L'escargot français 3

Sixty years on…

Magda was sitting on the upper deck of a bus in the traffic jam that called itself Wandsworth Road when her phone beeped three times.  She sighed, then felt slightly guilty about it.  She’d agreed to work these hours – hell she’d signed the contract and understood what she was getting into! – but right now when she was wishing she had some alternative route home just wasn’t the right time for work to be calling.  She pulled the phone out of the inside pocket of her Snow&Rock padded jacket and double-tapped the home button.  It beeped again as custom software intercepted the phone’s usual behaviour and a pin pad screen appeared.  She tapped in a code number and then a second one when the screen told her that the first one was incorrect.  Only then did the phone unlock and allow her access to her secure mail.

Come back in, read the message.  There’s been a development.

Of course there was.  It was seven in the evening, she was in a traffic jam trying to get home and maybe, if she was lucky, find that her flatmate hadn’t eaten all of last night’s casserole, and now work wanted her to turn around and go back because there’d been a development.  That couldn’t wait until eight o’clock tomorrow morning.  She stood up and stomped along the bus to the stairs, ignoring the cold looks the other passengers gave her, and went down.

She went to the exit doors and flipped the little plastic cover in the ceiling up, twisted the manual door-open switch there and stepped off the bus as the doors hissed open.  She could hear the beeping as the driver tried to close them again, but two other people got off and onto the pavement before they were all closed again.  Ridiculous really, to keep people trapped on the bus when it was going nowhere, but she’d read somewhere that the insurance rules required the drivers to only let people on and off at officially marked stops.  She looked at the road, wondering if there was any chance of a taxi, and then started walking back to Vauxhall.  It would definitely be faster.

She pass-carded her way into the foyer of the building where the security guard sat behind the desk watching television.  He put the fingerprint scanner up onto the counter without even looking at her, so she returned the favour while she placed her index finger on the little pad.  It beeped, an LED flashing green, and he pressed a button to allow her through the turnstile.  On the other side there was another gate that needed pass-carding, and beyond that the elevators that also needed pass-carding.  Inside the lift there was a panel of twenty-four buttons, none of which were marked in anyway.  She pressed a pattern of them, and the doors closed and the lift glided to its destination.

All of this was, she knew, security theatre.  It satisfied the people who came in to audit her organisation and make sure that they were keeping to the conditions of the PPP – Public Private Partnership, or how the government out-sourced various functions that were either too sensitive for politicians to have oversight of, or were too necessary for politicians to be allowed to fight over.

The lift doors slid open and there was nothing but darkness in front of her.  Despite that she did this at least once every working day she still felt a sense of dread and had to concentrate to force herself to step out of the lift and into the darkness.  As she did so she could swear that she could hear crickets chirping, and then a moment later the darkness was gone as though it had never been there.  Behind her, if she’d looked, the lift was clearly visible and closing its doors again; around her was the anodyne furnishing of a modern office; low partitions walls, glass offices arrayed around the outside of the floor, large sealed windows and the low hum of air conditioning.

Catherine appeared around a corner and nodded at her.

“This way,” she said.  “We’ll use Casino Royale.”

The meeting rooms were all named after Ian Fleming novels, apparently a condition of the PPP, though Magda found that slightly hard to believe.  Casino Royale was on the LDAP as being appropriate for up to ten people and having both a telephone and VC facilities.  It was on the side of the office overlooking the tangle of roads around Vauxhall bus station and the lights came on automatically as they walked in.  The chairs were scattered around the room, most some distance away from the collection of tables in the middle.

“I think Gerard had one of his meetings in here last,” said Catherine, pulling a black, stretchy-fabric-over-steel-tubing chair to one side of the table.  Magda followed suit, choosing to sit on the adjacent side, ninety degrees to her boss.  “His group never want to sit anywhere near each other.  I don’t know what he does to them.”

“You probably don’t want to know what he does to them,” said Magda with only a hint of joviality in her voice.  Gerard was an Architect and his group were mostly considered dysfunctional by the rest of the office.

“Probably,” said Catherine.  “Right, looks, thanks for coming back in.  I guess you’d gone home already.”

It wasn’t a question but Magda answered it anyway.  “I was on the bus going nowhere fast,” she said.  “I’ll probably get back faster for coming back here and then going out again.  The traffic is ridiculous on that road.”

“You could walk, couldn’t you?”

“Well, yes, but that’s not the point.”  Magda felt uncomfortably warm and realised she’d not had time to take her jacket off and leave it at her desk.  She took it off now, and Catherine waited until she’d draped it over the back of the chair.

“Magda, you were assigned to the Chartwell House group when you were promoted.” Magda nodded.  “There’s been a development with one of those cases.”

“Really?”  Her voice cracked with shock.  “They’re all over fifty years old, how could any of them have a development?”

“Fifty years isn’t that long,” said Catherine.  “That is not dead, and all that.”

