Jonathan Barnes - The Domino Men

Then it came again — the same solemn tapping.

Laetitia looked around for something with which she might defend herself. Although the room lay in sepulchral gloom (the power having gone out almost forty-eight hours earlier and the emergency generator secreted beneath Clarence House failing only a very few minutes thereafter), it was still possible to see that the place was tastefully studded with objects of breezily incalculable wealth — several immensely rare vases, pottery fragments which were believed to predate Christ, a glass case of butterflies, all extinct — but none of them looked as though they might prove of much use as a weapon.

Arthur was at least sitting up now and had taken to rubbing his eyes, with hands clenched into fists like a child woken in the night. Laetitia was about to urge him into action when, from the other side of the door, she heard just about the most welcome voice in the world.

“Ma’am? Are you all right?”

Relief gushed into her voice. “Silverman?”

Behind her, Arthur, on his feet and searching for something on the floor by the bed, started to mumble a warning, but Laetitia ignored him and opened the door onto an old friend.

It was a friend, however, sadly changed. Mr. Silverman stood upon the threshold, badly bruised, stained in mud, grease and blood, his left hand horribly mangled as though he had dipped it, for some inebriate dare, into the spinning rotors of an uncompromisingly efficient piece of farming equipment.

“Silverman! My God!” The prince, leaning against the end of the bed, seemed to be stowing something into his trouser pocket. “What the devil have they done to you?”

The equerry stepped inside, closed the door and began to speak, briskly, urgently, but without obvious emotion, like a junior officer returned alone to HQ to deliver news of some catastrophic rout. “Mr. Streater took out some of his frustrations upon my person, sir. Shortly before imprisoning me in one of the wine cellars.”

“But you escaped?” Laetitia asked.

“Indeed, ma’am.”

Arthur gestured toward the gory remnants of Silverman’s hand. “But not, it seems, without some cost to yourself.”

“This is nothing, sir.” The man looked hideously pale, his skin taut and glossy with sweat, but it was still possible to discern a blush. “It’s a scratch.”

“Can you tell us what’s going on out there?”

Silverman appeared to sway slightly on his feet. “I think you might be able to teach us something about that, sir.” There was a trace of recrimination in his voice — not obvious and probably invisible to anyone who did not know him but to Arthur and Laetitia strikingly and uncomfortably apparent.

“I’ve made some mistakes, I know-” Arthur began.

Silverman cut him off with a gesture. “No time for that, sir. The city’s being eaten alive.”

“What?”

“It’s the snow, sir. It’s driven everybody mad.”

“And Streater? What happened to him?”

“He’s gone, sir. Took one of the Jaguars. He said that he had to look up an old friend. Although he was good enough to stop by the cellar for a few words. He seems to believe that he’ll actually be rewarded for what he’s done.”

The prince straightened up, mopped his forehead, pushed back his shoulders, cleared his throat, and despite his evident exhaustion, the unkempt brush of his hair and the wildness which capered in his eyes, he looked, just for an instant, unmistakably a king. Then his shoulders slumped, his posture sagged and he was only Arthur again. “I want you both to listen to me. This is what is going to happen. Silverman. I need you to stay here to look after Laetitia. His wife began to object but Arthur waved away her protestations. “I’m going outside,” he said. “There is somebody I need to find.”

Silverman sank gratefully onto the bed and nodded in grave approval.

“Good luck, sir.”

But if you’re going outside, the snow-”

Arthur shook his head. “Something tells me I’ve built up a resistance.” He bent down and kissed his wife on her forehead.

“Be careful,” she said.

The prince reached into his pocket and pulled out the gun that Mr. Streater had given him what felt like a small eternity ago. “I have this,” he said.

He nodded once, then, without saying goodbye, opened the door and stepped outside.

The house had been comprehensively ravaged and despoiled, as though an all-night party exclusively attended by vandals, incontinents and graffiti specialists had only recently moved on. Steeling himself against the sight of it, Arthur stepped through rubble and rubbish, over broken glass and furniture reduced to matchsticks, skirted around slicks of blood and trails of indescribable fluids before, at last, he emerged into the open air.

If anything, the devastation was even more advanced out here. Several vehicles were gutted and aflame and there were at least two bodies, which he tried not to examine too closely. As memories of what the cat had told him moved to the forefront of his brain and a more exact notion of what it was that he had to do began to form, he searched around for some means of transport.

When he saw it, he laughed out loud (a bitter, caustic sound). The only remaining car which seemed remotely roadworthy was an old Vauxhall Nova, effluent brown, the stink of Mr. Streater’s treachery still boiling off it. Swallowing his laughter, Arthur Windsor strode across to the car of his enemy, wondering if the man had actually been arrogant enough to leave his keys in the ignition.

And there, for the present, we shall leave him. For all that he believed himself capable of some species of Dunkirk’s courage, the Prince of Wales was undeniably a coward, a milksop and a fool, stepping dumbly into the role suggested by a small gray cat, whose owner, we are very glad to be able to report, was at that time either dying (slowly, with great and exacting pain) or else already dead.

The tragedy of it all — the sheer, mindless folly of these people’s actions — is brought home by the knowledge that we were only ever trying to help. However unfairly we may have been represented in these pages, you may be absolutely certain of the fact that Leviathan is here for one purpose only — we are here to tell you the good news.

“Joe!” Abbey stood behind me in the corridor. “What the hell are you doing here?”

The blond man flashed a Hollywood grin. “Come to rescue you.”

My landlady blushed. “You’d better get inside. Shut the door. There’s things out there that-”

Like some laconic traffic cop, Joe Streater held up his hand to halt her. “They won’t bother me.”

“Why not?”

Streater shrugged. “Kind of a long story.”

Still flushing crimson, Abbey stumbled over her words. “Henry, this is Joe. Joe — meet Henry.”

The two of us glared at one another, both measuring and sizing up, the veil of civility already close to rending.

His examination complete, Joe gave me a dismissive smirk, and for this alone I could cheerfully have punched him on the nose.

Abbey touched me lightly on the arm, pivoting me away from the interloper. “This is awkward. I know that. Really, really awkward. But could you just give us a minute on our own? We’ll go in the sitting room. There’s some stuff we need to get straight.”

“Fine,” I said. “Dandy.”

Frothing with rage and envy, I stalked off into the bedroom, sat on my bed and took deep, calming breaths. What seemed like a thousand different scenarios suggested themselves to me, none of them remotely optimistic.