The Doorkeepers

Twenty-Six

Josh and Simon reached the rear of the Puritan Martyrs Hospital through a narrow alleyway that led from the side of a parade of shops on Bunhill Row. On the far side of an overgrown allotment stood a high corrugated-iron fence with its top cut into serrated saw-blade points. There was a gate in the middle of it, but it was locked.

“How do we get over this?” Josh demanded.

Simon checked his watch, and at the same time the bells of a nearby church struck ten o’clock. “Whippy should be here any second. He’s always dead reliable, Whippy.”

Abraxas was snuffling around the weeds, searching for interesting smells. He was still whuffling when they heard a padlock clanking, and the sound of bolts being drawn back. The gate was opened, and a short, stocky young man appeared, with black curly hair and a Roman nose and eyes as bright as a badger’s. He was wearing a long white apron and he was carrying a large bowl of vegetable peelings.

“Simon! Christ almighty! Look at the state of you!”

“I’m all right, Whippy. Don’t make a song and dance about it. I’m lucky I’m still living and breathing. This is Mr Winward.”

Whippy wiped his hand on his apron and held it out. “Pleased to make your acquaintance,” he said, in a strong Manchester accent. “Any butty of Simon Cutter’s is a butty of mine. Taking your dog for a walk, are you?”

“He’ll be OK, don’t you worry.”

“I hope so. If those Hoodie dogs get a smell of him, it’ll be mutt chops for breakfast.”

Whippy tossed the vegetable peelings on to a compost heap, and then he beckoned that they should follow him through the gate and into the grounds.

The hospital was set amongst wide, well-trimmed lawns, and was illuminated by floodlights, which gave it an appearance of unreality, as if it were constructed of nothing more substantial than cardboard. It was a large three-story Victorian building built in the shape of a cross, with four Gothic towers at each end. There were lights shining in almost every window, but there were no ambulances here, no staff walking around. Beyond the hospital walls they could hear the sound of buses and horse-drawn wagons clattering along Bunhill Row; and in the distance they could make out the mournful drone of a Zeppelin as it flew toward London Airport. But inside the hospital grounds it was oddly quiet, and windless, as if the whole world were holding its breath.

Whippy led them along a gravel path to the kitchen entrance, his feet noisily scrunching. “I’m cleaning up now, that’s all, so there’s only me.” The kitchen was large and bright, with white enamel worktops and a wide green-enamel range. There was a faint smell of steak-and-kidney pie in the air, but a very much stronger smell of pine disinfectant.

“Do you have any idea where Nancy is?” asked Josh.

“Oh, yes. I have to cook her tea in the evening and send it up. Room three-thirteen, on the third floor.”

“Is the room guarded?”

“Doesn’t have to be. It’s locked.”

“Have you seen her? She isn’t hurt or anything?”

Whippy lifted a casserole dish out of the sink, rinsed it under the faucet and wiped it with a tea-towel. “I haven’t seen her myself, but Sophie has. She’s the nurse who takes her food up for her. She says she’s amazing, for a Purgatorial. She talks, she eats. You’d have never credited it, would you, a dead person talking and eating? But I suppose that’s the way it happens, isn’t it? If God doesn’t want you, and the Devil sends you back, what else can you do?”

“What has she eaten?”

“Eggs, bacon; a nice cheese omelet; steak-and-kidney pie; gooseberry fool.”

“Has it occurred to you that somebody who eats like that can’t possibly be dead?”

Whippy clattered saucepans. “I’m a cook, mate. Not a fucking philosopher.”

“She’s alive and I have to get her out of here.”

“Come on, Whippy,” said Simon. “You said you would. You owe me that much after everything I did for you. Your kid brother would be brown bread by now, if it wasn’t for me.”

Without another word, Whippy reached into his apron pocket and produced the key to a five-lever lock. “I lent it off Sophie. Whatever happens – if you get caught – don’t you say where you got it from. Otherwise it’s both of us heads.”

Josh said, “What kind of security do they have in this place? Any Hoodies? Any patrols?”

“There’s only a skeleton staff. You shouldn’t have any worries, so long as you’re quick.”

“Right, then. Let’s get going.”

Simon sat down behind the kitchen table. “I’m sorry, guvnor. This is as far as I go.”

“What the hell do you mean?”

“I mean that I’ve got you into the hospital, and given you the key, and they could scrag me for either of those. I can’t risk going any further.”

“Simon, you’re beginning to give me a very bad feeling about this.”

“I’ve lost my hand. I’ve had three ribs broken. My balls have been burned to buggery. I don’t want to lose my bonce, that’s all.”

Josh stared at him narrowly. “You’re telling me the truth here, right?”

Simon shrugged, and looked down at the kitchen floor.

“You’re telling me the truth here, right? There are no Hoodies waiting for me up on the third floor? Nancy’s safe and well?”

“I brought you here – what more do you want? I almost died, because of you!”

Josh went up to him and laid his hand on Simon’s shoulder. Under his coat, his shoulder felt like chicken bones. “Yes, you did, and I’m sorry.”

