Thirty pieces of silver

Asmodeus opened his hand; it had two thumbs on it, flanking five fingers.  The fingernails were opalescent and unusually thick, and spurs of bone poked through the knuckles at each joint.  In the palm of his hand was a literal handful of pieces of silver.  Each one looked slightly greasy; a rainbow shimmer came off them and the design on the faces of the coins was hard to focus on and read.
"And I just take one?"  Travis's voice was hesitant, catching in his throat.  His hands stayed firmly pushed into his coat pockets and the threadbare garment pulled tight around the back of his neck.
More than one if you like, said Asmodeus.  His voice seemed to come from far away and yet at the same time it was like hearing someone whisper in your ear.  Travis pulled a hand free from a pocket to rub at his left ear.  I am not ungenerous.
"There has to be a catch," said Travis.  "You're Asmodeus.  You wouldn't give power away just like that, there's got to be a catch."
Very well, there's a catch, said Asmodeus.  His eyes sparkled; they were grey and deepset with crow's-feet at the corners.  There was a hint of a smile on his face and it was like looking at a cheerful grandfather.
"I knew it!" said Travis.  He paused, and then balled his hand up into a fist and shoved it back into his pocket.  "What's the catch then?"
You'll be able to use a portion of my power, said Asmodeus.  For any purpose you choose.  However, no other King will be able to offer a portion of their power while you have a portion of mine.  They're mutually exclusive.  We have quantum mechanics working on the why of it right now, in fact.  Working hard.
"I don't think I understood much of that," said Travis.  Honesty was, in his book, the best policy, but even he would have to admit that his book was a short one with easy words and a big font.  "If I take one of your coins then no other demon will give me a coin as well?"
King is the preferred term.  The writers of the Bible found it apt to... heh, demonise us, but we were mortals too.  And Kings, for that matter.  I can introduce you to Nebuchadnezzar if you like?  Or perhaps Balthazar?
"They sound like drinks, not Kings," said Travis.  His eyes were fixated now on the coins and he had a hungry look on his face.  "Whose got the best coins then?"
Me, obviously.
"Yeah right, but you would say that wouldn't you?  How do I get more of you here so I can have a... like a... thingy, you know!"
Auction?
"Yeah, sure, that'll do."
Take my coin.  You'll have power then over a number of other Kings.  Take more than one coin and you'll have power over even more Kings.
"Hang on, this can't be right."  Travis rocked back and forth on his feet, his fists clenching and unclenching inside his coat pockets.  His left eyelid was flickering with muscle spasms.  "Each one of those coins is like one-thirtieth of your power.  What if I just take them all?"
Of course you may take them all.  Asmodeus's hand moved a little closer to Travis and the coins jingled seductively.  Though there are only twelve there.  And each coin represents only 1% of my power.
"So there's a hundred in total?"
There are thirty in total.  It is a – significant – number.  And I am not fool enough to give away all my power, child.  I might need it, after all.
"Right, right," said Travis.  His eyes were almost vacant now and a droplet of drool was forming at the corner of his lip.  "I can have one right?  Mine.  To keep."
Oh yes, said Asmodeus.  But don't forget that there's a catch.
"Yeah, sure," said Travis.  His hand came out of his pocket and he lunged at Asmodeus's hand.  He pulled a single coin from the pile and held it up.  "Mine!"
Asmodeus made the other coins disappear nearly instantly and a wide grin spread across his face.
Mine, he echoed.

