him. He leered at Molly, and nodded briskly to me.
“Hail fellows well met, and all that crap. Trash, sir, at your service. It’s not my given name, you understand; I chose it. It’s real, it’s romantic, it’s . . . me. Trash: child prodigy, eccentric dancer, and necromancer-in-waiting to the court of St. James, the bastards. I understand you’re hot on the trail of a new satanic conspiracy. . . . Whatever happened to the old one, I wonder? People can’t be bothered to look after their conspiracies anymore. In my young day, you could expect a decent conspiracy to give you a good run for your money; be something you could hand down to your children and grandchildren. Not that I’ve ever been cursed with such. I would love to be of assistance, Molly, dear, but these days if it isn’t directly concerned with death and dying, I’m really not interested. Sex and death, you see; it’s all down to sex and death. Or if it isn’t, I don’t want to know. I could ask some recently departed if they know anything, but frankly I wouldn’t trust anything they have to say. The dead have their own strange ideas about what’s real and what isn’t. Either that, or they have a really weird sense of humour, and lie a lot. And they always have their own agenda.”
We moved on, leaving Trash to chat up an emo ghoul with far too many piercings. I spotted Jeremy Diego wistfully waving a folded banknote in the air as he tried to attract a bartender’s attention. Some people can’t get served. Jeremy was a ghost finder from the Carnacki Institute, and it showed in his prematurely aged face and otherworldly eyes. A short and stocky chap in a battered suit and a jaunty fedora, and what appeared to be half his breakfast all down his front. He seemed pleased enough to see me, and nodded politely to Molly, but as always, if it didn’t involve ghosts, he didn’t have a clue.
“The word is,” he said, peering at us owlishly over the drink I’d bought him, “things are stirring in the afterworlds. Very powerful things. An awful lot of our psychics are looking into the future and coming back with spiritual shell shock. Something Bad is heading our way. Can’t get any of them to agree on what it might be, but then, that’s psychics for you. The one thing you can be sure of is that when we do find out what it is, we’re really not going to like it. Mark my word, young Shaman, there’ll be tears before bedtime. . . .”
And then there was Monkton Farley, the famous consulting detective, leaning very casually against the bar in his immaculately cut suit, elegant cuffs and brightly polished brogues. He had the usual small crowd of admirers set out before him, listening eagerly to his tale of the Case of the Unnatural Progression. Luckily he’d almost finished, because we’d never get anything out of him until he had. We waited for the crowd to finish applauding, and then pushed our way through to the front. He looked down his long nose at me, over his flute of pink champagne, but had better sense than to try that with Molly, and so gave her a wintry smile.
“Satanic conspiracy?” he drawled, in that aristocratic tone I knew for a fact he wasn’t entitled to. “Haven’t heard a thing. Been very busy, you know. Nothing succeeds like success, and all that. Only just got back from the wilds of rural Somerset. God, I despise the countryside. It’s so . . . uncivilised.”
Molly and I split up after that, so we could cover more ground. I worked the club with my usual practiced charm, asking a discreet question or two here and there, and reading between the lines of what I was told; but when I joined up with Molly again neither of us had much to show for our efforts. There was a general feeling among the club regulars that there was definitely Something in the air, but no one knew anything for sure. And when I did come right out with it, and asked if anyone had heard anything about a new satanic conspiracy, most people laughed at me.
And then, while Molly and I were refreshing ourselves with several new drinks, I spotted a familiar if somewhat unexpected face. Philip MacAlpine was one of the old-time spies, who spent his whole adult life in the treacherous trenches of espionage and double-dealing. He was supposed to have done good work with my uncle James and uncle Jack back in the day, but now, at the end of his career, he was only a minor functionary at MI-13, helping to keep the lid on things the public wasn’t supposed to know about. He’d tried to kill me on more than one occasion, but I did my best not to take it personally.
