‘cept, that is, for Alf and Sid an’ they’ve got to know ‘cos they’re working the levers. But go on, tell us wot yous fink, Wanker. Me and the lads ain’t done bad, ‘ave we?’
In Vanka’s judgement Burlesque and his gang of workmen had done very well indeed. In the space of a day they’d built something quite remarkable. But then, he supposed, the half-million guineas Ella had promised Burlesque for his help in freeing the Daemon bought a lot of enthusiasm.
The hounfo was made up of two forty-foot-long, ten-foot-high wooden walls arranged in a ‘V’ shape, with the widest, open part of the delta formed by the walls extending from one side of the ballroom to the other and the delta’s point almost touching the furthest end of the ballroom, where the room’s windows looked out onto the Manor’s grounds. It was within the open space enclosed by the arrowed walls of the hounfo that that evening’s seance would be performed.
‘No, you’ve done a good job, Burlesque: I’m impressed.’
Burlesque beamed. ‘But do you fink it’ll fool the nobs?’
‘It might,’ was all Vanka could bring himself to say.
He knew he was right to be cautious. Despite the strange emblems and decorations that Ella had had daubed over the hounfo and the black netting covering the walls it was still just a piece of stage magic writ large. He had the feeling that any illusionist worth his salt would see through the flim-flam in an instant. And Aleister Crowley was a master magician. All Vanka could hope was that its sheer immensity would persuade Crowley that it was simply too big to be just a prop in a vanishing act.
He began a slow walk around the structure, pushing and shoving at the walls as he went, testing them for strength. ‘I never thought it would look this big,’ he admitted, ‘or this strange.’
He gave the hounfo a kick. The walls were so heavy – it had taken five steamers to deliver all the timber used in its construction – that it didn’t even vibrate when he booted it. But was it enough to fool Crowley?
If Crowley should suspect for an instant…
There had already been one heart-stopping moment when Crowley and Archie Clement had come snooping around earlier that afternoon, but fortunately that had been before the hounfo had been fully erected. After that Vanka had made bloody damned sure that the ballroom door was locked and he had spread the rumour that anyone who came near it before the seance would be cursed by the mambo Laveau. There had been no more snoopers.
Vanka rubbed his chin thoughtfully. ‘Yeah, it might just do. And all this WhoDoo mumbo-jumbo Ella’s tricked the place out in is a distraction.’ He nodded towards the cabbalistic designs painted over the black walls of the hounfo. ‘And, of course, it’ll be evening and we’ll have the lights turned low.’
‘Miss Ella tells me she’s planning to ‘ave a couple of braziers at the sides of the ballroom burning stuff that gives off a lot of smoke.’
‘That’s good thinking. Lots of smoke and mirrors, that’s what we need.’ Vanka stopped alongside the gate that was hinged midway along the right-hand wall of the hounfo. ‘If you would close the left-hand gate, Burlesque, I want to check that the gates meet in the middle.’
The two of them pulled the gates closed, Vanka surprised by how easily the ten-foot-tall gates swung on their hinges. They met perfectly, enclosing the pointed part of the WhoDoo temple from midway along the hounfo’s walls. Now Burlesque stood in the triangular space formed on the inside of the gates and Vanka stood on the outside, but even with the gates closed they could see each other clearly through the gaps between the thick wooden bars. What had Ella said? The gates reminded her of a gigantic version of the picket fence that had surrounded her grandmother’s front yard. Vanka had trouble imagining a district where there was so much space that ordinary people could have gardens.
They reopened the gates and set them back ready for the evening’s performance. Vanka gave the hounfo a final pat and stepped back to admire the construction. ‘Yeah, I think it’ll do, Burlesque. It’s big enough to awe even the most dubious of cynics and clever enough to fox even the most hardened of disbelievers, including, I hope, Aleister Crowley. We’ll put the altar as far in as we can, right back hard against the pointed end of the temple.’ He glanced around the room yet again making sure that, except for him, Burlesque and Ella, the ballroom was empty. ‘That’ll make the vanishing easier.’