Asmodeus

"They do not call it the Asmodean Museum!" said Charles hotly.  His face was flushed and his eyes were protruding a little, which was very impressive for a ghost.  Standing next to him, in a guise only marginally hideous to human perceptions, was Asmodeus.
They used to, he said, his voice seemingly formed from the noises of the cathedral around them.  A footfall became a hard consonant, the flick of a duster across the top of the pews became a sibilant.  It had the odd effect of making it seem like the entire cathedral was speaking Asmodeus's thoughts.  Then Herbert became the curator and decided that the name needed to change.  But didn't the Bard observe that the name of the thing matters not?  That the essence will out?
"That doesn't sound all that much like Taliesin to me," said Charles.  "Not enough words for starters.  And I think he'd probably have said it in Welsh."
Not that... oh never mind.  Asmodeus sighed, which required the doors of the cathedral to swing open and a gust of air to rush in.  Coats fluttered and dresses lifted and an elderly Cardinal who'd led an especially sheltered life fainted.  The choirboys retreated en masse from his prostrate form, leaving it lying on the marble-tiled floors in front of the altar, and two other Cardinals came up to sit him up and revive him. One of them dipped a hand in the font of holy water and offered it to the old man.
"Isn't that sacrilege?" asked Charles.
Hardly, said Asmodeus.  It's tap water most days, though occasionally the cleaning lady empties her bottle of spring water in there if it's looking low.  They only bless it if they remember, usually before a Christening.
"Isn't that sacrilege then?"
Heh, quite possibly. And yet it happens.
Asmodeus looked around and pointed a thumb.  On each hand he had two thumbs, one at each end, and a further five fingers.  Small spikes of bone poked through the skin at each knuckle and there was a leathery, aged quality to the skin, as though it had been tanned without ever being first removed.  He walked in the direction he was pointing, passing invisibly through the cathedral.  Charles followed, noting that Asmodeus's footsteps glowed briefly in the air as he went, wondering if it was a reaction to being on Holy Ground or if it was just an affectation.  He suspected, having spent some time with the daemon now, that it was an affectation.
They left the main body of the cathedral, passing through a robing room where the choirboys had lockers and stowed their stuff while they were officiating in the ceremonies, and then on into a secondary chapel.  The ceiling was high and vaulted and stained glass windows let light in from three of the four walls.  The floor was made of large stone slabs, as were the lower walls, and as Charles looked at them he saw that they were inscribed and realised that they were grave markers.
They buried the wealthy and the powerful here, said Asmodeus.  His voice was much quieter as there was less ambient noise to work with.  An obvious folly, you would think.
"What do you mean?" said Charles.
Asmodeus reached out, his arm stretching and growing, longer and longer until it reached across the room and touched a vertical stone slab.  Light illuminated the inscription on it, growing brighter until it hurt Charles's eyes to look at it.  He turned his head away, having only managed to read the name at the top of the inscription: Lady Sheilagh ap Cwmlleg.  The light faded somewhat, and he turned his head back.  The stone slab had become transparent and behind it, sat at a writing desk with her head held in her hands, was a woman.  She had long, flowing hair that reached to her ankles when she sat and was wearing a ruffled and rouched dress that seemed old-fashioned to Charles's eyes.
Lady Shelagh, said Asmodeus and the woman lifted her head.  Black holes where her eyes should be seemed to suck in the light and her face seemed to sink into shadow.
Lady Shelagh was buried here because she paid a full third of the costs of construction, said Asmodeus.  She didn't nag her husband overmuch, she managed with the one for her entire life, and she entertained various members of the church when they came to see the progress of the work of building the cathedral.  She was considered to be a good woman.
Lady Shelagh hissed at Asmodeus and lowered her head again.  Something rattled on the writing desk and then a bottle of ink fell to the floor and shattered, spattering something red and viscous out into the chapel.
She poisoned each of her children, continued Asmodeus as though nothing had happened.  Two because she had tired of children and didn't wish to be bothered by them; one because she felt it was a sickly child and would not have lived of its own accord anyway, and her first daughter... well, she was poisoned because her mother didn't want the competition.  Did you, Shelagh?
The woman didn't respond, and Charles suspected that the shuddering of her shoulders might be sobs racking her body.
And so, said Asmodeus, Lady Shelagh's presence here, unhallowed and unforgiven, allows me to walk here freely.
"I thought God forgave everything?" said Charles.  "I mean, all you do is repent on your deathbed, right?  And then it doesn't matter how many people you killed, or how you did it, or anything.  You're forgiven, the slate is wiped clean, and off you go to Heaven."
And what do you do there?  Sit around and swap stories about how you murdered your servants for bringing you a drink that was the wrong temperature?
"I... would have thought that would be a sin of pride?"
Asmodues chuckled.  Quite probably.  But you can only be forgiven if you truly repent, saying the words is not enough.  And Lady Shelagh still doesn't regret her actions.
Asmodeus's arm shrank back in on itself, and the stone slab because solid and substantial again.  Charles noted that the spilled ink remained though, a blood-like stain against the wall.
"You showed that to me to make a point," he said.  His words were slow and thoughtful.
Ah yes, said Asmodeus.

