Lies Sleeping

25 An Alarming Lack of Cocktail Parties

I woke up in darkness and, judging from the smell of my own breath, wearing a cloth hood. I was lying on my side on a metal surface with my legs fastened and my arms tied behind my back. There was something yielding that was supporting my head, carefully placed to avoid positional asphyxiation. Which was just as well, since I was definitely not feeling well. Like I said . . . nothing that sedates you that fast is remotely safe.

Even with a hood on, I was unmistakably in the back of Sprinter or a Transit van. I was a bit short of clues otherwise. I tried counting turns as I was thrown from side to side, but lost track and all I could smell was the inside of the hood. I doubted I was going to be recreating this journey with the help of a preternaturally perceptive blind person and a deceptively cheerful flock of geese. I suppose it could have been worse – I could have been head down in a barrel.

I’ve never been that good at judging time without an external reference. Dr Walid thinks it’s because I’m outwardly orientated and always looking to establish my position within the wider environment. He thinks that might be why I’m good at vestigia. But, given that his data pool consists of five people, I’m not giving that theory much weight. Whatever, I think it was about half an hour from when I regained consciousness to the van coming to a halt.

I heard the back doors creak open and was seriously considering lashing out with my feet when hands grabbed my legs and dragged me out. They were strong, whoever it was, strong enough to effortlessly lift me and sling me over their shoulder. And it wasn’t a wide shoulder either, and bony enough to dig into my stomach. What with the aftermath of the sedative, the hood and the jogging up and down, they were all sodding lucky they didn’t have to wash that hood afterwards.

Then I was lowered, with surprising care, into a chair with my wrists behind the seat back. The ridiculously strong hands kept me from moving while somebody else fixed what felt suspiciously like alligator clamps to my left index finger and the top of my right sock.

I heard Chorley ask whether things were ready and Lesley say they were. I felt the tape securing the neck of the hood being ripped off, followed by the hood proper. I squinted in the sudden light.

I was in a large, high-ceilinged room with a row of tall metal-framed windows with small panes. The walls were whitewashed brick with rounded edges along the windowsills and doorways. Interwar Art Deco industrial, I guessed, a former school or office, not so common a design that I couldn’t trace it later.

Chorley was perched on a chair in front of me, elbows on his knees, leaning forward intently but not, unluckily, close enough for me to bite his nose. He was dressed office casual in tan slacks and a light blue pinstripe shirt, top button undone – no tie.

I knew it was futile but I conjured up a shield to cut the ties on my hands. Before I even had the forma lined up my body gave an involuntary jump – a thudding shock and then pain.

‘Don’t,’ said Lesley from behind me.

I recognised the set-up – it came straight out of Nightingale’s wartime guide to holding practitioner POWs.

‘What have you got that plugged into?’ I asked. ‘The mains?’

‘As it happens, yes,’ said Lesley. ‘We couldn’t find a car battery.’

‘Now we’ve established that we’ve taken adequate precautions,’ said Chorley, ‘perhaps we can get down to business?’

‘You’ve kidnapped a police officer,’ I said. ‘The last time that happened Nightingale hunted the perpetrators down like dogs – and I mean literally like dogs – from horseback.’

‘Tell me about it,’ said Chorley. ‘I personally wanted you dead. I had some talent lined up to shoot you as you came out of your mother’s flat.’

You want to be calm and in control and insouciant in the face of danger. But I was thinking of the ‘talent’ and my mum and dad and for a moment I was paralysed by the conflicting waves of fear and rage. I could feel my face burning and my hands flex – Lesley gave me a little cautionary shock.

I didn’t snarl – Stay away from my family – because I felt we could take the horrific and protracted vengeance speech as read. Still, I’d have to take the threat to my parents more seriously in the future.

If I lived long enough.

‘I wouldn’t worry about your parents,’ said Chorley. ‘I’m not foolish enough to think that would slow you down for a moment, and it is unnecessary in any case. Short of killing you, this is by far the most elegant solution.’