He took Abraxas and walked out of the kitchen, into the corridor beyond.

It wasn’t difficult to locate the third floor. The corridor led to a huge, high-ceilinged hallway with a highly-polished floor of white and tawny marble. A sweeping flight of stairs led up to the first-floor landing, with nude bronze figures holding up torches on the newel-posts. Abraxas had difficulty crossing the hallway: it was so shiny that his paws kept slipping, and he made a loud scrabbly sound until he managed to reach the other side. “You should wear Keds,” Josh admonished him, and he let out a thin, suppressed whine.

They climbed the stairs to the first-floor landing, where huge dark oil paintings hung: portraits of famous benefactors and doctors. Abraxas was panting again. Ella had kept him in her apartment for most of the day so he wasn’t very fit. Josh almost had to drag him up the next flight of stairs, and at the bottom of the third flight he refused to move, and sat on his haunches whining.

“Come on, Abraxas, you can’t stay here. We have to go find Nancy.”

He heard echoing voices in the hallway below. Footsteps, and people laughing. “Come on, Abraxas, for Christ’s sake! We have to go find Nancy!” The footsteps began to mount the stairs, and there was even more laughter.

Abraxas still refused to budge. Josh tried pulling the leash, but he sank his shoulders lower to the floor and frowned up at him, defying him to try to pull him bodily up the next flight of stairs. The footsteps were climbing higher, and the voices were so clear that Josh could actually hear what they were saying.

“… plenty of new supplies, and without any risk whatsoever …”

“… don’t have to be squeamish …”

“… who’s squeamish …?”

Josh came back down the stairs and sat close to Abraxas. “You are going to come up these stairs with me, and you are going to be alert and hot and ready to trot whenever you’re told. Do you understand that?”

There was a moment when he knew that Abraxas had agreed to do what he was told. It was hard to tell exactly how he knew; but he felt something pass between them – not spiritual perhaps, but certainly empathetic. That weird understanding between one species and another.

“Come on,” he said, and climbed the stairs, and Abraxas came bounding up after him.

He walked along the third-floor corridor, looking for 313. The corridor was decorated with Regency-striped wallpaper, maroon and cream, and it smelled like a stuffy, second-rate hotel. There were crystal wall-lights all the way along, but two out of three of them had broken, or needed new bulbs, and so the corridor was filled with occasional pools of darkness.

Room 309, Room 311 … He turned the corner and it was only then that he realized what a fool he had been. Right ahead of him, silhouetted against the next wall-light, were three Hooded Men and two dog-handlers. Another man was standing behind them, right under the light – pale-faced, with greased-back hair, wearing a navy-blue blazer with brass buttons. He laughed out loud as Josh appeared.

“Look at this! Didn’t I tell you! Here he is! Aren’t the Yanks the stupidest race on earth! He trusted Simon Cutter! He bloody well trusted him! And here he is!”

The Hoodies’ dogs jumped against their chains and barked at Abraxas in hysterical fury. Abraxas barked angrily back, tugging Josh forward. But Josh managed to heave him back, and grab hold of his collar, and pull his head back.

“I’m going to let you off the leash,” he said. “You’re going to run, and you’re going to save yourself. Now, go!”

Just then, he heard the steel-sliding sound of a sword being drawn, right behind him. A sharp point jabbed into the back of his neck.

“You are under arrest,” said one of the Hooded Men. “You are charged with heresy, treason, murder, conspiracy to murder, subversion and insurrection.”

Josh didn’t move, but he unbuckled Abraxas’ collar, and before the Hooded Man could stop him, Abraxas went tearing off along the corridor with his claws scrabbling on the floor.

“Send a dog after it?” asked one of the dog-handlers, his own dog straining at the chain so hard that it was standing up on two legs, and whining like an acute asthmatic.

“Forget it,” said the Hooded Man. “We have what we wanted – don’t we, Mr Winward?”

“Screw you,” Josh retorted. “You don’t have any jurisdiction over me or anybody else who doesn’t live in this screwed-up London of yours. I want to see Nancy. I want to see her now. If you’ve hurt her – by God, even if you’ve even touched her. I don’t care what you do to me, I’m going to murder all of you, one by one.”

“I think you’re being a little optimistic, don’t you?” asked the Hooded Man. “There are many of us, and there is only one of you. And besides, this is our world, not yours. You have nowhere to run to. No friends, no hiding places. Ella Tibibnia is dead – we killed her. John Farbelow is dead – we killed him. Fifteen more subversives were eliminated on the very same day. Mrs Marmion’s mother, Ranjit Singh – many, many more. We rule all of these different existences, Mr Winward, and we keep very good order.”

“I want to see Nancy,” Josh insisted. He felt hopeless and exhausted and his teeth ached furiously, but his sole purpose was to find Nancy. Even if she were dead already.

The man in the blue blazer came up to him and offered his hand. “Allow me to introduce myself. Frank Mordant. You and I could do business together.”

“What?” Josh retorted. “You’ve got your fucking nerve. You murdered my sister. You personally murdered my sister!”