More bibliomancy

The butler had been moping ever since the stable-boy had left.  I’d been rather puzzled as to why I was paying for the employ of a stable-boy when I had no stables, so when he announced his desire to move on to a horse-farm I had congratulated him on his determination to pursue his career and offered him a month’s garden leave.  He accepted, looking suddenly happy, and that was the last I’d seen of him.  Judging by the butler’s ill-temper it was the last the butler had seen on him as well, but I was avoiding thinking about that and the implications.

It was beautiful outside, at least as far as I could tell by looking out of the window, and I had decided that a walk might be good for my health.  I was dressed to go; I had on my best walking coat and had located my grandfather’s swordstick and my father’s favourite huntsman’s hat and was pulling on a pair of boots that I didn’t recognise but appeared to be my size when I realised that I couldn’t possibly leave the house without some idea of what might befall me when I did.

I finished tying the bootlaces and then pulled a book down from the bookshelves.  I opened it without looking, jabbed a finger on to the page, and then looked to see what was written there:

She’d attended his funeral a year ago – seen his casket being lowered into the ground.

I mused for a moment that seeing a casket being lowered into the ground was no guarantee that anyone was in the casket, or that any body in there was the intended one, and then I tried to remember where the front-door was.  The house was so large, and I left my suite so infrequently, that it usually took a moment or two to remember where I was going.  Then the memory returned, I allowed myself a small chuckle of triumph, and I started off.

As I closed the front-door behind me I caught sight of the butler watching me from the upper landing window.  He still looked morose, perhaps even forlorn, and I wondered if I should buy him a pet of some kind.  I recall that my father had his butlers shot when they stopped being able to manage their day-to-day duties, but I had a feeling that times might have changed since then, and I wasn’t in the mood for entertaining the police and their enquiries.

There is a long, gravelled drive that leads out of the house and down to the main road and I was half way along that when the spire of the church hove into view.  I thought for a moment, and remembering the words from the book decided that I was probably intended to go and view a funeral today, so I clambered over the two-bar wooden fence that stopped cars randomly driving into the fields, and waded through knee-high grass in the direction of the spire.  It was tough going at first, but slowly the grass became lower and lower and the walking became easier, and then it turned into something that was neatly mowed and maintained and the churchyard was just across a low stone wall.

There was a funeral going on as I approached, with a large crowd of black-clad mourners gathered around a hole and two caskets, side-by-side on a large blue tarpaulin, presided over by the vicar who I recognised as the son of the man who had buried my father.  I managed to get over the wall, though it was harder work than the fence, and avoided falling over when I landed on some fresh flowers on a grave on the other side.  Some people in the mob… I mean, mourners, turned when they heard me swearing as I tried to keep my feet, but I ignored them.  There was a flash of pain on the vicar’s face and I wondered if he had his father’s problems of gout, vanity and avarice.

A woman broke away from the crowd and confronted me.

“This is a private funeral,” she said.  Her eyes were red and her lipstick appeared to have been put on in a moving vehicle in the dark.  She was old enough to be my sister, and she held her arm stiffly as though it had been broken and never set properly.

“This is private land,” I replied.

“It’s a church,” she said.  She still looked annoyed, but her tone had come down a notch as though she suspected I had something to say she wasn’t going to like.

“My church,” I said.  “I’m the landowner here.”

She looked like she was chewing a mouse as she tried to work out what she could say to that.

“My sons are both dead,” she said finally.  “We are burying them.  You may stay and watch if you wish.”