He was looking old and tired, so I decided to cheer him up with my company. He took one look at me advancing on him and tried to run. But I’d already sent Molly ahead of me to block his way. He looked back and forth, and his shoulders slumped. I smiled at him, and he grunted back. Anyone would have thought he wasn’t pleased to see me.
“Not pleased to see me, Philip?” I said brightly.
“I used to have a career!” he snapped. “I used to have prospects, and an office with a window! And then you happened to me.”
“Shouldn’t have tried to kill me then,” I said reasonably.
“I shouldn’t have failed,” said MacAlpine, pouting. “I told them there was no point in trying to go head-to- head with a Drood field agent, but no; no one ever listens to me. Even though I’ve got more field experience than half my superiors put together, these days. The departments aren’t what they were. I used to swan around Eastern Europe in a cool car, with all the latest weaponry, making trouble in all the right places . . . and now I have to fill in forms in triplicate just to go to the toilet. I blame the end of the Cold War. They knew how to play the game. . . . Now it’s all fanatics and religious head cases with no sense of humour, who wouldn’t understand the rules of the game if you tattooed them on their foreheads.”
“I heard you’d found a new niche for yourself at MI-13,” said Molly. “Cracking down on unregistered aliens from other dimensions . . .”
“MI-13 is still a force to be reckoned with,” MacAlpine said quickly. “Droods don’t have all the answers. There’s still plenty for us to do.”
I nodded, only half listening to what he was saying. A strange sense of déjà vu was raising all the hairs on the back of my neck. The last time I’d talked with Philip MacAlpine, it had been at the Winter Hall, in Limbo. I still remembered that conversation, but he didn’t, because he wasn’t really there. Or was he? It was hard to be sure about anything that had happened in that strange other place. I wondered, if I were to remind him of what he said there, would he remember? I decided it was better not to ask. I cut into his ramblings about how his life hadn’t worked out the way it should have, and fixed him with a hard stare.
“You owe me, MacAlpine. You, MI-13 and this whole country. I saved the crown jewels from being stolen.”
MacAlpine sniffed moistly. “All right. Say you did. Even though officially that never happened, and don’t you forget it. What do you want, a medal? I could probably get you a nice illuminated scroll, signed by Her Majesty.”
“You owe me,” I said, and something in my voice made him look away for a moment. “You owe me, and I want a favour. Right now, with a ribbon on it. Nothing too difficult. I need to get into Under Parliament, and for that I need access to the outer lobby of the House of Commons. Now, I could force my way in, but that would make more trouble than it was worth, for both of us. So I want you to supply Molly and me with two MI-13 security passes. One day only, of course. Do it now, Philip. Or watch me turn seriously crotchety.”
He growled and muttered for a while, but his heart wasn’t in it. He took out his mobile phone and moved away so he could talk in private. Though he needn’t have bothered; over the blasting music and the sheer bedlam of raised voices, we’d had to shout at each other to be heard anyway. Molly glared after him.
“Never trusted him. Shifty little scrote. You really think he’s going to help us? He hates your guts!”
“Possibly,” I said calmly. “But he’s far too much the professional to let that get in the way of doing business. He may not want to help me now, but his superiors will. They owe the Droods, and they know it, and they’ll be glad to get off this easily. What are a couple of passes to them? They hand the things out like party favours these days.”
MacAlpine put his phone away and came back to join us, looking even more sour than before, if that was possible. “All right, it’s arranged. Two security passes will be waiting for you at the entrance to the House of Commons: a full pass for Shaman Bond, and a backup pass for one other.”
“One other?” Molly said ominously. “The powerful and legendary wild witch of the woods is
“If I put your real name on the pass, they’d never let you in,” said MacAlpine. “Your reputation precedes you.”
“Yes,” said Molly, not displeased. “It does tend to.”
MacAlpine made a point of turning his full attention to me. “The passes will get you into the outer lobby, but no farther. Don’t push your luck. And getting into Under Parliament is strictly your business.”
“No problem,” I said cheerfully.
“I really didn’t like the way you said that,” MacAlpine said sadly.
