“Unbelievable.”
“Indeed. And speaking of unbelievable… What a splendid pullover.” The body of Steerforth emitted a series of gurgles which I presumed, after a while, to be laughter. “We’ve been left with no choice,” he said. “Tonight, you meet the prisoners. You need to prize just one single piece of information from them. The whereabouts of a woman called Estella. Have you got that, Henry Lamb? Am I making myself unequivocally clear?”
“Who are these prisoners? How do they know so much?”
“I don’t wish to say their names. Not now.”
“Dedlock? I need to know who these people are.”
It was raining harder now, each drop a hammer-blow against the pane. “My, my.” The thing in Steerforth gave a liquid giggle. “Who said anything about them being people?”
There was a final burble, then Steerforth’s face, running with rivulets of sweat, went slack and sagged back into its old, familiar lineaments.
“What the hell was that?”
Steerforth yanked a handkerchief from his pocket and mopped his face. “Now you see the price of the war,” he murmured. “And we can’t afford it. Not by a long shot.”
The car sped on through the night, passing out of south London, over the river, toward the center of the city. It was a silent journey except for the deluge which beat ferociously against the windows, the windscreen, the roof.
At last, we headed past Trafalgar Square and turned into Whitehall, stopping outside a metal barricade guarded by a man with a machine gun slung around his neck. Hair plastered to forehead, his uniform sodden with rain, the sentry motioned for Barnaby to wind down the window. “State your business,” he said, with all the thoroughgoing charm of a German border official.
“My name is Barnaby. This is Steerforth. We work for Mr. Dedlock.”
The soldier peered into the back of the car, then took a stumbling step backward. “Sorry, gents,” he said. Then again, cravenly: “Really sorry.”
Barnaby muttered something resentful, wound up his window and drove on toward the most famous address in England.
I think I might actually have shaken my head. “You can’t be serious.”
Steerforth was unable to keep a hint of pride from his voice. “Welcome to Downing Street.”
Number Ten Downing Street is full of false doors. Built, re-built, altered, extended, improved and reconceived over generations by a plethora of architects eager to impress, almost everything done by one designer his later been summarily reversed by another. The result is that the building his acquired the air of a folly, filled with corridors which lead nowhere, staircases that curve gracefully into thin air, doors which open onto brickwork. It is a place of doubles and traps where little is what it seems and nothing can be trusted.
Steerforth led me inside (the door to Number Ten, being perpetually open, has no handle), down a long, tapering corridor which, rather dispiritingly, seemed every bit as gray and nondescript as those in my old office. Eventually, we reached a spiral staircase, the walls of which were decorated with portraits of past prime ministers, beginning with the most recent incumbent before stretching chronologically backward in time.
Then Steerforth led me down into the past. At first I recognized many of the politicians depicted on the walls — men and women who had held high office in my lifetime — but as we descended, the pictures grew older and increasingly unrecognizable, their costumes changing with the unfurling of the years, from starched collars and cravats to powder wigs and frock coats to lace and frills until, as we reached the lower levels, they scarcely seemed like statesmen at all. The people in those paintings were men of shadows, their faces half-masked and their bodies shrouded in darkness. At the end of the sequence, there were men in animal pelts and furs, hailing from an era of history I wasn’t even sure I recognized at all.
At the bottom of the staircase was a lavish library, its walls filled with shelves, packed tight with books — but not the kind of books that one would expect to see here, not parliamentary records, treaties, contracts and points of order, but other, more troubling titles, akin to those I had found in Granddad’s house, though stranger still. The tang of the forbidden was in that room. Often I think back to some of those half-glimpsed titles and I shudder.
The only space not taken up with books was filled by a life-sized portrait of a Victorian gentleman, his face still young but starting to show the corruption of age, his dark hair worn daringly collar length, a flutter of grim amusement on his face. I thought I recognized that smile. I have my suspicions as to why, but even now, I shouldn’t like to say for certain.
Steerforth walked over to the portrait, pulled out a two-pronged metal tube identical to a device I’d seen Jasper wave at Granddad and pointed it at the picture. There was an electronic whine, a subtle click, and the painting swung backward. No, not a painting, I saw now. A door.
A halogen light flickered on to reveal the smooth steel walls of an elevator.
Steerforth stepped inside and asked me to follow.
Numbly, wondering why the madness of this life no longer seemed to affect me, I did as I was told.
Steerforth pressed a button, the door hissed shut and I heard the painting snap back into place. Smoothly, the lift began to descend.
“Is there any point in asking where you’re taking me?”
The man said nothing.
“Steerforth?”
The lift came to a halt, the doors swept backward and Steerforth led me into another long corridor. Two guards, both armed, greeted us with grim nods.
On either side of us were glass windows fronting small rooms or cells, as if we were passing through the reptile house at the zoo. It was completely silent save for our footsteps and the shuffles of the guards. As I followed, I saw that there were people in each cell and that every one of them was naked. All seemed ill but their actions careered between the extremes of human behavior. One raged and gibbered at the sight of us. Another placed his hands imploringly upon the glass, tears curving down his plump cheeks. Another still seemed quite oblivious to us, curled up in a fetal ball, his flabby body quivering in despair. There was even a man who seemed faintly familiar. He let fly a thick stream of urine as we passed before crouching down and enthusiastically licking it up.
“Don’t I recognize him?”
Steerforth grunted. “Health secretary. Last but one, I think.”
“You’re not serious.”
We reached the end of the corridor, the final room, which, in contrast to the rest, lay in total darkness. Another guard stood outside, another machine gun slung around his neck. He sported an eye-popping look of the kind of state-sponsored sociopath who’d not only kill without a minute’s hesitation but would probably be looking forward to it.
“We never meant for you to see this,” Steerforth said softly. “But your grandfather’s left us no choice. You’ve got to go inside.”
“You’re not coming in with me?”
A hesitation. “Please,” he said, and his voice seemed to tremble.
“Steerforth? What’s the matter?”
The big man sounded as though he were about to cry.
“People think I don’t get frightened. But what’s in there…” His voice grew husky and he began to shake, like an alcoholic about to admit in front of his support group that he has a problem. “They scare me.”
“Oh, but you don’t mind sending me in?”
“You’ll be perfectly safe,” he said, although it was obvious he didn’t believe it. “They can’t leave the circle. Stay outside the circle and I promise you’ll be fine.”
The glass door glided noiselessly open and Steerforth looked away. “They’re waiting for you,” he said, and it was impossible not to notice the dark stain that had begun to spread across his combat trousers, snailing down his left leg and toward his shoes. “Go inside,” he said miserably.
“Please. At least tell me what to expect.”
But the pit bull of the Directorate couldn’t even meet my eye.
