Jonathan Barnes - The Domino Men

When he could bring himself to look back, the syringe and the tourniquet had vanished and the blond man was rolling down his sleeve, grinning wildly, like someone had slashed a smile in his face from left ear to right. “I don’t care what anyone says. Drugs are cool.”

“The Prince of Wales flinched.

From somewhere, Streater had conjured up a cup of tea, which he proffered to the prince. “Oi. Get this down your neck.”

Arthur took the cup and drank. The blend was unfamiliar to him but he liked it at once — soothing, rich and aromatically sweet.

“I’m not sure what this is all about,” he said. “But I want no part of it. I am a decent human being.”

Streater gave him a pitying look. “Grow up, chief. The world’s not interested in decency anymore.”

Arthur turned his back on the man and tried the door, only to find it locked and bolted. “Let me out this instant.” Somehow, he succeeded in keeping his temper. “You’re already in very serious trouble. Don’t make it any worse for yourself.”

Mr. Streater shook his head in mock pity. “Stay where you are, chief.” He peeled back his lips and grinned. “I’m gonna tell you a secret.”

I fear the worst.

I’ve just sat down to write, intending to continue the account of my first meeting with the Prefects, only to find several previously blank pages crammed with the opening of someone else’s story, a different set of events entirely, some weird interpolation about the House of Windsor.

This has got nothing to do with me. That handwriting is not my own. Whatever you’ve just read, you can be absolutely certain that it wasn’t me who wrote it.

But of course. I know what’s happening here. I know what this means.

It means that I am losing.

The creatures which Steerforth had called, with a shudder in his voice, “The Domino Men” sat on their deckchairs, swinging their short-trousered legs and laughing.

“I say, Hawker,” said the smaller man.

“Yes, Boon?” said his beefier companion.

“Corks! He’s not the least bit how I expected.”

“Abso-bally-lutely, old top. He’s a queer-looking bird an no mistake!”

Boon nodded in enthusiastic agreement. “He’s got gangly limbs.”

“Fishy eyes.”

“A rum sort of gait.”

One of them pointed at me. “Everything went wrong with you, didn’t it, sir?”

“You’re a reject, sir! A misshape!”

“If I was your pa, Mr. L, I’d take you back to the shop and demand a refund.”

Peals of laughter, curiously high pitched.

“Sorry, sir.” Boon wiped his eyes with the scuffed blue sleeve of his blazer. “Don’t mind us.”

“We’re just a-joking.”

“Just joshing.”

“Only a bit of banter, sir. Only horseplay. We’re really frightfully bucked to meet you.”

As they chattered on, I felt a strange inertia creep over me, the kind of numb fascination you’re supposed to experience coming face to face with a predator in the wild, the terrible hypnotism of the carnivore. I stepped a fraction closer — though I wasn’t so bewitched that I didn’t remember to keep a careful distance from the chalk circle.

“You’re the prisoners,” I said softly.

“You might say that, sir.”

“Indeed you jolly well might.”

I stared at them in their absurd little outfits listened to their ludicrous manner of speaking, and for a moment I wasn’t sure that I shouldn’t laugh. Such naivete, in retrospect, given all that I know now.

Hawker beamed. “Frightfully sorry to hear about your grandpapa’s fall.”

“Terrible pity, sir.”

“He was wizard, your granddad!”

“What a brick, sir!”

Hawker’s eyes were brimming with dewy wistfulness. “And — oh — he had a lovely sense of humor.”

The Prefects exploded into mocking laughter.

I stood silently, determined that these creatures should not get the better of me, that I wouldn’t be reduced to cowering at their cell door like the pit bull Steerforth.

As the Prefects finished cackling, Boon leant forward and looked me in the eye. “I take it old fish-face has sent you?”

“He has,” I said quietly.

Hawker chortled. “He must be sweating conkers now your grandpa’s popped off. S’pose he’s told you to nose out where Estella is?”

“Sad, isn’t it?” said Boon before I could reply, although I expect my expression told him all he needed to know. “Predictable.”

“Dashed predictable.”

“Beastly little prig.”

“Greasy ape.”

“He need a vigorous slippering and I don’t mind admitting it.”

I tried my best to stay calm. “So do you know,” I asked, “where this woman is?”

Hawker waggled his eyebrows. “Rather, my old shoehorn! Your grandpa told us!”

Boon gave a triumphant grin. “If you’re nice to us, one day we might even pass it on.”

I glared back. “I think Mr. Dedlock will want more of a guarantee than that.”

“’Fraid he’ll be disappointed then.”

“Not today, sir!”

“Nothing doing!”

“No room at the inn, sir!”

“Dedlock told me you knew my name,” I said. “How?”

“Oh, but we’ve always known about you, Mr. L.”

“We wanted to see your face, sir.”

“We wanted to look you in the eye.”

A chill slithered down my spine. “Why?”

Boon flashed another sharky smile. “So that we’ll know you when we meet again, sir. Out there in the real world. Just before the end.”

They exchanged glances, sly and conspiratorial.

“I think you’re lying,” I said.

“Oh!” Boon gave a gleeful yelp. “He thinks we’re lying. He’s only just made our acquaintance, Hawker, and already he’s calling us fibbers.”

“Getting rather frilly, ain’t he, Boon?”

“Fearfully bold.”

“The cheek of it. The sheer brazen cheek of it.”

“Say what he thinks, doesn’t he, our young Mr. Lamb?”

“Oh, he calls a spade a spade.”

“Do you know, I rather like that.”

“I respect it.”

“Sound fellow!”

“Good egg!”

“Ripping sport!”

“Come and see us again, won’t you, sir?”

“How we’d adore another visit.”

They laughed uproariously.

“But before you skedaddle, sir.”

“Just one more thing before you cut.”

“A quick word about your father, sir.”

“Your late, lamented pa.”

“My father?” I asked, feeling the stirrings of panic. “What do you know about my dad?”

Boon gave me a subtle look and I felt a heave of nausea.

“Do you want to know how long it took him to die, sir? Trapped in the tangled wreck of his automobile as the medical chaps tired and failed to cut him free?”

The sound of blood thundered through my head. “How do you know this?”

Hawker smirked. “Four hours, sir. Four unbearable hours before he finally popped off. Wasn’t a nice death, was it, Boon?”

“Bally awful if you ask me.”

“Protracted, I’d call it. Horribly protracted.”

“Golly, Boon, you know some long words.”

“So I should, Hawker. You are talking, after all, to the winner of the Cuthbert Cup for Prolixity for five consecutive terms.”

“Congratulations, dear thing.”

“Thank you, my old hat stand.”

Hawker grinned at me. “He bled to death, Mr. L.. Nasty gash in the tummy, I think. Absolutely the worst place for it to happen.”

“He called for you at the end. He shouted your name as delirium took hold and his bowels let him down.”

I turned and banged on the glass window. “Let me out!”