The Somnambulist

across their drinks, slammed down the glasses and shuffled truculently away.

“You mentioned needing a favor,” she said, once Moon had taken a fortifying sip.

“I spent the night in the Stacks.”

“You spend half your life there.”

“The Church of the Summer Kingdom is one of the richest organizations in London.”

Charlotte pursed her lips. “Are you sure?”

“No question. They’ve hidden it well. I had to wade through oceans of paperwork. But they’ve left a trail. It only needed someone with enough persistence to follow it to its source.”

“And what did you find?”

“That the church is funded almost entirely by a single body. A corporation which calls itself… ‘Love’.”

“Love?”

“Bankers and brokers. Moneymen of some kind. Massively wealthy and a major player in the city. Their full name — believe it or not — is Love, Love, Love and Love.”

“Sounds like a joke.”

Moon did not smile. “The Somnambulist and I went to their offices. He recognized the building. Said he’d seen Speight of all people walk inside, dressed in a suit and behaving as if he owned the place.”

Charlotte laughed. “He must have been confused. Or drunk. He strikes me as the kind of man who might be.”

“The Somnambulist is far and away the most sensible person I know. Besides, I’ve only ever seen him drink milk.”

“The mystery thickens. You must be delighted.”

“Don’t’ you see that something’s happening here?”

Charlotte drained her cup and spoke again, calm and in control. “I agree it’s suspicious. How can I help?”

“I’ve arranged a job for you at Love.”

“Presumptuous of you.”

“Forgive me. Time is short.”

“How did you manage it?”

“Skimpole. The Directorate has its uses.”

Charlotte sighed. “What do you want me to do?”

“Infiltrate Love. Discover their connection to the church. Find out what they’re planning.”

“Nothing too demanding.”

“Report everything back to me, no matter how extraneous or irrelevant it may seem. Please, be scrupulous. I’m relying on you.”

“And what will you be up to whilst I’m doing all this?”

“The Somnambulist and I have to pursue another lead but — rest assured — I will be watching.” Moon fished a business card from his pocket. “Here’s the address. Be careful. I hope to God I’m not putting you in danger.”

“Danger? What are you expecting?”

“If Madame Innocenti was right we only have three days left.”

“You believe her?”

“I hope I’m wrong. But I think the pattern is beginning to make itself clear.”

Irritation rose in Charlotte’s voice. “You’re being mysterious again.”

“I know.” He shrugged. “I can’t help it.”

Dedlock took a cab to the center of the city and alighted amidst the bustle of Piccadilly Circus, that Mecca for the sybarite, the pleasure-seeker, the good-time girl. He did not stop to sample the delights of the place but headed instead toward the genteel calm of St. James’s Park, at the borders of which was situated his club, a well-heeled oasis scant seconds from the populous commotion of the city.

There had been an atmosphere of disquiet in the Directorate for days, a tangible sense of menace in the air. The Slattery incident had unsettled them all, the business with Grischenko even more so. Dedlock had sent the “Chinamen” away (vetted more carefully since the Mackenzie-Cooper debacle) and Skimpole had slouched off home for the day, gloomier and more grisly-looking than ever. Clearly something was up with the man, but in all the years they had known one another Dedlock had always found it difficult to sympathize with him, had never had the stomach for the spindly palpitations of his permanently sickly colleague.

He walked down a narrow avenue just of Pall Mall, stopping outside a house halfway along the street. A bronze plaque had been placed by the doorbell and read, in neat, black, unassuming letters:

THE SURVIVORS’ CLUB

STRICTLY MEMBERS ONLY

Dedlock rang the bell and an elderly man hobbled to the door.

Shriveled, hunched and wizened, he had huge eyebrows — vast white things like spiky tadpoles mutated to a dozen times their normal size — which hung precariously beneath his brow and cast strange shadows across his face. He recognized Dedlock at once. “Pleasure to see you again, sir. Do come in.”

Inside, Dedlock was immediately assailed by the familiar scents of the place, its indefinably comforting cocktail of whisky, port, stale tobacco smoke, must carpets and the aroma of manly perspiration.

“It’s rather quiet today, sir,” the man with the eyebrows apologized as he took Dedlock’s coat. “You’re just a little early.”

“That’s fine. I’ll go straight through.”

“Very good, sir.”

Dedlock sauntered down a long corridor and into the last of four open rooms. “Afternoon,” he said, by way of a general greeting. A chorus of grunts and murmurs ensued, emanating from the half-dozen gentlemen sitting inside, all of whom clasped cigarettes, cigars or pipes.

Dedlock took his usual armchair by the door. Opposite him, engrossed in the Gazette, was a tall, rangy man, besuited and wholly unremarkable — but for the fact that most of both his legs were missing, the lower part of his body reduced to a flabby stump hanging impotently over the front of his chair.

To his right sat a man so grotesquely disfigured that most of us would probably have screamed or swooned at the sight of him. Dedlock, however, only nodded with the same nonchalant courtesy he might have afforded any other, more recognizably human acquaintance — a friend passed in the street, perhaps, or a workmate encountered at the bar. Evidently the victim of a terrible fire, half the man’s features had been ravaged and deformed, his hair entirely scorched away, his skin dyed a livid shade of purple. Doubtless, Dedlock thought, this fellow was an object of pity in the world at large, doubtless he was jeered at by children as he went about his daily business, pointed out and stared at and made an object of ridicule. Fishwives (it would not surprise him to learn) cast aspersions on his sexual capabilities whenever he so much as raised his hat in greeting. But here in this most exclusive of the city’s clubs, here the man could relax without shame and hold his head up high amongst his peers. Today, in fact, he seemed positively cheerful, puffing enthusiastically away on an ancient briarwood pipe. Dedlock waved and the man smiled lopsidedly back.

A few yards away sat a chap with an eyepatch and a ragged red hole where his nose ought to have been; his neighbor was a man with half an arm who seemed subject to repeated bouts of violent shakes and shudders. Close by sat a scrawny fellow whose face resembled that of a dog or badger in the aftermath of an especially bloody fight.

Dedlock wriggled in his chair, feeling suddenly uncomfortable and out of place. Giving in gratefully to temptation, he took off his tie, unbuttoned his shirt and stripped naked to the waist to reveal a body criss-crossed by a pair of gargantuan milk-white scars. He passed his fingers over their deep indentations, caressed their worn, familiar lines. The man with the pipe looked over and nodded approvingly. Dedlock reached for his cigarettes and settled back in his chair, a rare smile of contentment on his face, home at last.

When he awoke, the room had grown silent, dark and empty. Dedlock’s first thought as he stretched himself into a vague approximation of consciousness was a question: why had the man with the eyebrows not woken him? He felt stiff and uncomfortable and his joints ached from sitting too long in the chair. He rubbed his eyes and was