“Why do little boys do anything, sir? For fun. For larks.”
“Where are those knobble-kneed bastards now?”
Barbara took out her PDA. “I can see them, sir. We can track them.”
“Then get after them!”
“People are dying here,” I said.
The old man was incensed. “If you don’t do your job, this city as we know it will cease to exist.”
“I’ll get the car,” said Barbara. “We’ll bring them in.”
“Do it.” A final snarl from Dedlock, then merciful silence in my head.
Barbara ran out of sight to get the car before I could think of anything to say.
I did my best to soothe the girl in my arms, tried to staunch the blood, told her to breathe deeply and think about not sneezing. After a while, it seemed to calm her, so I did what I could for some of the other victims until, at last, a fleet of ambulances blared onto the scene. I was easing a man whose body was close to rupturing into the arms of a paramedic when Barbara pulled me roughly to my feet. Her trench coat was back, billowing about her in the breeze.
“We’re leaving. Now.”
“But these people-”
“There’s nothing you can do for them.”
“Where’s the car? Where’s Barnaby? Where’s Jasper?”
The car is burning. Barnaby’s dead. And Jasper’s gone.”
Already, I was growing accustomed to Barbara’s delivery of bad news — catastrophe snapped out in telegraphic monosyllables. “Burning? Dead? Gone?” I asked, but she was already running. I left the paramedics to do their job and sprinted after her. “Barbara!”
She pelted on, ignoring me. There was a crackling in my ear and I heard the voice of Dedlock. “What’s happening?”
“Barbara: “We’re tracking them.”
“You mean you’ve let them get away?”
“The club’s in chaos. It masked their escape.”
Dedlock snapped some final, bitter instruction and broke the connection. The two of us dashed into the darkness of the city. Soon my breathing was ragged and I had an agonizing stitch in my side but Barbara, sprinting into the distance, appeared quite unaffected. I was about to lose sight of her completely when she gave a yelp of frustration.
When I caught up, she had stopped short and was staring at her PDA in furious disbelief.
I panted. “What’s happened?”
She struck the machine hard. “They’ve vanished.”
“What?”
“Disappeared. Dropped off the map.” Her shoulders sagged at the news and for a second or two I thought I caught a glimpse of the real Barbara, trapped behind that immaculate facade. “They’re playing with us.”
Once I had sufficiently recaptured my breath to form whole sentences again, I said: “You saved me. I ought to thank you.”
“No need.”
“How come you weren’t affected? By the sneezing powder?”
“My respiratory system is vastly superior to yours. I can go three hours without having to draw breath.”
“Remarkable,” I said, even now incredulous. “And Mr. Jasper did all this just by giving you a pill?”
Barbara nodded. “Despite his considerable personal failings, Jasper is the most brilliant chemist of his generation. The Directorate takes only the best. The prodigies. The wunderkinder.” Her eyes passed over me as though she’d suddenly remembered something. “And you, of course, Henry.”
She walked on.
“Where are we going?”
“We’re tracking the Domino Men. We’re following their spoor.”
“But we’ve lost them! This is pointless.”
Unspeaking, she strode ahead.
The long night had turned into early morning and the first glimmerings of dawn had just begun to dilute the grayness of the sky when we chanced upon a side street filled with parked taxis clustered around an all-night cafe like piglets at a teat. We had been walking for what felt like hours and I suggested to Barbara that we at least take the opportunity to get a coffee. I had even begun to wonder whether she required sustenance at all in the traditional human sense, so I was surprised when she quickly concurred with something approaching gratitude in her voice.
I’d rolled down my trousers and ditched the old school tie so that when we walked inside, I looked normal again — or at least able to pass for it. The place was filled with cab drivers amongst whom there appeared to be little or no camaraderie. They sat in their ones or twos, morosely clasping plastic cups, scanning the sports pages of yesterday’s newspapers or gazing dead eyed at the smeary blankness of the Formica table tops. Even the appearance of Barbara in their midst occasioned little more than a rustling of tabloids, a weary leer and a single, pathetic wolf-whistle which shriveled into nothing after my companion’s gaze flicked across the culprit. I got us a couple of coffees and we sat together at a table by the window.
“Do you remember when I started at the office?” she said, after we’d both swallowed a mouthful of what turned out to be surprisingly decent coffee.
All of a sudden, her voice sounded different and I experience a stab of hope. “Barbara?”
A brief flash of a smile. “Barbara’s always here, Henry. Even if it doesn’t seem that way. But I asked you a question. Do you remember my first day?”
“Of course.”
“You were kind to me. You showed me the file room, that sweaty woman in the basement. You introduced me to Peter Hickey-Brown.”
I pushed aside my memories of everything which had happened since then — from my grandfather’s collapse to the carnage at Diabolism — and I ventured a smile. “God, that man’s a prat. Do you remember — he tried to impress you by naming all the gigs he goes to?”
Barbara tried to laugh at the memory. It was a painful thing to hear. A forced rasp, a throaty hiss, a mechanical chatter.
“I’m glad you remember,” I said softly.
“It’s strange.” She sipped her coffee. “There are parts of Barbara’s life I can recall so clearly. Her father — my father — taking me to church on Christmas Eve. Midnight mass. The way his hand felt in mine. But I can’t remember if Barbara ever kissed anyone. I can’t remember what happened to her after she went to lunch with Mr. Jasper.”
“I’m so sorry.”
“I don’t know how I can explain this to you. Somehow my memories are so infused with those of the woman they call Estella. She had such a life, Henry. She’d avert national disaster and scarcely blink. But I’m not either of them now. Not fully Estella. Nor fully Barbara.”
I gazed at her, partly in admiration, partly in fear. “Jasper seems to think you’re some kind of superhuman.”
She snorted. “You know what I think I am?” she asked. “Honestly?”
“Go on.”
“I think I’m a cul-de-sac. I think I’m a dead end.” She got to her feet. “And I think I need to try to pee.”
As Barbara walked into the back of the cafe I suddenly remembered something. I fumbled for my phone and punched out a text message to Abbey.
So sorry. Been a horrible night.
Can’t wait to see you again.
I pressed send although I didn’t expect a reply for several hours.
Barbara returned from the bathroom. I tried to draw her back into a discussion of the transformation which
