Billy and Dane were aboveground, in a neglected tower, a folly thrown up on a terrace by some exuberant Camden architect. As everything closed in and they ran out of Dane’s hidden, fake flats, they retreated to chambers above the city and below it. This one was empty and light and dust-clogged. They sat in striae of particulate.
“And it was all the names of old associates on the desks?” Dane said at last.
“Yeah,” said Kirk-Wati. “Whoever was with Grisamentum when he was around.”
“Oh, he’s around,” Billy said.
“Well. You know what I mean. It was all people who’d been with him. Necros, doctors, pyros.”
“Names?” Dane said.
“A geezer called Barto. Ring any bells? Necromancer, according to the notes I saw. Byrne obviously. Someone Smithsee someone. A guy called Cole.”
“Cole. Wait a moment,” said Dane.
“What?” Billy said.
“Cole’s a pyro.”
“I couldn’t see,” said Wati. “All we got was a university, some notes. Why? You know him?”
“I know his name. I remember it from when Griz died. I heard it then. He’s a pyro.” He looked at Billy’s uncertainty. “A firesmith.”
“Yeah, I get that, but why …”
“From when Grisamentum was cremated. Supposedly. But … he works with fire.”
It was fire that ate up everything at the end. It was fire and a secret scheme from Adler, a minor man, a player in the rubble of Grisamentum’s organisation, with unknown intentions, connected to this other one.
“Where is Grisamentum?” Billy said.
“We don’t know. You know that. Wati can’t—”
“It’s more than where, though, isn’t it? You said you don’t see any reason?”
“For him to burn the world? No. No. I don’t get what his plans were at all, but they weren’t that.” They were uncertain enough not to join him, still.
“We’ll find out,” Billy said. “Let’s go find out what Cole is in all this.” He stood, pushing through the layered air. He looked down at the cars. “What the bloody hell is going on out there?”
THE TATTOO WAS GOING ON. HIS HIRED GUNS RAGED AND VIOLATED trusts that had held for decades, all the way through everything, hunting for the quarry they had had and lost.
The Chaos Nazis were nothing, of course. Who was afraid of them now, drowned, screaming and up-fucked? The freelancers, the full-timer knuckleheads and others were happy to audition for the newly open position of lead bogeymen, and the UMA pickets were unwilling bit parts in these violent run-throughs and résumé-building attacks. Wati was gone from the room above Camden, back, gone, back, shoring up, fixing and failing.
“Tattoo’s gone fucking batshit,” Collingswood said. “What is he doing? Has anyone spoken to him?”
“Won’t talk,” said Baron. He puffed out his cheeks and exhaled. “We can’t bloody find him.”
“He doesn’t need our permission,” Vardy said. The three sat like a support group for the morose.
“Come on,” said Baron. “I don’t employ you two for your looks. Talk this out.”
“We’ve got the Tattoo declaring war,” Vardy said. “Sending Goss and Subby in here. Dealing with our prisoners.”
“And Dane and Billy sending people into my effing office,” Collingswood said.
“So it’s the office intrusion that particularly bothers you,” Baron said angrily. “It’s having people rummage around in the pens that really got your goat, Kath …”
She stared at him. “Yeah,” she said. “That and the thing with the horrible death thing.”
Another round of staring.
“No one gives a shit about us anymore,” Baron said. “We’re just in the middle. It’s bad for the soul, that sort of thing.”
“Christ, boss,” said Collingswood. “Perk the fuck up.”
“We’re not running buggery fuck,” Baron said. “Billy and Dane’ve got more going on than us.”
“This won’t do,” Vardy said. He blinked quickly, formulating. “Sitting here like something. Everyone running around around us. Let’s assert a bit of bloody authority. We need to start bringing people in. On our terms.”
“And how are we supposed to do that?” Baron said. “We don’t know where any of them are.”
“No. So. We have to do something about that. Now look, we know what they know. One, they know about the end. And two, they know it’s because the squid’s bloody gone. And three, that someone, somewhere out there, for some reason, is planning things that way. So what we need to do is get the mountain to come to Mohammed.”
