Jonathan Barnes - The Domino Men

“Little field trip,” one of them said. Virtue? Mercy? It was so difficult to tell. “Little bit of R ‘n’ R.”

“Just sit still,” Streater snapped, “we’re going inside in a bit.”

“You’re catching a train?” Arthur asked hopefully.

Streater looked as though he was about to remark that the prince should just wait and see when someone tapped on the windscreen, scurried round to the back of the car and, miraculously, crammed himself in beside the fat policemen.

The newcomer was sweaty and nervous, had graying hair (too long) and wore an embarrassing amount of gold jewelry. “Streater?” he said, and nodded toward the prince. “Who’s this? What’s he doing here?”

This question elicited a more than usually large grin from Streater. “This is Arthur Windsor. Arthur, this is-”

“Mr. X,” the man interrupted, suddenly frantic.

“For Christ’s sake. This is the next king of England. If you can’t be upfront with the Prince of Wales, who the hell can you be straight with?”

The man seemed embarrassed. “Of course. Sorry. I’m Peter.” He stuck out his hand, and instinctively, the prince shook it.

On the back seat, one of the policemen belched, and for a vile moment the smell of half-digested Big Mac lingered in the atmosphere.

“Time to move,” Streater said, and opened the door, admitting a merciful blast of cold air.

Together, the five of them walked into the station.

“You’ve probably been wondering exactly what ampersand is…,” Streater said.

One of the fat men laughed. “Tasty!”

Streater went on as though the interruption had never happened. “Fact is, it’s a natural substance. Grows by itself under certain conditions. Peter here… what’s the word you’d use, Pete? He gathers it, he… harvests it for us.”

The gray-haired man flushed pink.

“But demand’s seriously outstripping supply. The kids are lapping it up so we’ve had to find a way to replicate. A mate of mine has a mate who knows a man who did time with a guy who’s shagging the sister of a bloke in France who’s tight with a sympathetic chemist. Result — ampersand manufactured by the ton. We’re off to meet our courier off the train.”

Detective Sergeant Vince Mercy slapped his hands together in glee. “New delivery! Fresh meat!”

Streater grinned. “Welcome to the real world.”

The blond man led them into the station and down the escalator to the Eurostar terminus, where they took up positions by the coffee shop. Arthur kept the baseball cap pulled down over his face but was strangely disappointed to find that not one member of the public so much as glanced at him.

Streater bought Peter and the prince a latte (oddly, not offering to do the same for the two policemen) and they all stood suckling at the plastic teats on their cups, trying not to look suspicious. One of the fat men jabbed Arthur in the ribs. “Has he told you how it’s done, guv?”

“I’m sorry?”

“This bird we’re meeting. She’ll be carrying the stuff inside her.”

“What do you mean?”

The other detective leered and Arthur was assaulted by a venting of his rancid breath. “Obliging little cow swallowed ampersand in a prophylactic. We’ll strain it out of her later.”

“That’s horrible.”

“That’s life, mate. We weren’t all born with a silver spoon up our jacksie.”

Streater looked up from his conversation with Peter. “Everything OK, chief? You seem worried.”

Arthur was stuttering his way into a reply when a train’s worth of people emerged from the exit gates, last amongst them a dark-haired woman just on the cusp of middle age.

“Here we go,” grunted one of the policemen. “I’d recognize that wiggle anywhere.”

Peter seemed even sweatier and more nervous than before. “No,” he muttered. “Something’s wrong.”

Streater shot the man a sharp look. “What?”

“Look at her. Something’s up.”

They all stared as the woman moved across the floor. It was as though she was drunk but trying her best to walk in a straight line, staggering under some appalling strain. As she drew closer, they saw that her skin had turned a violent shade of pink.

“Oh God.” Peter was whimpering. “Oh God.”

“What is it?” Streater snapped. “What’s happening?”

All the blood had drained from his face. “I think it’s split inside her. If she’s ingested that amount of raw ampersand… Christ knows what’ll happen to her.”

None of the men, not even the policemen, had any answer to this. They all just stood in silence and watched the inevitable unfold.

The woman staggered again, stumbled forward and lurched onto the ground. Arthur made a move to help but Streater grabbed his arm to hold him back.

A couple of customs staff had seen the woman fall and hurried over but it was already too late. Her face grew more florid, seeming to bloat and swell far beyond its natural size. Shiny, bulbous boils rose upon her face, and even from a few meters away, Arthur could see that they were filled with lurid pus, moving and squirming with some life of their own. Her body seemed wracked with a tremendous pressure from within, shuddering like a blocked water pipe after the taps have been left running. Once or twice, Arthur tried to turn away but failed to do so, morbidly riveted by the spectacle of it.

The woman was still shaking. A keening, piteous moan escaped her as a crowd began to gather, impotent yet transfixed.

At the end, Arthur’s view was mercifully obscured, but he heard the sound she made when she died. One could hardly miss it — it was the hearty impact of a water balloon on a summer’s day — and he saw the aftermath, too, the spreading pool of bubblegum pink which crept along the station floor, staining the stone with ampersand.

Peter was retching into his handkerchief. Virtue and Mercy were shaking their heads in grim disbelief. But Mr. Streater only smirked. “Just goes to show,” he said. “Turns out you really can have too much of a good thing.”

And he smiled his secret smile.

Often, late at night, when I can’t get to sleep, I wonder how Jasper did it.

I don’t suppose he even found it difficult. Something like that… it would get to me. It would prey on my mind. But Jasper? It never seemed to bother him in the slightest.

You’ve probably already guessed who he phoned the moment he left me at the Eye. And you can imagine how he sweet-talked her into coming out for lunch. Somewhere posh, he would have said, somewhere swanky. My treat. And the girl, already flattered by his attentions, by the gentlemanly way in which he had conducted himself and the evident sincerity of his intentions, would have been helpless at the invitation.

Later, after it was done, Jasper told me that he had never laid a finger on her. But we know the truth. We know what kind of man he was. We know he wouldn’t have been able to stop himself.

You’ll have to forgive me if I sound bitter. Given my condition, I actually harbor surprisingly little resentment, but there’s something about this part of my story which never fails to enrage me. Something also in the fact that if I’d just been that little bit sharper, that tiny bit more alert, I might have been able to stop it completely.

So Jasper called her up, asked her out for an early lunch and she agreed. She would have scavenged some makeup from her colleagues and spent an eternity in the ladies’ before coming to meet him, her heart pitter-patting at the prospect of another unburdened by baggage, kinks of hang-ups. Jasper would have been waiting punctually outside the office and taken her to a restaurant which he knew should impress her but which he would never dream of visiting in the normal way. It had to be somewhere no one knew him. It had to be somewhere he wouldn’t be recognized.