‘Why not kill me?’ I asked, because I’m stupid that way.

‘You know why not,’ he snapped. ‘Your friend Lesley has an unwarranted soft spot for you. Although I’m beginning to see that you could well have a place in our new tomorrow. That’s why I let her have one last go at persuading you to stand down – which is why you’re still alive now. Despite our little contretemps the other day.’

‘Oh, that,’ I said.

‘Yes, that,’ said Chorley.

And because you never know your luck, I asked him where he got the vampire bits from.

‘You’d be surprised what you can buy on the dark web these days,’ said Chorley. ‘And what shadows lie behind the shadows you think you know.’

‘Really?’ I said. ‘What shadows are those?’

‘Lesley is right about you in one way. You are persistent. I’m not about to breach my own operational security. And besides,’ he gave me a bright smile, ‘most of it will be irrelevant soon.’

‘What, you mean when the sleeper awakes and leads a jihad to conquer the known universe,’ I said.

‘Very funny,’ said Chorley.

‘What was that about?’ asked Lesley.

‘Sorry, wrong power fantasy,’ I said. ‘I mean when Arthur wakes and rides out with his chosen knights to . . . What, exactly? Storm Buckingham Palace? What are you expecting to happen?’

‘I’m not sure what you think you know, Peter,’ said Chorley, frowning.

‘I know you’re obsessed with the Dark Ages and with Arthur,’ I said. ‘And I know you think you’ve got hold of Excalibur. And I know you murdered John Chapman and probably Gabriel Tate to keep the details quiet.’

‘Actually,’ said Chorley, ‘the first I knew about John and Gabriel’s deaths was when Lesley read your report on it and told me. Sorry – nothing to do with me.’

His mobile rang then – the jingling factory-set tune – and he pulled it out, glanced at the screen, and grimaced.

‘Sorry,’ he said, getting up. ‘I’ve got to take this. Back in a mo.’

I waited until I was certain he was out of the room before asking for a cup of tea.

‘Later,’ she said. ‘If you’re good.’

‘You know he’s a plastic toy short of a happy meal – right?’

‘What?’ she said. ‘Because he believes in magic?’

‘Because he plans to bring back King Arthur. The Once and Future King. You know, the one that was totally made up by a bunch of Welsh Nationalists and romantic Frenchmen.’

I heard Lesley laugh behind me.

‘Yeah,’ I said. ‘I’ve done a bit of reading on the subject.’

‘I bet that helped you with your PIP2 qualifications.’

‘Still passed,’ I said, because Lesley always did know how to sidetrack me.

‘Not Arthur,’ she said suddenly. ‘We don’t need a man with a sword, do we?’

‘What do we need?’

‘We need the power behind the legend. The brains, the magic. You should like this. This is your kind of stuff.’

Oh shit, I thought. And suddenly I could see it. Chorley was a man who liked to walk in the shadows and stand beside the throne – not Arthur. Never Arthur. Not the king of Camelot.

But its architect,

‘Do me a favour,’ I said wearily.

‘That’s exactly what I’ve been trying to do from the start.’

‘There never was a Merlin,’ I said.

‘Yeah?’ said Lesley. ‘And you know that because?’

‘Because people have spent the last hundred years looking for him,’ I said. ‘And he’s nowhere to be found.’

I heard the scrape of chair legs on cement and Lesley walked out in front of me. She was carrying a silver and black metal button box of the kind used to operate heavy industrial equipment, which trailed a braided blue cable behind it. I didn’t need to ask where that went.

Still, my chair didn’t seem to be fastened down. And with Lesley now in front of me I reckoned that if her attention wavered I could yank myself free of the clips before she could react. That’s why the operator is supposed to stay behind the prisoner.

Lesley must have caught my attitude, because she frowned and wiggled the button box at me.

‘Regarding Merlin,’ she said, ‘absence of evidence is not evidence of absence.’