Baron continued to stare. “Who’s Mohammed in all this?” he said. “And where’s the mountain?”
“I ain’t climbing fuck,” Collingswood said.
“We need to fish for them,” Vardy said.
“Is this, like, the mountain going fishing now?” Collingswood said.
“Jesus Christ, will you shut up?” Vardy shouted. She showed no shock, but Collingswood said nothing. “We need to dangle what they want, what they’re waiting for. What’s going to bring them out? Well, what brings everyone out?” He waited, theatrical.
Collingswood—a little tentative—said, “Ah. Apocalypse.”
“There you go,” Vardy said. “They’re waiting for an apocalypse. Let’s give them one.”
In London, Heresiopolis was always the draw. Some midnight-of-all or other was predicted every few days or nights. Most came to nothing, leaving relevant prophets cringing with a unique embarrassment as the sun rose. It was a very particular shame, that of now ex-worshippers avoiding each other’s eyes in the unexpected aftermath of “final” acts—crimes, admissions, debaucheries and abandon.
Believers tried to talk the universe into giving their version a go. Even small outlandish groupuscules might make headway in ushering in their End. The FSRC had a decent reputation for helping clear up these potentials. But Vardy’s point was that the most dramatic of these Armageddonim—London had had to grow used to such arcane plural forms—were events in a kind of society. Spectator sports. To miss one would be a realtheologikal faux pas.
They were means to gauge who was in the ascendant, which group on the wane. The shenanigans of putatively final nights were something between fieldwork and social gatherings.
Baron and Collingswood looked startled. “It won’t work,” Collingswood said. “No end’s going to be big enough to get people out at the moment, not with everything else going on. You’d have to cook up something pretty fucking dramatic. And people’ve got their ears to the ground, they’d know it wasn’t real. They wouldn’t turn up.”
“They’d certainly turn up if they thought it might be the end,” Vardy said. “Imagine if the one apocalypse you missed was the real one.”
“Yeah, but …”
“No, you’re right, we couldn’t fake it. We need to bump up some little one that no one would’ve noticed scheduled … Ha. I say ‘one.’ ‘Something big.’ For the times when one apocalypse isn’t enough, ha.” He stood, all bristling. “A list of the sects we have an in with.” He clicked his fingers. “Everyone’s heard about the kraken by now. Right? And they know that whatever it is that’s coming has something to do with it. Don’t they? They do.”
“What is it you’ve got in mind, bruv?” Collingswood said.
“Everyone’s waiting for the end of the world. Let’s get in there first and bring it to them. Like you say, we can’t fake it. We need proper rumours. So we’ll have to make it real. And we’ll have to get as many details right, so they think … We need to encourage certain rumours, and the closer to the truth the better. We probably can’t make it an octopus, but who do we know with an animal god? Who could we persuade to bring their apocalypse forward? Word’d get out.”
He began to go through his files. After a second, Collingswood joined him. Baron watched them and did not rise.
“Are you two out of your bonces?” he said. “You’re going to come up wit
h an end-of-the-world party, just to get everyone together …”
“What about this lot?” Collingswood said. Vardy looked where she pointed.
“I don’t think we have the clout to persuade them,” he said. They continued looking.
“Them?”
“No.”
“Them?”
“… It’s nothing like a squid.”
“What are you even doing?” Baron said.
“Yeah, but if we get rumours out quick, it won’t matter, it’s a big animal,” Collingswood said. “That’s what people would hear.”
“Maybe,” Vardy said. “A problem occurs to me,” he said. He pointed at something on another sheet. Baron peered at whatever they were discussing. “There’s another one coming in soon. In and of itself who cares, but it’s got no animal stuff to it, and it’s going to be difficult to get their prophets to delay. Or if we have them too close together, no one’ll—”
“Just have them on the same day,” Collingswood said.
“What are you …?” Baron said, and Vardy hushed him with a glance. He looked as if he were about to pooh-pooh Collingswood’s suggestion, but a stare of quite astonishing delight came over him.