“Oh, come on, Mr Winward, it wasn’t like that at all. We were fooling around a little. You know what it’s like, the boss-secretary relationship? She said she wanted to try this restricted breathing thing.”

“I don’t believe a goddamned word of it. You murdered her.”

“I’m sorry. I know you don’t want to believe it, but it’s true. One minute we were going at it hammer and tongs. The next minute, she went all blue and I had to call the ambulance. Dead on arrival, I’m afraid.”

“You’re out of your mind. Julia would never try anything like that.”

“I know she was your sister, and you knew her very much better than I did. But our brothers and sisters don’t always tell us everything about their private inclinations, do they?”

“So who mutilated her? Who emptied her out?”

“It was all in a very good cause,” said Frank Mordant, taking his arm. Josh immediately twisted himself free. “When your sister Julia died, another was able to carry on living.”

“You took all of her organs without any kind of permission, and then you just dumped her body in the river.”

“Actually, no permission was required. Living here, in this London, she was subject to all of our laws. Vital organs can be taken from the dead at the discretion of the surgeon in charge. It’s quite humane, when you think about it. And don’t tell me it doesn’t happen in your world, too.”

“You think it was humane to throw her in the Thames?”

“That was undignified, I’ll admit. But we wanted you to have her body back. There can’t be anything worse than losing somebody and never discovering what happened to them.”

They walked together along the stuffy corridor with the Hooded Men and the dog-handlers following close behind them. One of the Hooded Men caught up with Josh and said, “I want you to call that mongrel of yours.”

“I can’t. He’s not even mine.”

“If you don’t call it, I’m going to send our own dogs after it, and have them rip it apart right in front of you, and eat it.”

“I can’t call him. He just won’t answer. And he could be anyplace by now.”

The Hooded Man turned to the dog-handlers and said, “Let them off the leash. I want that animal found and destroyed.”

“Yes, sir,” they said, and unclipped their animals’ leads so that they could follow Abraxas’ scent.

The dogs immediately ran off, but they were only thirty feet down the corridor when Josh called out, “Hey!” and gave them a piercing birdlike whistle. Both dogs skidded to a stop and turned around and stared back at him in expectation.

“What are you waiting for?” one of the dog-handlers screamed at them. “Go and track down that other damned dog! Kill!”

Josh said, “There’s no point in yelling at them. You should appeal to their better nature.”

The dog-handler had a blue-shaved head and his face was scarred like a patchwork quilt. “None of my dogs has a better nature.”

“Yes, they do,” said Josh. He put out his hands and the dogs came trotting up to him. He rubbed their heads and tugged at their ears. The dog-handler was furious and astounded at the same time.

“Did you ever hear of the Montenotte Method?” Josh asked.

“No, I didn’t.”

“The Montenotte Method says that you can teach a dog to be aggressive by appealing to its sense of loyalty.”

“This dog is aggressive because I’ll strangle him if he isn’t.”

Josh rubbed the dogs’ muzzles and let them go. They walked uncertainly toward the staircase, paused, and looked back at their handlers, bewildered.

“GO!” screamed the bald handler. “Kill, or I’ll feed your bollocks to the cats!”

The dogs scampered off down the stairs and out of sight.

“I see you have a very special talent, Mr Winward,” said Frank Mordant.

“Anybody who cares about animals can do it,” Josh told him. “And I care enough about Abraxas to buy him a little more time to get away.”

Frank Mordant smiled. Then he said, “You wanted to see Miss Andersen? Come along, and I’ll show you.”

He stood beside Nancy’s bed and he hardly knew what to say. She was pale and drugged, and her eyes were puffy, but he could see that they hadn’t hurt her.

“Josh,” she whispered, reaching out her hand for him. “I’m so sorry. I thought I could find Frank Mordant for you … I really thought I could do it.”

He took a step closer to the bed, but the Hooded Man said, “That’s near enough.”

Frank Mordant said, “As you can see, she’s a little sleepy, but we’ve kept her in the best of health.”

“What are you going to do with us?” asked Josh.

“Me, personally, nothing. I’m only a minion, I’m afraid. I brought Nancy here because the Doorkeepers had a warrant out for her arrest, and yours, and I really didn’t have a choice. If it had been up to me, I would have let her go. My conscience is clear about Julia, I promise you. She died by accident. But Miss Andersen came after me, and you came after her, so what was I to do?”

The Hooded Man said, “Tomorrow at noon you will hear the judgement of the Masters of Religious Observance; and then you will know what punishment you will suffer.”

“You can’t do this. You don’t have any right.”

“I wouldn’t worry about it too much, old man,” put in Frank Mordant. “They’ll probably decide to exile you, that’s all – on pain of imprisonment if you ever come back.”

“Oh, you think so? If that’s what they’re going to do, why don’t they let us go now?”

“It’s all a question of ritual. You know. Keeping up appearances.”

“Follow me,” ordered the Hooded Man, and led him out of the room. Josh turned back just in time to see Nancy raising her hand to him in the Modoc sign meaning Hope.