“Well yes,” said Magda, her thoughts racing now as she tried to remember the details of the files.  She’d not paid a lot of attention to them as they all seemed pretty much dead and done.  “But even so, I think I’ve got Jack the Ripper in one of them….”

“Well that one probably is dead,” said Christine.  “At least, if it isn’t then it’s going to be interesting, in the Chinese sense of the word, when it comes up again.”

“And messy I should think,” said Magda.  “Do we have anyone up on containments at the moment?”

“No,” said Christine.  “And that’s not the only area we’ve not got enough coverage in either.  And that might be an issue.”

“What?”

“Freddy Stanley just turned up.  And I mean that literally; one minute he wasn’t there, the next minute he was.”

“Where?” Magda’s thought jumped at the name, but she couldn’t think what the connection was.  She groped after it, still listening to Christine.

“Weatherwood House.  They were carrying out the morning register and they found they had an extra patient.  And an extra bed for that matter, the ward he was on was supposed to be full.  They’ve checked and rechecked and they’re sure they’ve not lost anyone, but they’ve no idea where he came from, or even when except for ‘overnight’.”

Magda tapped her fingers on the table, still unable to place the name.  “Weatherwood House is the funny-farm?” she asked.

“Employee recuperative facility, yes,” said Christine, but there was no reproach in her voice.  She allowed herself a smile.  “Oddly appropriate, really; we’ve decided to keep him there.  We’ve moved him to his own room though.”

“Freddy Stanley,” said Magda.  “The name rings a bell, something to do with France?  Snails?”

“L’escargot français,” said Christine.

L'escargot français 2

Fifteen years later….

The building had gone up four years earlier, on a bomb-site.  They’d cleared bodies, as Freddy understood it, that had been missed in the original clearup.  Mostly bones and tatters of cloth by the time the work began, it had held up progress for nearly four months while they tried to find the families.  Some of the bones had ended up in the nearby Church of Seven Martyrs because no-one had come forward to claim them.  Now there was a concrete block stood where there had once been housing, part of the symbols of modern London.  There was a dark line running down the front of the building where water was leaking from somewhere; it was ugly but it still seemed to add character somehow.  Freddy looked over the building and shook his head, wondering if it would ever look any less brutal.

He flipped the collar of his mackintosh up, a long beige coat that was waterproof when the rain wasn’t too heavy, and crossed the road away from the shelter of the bus-stop.  There wasn’t much traffic this morning.  As he approached the building a doorman stepped out of a shelter like a soldier’s pillar-box and blocked his way.

“Hi Geoff,” said Freddy, not expecting a response.  He stuck his hand in his trouser pocket to find his pass: a stiff piece of pasteboard with his photograph on one side and some hieroglyphics on the other.  He presented it, and Geoff looked at it, comparing the photograph with him  and then checking the symbols on the reverse.

“Hi Freddy,” said Geoff at last.  “Mr. Landon says you’re to go and see him.  He’s on the third floor today.”

Freddy put the pasteboard back in his pocket and walked into the concrete building.

The lobby was cold and impersonal with just the doors to the lift at the far end.  Concrete pillars, left deliberately rough, supported the ceiling and possibly the whole building.  Freddy’s footsteps clicked loudly with a faint echo as he walked through; the noise annoyed him and he found himself trying to step more quietly and avoid making a noise altogether.  There was a single button for the lift, and when the doors opened and he stepped inside there was only a keyhole visible; no numbers for any floor.  Freddy searched through the loose change in his other trouser pocket until he found a small key; when he slotted that into the keyhole the doors slid shut and the numbers 1 to 5 lit up around the keyhole.  He twisted until the key pointed at 3, and then waited as it took him up.

When the doors opened again it was onto a long corridor with thin walls that partitioned the floor into various rooms and spaces.  Each wall had windows from the mid-height to the ceiling to let the light through, though many of the windows were frosted to prevent people outside from seeing what was going on inside.  Freddy walked along until the end of the corridor, where it turned left, and knocked on the door there.  Landon’s voice called out “Come in,” almost immediately.

“Ah Freddy,” said Landon as Freddy opened the door.  “I was hoping you might be in early this morning.”  The office was on the edge of the building and the windows here had a view across landscaped gardens to the river.  Even in the grey light brought on by the rain the room seemed spacious and airy.  Landon, a middle-aged man with a spreading waistline, was sat behind a modest desk and in front of several grey-steel filing cabinets.  Across the desk were two chairs, both hard-backed and uncomfortable, but over to the left were some easy chairs around a coffee-table. 

“Mrs. Fancroft?” said Landon, pressing a button on the black-and-ivory intercom system that took up much of the right-hand side of his desk.  “Tea for two, please.”  He looked at Freddy.  “Unless you’d like coffee?”

“How very American,” said Freddy.  “Are they getting to you, old boy?  Should I be reporting you to the Witchfinder General?”

