Jonathan Barnes - The Domino Men

“Sounds a bit heavy going.”

Barnaby reacted to this with barely checked fury, as though I’d just insulted his sister. “You think I’m a driver? Just a bloody cabbie? Is that what you thought?”

I blurted out a ham-fisted retraction. “I’m not sure what I meant.”

“Well, I know what you meant. I know damn well what you meant. Listen, before I was recruited by Dedlock’s outfit, I was a whole lot more than just a driver.”

“Oh, right. Really? What did you do?”

“I was professor of literature at one of this country’s foremost centers of excellence. I was an acknowledged authority on fin de siecle peril fiction. So I like to keep my hand in. Big deal. You got a problem with that?”

“Course not.” Although taken aback by his belligerence, I was still determined to be civil, the importance of a sort of relentlessly cheerful politeness having been instilled in me by Granddad since the crib. “So…” I floundered about for a question. “What made you give up academia for all this.”

“Wasn’t given a choice, was I? Those greedy bastards framed me. Got me thrown out of college on the most disgusting charges. The whole business was completely trumped up. There wasn’t an ounce of truth in any of it. It was a wicked, stinking pack of lies. You understand me, Lamb? It was all invention. The whole pernicious lot of it. Do you hear what I’m saying?”

“Absolutely,” I said hastily. “Without a doubt.”

After that, the rest of the journey went by in sullen silence, as we passed through Clapham, Brixton and on to central London via an unusually circuitous route. Abruptly, we turned a corner and found ourselves in the taxi line at Waterloo station.

Barnaby exhaled noisily. “You can get out and walk from here.”

In the shadow of the Eye, Mr. Jasper was waiting. A queue of sightseers snaked around him on the pavement — disgorged passengers from those coaches already wallowing by the side of the street.

Strange that in the twenty-first century, the city’s greatest attraction should be a bird’s-eye view of itself. For all its cocky futurism, there was something Victorian about the Eye. It had a sense of permanence and antiquity, as though it had been there for decades, looking down upon London as it burgeoned and swelled. It is easy to imagine the Elephant Man being taken aboard for a daytrip, staring awe-struck through the glass and wittering on about how terribly kind everyone had been to him.

“Good morning, Mr. Lamb,” Jasper can only have been a year or two my senior, yet he invariably spoke to me like I was a school leaver on work experience. “Nice suit.” This was said with heavy sarcasm but I mumbled thanks all the same.

“How do you like our driver?”

“I’m not sure I made the best first impression.”

“Barnaby takes a bit of getting used to.”

“I can imagine.”

“You’d better come up. Dedlock is expecting you.”

The pod door was open and I saw the same gaggle of tourists inside as I’d seen on the previous Friday, but today they seemed weirdly frozen, calcified and motionless, like statues pointing toward sights they couldn’t see.

“We don’t maintain the illusion twenty-four-seven,” Jasper murmured. “These days we just can’t get the funding.”

Bolder than before, I stepped into the mirage and emerged to face the old man. He had swum close to the glass of his tank and his pale fingers were pressed against the pane.

“Good morning,” he said. “I trust you had a restful weekend.”

“Yes, thank you.” My voice was trembling a little. “But I’d appreciate some answers.”

“In good time.” He swiveled toward my companion. “Jasper? Why haven’t you got your hat on?”

Jasper screwed his face up into a sulk. “I had hoped you were joking.”

The old man struck the side of his tank and snarled. “Put it on this instant.”

Huffily, Jasper reached into his suit pocket, pulled out a pink, neatly folded paper hat and placed it upon his head.

Dedlock gave him a steely look. “That’s better.” I got a gummy smile and noticed for the first time that the old man had few teeth left — and of those that remained, all were stumps, yellow, rotting and askew. “We wanted you to feel at home,” he said. “Happy birthday, Henry Lamb!”

I fought back the urge to laugh hysterically.

Dedlock flaunted his dental remnants again. “Enjoy your birthday. Celebrate your survival. But pray you never have to suffer as many of the things as me.”

The pod shook as it began its ascent and when the man in the tank looked at me again, he was no longer smiling. “Party’s over. To business.”

“I’d like to know what you want with me.” I spoke as calmly and precisely as I could. “I’m nothing special. I’m just a filing clerk. I’ve got nothing to do with your civil war.”

“You’re quite correct.”

“Oh.” I was faintly hurt by this. “Am I?”

“There is nothing special about you, Henry Lamb. Not remotely. And yet your grandfather — he was remarkable. I knew him very well. For a time, we were even friends.”

“You and he? Friends?”

“Certainly. Indeed, it’s only because he held such inexplicable affection for you that you are summoned here at all. I’m sure that this is how he wanted it to be. When you work alongside someone for as long as we did, you get to know the way they think. And I’ve little doubt that this is what he meant to happen.”

Certain peculiar suspicions were coalescing in my mind. “Granddad was something to do with all this, wasn’t he?”

Dedlock and Jasper exchanged watchful glances.

“Was he…” I trailed off, hardly daring to articulate the thought. “Was he one of you?”

The old man gave a long, sober stare. “There was a time, long ago, when I would have said he was the best of us.”

“Tell me more,” I said. “Right now.”

Dedlock turned away and started to paddle over to the other side of his tank. “We’re looking for a woman named Estella. Find her and the war is at an end. Your grandfather was the last man alive who knew where she was and I can only hope that he has done us the courtesy of leaving us a clue. I need you to take Jasper to the hospital.”

“Why on earth-”

“This is a direct order. Your generation may be a soft and feckless one but you are at least familiar with the concept of an order, yes?”

I said nothing.

“In good time, Henry Lamb, I’ll tell you whatever you want to know. Until then — do your duty.” And with this final exhortation, dolefully delivered, the old man turned his back upon us and gazed silently out across the sky.

When we arrived at the Machen Ward we were told that the old bastard was being washed — a ghastly, ghoulish sponge bath which I had no desire to witness. Jasper and I retreated to the canteen, where we shared an awkward half hour with two lukewarm coffees and a rubbery BLT.

It was only then that I was finally able to persuade Mr. Jasper to listen. During the journey from the Eye, punctuated by bursts of indiscriminate bitterness from our driver, he had sat in solemn silence, ignoring or rebuffing my every attempt at conversation.

“I need to ask you about the war,” I said, for what felt like the fifth or sixth time that day.

“Fire away,” Jasper said sardonically.

“The House of Windsor… they’re the royal family, right?”

A yawn, a nod: “Your point being?”

“It’s just that I never thought of them as particularly malevolent. Slightly embarrassing, yes, a bit kooky, maybe, but-”

“They would see London in ruins. They would see the city laid waste.”

“Why? Why on earth would they want that?”