Wolf in Shadow-eARC (14 page)

Kendrics scuttled over to the display board and switched it on. A map of London and the Home Counties, the counties immediately around the capital, sprang into view on the lecture screen. A tap on the keyboard caused a number of stars to flash.

“Ah, as you know, there have been an unusually high number of paranormal incidents in the last few months, especially in the London region. We have been plotting them in the Library.”

The Library was the Commission’s research unit, [so called because it started out as Dr. John Dee’s occult library housed in his mother’s home in Mortlake.] The house was long since gone, being redeveloped as a brewery. It had an unsavory reputation for unfortunate incidents and bloody awful beer.

Dee’s name was an Anglicization of the old Welsh word for black, and Dee had certainly left a dark reputation behind him. Lovecraft claimed that it had been Dee who translated Abdul Alhazred’s
Necronomicon
into English. Magical adepts whispered that Dee had done more than merely translate and had used spells from the
Necronomicon
in the service of Queen Elizabeth I and her spymaster, Walsingham, in the secret war against Spain.

Official history certainly records that Dr. Dee worked as a code breaker for Walsingham. It also records that his library, the largest in Europe, was sacked by thieves while Dee traveled across the continent with David Kelly. That was quite untrue. Dee’s library, or the more exotic volumes within, was removed by agents working for Walsingham. It became the core of the newly commissioned occult branch of the secret service, now known to a small circle of initiates as The Commission. It was rumored that the Library still had Dee’s translation of the
Necronomicon
in a chamber under London heavily sealed against both physical and paranormal intruders. The Commission abounded in rumors, some true and others deliberate misinformation to hide even more horrifying secrets. And some were just rumors.

Kendrics pushed his finger across the laptop’s touchpad. The view zoomed in on the most famous river shape in the world, the loop of the Thames.

“The epicenter appears to be in East London,” Kendrics said. “You will also notice that incidents increase in severity around Docklands.”

He tapped the keypad. The incident stars color coded from green to red through yellow and amber. The greens tended to be in the Home Counties and the reds in East London, loosely circling the Commission’s new building.

“Are we under attack?” Randolph asked, rhetorically. “Is it something we are doing, or is unconnected with The Commission at all?”

Miss Arnoux carefully placed her hands on the table and addressed them softly, forcing the others to listen carefully. Jameson thought sourly that it was a cheap rhetorical trick as the old shrew could be loud enough when she wanted.

“London is always a nexus for paranormal activity because of its dense concentration of people, its size, and its long history. It has also been a hub for human activity since the rise of the western world. It is still the primary communication center, the financial center, and the air travel hub between the old and new worlds. In short, London is the center of the human world, or, at least, the bits that matter. That’s why world maps always show it in the middle. All that human energy and emotion channeled through one place inevitably attracts attention in the Otherworld.”

“I believe Australians print maps with the south uppermost and Australia in the middle,” Kendrics said.

“Ah, well, the colonies . . .” said Miss Arnoux.

“Quite,” Randolph interrupted, apparently not at all interested in Miss Arnoux’s opinion of the colonies.

“The East End is the most magical place in London because it has been a sinkhole of poverty, misery, and human degradation. The emotional energy released attracts paranormal entities and human sensitives, reinforcing a positive feedback loop. The plague pits for London are here, John Wesley preached his first sermon outside the Blind Beggar Pub here, the liberty bell was made here, and Jack the Ripper sacrificed here.”

Randolph winced. “Shutting him down was possibly the most expensive operation in The Commission’s long history. We lost almost half our strength. Fortunately, it was easier to suppress information in those days.”

“The point is that in East London the barrier between the material world and the Otherworld is weak and easily penetrated,” said Miss Arnoux.

“Or, leaving aside the mumbo jumbo, the walls in the multiverse are porous because of so much human information reducing entropic impedance,” Kendrics said.

Miss Arnoux looked at him in distaste. The Witches and the Library both saw themselves as the keepers of the true spirit of The Commission. Whereas the Wiccans perceived the paranormal through a spiritual lens, the Library was bang up to date with the worldview of modern physics. Jameson sometimes wondered whether The Commission actively encouraged its various departments to be deeply suspicious of each other as a safety system, divide and rule and all that.