Landon smiled, and gestured to the easy chairs. “You shouldn’t call him that,” he said.  “Percy’s got a job to do, just like the rest of us.  And he’s no McCarthy either.”

“There’s a man to watch,” said Freddy.  “I can see trouble there, you know.”

“We all can,” said Landon.  “But we have to bide our time, I think.  If we play our hand too early… well, it’s not that strong really.  Just between you and me.”

“Between you and me we need something extra if we’re going to play at all.”  Freddy sat in the easy chair and the cushions seemed to fold around him.  He struggled to sit up straighter, and ended up perched on the edge of the chair.  Landon sat opposite him, and set a manila envelope down on the table.

“How’s Martha?” he asked.

“Still dead,” said Freddy, reaching for the envelope.  “I can’t see that changing, old boy, no matter how much you ask.”  He upended the envelopes and shook out two photographs on A4-sized paper and three sheets of paper clipped together.  He whistled.  “That’s Florian Aachen.  Must have been taken ten years ago though, he’s not so good-looking now.”

“Fifteen,” said Landon, his voice quiet now.  “Michael thinks it was taken just before… well, you know.”

“I thought Michael was in Rome,” said Freddy picking up the other picture.  This showed the same man as the first, but now his face was wrinkled down one side and smooth and shiny down the other as though burned.  One eye was missing, but the other still looked at the camera, and there was a sense of foreboding about the picture, as though the man in it knew he was doomed.

“That’s what we put about,” said Landon.  “He was… in Europe at least, checking out these pictures.  The pages are his report.”

“Why am I looking at Florian Aachen?” said Freddy.  He picked up the pages, glancing at the typescript on them.  He skimmed the first page and then the second, stopping a paragraph from the bottom.  “Ah no,” he said.

“It would be reconnaissance,” said Landon.

“It always is,” said Freddy.  “At first.  Then you’re the man on the ground.  Or rather, I am.”

“We’re putting together a team for this one though,” said Landon.  “You won’t be going alone.”

“L’escargot,” said Freddy.  “It’s not like I even really know what it is, just that it was there in the war and then it wasn’t.  And that Florian Aachen might, or might not, have had something to do with that.”

“You’re our expert,” said Landon.

There was a rap on the door, and then it opened.  Mrs. Fancroft came in carrying a melamine tray on which two mugs of tea and a teaspoon rattled as she walked.  She set it down on the coffee table, saying nothing, and left again.”

“Out of biscuits, old boy?” asked Freddy.

“Not before eleven,” said Landon.

“New rules?”

“Mrs. Fancroft disapproves.”

“Hah.  I wonder what she’d make of the Snail?”

“I sincerely hope I never have to find out.”  There was a moment’s silence.  “Are you going to do this, then?”

Freddy sighed.  “Do I have a choice?”

L'escargot français

They parked the tank in the square as a show of who was in charge.  It had been in the desert previously and they’d not bothered to repaint it for occupation of a small town, so it was beige and sandy, an eyesore against the muted green of the fig trees and the dark burgundy of old brickwork.  An elderly woman came out of her house, staggering under the weight of the wet washing in her basket, came up to the tank and started to hang the clothes out on it.  Children nearby laughed and pointed, and the other adults carefully didn’t notice  so as not to annoy the soldiers.  It made little difference; the Captain, a young man with a thin moustache on his upper lip, a prominent adam’s-apple that bobbed when he swallowed, and a dress uniform tailored for a man a good four inches taller than him, came out of the bar and swayed a little as he took the scene in.  Then he called two soldiers over from where they’d been standing a poor guard outside the bar and gave them orders.  Magritte, who was closest, turned white and scurried away, her head down, hoping that they’d not realised she’d understood what they’d said.  Her shoes scuffed the flagstones of the square as she ran, and her headscarf fluttered madly in the breeze, finally pulling free and drifting to the ground behind her where it was a blazon of blue on the ground.

Two shots rang out, as both guards had fired.  The elderly woman, Beatrice, slumped over the front of the tank onto her washing and didn’t move.  The children’s laughter was cut short, and in the silence that followed the soldiers walked over to her and hauled her off the tank.  The Captain turned on his heel and went back into the bar, while the soldier dropped the body beneath a fig tree and swept the bloodstained linen from the tank and mounded it up over it.

*

Inside the bar it was dark; the shutters were closed outside the window and blackout cloths were drawn inside.  A single oil lantern was burning in front of a brass mirror above the bottle behind the bar, but it seemed only to intensify the shadows and darkness; nothing was distinguished in the dark.  The Captain collided first with a table and then with a chair, each scrape of wood on stone met with a slight gasp.  He kicked the chair when he hit it, and as it toppled over he realised that he might now fall over it again and had to stoop, comically sweeping his hand in front of him as he advanced, until he found it and threw it out of his way.  It hit something, possibly a soldier, a little way away, but elicited only a grunt.