‘I can’t wait to see the punters’ faces when yous an’ the Daemon disappear inna puff ov smoke.’
‘I wouldn’t hang around too long after we disappear, Burlesque. Chances are Heydrich will be a little bent out of shape when he finds his prize Daemon has done a runner.’
‘Don’t worry abart me, Vanka. Me an’ the Witchfinder are like that.’ He showed Vanka a pair of crossed fingers. ‘They ain’t never gonna believe that their mate Burlesque Bandstand ‘ad anyfink to do wiv it.’
Vanka kept his face as bland as he was able: he found Burlesque’s optimism almost unbelievably naive. ‘I hope you’re right, Burlesque, I hope you’re right.’ He gave the hounfo another pat. ‘You know, this will make an amazing swansong to the career of Vanka Maykov: Licensed Psychic.’
‘Wossa “swansong”, Wanker?’
‘Burlesque still hasn’t twigged just how pissed off Heydrich’s going to be,’ said Vanka as he came up alongside Ella. She was staring out of one of the windows at the rear of the ballroom, watching the SS troopers marching up and down in the garden.
‘Oh, don’t worry about Burlesque, Vanka, he’ll be all right. He’s done so much work for the Witchfinder he’s practically a member of the SS. They won’t punish one of their own for the Daemon disappearing. Anyway once I get to a Blood Bank he’ll have half a million guineas to compensate him for any aggravation they might give him.’
‘I just hope we survive to get to a Bank. To my mind making the Daemon disappear is the easy part: escaping through that gate is the real problem.’
Through the ballroom’s windows Ella could see what he meant. Neither she nor Vanka, even in their wildest imaginings, had anticipated that the Daemon would be quite so well protected. The gardens were crawling with black-uniformed SS troopers, these goons supplemented by a detachment of redcoated regular soldiers. And as the only exit to the outside world seemed to be via the very heavy and very heavily guarded gate they’d passed through when they’d arrived that morning, the inevitable conclusion Ella was coming to was that escaping with Norma Williams would not be easy.
Scratch ‘would not be easy’ and substitute ‘would be nigh on impossible’.
So it was little wonder that Vanka was so concerned. As he had so succinctly put it when he had first seen Dashwood Manor, Ella was giving him ‘a terrific chance to be the richest fucking dead man in the whole of the fucking Demi-Monde’.
Ella felt Vanka shuffle awkwardly.
‘We haven’t got a prayer, you know,’ he said in a conversational sort of way. ‘I thought the Daemon would be guarded, but this is ridiculous. It must be the presence of Heydrich that’s got them spooked. There’s a small army garrisoned here.’
‘We’re going to have surprise on our side, Vanka,’ she suggested encouragingly.
Vanka’s expression turned to one of disbelief. ‘Surprise, Ella? We could have total fucking bewilderment on our side for all the fucking difference it’s going to make. If this hounfo of mine works correctly and if we are able to wriggle through a window without being spotted we’ve still got to run fifty yards across a wide-open lawn that’s guarded by a hundred or so of the best troops in the ForthRight and if, by some miracle, we manage to do that’ – a nod towards the gate leading to the world beyond the Manor – ‘we’ve still got to find a way to vault over a fifteen- foot gate.’
Ella was determined to remain upbeat. ‘It’ll be dark by then.’
‘I don’t want to be a party pooper, Ella, and correct me if I’m wrong but my understanding is that it’s fucking difficult to see in the dark. So difficult that I would give good odds on us all finding ourselves pitching arse over tit into one of the trenches these SS bastards have dug or getting entangled in the barbed wire these sods have been so enthusiastic about spreading around the garden.’
Ella had never heard Vanka so pessimistic and she found his mood affecting hers. ‘Do you think we should call it off?’
Vanka laughed ironically. ‘Nah. Life’s too short to pass up the opportunity to piss Crowley off as much as you intend to. Anyway, a million guineas is a million guineas. Don’t worry: something will turn up, it always does.’
Trixie left the morning room in a state of shock. She had started the day as a schoolgirl, the daughter of a high-ranking and highly respectable member of the Party, a girl who expected her life to proceed in a well-ordered