“Why not?” he said. “Why not? If we have the right, the right keywords to the rumours, even then, one little everyday Armageddon might hardly cut it. So long as enough people think it even might be an animal god thing. It’d certainly get people talking … Could be a surefire way of making our little bait even more …”
“Baity,” said Collingswood.
“Dramatic. Maybe. Imagine if there are two?”
He and Collingswood looked at each other, snorted, and nodded. “It won’t change the, the real deal,” Collingswood said. “But we don’t even know when … Step up, boss-man,” Collingswood said, to Baron, and patted his cheek affectionately.
“Alright,” said Vardy. “So we’ve not one but two prophecies to, um, chivvy. I’m going to make some calls.”
Chapter Fifty-Nine
A CHOLERIC DELEGATION CAME TO THE EMBASSY OF THE SEA. There was no possibility such a troop could bicker with such an antagonist and not be noticed, and noticed they were, and in the wake of that confrontation rumours went everywhere.
Mostly, they weren’t badly inaccurate. A few mad exaggerations, alright, within a couple of days: swear to fucking god, they were like throwing grenades and pulling out all kinds of crazy knackery, it was out of control. Whatever. As if the story, if big enough, reflected glory on the teller.
The truth was adequate drama. A motorcade arrived in the street. Man after man, a couple of women too, helmeted as if they rode motorbikes but emerging from cars, stationing themselves at each junction. Tinted glass obscuring finger faces. No one walked down the street while they were there.
From within the street’s houses people looked nervously at the people in helmets and the night outside. You did not have to have a grasp of the details, and they did not, to know in a carefully unverbalised way that that bloody end house had long been a problem. From the largest car came two more helmeted figures escorting a scrawny third. Punk-haired and terrified. His mouth was covered. The guards walked him between them to the front door.
“Turn round.” The man obeyed that voice. His jacket had holes cut in it, through which stared ink eyes. No avatars, no workshopped figures, no mouthpieces: the boss himself. “Your fucking eminence,” said the Tattoo. His voice was perfectly audible despite the clothes his bearer wore. Looking out at the street, away from the argument behind him, the Tattoo-bearer shivered.
“I heard you visited some contacts of mine. They were holding something for me and you sort of intervened yourself. And I ended up losing something I had expended a great goddamn lot of effort and money getting hold of. So what I’m here to do is ask one, is this actually true? And two, if it is, do you really want to go down this route? Want to go to war with me?”
Again nothing. After long seconds the Tattoo whispered, “Answer me, your oceanship. I know you can bastard hear me.” But no bottle, no message from the letter box. “You and your elemental whatever. You think I’m afraid of you? Tell me there was a misunderstanding. Can you even tell what’s going on? Nothing’s safe anymore. You can burn, same as the rest of us. I’m not scared of you, and whatever you think, you are not safe from war. Do you know who I am?”
The way that maleficent ink said those last words, that old-hat kitsch threat, made it something again. If you had heard it you might have shivered. But nothing happened in the sea’s house.
“Think I won’t fight you?” the Tattoo said. “Stay out of my business.”
Had the sea invaded the Tattoo’s own halls it would have been an insult too far, and whatever the cost—and the cost of war against an element was big—the Tattoo would have waged it. There would have been bombs lobbed into the waters, that exploded and left holes of nothing under traumatised waves. Brine-killing poisons. And even though the Tattoo could not have won, the sea’s interest and breach of neutrality might have spread the war.
But no one would count the attack on the despised and disavowed Nazis as meddling, and the Tattoo would find no allies. The downside of employing bogeymen. Which was why the sea had risked its actions. People doubtless knew it had been there, though it had assiduously withdrawn every molecule of saltwater from the caverns carved under the pavement, the new oceanic grottos, but no one admitted it.