Past the bar were stairs, and he went up them with each hand on a wall, his feet stepping carefully up and checking for the next step, never assuming.  At the top he probed delicately in case there was a landing and more steps, but then turned down the hallway and stopped at the first doorway.

“I heard the shots,” said a voice from inside the room.  It was breathy and feminine, and after it had stopped speaking there was a sudden breath of warm air smelling of violets from the room.  The Captain swallowed, his adam’s-apple bobbing in his throat.

“We are not a joke,” he said.  “They need to remember that.”

“I’m sure Beatrice won’t,” said the voice.  When the Captain didn’t reply it continued, “Beatrice was the name of the woman you ordered shot.  She was eighty-five and had lived here her entire life.  Her parents walked here from Rennes eight years before she was born, fleeing accusations of witchcraft.”

“How do you know?” The Captain didn’t sound curious, he sounded terrified.  His voice wobbled a little as he spoke, and was higher than his normal contralto.  “She’s dead.  I ordered her shot.”

“Indeed you did, little Faustschen,” said the voice.  “And am I not Mephistopheles for you?  Shouldn’t I know these things?”

The Captain turned on one heel of his well-polished boots and hurried away down the corridor and back to the stairs where he felt his way down again, sweat running icy-cold down his spine, unable to shake the conviction that he was being watched all the way.

Inside the room the owner of the voice paused from her activities for a moment to allow Beatrice’s memories a moment to settle.  Like butterflies descending on a flowering bush they gathered around her and she welcomed them in, riffling through them as though they were magazine pages, marking ones that interested her, and pushing others of no interest to one side.  When she felt that she had them under control she returned to drawing on the floor in wet, sticky fluids, quietly muttering words of binding and power as each line completed.

*

The Captain sat at the bar alone.  Around the room were his men, but they were either comatose or dead and he didn’t want to shake any of them to find out which they were.  The woman upstairs, the Snail, had stated her requirements and he had received the letter from headquarters instructing him on the actions he was to take to fulfil them.  His hands had shaken as he’d poured shot-glasses of sparkling liquids into the bottles of wine that he’d then served to the tables himself, and for a moment he’d wondered if he shouldn’t drink with them and lessen the burden somehow.  But when he’d gone to fetch another glass from the bar she’d been standing there, misshapen and cold, and he’d dropped the glass on the floor in shock.

“Clean that up,” she’d said, the breath of violets coming a moment after she’d spoken.

He knocked back a tumbler of whiskey and shook as it burned its way down his throat, fighting the urge to throw up.  He stared at the dark wood of the bar counter, unable in the gloom to make out any details, and then lifted his head up to stare behind the bar.  What was the point of being here when abominations like the Snail were allowed to do as they please?  Why did he have to shoot old women who protested by hanging out their washing on a tank that would be a target for any aircraft that flew overhead?  Surely she’d been doing him a favour by camouflaging it.

His eyes rested on a shape in the gloom, and slowly his brain teased out the detail: a salt pig.

They call her the Snail, he thought, slowly, muzzily.  L’escargot français, but I thought that escargot was masculine.  Perhaps she won’t like the salt either.

Quietly, listening to his heart pound in his chest as though it were the parade’s drum, he stood up and went behind the bar again.  The salt pig was quite full, and he spread the salt liberally around on the bottom three stairs.  Probably it was just a waste of salt, but who knew?  Perhaps the Escargot would take after her namesake.

Substitute prostitute

“I’d like to see Joanna, please.”  The man smiled, a little hesitantly, and Marie smiled back.  It was her turn on the desk, and to be honest she was quite happy about it.  Sometimes this was the easier aspect of customer service.

“I’ll see if she’s free,” she said.  “Does she see you often?”  They’d tried ‘Are you a regular?’ as a line, but that frequently got embarrassed mumbles and people leaving.  While they tried to present this as a business transaction and nothing else it seemed that the people making the purchase still had issues with it that they hadn’t got over.  Madame even thought that perhaps that was an essential part of the process, but then Madame had been going to evening classes on Psychology and was starting to think some pretty odd things.

“Uh, yes,” said the man.  He was middle-aged, a little flabby about the waist and his arms were a bit short for his height, but otherwise he wasn’t bad looking.  He made Marie think of one of her schoolteachers, and that wasn’t necessarily a bad thing either.  “It’s André.  She’ll know who… she’ll know me.”

“Excellent,” said Marie, beaming brightly at him to distract him from her fingers quickly typing his name in on the keyboard.  She could touch-type which meant that the customers often didn’t even realise they’d been checked out in the database.  The screen flickered, and she let her eyes focus on it briefly.

“Ah,” she said.  “You’re going to be in the Boudoir.”

André’s smile, which had been a little tenuous anyway, stretched to breaking point.  “Uh,” he said awkwardly, his shoulders hunching.

“On the house,” said Marie.

“Oh!”