“Okay, we get the point. Cause and effect are difficult to separate. From a field agent’s point of view it hardly matters anyway. We just want to shut down whatever’s happening before it gets worse,” Jameson said, heading off another departmental turf war.

“Bloody elves and dwarves,” Jameson said, as an aside to Karla, who smirked.

Elves and dwarves were one of those literary tropes that repeatedly surfaced in real life. Elves were poetic, spiritual, and mystical and dwarves were rational, horny-handed sons of toil who beat metal and built things. Wells used an extreme version of the trope for Eloi and Morlocks in his novel
The Time Machine
. Jameson found it easier to interact with the dwarves but had a horrible suspicion that the elves had the more accurate perspective on what passed for reality.

Randolph shot Jameson a “shut-up” look, but just for a moment the corner of his mouth lifted as if in amusement. Jameson decided he must be seeing things. Randolph famously had no sense of humor.

“And it is getting worse,” Kendrics said, unexpectedly. “The incidents are becoming more serious with time. Look at the pattern.”

Under Kendrics’ control the stars were removed and replaced on the screen in a time sequence. The early ones tended to be green, but red dominated by the end.

At that point, Randolph’s phone chimed. “What? Yes. I see.”

“There has been another incident, a bad one in broad daylight. The Gamekeepers have been dispatched. The details are being downloaded to your mobile phone.”

“We’re on our way,” said Jameson.

The Jaguar’s GPS guided them to a location just off Docklands. It was by a complex of luxury low-rise apartment blocks around Limehouse Basin. The Basin was formerly known as Regent’s Canal Dock because it was where ocean-going ships in the Nineteenth Century unloaded into canal boats. The canal gave access from the Thames to the whole British waterway network. Now it was an exclusive waterside development used by pleasure boats coming down from Little Venice.

The brief on Jameson’s mobile was singularly unhelpful, noting only that a body had been found and magical incursion was suspected.A police cordon marked off the incident zone. When Jameson drove up, two uniformed policemen moved to intercept him.

“You can’t stop there,” an officer ordered.

Jameson got out his wallet and selected an ID card which identified him as a Special Branch Commander, the police department responsible for anti-terrorism.

“Let Commander Jameson through, Perkins. Special Branch are a law unto themselves, their mysteries to perform.”

The speaker was a middle-aged man in a raincoat and tartan neck scarf. Civilian clothes did nothing to hide the fact that he was police. Inspector Fowler was an old-style Metropolitan copper risen through the ranks by dint of hard graft. He resented everything about Jameson, his car, his accent, his clothes, and his Special Branch Warrant Card. To Fowler, graduate entrants like Jameson lording it over honest coppers were an example of all, that was wrong with the modern police force. Of course, Jameson was not a policeman at all but Fowler did not know that. Jameson rather liked the man.

“I wondered when you would show,” Fowler said to Jameson.

“Brief me, if you please, who found the corpse?” Jameson asked.

“Not sure if corpse is the right word. Hell of a mess, body bits everywhere,” Fowler said. “The victim was ripped to pieces.”

“Who found the mess, then?”

“There was a witness, a young woman. She’s being interviewed by your people. We did not get much sense out of her. She’s bloody hysterical,” Fowler said.

Blood splatter marked the scene of the incident in a short alley between two of the developments. A man’s black lace-up shoe lay on the paving. Jameson thought that they had already moved the body until he realized the shoe still contained a foot. There was nothing left of the victim bigger than a shoulder of lamb. His entrails were wound around the bollard that blocked the alley to cars.

Karla folded her hands into fists, covering the nails. She inhaled deeply and looked at Jameson, her eyes glittering metallic green in the sunlight. He knew that if she opened her mouth, it would reveal long canines. She was a monster, no less a monster than whatever had torn a man to pieces, but she was his monster. Jameson turned away and examined the bollard. Amongst the gore glittered silver rakes in the iron where the paint had been gouged down to the metal.

“We think the attacker must have used a heavy gardening tool like a scythe or maybe a chainsaw,” Fowler said.