“Whose funeral were you at a year ago?” I asked, the bibliomantic words burning in my head now.  She’d been turning away, but now she turned back again.

“You know…?”

I nodded, though I had no idea what she was talking about.  Tears welled in her eyes.  “She said you never knew,” she said.  Her voice cracked and became a whisper.  “She said she was trying to protect you.”

“Who?” I prompted.  The vicar was staring over at us, clearly waiting for one or both of us to join the mob.

“Your mother,” she said, starting to sob.

Now that was interesting, since I was under the impression that father had shot mother as well when she stopped being able to produce children.

Agnes and Bettie

“I don’t know if we’re allowed back in here,” said Bettie.  She was shuffling along behind Aggie, her flat-shoes making a susurration against the grimy pavement and her skirts clinging damply to her legs.  She was holding a canary-yellow umbrella as protection from the rain, but the autumn wind was blowing the wind sideways and the umbrella was doing little more than threatening to pull her over.

“Don’t be silly,” said Aggie.  “Of course we will be, we’re patrons of the arts.”  She had a slightly more energetic shuffle than Bettie, despite being nearly four years older than her, and had left her umbrella at home in favour of a transparent plastic rain-hood that she’d tied under her chin in an untidy bow.  Her grey hair, with the occasional bald-patch from alopecia, looked like a brillo pad trapped beneath it.

“You did spit on the assistant manager last time,” said Bettie.  “Not that I should think you need reminding.”

“He was on fire!  A little bit, anyway.”

“You’d set him on fire with that cigarette thingy you were waving around.  I don’t think he was very pleased about that either.”

“Well I didn’t know what it was, did I?”

“…yes.  We both had them when we were younger, Aggie.”

“Back when we smoked, you mean?”

They fell silent for a moment, both women remembering a world that seemed almost centuries ago.  Then Aggie reached the main doors of the Winklepicker Theatre and reached for the handle to open them.

“Not today ladies thankyou,” said a tall man with a pronounced belly.  He spoke so quickly that the words seemed almost run-together and he positioned himself between Aggie’s hand and the doorhandle, which led to her grabbing hold of the waistband of his trousers.  “Madam!”

“Well don’t put it out there if you’re not offering it,” said Aggie.  “That’s what my mother and her aunt Judith used to say.”

“In unison,” said Bettie.  “I can still remember them standing on the landing in that house you had at Rudwell.  Like a Greek choir they were.”

“I bet you don’t know what a Greek choir is, do you?” said Aggie looking at the man who’d blocked her way.  He was wearing a black suit and a white shirt; the shirt cuffs were too long and covered half his palms, while the suit jacket was definitely a size too small and looked badly stretched across the shoulder.

“Of course I do,” he said looking down the length of his nose at them.  “There’s one, for example, in Brecht’s Kaukasische Kreiderkreis.”

“Did you just spit on me?” said Aggie, brushing her sleeve.  Her coat smelled of damp dog even in the rain and looked at though it was used as an animal blanket when she wasn’t wearing it.  There were hairs of all lengths, colours and thicknesses clinging to it, and the belt was the uneven colour of something that’s dealt with lots of bodily fluids.  “How dare you!  How dare you spit on me!”

The door opened behind the tall man and the assistant manager of the Winklepicker stepped out.  The wind blew the rain into his face, and he stepped back into the doorway again, holding the door open with a pale hand.  “Like you spat on me?” he said, revealing that he’d been stood just inside the doors listening.

“You were on fire!” said Aggie.  “I said that already, I said that.  Didn’t I, Bettie?  Didn’t I say that?”

“Then thank-you for spitting on me,” said the assistant manager, “and I am glad to have been able to return the favour through Louis here.  Now ladies, as you are banned from the theatre for life, why are you stood out here?”

“You can’t ban me!”  Aggie straightened up with shock, and a look of pain crossed her face.  “Oh, ooh.” she said.  “That’s my back, I shouldn’t have done that.  I’m going to be half-crippled for the rest of the week now.”