“Would you like to sign up for a loyalty card?  It comes with a 5% discount….”  Marie’s voice trailed away, seeing the telltale rabbit-in-the-headlights look in his eyes.  “Do you know your way to the Boudoir?”

“Oh yes,” said André, and he started off towards the curtain that concealed the stairs.

“Very good,” said Marie, and only sighed after she was sure he was at least half-way up the stairs.

*

André opened the door to the Boudoir and looked in.  The room was about the size of a king-size hotel room and contained an enormous waterbed, a couple of hard-backed chairs, shag-pile carpet, a tall, wooden wardrobe and a mirrored ceiling.  There was a connecting door that led to an en-suite bathroom, and there was a silk man’s dressing gown laid out on the bed already.  He closed the door behind him and locked it, and then considered for a moment and unlocked it again.  He checked the connecting door but that was already locked, and when he pressed his ear against it there was only silence.  Perhaps that would be opened after Joanna arrived.  He got undressed quickly and pulled the dressing gown on, wondering if there would be a time limit since it was free.

He’d just sat down on the bed when the door opened and a tall, dark-skinned woman came in.  She was wearing gauzy fabrics draped around her body that shifted and shimmered as she moved, making it hard to tell if you were catching a glimpse of something that was supposed to be covered up or not.  She smiled at him.

“Oh, am I in the wrong room?” he said, standing up.  Inwardly he was cringing at the idea that he’d ended up in someone else’s room, but another part of him, hot and embarrassed was thinking that he knew that this was the Boudoir and it was his, damnit, they’d offered it to him.

“I hope not,” she said, smiling at him with both her mouth and her eyes.  He felt a little flushed in a different way now.  “You’re André, aren’t you?”

“I was told this was free,” he said, sitting back down on the bed.  “That means I don’t have to pay.  Or sign up for anything.”

“And it is,” said the woman.  “I’m Semilla.”

“Where’s Joanna?”

“She’s elsewhere,” said the woman.  “I’m a substitute.”

“I don’t want anyone else, I want Joanna,” he said, almost automatically.  Then, as his brain caught up with his ears, “What do you mean, you’re a substitute?  You can’t just substitute people like that!”

“You can substitute teachers,” said Semilla.  She came and sat down next to him on the bed.  “You can get in temporary replacements for people on maternity leave, or when they’ve got serious, long-term illnesses.  Why can’t you have a substitute prostitute?”

“Because I don’t want you!  I want Joanna, she understands me.”  As soon as the words left his mouth he felt like he wanted the floor to open and swallow him up.  He’d admitted to a dependency.  They’d put her price up immediately and he’d not be able to come here again without his wife finding out.  His head sank.

Semilla put her arm around his shoulders.  “But I’m here to provide a specialist service,” she said.  She caressed his arm.  “Free of charge.  I know what you like, I know what you really want.  Joanna doesn’t offer that kind of thing, as I know you know.”

“She said she wouldn’t tell!”

“She didn’t have to; we have cameras.”

He lifted his head and stared into her eyes, desperation and despair mingling.

“Oh, don’t look at me like that.  We have to get feedback somehow, and you’re barely willing to tell us who you are at the front desk, let alone fill in a questionnaire afterwards about how your experience was and how it could be improved.”

“…blackmail….”

“Hardly!  We’re running a business, and you’re a valued customer.  You come back, and you have needs that we understand how to meet.  You’re exactly the kind of customer that we want, and want to encourage.  Word of mouth is tough in this business, but we think that in the pub or in the bars you might casually mention a place where a man can get needs met for a reasonable price.  It’s not a lot, but it helps.”

“Huh?”

“Don’t worry about it.  But for this evening, I have something a little special for you.  Something that I know you want, and that you probably wouldn’t dare ask for.  And I have,” her hand moved up and caressed his neck, under his jaw, “all the time in the world,” she leaned in and kissed him on the lips, “for you.”

“For me.”

She stood up and led him over to the wardrobe, which she opened with her free hand.  There were no clothes inside.

“Where shall we begin?”

I used to be Lunatik

"I used to be Lunatik, from the Gracious Days."
"Sweet Hobojesus!"  There was a pause as Timothy looked first at the thing in the chair that had been speaking and then over at Gordon.
"And who are you now?" he asked, a note of caution making his voice low, almost like he was purring.
"I'm Tik-tok the clockwork man," said the thing in the chair in a high-pitched sing-song voice.

*

The Gracious Days came between the Second and Third Comings, and Hobojesus was the Seventh Coming, before the Church had adopted the idea of checking how the Messiah was choosing to manifest himself on Earth before they announced and annunciated.  There were those who argued that the Church shouldn't be allowed to pick and choose like that, and there were also those who pointed out that that was how the Bible had been put together.  So far there had been twenty-three additional Comings, but only one set of Gracious Days.  Not so many people remembered them, because a lot of people hadn't survived them.

