Jonathan Barnes - The Domino Men

The prince fell back upon the floor as the cat came closer. He was about to say something more, to offer the animal some thanks, some further words of gratitude, when exhaustion washed over him and everything faded away. The last thing he saw was a feline face, small and gray, filled with wisdom and concern, opening its mouth as though it was about to speak and, at long last, explain it all.

At 9:01 A.M. that Tuesday morning, Mr. Derek Mackett, who had dedicated the great majority of his life to safeguarding the Civil Service Archive Unit, waved two of the most notorious killers in British history past reception without even asking for their ID. It was the only blot on a career which (with its 100 percent attendance record and five-time commendation for loyal service) stood otherwise unblemished.

Mackett was never able to forgive himself for the oversight. How could he have failed to stop two people who transparently had no business in a civil service building without getting them to sign in for guest passes? How could he have blithely hurried them through, even going so far as to speed them on their way with a gruffly avuncular smile and a friendly nod? Why did he think that there was nothing at all suspicious in two grown men dressed as schoolboys wandering into an office block? Why couldn’t he have smelt the bloodlust on them?

The counselors were good with him, awfully decent and kind. They told him that the Prefects were able to warp perception, that they were masters of deceit and that Mr. Mackett was far from the only person responsible for what happened. But Derek took his job very seriously indeed, and as far as he was concerned, the buck stopped with him.

I heard that he died last month, not so much of a broken heart as of fatally punctured professional pride.

At 9:02 A.M., the Prefects were in the lift, chittering excitedly to one another, ascending toward the uppermost level. Theoretically, there should still exist CCTV footage of their journey, but you might not be altogether surprised to learn that the tapes for that day show only electric snow, that they are filled end to end with the miserable vacuum of static.

At 9:03 A.M., Hawker and Boon arrived at the tenth floor and the carnage began.

Their first victim was Philip Statham, the safety officer. He was leant over his desk, engrossed in a book of Sudoku, when Hawker and Boon strolled up to him, sliced away the front of his fan, deftly switched it on and pressed Mr. Statham’s face into the spinning blades. Blood on the puzzles. Desktop dappled, in a hideous kind of artistry, with red.

A secretary by the name of Emily Singer saw this happen. I understand that she has never fully recovered from the experience and is unable to sleep with the lights out. On that Tuesday, however, Mrs. Singer showed some presence of mind. She screamed as loudly as she knew how, smashed the fire alarm with its little plastic hammer and dashed pell-mell for the exit. This should have meant that the population of the entire building began an automatic evacuation onto the street, but for some reason the mechanism malfunctioned, failing to make any sound at all. A satisfactory explanation for this has yet to be advanced.

Singer escaped to the exit but many of her colleagues were not so lucky. They were corralled against the photocopier by the relentless storm of Hawker and Boon, who moved amongst them with penknives flashing and teeth shining, their eyes bright with the reaper’s joy on the first day of harvest.

“What ho!” said Boon, as he forced the hand of a Timothy Clapshaw (who I vaguely remember and who I think had something to do with accounts) into a paper shredder.

“Top of the morning to you!” said Hawker, energetically staple-gunning the hands of a brusque PA called Sandra Pullman to the surface of her boss’s desk. “I don’t suppose any of you fine fellows has seen Estella?”

Anyone who could speak protested that they had never heard of the woman, let alone knew where she was.

Hawker shook his head in disappointment. “That’s a dashed shame.”

Boon heartily concurred. “If you’d only tell us, Hawker and I might think about giving all this up.”

“Too true, my old tup-weasel. We’d throw in the towel.”

Someone from HR whimpered that no one knew what they were talking about.

“She’s here somewhere,” Hawker brayed. “I can jolly well nose her.”

“Just so, old top. But at least we can have a bit of fun while we’re looking.”

At 9:08 A.M., Hawker and Boon moved down to the ninth floor just as Miss Morning, Barbara and myself were attempting to fight our way up toward them. On the stairwell, wading against the fleeing masses, I bumped into Peter Hickey-Brown.

“Christ,” he said. “What the hell are you doing here?”

“Hello, Peter,” I said.

He sounded close to hyperventilating. At the time I assumed that he was simply overwhelmed by panic.

“Just leave,” I snapped. “Run for your life and don’t look back.”

Hickey-Brown gave a limp, lolling kind of nod, pushed past us and skipped girlishly down the stairs.

“They’re on the top floor,” Barbara shouted. “The sooner we can intercept them, the fewer people need to die.”

I realized that someone was missing. “Where’s Miss Morning?”

And so it was that at 9:12 A.M., on the eighth floor of the Civil Service Archive Unit, Hawker and Boon ran, almost literally, into an old acquaintance.

Miss Morning stood before them — my grandfather’s glass gun held outstretched in both hands, her gnarled little finger curled around its crystalline trigger, her arms shaking only slightly, trembling almost imperceptibly in the face of their blazered malevolence.

Of course, I can only take an educated guess at what happened next.

“Hawker,” the old lady said softly. “Boon. You haven’t aged a day.”

The ginger-haired man grinned. “Whereas you, old girl, look absolutely hideous.”

“Miss Morning…” Boon said heavily. “Didn’t you ever feel rather left out? Everyone else had a made-up name and you had to get by with the one you were born with.”

“That was my choice,” Miss Morning said, unflinching. “They offered me Havisham but I chose to keep my own.”

“Course you did.” Boon winked. “Course you did, old thing.”

Hawker mimed the stroking of a long imaginary beard. “Itchy beard!” he shouted. “Itchy beard!”

Then Boon was doing it, too, yelping out the same esoteric phrase. “Itchy beard! Itchy beard!”

Miss Morning was fed up. “Behave!” She pointed the gun toward Hawker’s head. “You know who built this. You know what it can do.” She pulled back the safety and the device made a splintering click.

Suddenly, Boon looked pitiful and afraid, more child-like than ever. “Please don’t pull the trigger, Miss Morning.”

“Oh, please don’t do it, Miss.”

“It’s really going to sting.”

“Pretty please!”

Without a second’s hesitation, without so much as a shiver of conscience or doubt, the old woman shoved the weapon hard against Hawker’s head and pulled the trigger.

The Prefect collapsed wailing to the floor, screeching in melodramatic agony. For almost a minute, Miss Morning was actually fooled. For a while there, she actually believed she might have won.

Hawker sat up with a big grin on his face and mimed a little wave. He and Boon fell about laughing.

“That should have stopped you,” Miss Morning muttered. “He promised. He promised it would cut you down.”

She was still protesting as Hawker and Boon advanced upon her, their bodies visibly quivering at their own incorrigible naughtiness.

“Nothing stops us, old girl,” Hawker said, as he hoisted the pensioner in the air by her throat. “You really ought to know that by now.”