. Everyone looks at him.

“Sorry,” he says, as Danish as he knows how, “I have windiness.”

The guide smiles flatly and gets back to her script. “Unlike so many of Henry’s buildings it was never used to house inconvenient wives or desired mistresses, but it remains one of the capital’s most interesting undiscovered buildings. I do advise you to come back some time when it isn’t closed and take the tour.”

“Why is it closed?” the dapper little man in the second row of the bus says, from beneath one of those rather surgical-looking plastic macs.

“Cleaning,” the umbrella woman says briefly.

“Cleaning?”

“Yes. You’d think we could just go in anyway, wouldn’t you, but apparently … Health and Safety.” Even the Japanese party at the back are familiar with this so-British obsession. Everyone laughs.

As Joe watches, a woman, likely a housekeeper, leans from a window to throw something tubular and offal-ish into the moat; oily ripples abruptly transform into boiling, frothing spume.

Joe Spork takes the binoculars from his face and stares at Polly Cradle.

“Yes,” she says, “I saw it, too.”

“Piranhas? In London?”

“So it would appear.”

“You are absolutely fucking kidding me,” says Joshua Joseph Spork.

Polly Cradle dials a number on her phone. “Yes, hello, it’s Linda here at Sharrow House? Yes, we’re ready now, could you—thank you.”

A moment later, a London taxi chugs towards the gates. Joe looks on with a slightly guilty frown. Before the cab is even on the causeway, it is surrounded by black-clad monks and soldiers, and the driver is on his knees in the gravel, and then flat on his face.

“Oh,” says the umbrella lady hurriedly. “Well, there we are: British armed forces are using the maintenance work for training. A round of applause, please.”

Everyone claps. The taxi driver lies in the dirt.

Joe winces. “We’re not getting in that way.”

A conversation with Arvin Cummerbund does not produce any better news: Arvin is painfully eager to continue his atonement, but has never been inside Sharrow House. The Legacy Board has a hands-off relationship with its religious subcontractor; a
laissez-faire
, light-touch management ethos. In other words, Arvin now acknowledges, Rodney Titwhistle and his political masters prefer not to know what the Ruskinites do. Sharrow House is like a giant blind spot in the vision of British officialdom, and the Legacy Board is specifically charged with making sure it does not become obnoxiously obvious—or, if it ever should, that it be absolutely clear that any crimes were committed without the knowledge of the government: a sad lack of oversight, but not actual complicity.
Lessons will be learned
, of course.