Jonathan Barnes - The Domino Men

“Thanks,” I said. “Thank you for saying that.” Someone blundered into the toilet, bringing the antic roar of the dance floor with him.

“Where are you anyway? I thought you were working late.”

“I’m at a club.”

“You’re where?” The thaw was retreating now and a new ice age had begun.

“In a club,” I repeated. “Diabolism.” Adding quickly: “It’s for work.”

“Well, who are you there with?”

“Just a colleague,” I said, trying to sound meek and innocent.

Abbey’s voice seethed with barely suppressed fury. “And what’s her name?”

“It’s complicated… But I suppose you could say I’m with Barbara.”

“Unbelievable! We have one tiny disagreement and you’re out with another woman.”

“Abbey, please. It’s not really like that.”

“You’d better hope you’ve got a really, really good explanation for this.” There was a strange shattering sound from the other end of the line. “Christ.”

“What was that? What’s happened?”

“Your friend. She’s just put her foot through our TV.”

“What?”

“Goodbye, Henry.”

I suppose she just have put the phone down then.

I left the stall and stepped over to the sink. There was a man there, a Diabolism employee who squirted soap at my palms before guilt-tripping me into paying him a pound for the privilege.

“You chatting to your lady?” he asked, and I realized that he must have overheard the whole of my conversation. “You talking to your woman?”

“Yes,” I said stiffly. “I suppose I was.”

“Giving you grief, was she?”

“In a manner of speaking.”

“You want my advice?”

“Not particularly,” I said, but the man didn’t seem to hear me.

“Forget her. Have a good time. What your lady don’t know won’t hurt her. What happens in Diabolism stays in Diabolism.”

“Thanks for that,” I said, and, just about resisting the urge to snatch back my pound, strode back out into the heart of the club.

The hours which followed were amongst the longest of my life. I patrolled every inch of the dance floor. I scrutinized the faces of lip-locked couples. I stepped over pools of vomit, drank three cocktails, two bottles of beer and a pint of tap water into which I’m certain I saw the barman spit. I tried to blend in by dancing.

It was late, well into the small hours of the morning, when I saw them. After the inaugural chords of Alice Cooper’s “School’s Out” were greeted by whoops of delight from the regulars, I’d retreated to the bar, where I stood half-watching a couple overenthusiastic young men whirl themselves around the firemen’s poles. Then, caught in a lightning flash of strobe, I saw their faces and my insides turned to water. I started to move across the floor and searched around desperately for Barbara but she seemed to have disappeared. When I looked again at the pole, the Prefects had vanished, their places taken by a couple of paunchy men who I’d never seen before in my life. I was starting to wonder if I hadn’t imagined it when someone slapped me hard on the back.

As I turned to face them the incessant music of the place seemed to recede into the background and I could hear them both perfectly, like voices in my head.

“Crikey! If it isn’t old lamb chop,” said Hawker.

“Hello, old man,” said Boon.

“What are you doing here?” I said. “You promised you’d lead us to Estella.”

“And we will, sir.”

“Keep following, sir. We’ll see you right.”

“We’re just having a bit of fun first.”

“Only larks, sir.”

“We’re stretching our legs, sir.”

“Getting a breath of fresh air.”

“Going the scenic route, sir. Taking the dog for a walk and getting a dashed good yomp in the bargain.”

“What are you talking about?” I asked.

“I’d get out now, sir, if I was you.”

“I’d cut.”

“Why? What are you planning?”

“We’ve just time for one more prank before the end, sir.”

“Just time for a damned good bibbling.”

“Don’t look so worried, old man.”

“Trust the Process, Mr. L.”

“No!” I shouted. “Please-”

I was interrupted by a drunken quartet of middle-aged men in nylon skirts and sweat-soaked blouses dancing past me in an inebriated attempt at a conga line. By the time they’d staggered past, the Prefects had vanished again.

I struggled through the crowd, looking for Barbara, but it was already too late.

A minute later, all the lights in the building went out.

And a minute after that, the sneezing began.

Blissed out on the contents of another syringe and succeeding in holding back the tides of his suspicion, there were times, as he hunkered down in the passenger seat of Mr. Streater’s Nova, that the Prince of Wales felt almost content. Then, a moment later, everything would crowd back around him, he would remember the appalling details of the past few days and life became bleak and impossible again. This was the rhythm to which he was already growing accustomed, this awful see-saw of emotions, the heaven and hell of the drug called ampersand.

For a few minutes, he drifted into an uneasy sleep and had the dream again. When he woke, the man behind the wheel was swearing noisily at a passing motorist.

“Mr. Streater?”

“What?”

“Why is his grandfather to blame?”

“What are you on about?”

“I keep having this dream-”

“Christ.” Streater tugged an Evening Standard from the car floor and tossed it over to him. “Do the crossword or something.”

Arthur shuffled in his seat and stared blankly at the print but the words swam persistently away from him.

“How long will it be?” he asked.

One of Streater’s hands was on the steering wheel, the other was engaged in teasing his hair back into its usual spikes. “What’s that, chief?”

“How long before Leviathan is let loose?”

“Not long now. It’s all going according to plan. The beauty of it is we hardly need to lift a finger. The enemy is doing all the hard stuff for us.”

Arthur seemed to be having great difficulty forcing out his words. “And what will happen once it’s freed?”

“Things are gonna get a lot more interesting around here. Take it from me, everything’s gonna change for the better.”

The prince groaned, flailed in his chair and gave in to despair again, sinking gratefully into darkness.

When he opened his eyes there were two men sitting in the back of Streater’s car. One of them leant forward.

“Remember us, guv? DCI Virtue and DS Mercy?”

Both were eating kebabs and they held aloft their supper in congealed greeting. They smelt, as before, of grease and animal fat.

When the prince glanced up into the rearview mirror, he was somehow not completely surprised to see that Virtue and Mercy were not reflected there, that the spotty glass showed only empty seats.

“What’s happening?” he asked numbly. “Where are we heading?”

“Nearly there,” said Mr. Streater.

As Arthur peered out of the window, the lights of a tube station slithered by and the prince reflected sadly that he had ridden only twice on the city’s underground system, both occasions engineered by his squad of experts in public relations. This seemed to him to be a pity since these places had always felt so welcoming and full of cheer.

Streater drove away from the main road and down a couple of side streets, eventually emerging in a small patch of concrete dappled with junk and debris, round the back of what appeared to be some kind of pub or nightclub. There were a couple of cars already there, a motorbike, an abandoned shopping trolley and a stack of soggy boxes. There was also the faint, disagreeable rumble of popular music.