*

"Hobojesus," said Gordon.  He and Timothy were stood in the narrow, white-tiled kitchen.  They both had a cup of industrial coffee in their hands; Gordon had half-filled his cup with milk in a vain attempt to pretend he was drinking a latte and Timothy was sipping a cup of black bitter liquid and wondering if sugar would make it taste any better.  Opposite them was the viewing window, a huge one-way panel that looked into the interview view where Lunatik, or Tik-tok, was still sat.

"Yeah?"  Timothy yawned despite the coffee.

"Pretty certain he wasn't sweet, y'know," said Gordon.  "I think you're getting Hobojesus and Sweet'n'Sour jesus mixed up."

"You make it sound like people licked him.  Them."

"Yeah, pretty certain some people did."

"Some people are weird."

They both fell silent for a moment, looking through the window at Tik-tok.

"Think that's a person?"

"At least it's not a Messiah."

Tik-tok appeared to be robotic; there were steel plates visible here and there through its clothing, and even slumped in the chair it seemed to have more articulation to itself than a human would have.  But it also appeared to be breathing and had definitely eaten food the evening before when it had been brought here.  Timothy had put in a requisition for a doctor, endured the laughter on the other end of the phone, and had been given an ETA of Christmas Eve.

"Better get back in there.  Got more questions for it?"

"If it's really Lunatik, then... I guess so."

*

"You were Lunatik?  Really?"

The clockwork man nodded jerkily and its eyes flickered, but it seemed a very human flicker to Timothy.

"You were Queen Annie's treasurer then?  In the Gracious Days?"

"For four and a half years," said Tik-tok in its sing-song voice.  There was a sproing half-way through its sentence, but it acted as though nothing had happened.  "I took care of the bills and the bill-collectors."

"There are still things missing from those days," said Gordon.  He sounded contemplative, as though considering something profound.  "Like over a billion Euros."

"Burned," said Tik-tok.  Timothy looked up, wondering if he detected a hint of pride in its speech.  "I was Lunatik, that was my job.  I was only following orders."

"Bugger," said Gordon.

"There are two art galleries missing," said Timothy, wondering if they too had been burned.  "And I'm including the actual buildings when I say art galleries."

"Buried," said Tik-tok.  "It was a beautiful statement about the nature of art.  It was art itself to do that.  We buried them in sand though, so that it wouldn't damage the paintings.  Or the people."

"People?"

"There were people still inside when we buried them, that was important.  Queen Annie said so."

*

Queen Annie was killed by the Third Coming when he dropped out of the sky and landed on her.  There were reports, though of dubious trustworthiness, that his scream had dopplered on the way down, and that if she'd only looked up she'd have understood it was righteous retribution.  Historians put no faith in this at all, preferring instead to point at actual evidence and conversational transcripts from people who spent time with her and declare that she would never have changed her ways.

The Third Coming is also known as Meteorjesus, but people find it hard to use that as an oath.

*

"When did you become Tik-tok?"

"During the Fifth Coming," said Tik-tok.

"Targetjesus," said Gordon.

"Figures," said Timothy.  "People were really on edge back then."

"Too many Messiahs," said Tik-tok, and the three of them all nodded together.  Then Timothy and Gordon looked at each other, embarrassed, and looked away again.

Lestatic

The lights were low and the walls were decorated with flock wallpaper; stark black geometric patterns on an ivory background.  Shadows cast across the floor and tables wavered as though unsure of their welcome here, and people stepped in and out of them lithely like dancers.  The bar had a small number of people stood at it, stirring cocktails they looked uncertain of having ordered, or holding tumblers of brown and amber liquids with spherical ice cubes in and sipping them as though being forced to.  The tables were equally sparsely populated, mostly by single drinkers with more determination that the bar-huggers.  There was a low hubbub from disparate conversations, but a determined listener could have sat still in the middle and distinguished the words from each and every one.  There was a smell of liquorice in the air as well that might have been from a spilled bottle of cheap Absinthe, but then again might not have been.

A woman in a thin white dress walked through the door and was ignored by everyone.  She paused, clearly annoyed by this, and adjusted the front of her dress to expose a little more tanned cleavage, and still earned no reaction.  She shrugged, mostly to herself, and adjusted her shoulder bag; pale green leather with a gold leather strap intended to look like chain-link.  She looked around, then again, as though unable to believe that she couldn’t find who she was looking for.

He tapped her on the shoulder, having come in to the bar behind her.

“Toni,” he said, his voice a little husky.  She half-turned her head, saw him, and then flinched, several seconds too late.  His eyes recognised the slight but his face remained otherwise neutral.  “Shall we sit?”  He gestured to the tables.

She walked to one in the centre of them all and sat down, her bag swinging around to rest in her lap, and her hand cradling it protectively.  The man, Jarvis, raised his eyebrows in the direction of the bar, got an acknowledging nod from the barman, and then walked over and sat down opposite her.