“Quite likely,” Jameson replied, lying. “Have you identified the victim?”

“We got his name from his car number.” Fowler nodded at a silver BMW ZX sports car parked across from the alley.“He was a merchant banker called Henry Fethers, a partner in a small outfit specializing in commodity trading. He was married, two children at public schools, lived in Surrey but has a pied-a-terre in an apartment complex in the Basin. No previous under that name, but we’ll have to do a DNA check to be sure.”

“Thank you, Inspector, I think that will be all. My people will clear up here. If you’d like to return to your men and maintain the cordon. Keep everyone indoors.”

“The SOCOs have not yet examined the evidence,” Fowler said, holding his ground.

“My people will carry out such scene-of crime operations as are necessary,” Jameson replied.

“Right,” Fowler said, between gritted teeth. “Another Goulston Street job.”

Fowler was more right than he knew. A piece of bloodied cloth from Catherine Eddowes’s apron had been found in Goulston Street on the thirtieth of September, 1888, the night the Ripper killed Elizabeth Stride as well as Catherine. The official report noted that chalked on the wall above was a line of graffiti that read something like “
The Juwes are the men that will not be blamed for nothing.
”

A number of versions were reported by different witnesses, but all agreed on the basic meaning. All the witnesses lied or were misled. No one will ever prove that as the graffiti was immediately destroyed by Police Superintendent Arnold. Commissioner Warren gave the order, ostensibly to avoid an anti-Semitic race riot. The Library knows what the graffiti really said, but they aren’t talking.

“This is clearly a terrorist attack and as such is subject to a DA-Notice,” Jameson said.

Fowler nodded and stalked off with the air of a man washing his hands of the business. DA-Notices were such useful things, putting a blanket of secrecy across anything. The threat of decades locked up in one of Her Majesty’s less salubrious holiday resorts hung over potential leakers. They were introduced as a temporary measure during the Cold War to protect national security, maintained during the IRA bombing campaigns, and given a new lease on life by Islamic suicide bombers. They were so useful that a reason would always have to be found for keeping them. Fortunately, the tabloid press were easily wound into hysterics by some fashionable menace to use as justification.

“Let’s find the Gamekeepers,” Jameson said.

Gaston and his team had parked their van behind the victim’s Beemer. The van was a large six-wheeled vehicle painted as an ambulance. Jameson knocked on the door and Gaston appeared dressed as a paramedic. Gaston was a black working-class Londoner of West Indian descent, which meant that his only connection with the Dark Continent was an inherited skin color. He had been recruited by The Commission from the Parachute Regiment, whereas Jameson had been a major in the Guards. That meant they understood each other very well, and not necessarily in a good way.

“I wondered when you’d show,” Gaston said, making Jameson feel he was listening to an echo. “’Course the Guards were always a bit slow getting in to action despite their Swiss watches.”

Gaston was on form today getting in two digs at the Guards in the first few seconds. The first was that the Guards had failed to relieve the Paras at Arnheim, notoriously halting for tea breaks. The second was that the Paras considered the Guards a bunch of rich, incompetent, toffee-nosed, chinless, aristocratic inbreds incapable of reading the time despite owning expensive foreign timepieces.

In return, the Guards took the view that the Parachute Regiment dragged their knuckles on the ground when they walked– and that was only the officer’s mess. Of course, both considered the Light Infantry to be farmers with guns who still had straw sticking out of their hair and the Royal Tank Regiment to be sweaty spanner-heads with oily hands. Sometimes Jameson found it surprising that the British Army managed to find any time at all to engage the Queen’s enemies.

“The Guards add tone to what would otherwise be a vulgar brawl,” Jameson said, loftily.

“Hello Karla,” Gaston said, ignoring him.

The two grinned at each other without humor like two rival Mafia Capos at a mob “sit down.” Gaston and Karla went back a very long way. Gaston led the Gamekeeper team that captured Karla. He lost a trooper that day. The trooper was not just a colleague but also his girlfriend.

“Where’s the witness?” Jameson asked.

“Jane Littlewick, in there,” Gaston pointed to the van.