‘More money to perform in this shithole?’ suggested Vanka.
‘Nah, yous wanna manager, that’s wot yous want.’
And Ella had a horrible feeling just who Burlesque was going to suggest as the ideal candidate for that role.
21
The Demi-Monde: 52nd Day of Winter, 1004
Into the pre-Containment Demi-Monde came a woman – sometimes cited as being a Shade – called Lilith who was skilled in the dark arts of Vanir magic, Seidr. Lilith used her powers to journey to the furthest reaches of Yggdrasil (also called the Tree of Knowledge) to secure occult powers denied to the Pre-Folk by ABBA. There – at the very edge of Space and Time – Lilith met Loki (also called Satan, and the Trickster) who was so intoxicated by her sexual charms that he revealed to her the Secrets of the Living. Upon her return to the Demi-Monde, Lilith used her new-found powers to stir the base passions of the Pre-Folk to a frenzy, whereupon they lost all sense of racial propriety and wantonly engaged in the sin of miscegenation. Intermingling the seeds of the Pre-Folk and of the UnderMentionables, Lilith employed her occult powers to remodel and remake the people of the Demi-Monde, thus precipitating the Fall.
– talk given by Professeur Michel de Nostredame: Minutes of the Tenth Annual Congress Regarding the Myths and Oral Traditions of the Pre-Confinement Demi-Monde, 1003
Despite all her best efforts Ella could find neither hide nor hair of Norma Williams. She was fast coming to the conclusion that her mission was a wild goose chase. But in the end, in a roundabout way, Norma Williams found Ella.
That particular lunchtime, two days after her first seance, Ella was sitting in the Prancing Pig, enjoying – if that was the correct word – the dubious food on offer. The Pig wasn’t a particularly salubrious pub but as it was popular with the lascars and the Shades – she hated herself for lapsing into Rookerie-speak – who crewed the barges that plied up and down the Thames, Ella’s skin colour didn’t seem quite so out of the ordinary. Nevertheless she still wore her leather gloves and a broad-brimmed bonnet with a – fortunately – very fashionable veil draped over her face. The veil made eating her sausages a nightmare but anything was better than being noticed by the Checkya.
She had just pushed her disgusting plate of sausage and mash to one side when Vanka bustled in and tossed a thick envelope onto the table. ‘That’s a little thank-you present.’ He sat down and signalled the barmaid for a glass of Solution.
‘A thank-you for what?’ Ella opened the envelope to reveal a NoirVillian passport in the name of Marie Laveau complete with a ForthRight visitor’s visa stamped on the first page.
‘For getting me out of that jam with Morris the other night. If it wasn’t for you he’d have spotted me for sure, and then…’ He trailed off in uncomfortable consideration of how the ForthRight dealt with fraudulent psychics.
‘That’s very kind of you, Vanka.’
‘It’s nothing really, Burlesque’s ten guineas of expense money paid for it and what with Beria promoting his Festival of Friendship with NoirVille, there are so many Shades coming into the ForthRight that slipping one more visa through the system wasn’t that big a deal. Anyway it’ll help explain why you’re wearing a veil: all NoirVillian women wear veils when they’re out in public.’
‘Still, it’s very thoughtful of you.’ Before she quite realised what she was doing Ella had leant forward and kissed him on the cheek.
The reaction wasn’t at all what she expected from a man of the world like Vanka Maykov: he blushed!
For a moment she wondered if he was embarrassed by being kissed by a black girl in public, but from the way he was looking at her she didn’t think so. He raised his fingers to his cheek and touched the spot where Ella had kissed him, then stretched out a hand and gently eased back her veil. ‘Miss Thomas,’ he began in a very serious tone, ‘I should warn you that beautiful young ladies being so free with their affections might find themselves in danger of having those affections reciprocated.’
Their eyes met and Ella felt an oddly pleasant sensation welling up inside her. Oblivious to the crowds pressing around them, she leant forward.
She froze and her eyes widened in terror. ‘Oh, Vanka…’
Vanka spun around in his chair and felt fear trickle down his spine. Even as he watched, four large, black- uniformed and heavily armed SS StormTroopers led by a hard-faced captain barged into the Prancing Pig, two of the StormTroopers peeling off to stand guard on the back entrance to the pub. Then, with legs akimbo and automatic rifles held across their chests they stood glowering at the thirty or so men and women who made up the pub’s lunchtime clientele.
Vanka took a quick look around: there was no way out. They were trapped.
Maybe, he thought, it was just a routine raid but as those were usually conducted by the Militia – the ForthRight’s police force – this, he decided, was infinitely more serious than an ordinary shakedown. Some poor bastard was for the high jump.
His suspicions were confirmed when, at a signal from the captain, a small SS colonel, flanked by ten members of the SS-Ordo Templi Aryanis, strutted in through the door. The SSOrdo Templi Aryanis didn’t do ordinary or routine, they were the crack regiment that made up His Holiness Comrade Crowley’s own personal bodyguard. When Vanka saw that the SS colonel was no less than Archie Clement himself he knew something big was going down, although the adjective ‘big’ was difficult to use in connection with Archie Clement.
He was tiny.
The man the newspapers called ‘Crowley’s Hammer’ was an unprepossessing individual; he looked little more than a boy, not at all the Hero of the Revolution he was billed as. But if the legends about him were to be believed he was an extremely dangerous boy. For the Commander of the SS to be personally supervising a raid on the Prancing Pig meant they were hunting an Enemy of the State.
Vanka darted a look at Ella and his heart sank. He had an awful suspicion just who that Enemy of the State was.
Clement clapped his hands to signal that he wanted silence. ‘Ah am SS Colonel Archie Clement,’ he announced in a drawl of a voice. ‘This here establishment is now under the control of the SS-Ordo Templi Aryanis. You are asked to have your documents ready for inspection.’
‘I don’t care ‘oo the fuck are you, I ain’t finished me grub,’ came the drunken complaint from one of the pub’s patrons, a huge lascar bargee up from NoirVille.
There was a nod from Clement and one of his SS gangsters stepped forward, unclipped a long baton from his belt and proceeded to smash the man to the ground. He kept raining blows down on the bargee’s head until he had stopped twitching and lay silent and broken on the pub’s floor.
‘Does anyone else wanna make a comment?’ asked Clement.
No one said a word.
‘Good. Ah wish to have known to me the psychic who disports himself by the name of Mephisto.’
Vanka felt his spirits sag. To have justified such a high-ranking SS delegation coming in search of him meant that they wanted him very, very badly. Images of being tortured in some SS Hel-hole flashed before Vanka’s eyes but he shooed them away: he had to stay focused.
He gave Ella’s hand a surreptitious squeeze signalling that she should be silent. There was a chance they could bluff their way out: the only other person who knew that Vanka Maykov and Mephisto were one and the same person was Burlesque Bandstand.
At that moment Burlesque barged his way into the Pig looking even more florid-faced than usual. ‘Good afternoon, yer ‘ighnesses, Comrades… Sirs. I am delighted to ‘ave yous honour my establishment wiv your esteemed presence. As yous knows, Comrade Clement, I am always ready to do my duty for the ForthRight so iffn there’s anyfink you might require…’
Clement looked at Burlesque as he might look at something that had just been scraped from the sole of his shoe. ‘Ah’m searching for the psychic known as Mephisto.’
Now there was no chance of Vanka working a bluff. When it came to loyalty to friends, well, Burlesque didn’t