“Why did it have to be here?” she said.  Her fingernails, long and painted papal purple tapped the table like a demented woodpecker.

“Because this is where we first met,” said Jarvis.  “It’s appropriate, we’re coming full circle.”

“We’re coming full circle.”  Her mimicry was snide but excellent.  The barman appeared at her elbow and ignored her, looking at Jarvis expectantly.  “Hey, bud!  Bud!  I want a drink!”

“Directions on a cold, dark night, please,” said Jarvis.  The barman nodded.  “And sure, I’ll buy her a drink.”  Only now did the barman look at her, and his dark eyes held hers for a moment, quieting her.

“Prosecco,” she said.  “Fizzy, too.  None of that funny flat stuff.”

When the barman left them she glared at Jarvis.  “What was up with him?  Is he a faggot?  Couldn’t take his eyes off you, could he!  And what was that… that thing you ordered?  Directions to a big gay fight?”

“Just a cocktail,” said Jarvis.  “I think he didn’t like you.”

“Hahahahaaaaa.”  Her laugh was too close to a shriek for comfort.  “Yeah right, he didn’t like me.  He didn’t like you.  No-one likes you.  All of my friends hated you.  You were always just this big lump in the corner, getting fat and staring at people like you’d never seen them before.  You never watched tv, and you never listened to any decent music.  You were just fat and useless.  I’m glad we split up.”

“I watched tv,” said Jarvis.  “We just watched different shows, we listened to different music. Your friends did seem to hate me though, even the ones who’d never met me.”  His words floated past her, unlistened to.

“You’re so fat.”

“Sure,” said Jarvis.  He was wearing a hoodie that she’d bought him a month after they’d met.  It was three sizes too large and looked it, but after she’d bought it she made a fuss every time he came out unless he was wearing it.  It smelled faintly of wet dog, even when it was fresh from the dryer.

“Everyone here’s weird, you know?  Like no-one’s looking at anyone.”

“They’re just hungry,” said Jarvis.  The barman appeared again and set a tumbler of blood-red liquid down in front of Jarvis and a champagne flute of pale yellow bubbles in front of Toni.  His eyes caught hers again, and she wondered for a moment why they seemed so blood-shot.

“Yeah, I get cranky when my blood-sugar’s low,” she said, picking the glass up.  She sipped it, wrinkled her nose against the prickle of the bubbles and then downed it.  She set the glass down on the table, and looked at Jarvis.

“Same again.” she said.

Jarvis picked his drink up, and brushed away a little frost that had formed on the table underneath it.

“I said I’d buy you one drink,” he said, and sipped his drink.

There was a moment of peace as the liquid swirled around his mouth, aromas of red fruit and old leather bubbling up into his nose and a hint of sweetness washed away by a sea of bitterness like the regret of old sins, and then, predictably, Toni erupted.

“You cheap bastard!” she yelled, standing up so she breathe deeper and scream louder.  Behind her several people at the bar looked round at last.  “All I want is one more fucking drink!  Is that so fucking much to ask of my ex-bloody boyfriend?”

“Ex,” said Jarvis quietly.  She reached across the table to slap him, but someone behind her caught her hand.  She tried to pull away, but their grip was like stone; cold and uncompromising.  She turned, torn between continuing to shout at Jarvis and wanting to scream at this interloper and found herself looking into another pair of bloodshot eyes.  She opened her mouth, but something inside her suggested that this would be a really bad idea, and she closed it again.

“The thing is,” said Jarvis.  “The thing is, you never knew what bar you’d walked in to, did you?”

“What?” she wanted to look at him but she couldn’t pull her gaze away.

“Exactly.  You were just looking for another mark, another stupid little fuck to take for a ride and bleed dry.  And you would have got just the opposite if I hadn’t seen you.”

“What?”  She felt incredibly distracted.  She didn’t normally listen to anything Jarvis said – well, anyone said, really, except maybe Bethany, but Bethany had been like a sister to her – but now it was like she was being told not to.  Only no-one else was talking.

“This is a vampire bar, Toni.  Lestatic.  The name’s a clue.”

“What?”  It sounded pathetic this time, and she could barely hear herself speaking.  The room seemed to be darker than she remembered and she was feeling dizzy.  Only the bloodshot eyes in front of her were keeping her upright, she was sure.

“So here you are, back where we met, and this time I’m leaving you to your fate.  I gave you three months you didn’t deserve and don’t appreciate.  I think that’s enough.”

“Jar–?”  She had a feeling something important had just happened, but she wasn’t sure what.  She inclined her head, trying to hear the voice that had just been speaking, stretching her neck out as she turned and twisted.  The light in the bar fell on it, graceful as a swan’s, and for a moment everyone held their breath.