‘And children’s books are not evidence of shit,’ I said. ‘Or both of us would have gone to Hogwarts.’

‘I don’t get it, Peter. We’ve both met people . . .’ she put a deliberately alien stress on the word people, ‘who are thousands of years old. People hidden beneath the streets. And you’re shagging a river, for Christ’s sake. We do spells. I mean, what do you find intrinsically unlikely about Merlin being a real person?’

‘What if he’s Welsh?’

‘What if he is?’

‘Then he’s hardly likely to give you back the England you want, is he?’

‘He’s not going to give us anything,’ she said. ‘He’s going to help us make Britain a better place.’

‘Better how?’

‘Just better,’ she said, the corners of her mouth drawing downwards. ‘Nicer, cleaner, better!’ She shouted the last word and then paused to get control. ‘Not the shithole it is now.’

‘Something we can all be proud of,’ said Chorley, coming back into the room.

He nodded at Lesley, who retreated back out of my sight – the button box cable swishing behind her like an angry tail.

Chorley beckoned to someone else behind me.

‘Come over here, Foxglove,’ he said. ‘I want to introduce you properly.’

I twisted my head to track a pale white woman stepping hesitantly into view.

I’d never met a more obvious fae who wasn’t riding a unicorn. She was impossibly tall and slender, with elongated arms that emerged from a loose brown sleeveless smock and ended in long-fingered hands. She had supermodel legs in black leggings that ended at the ankles to expose dainty pink feet. Her face was long and oval, with a small mouth and chin, prominent cheekbones and big hazel eyes. Her hair was a cascade of gleaming black down her back.

She shyly stopped beside Chorley and did a little nod and dip in my direction.

‘Foxglove,’ said Chorley. ‘This is Peter Grant, who will be staying with you for a while.’

‘Hi,’ I said, as brightly as a man tied to a chair can.

I might have gone for a bit of charm, except Foxglove stepped forward and, with no real discernible effort, lifted me up and threw me over her shoulder. This explained the painfully thin shoulder from earlier, I thought – where was this one when I was carrying ten tons of shopping back from Ridley Road market?

She carried me quickly out of the room and, I think, down a corridor and into another room. I was hoping I’d become detached from the pain-making machine but Lesley was nippily following us and kept giving me low-level shocks every fifteen seconds or so to keep me off balance. Mostly, all I could see was Foxglove’s hair but I caught glimpses of more cream coloured 1930s brick, a corridor, a double door and then we were out into an echoing space full of natural light.

Finally Foxglove plonked me down, seized my shoulders and turned me to face forward. We were in a large room – a workshop with high walls and a dirty glass skylight roof. The floor was bare cement with no visible furniture and at my feet lay an ominous dark round hole three metres across.

‘I made this especially for you, Peter,’ said Martin Chorley. So he’d followed us, too. ‘To keep you safe and sound until the work is finished.’

I looked down the hole – all I could see was a circular stretch of vinyl matting at least five metres down. It didn’t look very safe to me.

‘And afterwards, when we’re all eating dung for dinner,’ I said, ‘you don’t think I’m going to come looking for payback?’

I felt strong fingers break the ties on my feet and then my wrists.

‘Not particularly,’ he said. ‘I know your type, Peter. You believe in law and order, and soon there will be a new order.’

‘And I’ll just knuckle under, is that it?’

I yelped as Lesley gave me a final shock before disconnecting the crocodile clips. I turned to find Foxglove blocking any attack on Chorley. Beside him Lesley was methodically wrapping the control cable around the button box.

‘Knuckle under?’ he said. ‘I expect you to be my champion – a paladin for justice. We’ll get you a suit of armour and you can wear Lesley’s favour on your lance.’

‘It’s all a lie,’ I said. ‘There never was a King Arthur or a Camelot – Geoffrey of Monmouth made him up out of old stories.’

I reckoned a dive to the side to get away from the hole and then I’d worry about what happened next.

‘We shall see,’ said Chorley, and Foxglove pushed me into the hole.