“Tell me what you have to say for yourself,” the Tattoo said. “Kick backward,” he said to the body he was on, and the man clumsily did, but the blow connected with neither the door nor with anything. “Fuck with my business again it’s war,” the Tattoo said. “Car,” he said to his body, and the man walked jerkily to the vehicle. The Tattoo was raging because the sea faced it down. Even the Tattoo won’t face down the sea, people said afterward. No one’ll face down the sea. That word found its way all over.
ANOTHER QUEASY LURCH OF HISTORY. IMPOSSIBLE TO DESCRIBE, A stutter, a switch, the timeline two-by-foured onto another course that looked, smelt, sounded the same but did not feel it, not in its flesh. In the clouds was more of that strange rage, more fighting, memory versus foreclosure in a celestial punchup. Every blow reconfigured the bits in Londoners’ heads. Only the most perspicacious gathered something of the reasons for their little strokes, their confusions and aphasia: that it was a part of the war.
Marge was part enough now of the hinterland that she felt it. Her head was full of abrupt forgettings and jab recalls.
It was a last night for her already. Resentful of and exhausted by all the impossibles, she had responded, to their great surprise, to a final pitch from some of her friends. A small group from one of the galleries at which she had exhibited—two men, two women who showed together under a collective term, the Exhausteds, they had given themselves based on perceived shared concerns. Marge, on the basis of her art, had once been dubbed a fellow traveller, a semiexhausted, a Somewhat Tired.
She had stopped hearing from her work friends, but one or other of the Exhausteds had been calling her every couple of days, trying to encourage her out to a drink, to supper, to an exhibition of competitors at which they could all sneer. “It’s fucking good to see you,” said a woman called Diane. She made pieces from melted plastic pens. “It’s been ages.”
“I know, I know,” Marge said. “Sorry, I’ve been getting really crazy into the work.”
“Never need to apologise for that,” Bryn said. He painted portraits into fat books opened at random. In Marge’s opinion his work was total shit.
She had thought she would feel herself playing a role that evening. But their rambles from pub to arty pub pulled her back into the life she had thought long gone. She had only a slight sense of watching herself, of pretence, as they went past tattoo parlours and bookshops, cheap restaurants. Sirens of police and fire passed them in tremendous rushes.
“Did you hear about Dave?” they asked her about people she barely remembered. “What’s up with that bu
siness with the dealer you were talking about?” “I can’t even believe I had to move, my landlord’s a shit,” and various other bits.
“How have you been?” Bryn asked her at last, quietly, and she just shook her head and rolled her eyes you don’t want to know, as if at a deadline, a heavy workload, time lost track of. He did not push it. They went to a movie then a dubstep gig, shedding Bryn then a woman called Ellen as they went, a late supper, gossip and creative bollocking. London opened up.
Miracle on Old Compton Street: Soho was fucking lovely that night. Crowds danced bad salsa, still clubbing outside Blackwell’s bookshop. The cafés bustled onto pavements, and a stranger with a spare cappuccino turned down by some disdainful prospect handed it with a shrug to Marge, who almost rolled her eyes at the world’s performance, but drank it and enjoyed every sip. Empty temples of finance watched from the skyline: bad times were not yet quite there, and they could overlook with indulgent window eyes as Marge played with her friends and just was in London.
It got close to midnight and seemed to stay there. She drank with the Exhausteds remnants for a long endless late-night moment amid cheerfully gusting paper trash and the lights of cars shunting around zone one as if the world was not about to burn. Marge had an appointment in the early small hours.
“Alright you outrageous flower,” said Diane when the calendar finally turned. “It’s been lovely, and it’s been too bloody long, stop acting up.” She gave Marge a hug and descended into Tottenham Court Road Tube station. “Be well,” she said. “Get home safe.”
“Yeah,” said Marge to her back. I’ll do that. Since when had home been home? She took a taxi. Not to a ghost or trap street, of course: the driver’s very expertise, the knowledge that got him his cab, would have hidden it from him. She directed him instead to the closest main street to her destination, and from there walked to the little east-London shack.
It looked thrown up out of discarded walls, wood, wattle, daub and brick remnants, on a tiny street of such mix-bred buildings, where a man she had found, via a convoluted online route, waited for her.