Resalination

There was a gentleman sitting in the Reception area of Data Analytics Marketetic Normalisations, his face carefully neutral while he read through a brochure describing the more public aspects of the purchase of a small island off the East Coast of America for the construction of a health-state on behalf of ADHD, the American Drivers for Healthcare Distribution.  He looked up briefly as a woman stalked past him, curious for a moment if giantesses were employed here, but then looked away again.  The woman, Jeronica, was simply wearing high-heels that must give her the most fantastic calf-muscles in the history of competitive body-building and appeared to add thirteen inches to her height.  That would explain, he mused momentarily, why the ceiling appeared to be so much higher in some places than others.  A short while later another man, much shorter, squatter, and smelling of patchouli oil paused for a moment opposite him, but he seemed interested only in checking the pile of newspapers and magazines for something he didn’t find.  He left again, and the gentleman carefully adjusted his position so as not to have to notice the slightly oily handprint that had been left on the back of the Claes Olson chair.

At one-seventeen exactly the receptionist, a young woman with white contact lenses that made her appear blind, a beehive hairdo that would have made Amy Winehouse bite through her microphone with jealousy, and a necklace around her neck that must have cost her two years’ salary pressed a buzzer.

“Dimitrion will see you now,” she said, her voice as modulated as Siri’s.  “In his office.”

The gentleman considered that information extraneous, but stood up anyway and carefully walked down a corridor different to the one the Receptionist was indicating.  He’d been here before.

Dimitrion was sat on a wooden platform suspended from the ceiling of his office by thin black chains.  The platform was directly over his desk, and the chairs that would normally be arranged around it were instead pushed back so that people sitting in them could clearly see Dimitrion on the platform.  Even so, he was slightly discomfitted when the gentleman came in from the door on the other side of his office.

“I believe you were invited to take the main corridor,” he said, a little waspishly.  He had a goatee that went wispy after the first three inches, and he looked a little like a goat.  His hair was dark and curly, and occasionally the drunk-and-suicidal would ruffle it, looking for horns.

“I felt like saving myself a little time,” said the gentleman, his words quiet and clear.  “You’ve kept me waiting exactly as many minutes after our appointed time as I arrived early for it.”

“We agreed a time,” said Dimitrion.  He was cross-legged, and he rested his elbows on his knees and then his chin on his prayer-folded hands.

“And you were not asked to see me any earlier,” said the gentleman.  “You were simply expected to let me sit in your reception area, drink your coffee, and read your brochures. How can you be annoyed about that?”

Dimitrion had no problems being annoyed about the sun rising every morning and him still not having found a way to monetise this, but he decided that at this stage he’d made his point and could afford to be generous.  “How was the coffee?  We have the interns make it.  Typically it takes them three months to learn how.”

“How very wasteful,” said the gentleman.  “Even assuming that they pay you for the privilege of working here and pay you bonuses for all the political and sociological information they encounter that’s still wasteful.  What else do you do with them?  Turn them into prosciutto for Christmas?”

“I hear that Margoyle uses them for pedicures,” said Dimitrion.  The concept of intern prosciutto had been floated at a company meeting a couple of years ago but he didn’t wish to go into any detail about it.  “However, you are here to talk about desalination, not pedicures or Christmas hams.  Perhaps we should attend to business?”

“Resalination,” said the gentleman placidly.  Dimitrion frowned.

“Re-salination?” he said.  “That can’t be right.”

“Oh yes it can,” said the gentleman.  “As you are aware, I represent what me might choose to call a cartel, but only here and in the confines of these walls and the numerous listening devices your colleagues have installed –“ he paused, looking at Dimitrion’s upraised hand.

“There are no bugs that I don’t know about,” said Dimitrion.  “If you look on my desk you’ll see what appears to be a desktop calculator.  That’s feeding the various bugs that I haven’t accidentally destroyed or blocked with an appropriate conversation between myself and the Global Head of Ancient Samoan Tributes.  The Receptionist knows you’re here, but she’s a professional.”

The gentleman nodded as though not quite believing.  “Be that as it may,” he said.  “The people that I represent recognise that water must flow to be useful, and that water is often useful because of its dissolutive properties.  We wish to compete in a meaningful manner with the resort and tourist opportunities that the Dead Sea represents, and as such we wish to re-salinate a large inland lake where there is a significant tourism project already underway.”

“Lake Saras,” said Dimitrion.  He produced a clicker from his pocket and used it to first lower the lights and then to turn on a projector screen that showed a geographical map of the region.  “Also a major supplier of freshwater to about three-hundred villages and towns in a two-hundred-and-fifty mile radius.”

“Whose populaces have little interest in politics,” said the gentleman smoothly.  Dimitrion understood this to mean that the populace considered that the gentleman and his friends had inappropriate ideas about politics and the means to ends.  “But freshwater can be obtained in other ways, such as desalination plants and aqueductage.”

“Expensive options,” said Dimitrion.

“But affordable if the tourism industry at Lake Saras can be increased.”

There was a moment’s silence, and then Dimtrion smiled and offered his hand.  “I’m absolutely certain we can do business,” he said.