“You always were a martyr to those vertebrae, girl,” said Bettie.  “You shouldn’t be stood out here in the cold and the wet at your age.  Nor me at mine, I shouldn’t wonder.”

“Yes ladies, you should run along home,” said the assistant manager.  “Before the weather grows more inclement.”

“Or you could just let us in,” said Bettie.  “We’d like two tickets to see Der Battenburg, please.”

“You’re banned, ladies,” said the assistant manager.  “Didn’t I just say that?”

“I say, is there a queue,” said another voice.  Bettie turned round and found a couple of young men with rugby-player builds standing just behind her.  “Frightful weather for a queue, don’t you think?”

“Oh there’s no queue,” said Bettie quickly.  The assistant manager raised a hand to try and stop her, but she hurried on.  “This man here in the bad suit is just spitting on my friend.”

“That’s not what’s hap–“ said the assistant manager, and Louis looked uncomfortable and tried to step backwards.  He stepped on the assistant manager’s foot, cutting him off in mid-word and causing him to cry out.

“She’s eighty next year,” said Bettie.  “She worked at Bletchley Park, you know.  And he’s… spitting on her.”

“Right!” said the young man.  “Let’s all go inside and get some apologies sorted out then.”

“Aren’t you going to hit him?” said Aggie.  “He spat on me!”

“That’s one side of the story,” said the young man.  “Now we need to hear the other side and then we can find a common middle ground that’ll keep everyone happy.”

“Oh,” said Aggie.  “In my day men defended women.”

“We’re all equal now, hey?” said the young man.  His companion nodded.  “Let’s just get inside.”

“They’re banned!” said the assistant manager, still hopping.  His pale face was reddened with either pain or anger.  “But everyone else can come in.”

“You can’t deny them recourse to justice,” said the young man.  “And it’s too wet out here for a conversation.  Let’s just get inside.”

“They’re banned,” said the assistant manager.  “She tried to set me on fire!”  He pointed at Aggie.

“See, that’s why you need to hear both sides of the story,” said the young man to Bettie.  “Imagine if we’d hit him and only then found out that she tried to murder him.  Can you imagine how I’d feel then?”

“Dry, on account of only finding out when you’d got inside?” said Aggie.  Bettie shrugged.

“It wasn’t him that was spitting on her, it was him,” she said, pointing at Louis.  “Who she’s never seen before in her life.”

“Well why’s he spitting on her then?” said the young man.  He turned the collar of his shirt up.

“That’s what I’d like to know,” said Bettie.  “I liked the idea of talking about inside though.”

“You’re banned!” said the assistant manager.  “Move out of the way and let these gentlemen in though. You’re holding up the queue!”

“There’s a queue now?” said the young man’s companion.  “Only you said there wasn’t a minute ago.”

“There isn’t,” said Bettie, while the assistant manager shouted “There’s only a queue of these dreadful old women.”

“Names!” said Aggie.  “Now he’s calling me names!”

“You set fire to me!” said the assistant manager.  He stared at Aggie, the spark of hope slowly dying in his eyes.  “Please, just leave.”

“I want two ticket to see Der Battenburg,” said Aggie.  “And I ain’t leaving until I’ve got them.”

“Der Battenburg doesn’t start until next week,” said the young man.  “They’re still showing Death of the Defector; that’s the matinee we’re here for.”

“Oh I’ve seen that,” said Aggie.  “That was awful.  The actor they’ve got playing the Defector is half-deaf and keeps missing his cues.  I wouldn’t go and see that if I were you.”

“What?” said the assistant manager.  Bettie nudged the young man’s companion.  “There’s a bar over there,” she said, pointing across the street.  “Be a love and buy us a drink and we’ll tell you all about the play and where you can go to see it done properly.”

“What?” said the assistant manager again.  The young men looked at each other, and then back at Bettie.  “It’ll be cheaper,” said the young man.  “Why not?”

“What?” said the assistant manager.  As the four departed, he stared at Louis.  “That’s coming out of your wages!” he said.

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.