Hawker was still smirking. “No need to cut up rough, old thing.”
At last, the door slid open.
Boon gave me a wave. “Bye-bye, Mr. L.”
“Toodle-oo, sir!”
Tinkety-tonk!”
They were still laughing when I staggered out into the corridor where Steerforth was waiting, into whose arms I practically collapsed as the door hissed shut.
“I’m sorry,” he said, an uncharacteristic tenderness in his voice. “I’m so sorry.”
The rain thrashed against the car as we were driven from Downing Street, the force of the downpour making it spray back into the air like steam. I sank down into my seat, finding, for once, the omnipresent smell of soggy dog almost welcoming.
Barnaby was hunched forward, peering past the wipers into the storm, trying to see his way as the rain became torrential. Steerforth was slumped sideways, eyes half closed, hands clasped together. I wondered if he was praying.
In the end, to my surprise, it was me who broke the silence.
“They knew about my dad,” I said, feeling my fear begin to ebb away and be replaced with anger, with raw, burning rage at those Whitehall obscenities, those knuckle-kneed monsters who find nothing so unremittingly hilarious as human misery. “How did they know about Dad?”
The pit bull did not reply but gazed solemnly at the floor as though in hope of absolution.
The rain smashed down on the roof; there was a flash of lightning and the timpani growl of thunder, and as the storm illuminated Steerforth’s face I saw his features begin to convulse, saw them squeezed, tugged and contorted in something utterly impossible.
For a second, I think I forgot to breathe.
When Steerforth spoke I heard that his voice had once again become a parody of his master’s. “Good evening, Mr. Lamb.”
“Dedlock?” I said softly.
“Did you get it?” he asked. “Do we know the whereabouts of Estella?”
“I couldn’t get them to talk. I’m sorry.”
“You’re sorry? You’ve let me down, Henry Lamb. You’ve let me down and as a result of that failure the city stands on the brink of catastrophe.”
“They knew about my father,” I said. “They know everything. The smell in there… The way you feel when they look at you… like needles in your head.”
“You have to see them again.”
My stomach contracted at the thought of it. “I’m just a filing clerk.”
“No objections. You see them again tomorrow.” I tried to protest but it was already too late.
As Dedlock departed from his body, Steerforth fell back into his chair, frantically sucking in lungfuls of air. Struggling to breathe, he loosened his tie and flicked down the first few buttons at the top of his shirt.
I caught a glimpse of the big man’s chest, and even now, I dearly wish I hadn’t. Poor Steerforth — zigzagged in maggot-white scars, scored with old stitches, furrows, grooves and crenellations, the skin repeatedly punctured with pinkish indentations.
Steerforth must have realized what I’d seen, as he swiftly covered himself up, his face aflame with humiliation. “You don’t deserve this,” he murmured. “None of us deserve this.”
Barnaby dropped me a street away from the flat and I had little choice but to make a dash for it through the rain. By the time I got home, my clothes were clinging to my body, my shoes felt squelchy and waterlogged and my hair was a bedraggled mop. The first thing I did was knock on Abbey’s bedroom door. There was no response, but rather than doing the sensible thing — take a hot shower and retire discreetly to bed — I knocked even harder. At last, I heard the click of her bedside lamp, the rustle of a duvet, somnolent steps toward the door.
“Henry?”
“It’s me.”
The door opened a crack and my landlady peered out in her pajamas, yawning, blinking voleishly into the light. My spirits lifted, just a little, to be breathing the same air as her.
“You’re drenched. Where the hell have you been?”
“Never mind about that. I want to tell you how I feel.”
The hint of a smile. “And how do you feel, Henry?”
“I want to say that you’re really special.”
“I think you’re special, too. But it’s late.”
“Lunch tomorrow? My treat.”
She sounded bemused. “Fine. Sounds nice.”
“Fantastic,” I said as, pushing my luck just that crucial bit too far, I moved an inch closer to her. “I’d like to kiss you. But I’m rather damp.”
“Good night, Henry,” she said (not unkindly) before — and there’s really no getting around this — slamming the door in my face.
I stood there for a bit in the hope that she’d come back and offer to towel me down or something. But there was no such luck, and, getting tired of loitering and dripping all over the carpet, I had that hot shower and flopped into bed. It was past midnight and I was drifting off to sleep when I sat up with a start and began to wonder exactly when it was that the madness of my life had ceased to seem wondrous and bizarre and started instead to become a reality which I simply accepted with the same flint-faced fatalism as Jasper, Steerforth and all those other freaks and victims who had given themselves over, body and soul, to the Directorate.
