“He did too many things wrong. He went out with me, a pleb. He disparaged the education and brains of certain touchy officers, at least one of whom was senior to him. He had wilder and wilder ideas. A few days before he disappeared, he told me he was certain the Glorious Resolution was planned by a clique of Public Era top dogs. They wanted to annihilate the Fatted Masses and gain absolute power through land and gold. If he mentioned ideas like that to a fellow glory officer… But his biggest mistake was being alone; he had no friends or family to miss him, nor had I.”
“What do you make of this?” Donald shot at Nightminster. The abrupt shift of focus did not faze him in the least.
“Long ago as a teenager, I was a glory trooper with General Wardian, in fact I joined at ten as a cub for fun and a little money. I left at eighteen. The glory trusts are hierarchies of venal, cowardly bureaucrats who will do anything to kiss arse whilst stamping down the competition. All I have heard about Lawrence is that he was an exceptionally effective officer. Such people attract enemies. I would say his error was to serve in a place like Oban. It’s on the edge of civilization. Things like this happen and then get buried by distance.”
“Can you help get him out of the Night and Fog?”
“No. I have nothing to do with the ultramarines. They are low-life. My Value System operation runs entirely on its own energy without input from them. I’m sorry, but I can’t help you, or I would have done so by now.”
The response did not surprise Donald. Nightminster would have no desire to help reunite Sarah-Kelly with her lost beau Lawrence. That said, Nightminster did sound genuine in his contempt for the ultramarines.
Donald made a fuss of looking at his watch—if he did not get out soon, he would end up spending the night and it would get all complicated. As it was Sunday tomorrow, etiquette would require him join in some hellish bore of religious practice. In any case, he would owe them hospitality. He stood up.
“I have to be back for an evening engagement. What I will do is pass this information up the pipeline. There will be action. However much you may demonise Tom Krossington, he’s not an unreasonable man.”
Sarah-Kelly looked unconvinced.
“I will be in touch again as events move.”
In saying his good-byes, he noted a sharp, cold gleam in the eyes of Nightminster. Donald joked:
“You could fly me up to Oban in that beautiful machine of yours.”
The cold gleam altered to something keener, as if Donald’s suggestion had prompted an idea in turn. TK had described Nightminster as “clever and mysterious”, an accurate summary of a man who said little and now offered no more of his thoughts.
*
Wingfield called at Donald’s house on Sunday evening to collect the report of the excursion. He thanked Donald for his work. Then, in his cold way, he instructed Donald he must get on with his life and leave the case of Lawrence entirely in the hands of the Krossington household. He could be rest-assured that justice would be done, even if many weeks passed before he heard anything further.
Chapter 11
Yet Donald disobeyed orders. Ten days later, he stood on the apron of the Port of Erith waiting for a mysterious correspondent to appear. The previous evening, he had received an unsigned message, written in beautiful Roundhand, urging him to turn up in this place “if he wished to know more about a certain mystery”.
So, here he was.
The Port of Erith lay on the Thames Estuary about twelve miles downstream from the Central Enclave. The port was surrounded by dense woods from which, here and there, glimpsed a broken gable end or a chimney breastwork, all that remained of what had been suburbia in the Public Era. Getting to Erith had been surprisingly simple. Okeke had dropped him at his chambers at 7 am before anyone else was about. He changed into slummy clothing—including Value System boots—in his office and left the building by a rear way on foot, walking the short distance to the River Thames to explore along the Embankment. He felt sure a ferry must run to such an important port as Erith, and sure enough, there was a motor ferry that departed at 8 am. The fare varied from one and a half gold sovereigns down to three white ones, depending on whether one travelled in the saloon of the superstructure or joined the crowd of slummies on the open deck. Donald chose the latter, being dressed that way.
On the gravel apron of Erith, activity seethed around him. Krossington’s dagger-like yacht Neptune stood propped in a dry dock while workers teemed around it scraping the encrustation from its hull. Quays reached out into the River Thames like fingers, moored up with sailing barges and schooners. One of the barges was outstandingly neat relative to the rusty tubs around it. Its hull was gloss-black and the masts were white, with the cable stays wrapped in tarred cloth. It was gradually consuming a queue of what appeared to be surplus into its hold. Donald supposed, from the exotic robes and piles of baggage, that this load was moneyed surplus, perhaps wandering traders and silversmiths. He had read of such groups in the erotic novels of Titty Titterington and Samantha Saucifield. No doubt a day or so puking in the guts of a luxury barge was vastly preferable to tramping the public drains in the company of surplus, dogs, lammergeiers and bloodthirsty ultramarines.
But of his mysterious correspondent there was no sign. About ten minutes later, a silver flying boat with the wings of a
