Jonathan Barnes - The Somnambulist

Moon shouted up to the steeple: “Please, whatever you’re about to do — stop. We can help you.”

But it was too late. The Fly shouted again and this time they all heard it quite distinctly, a prosaic and common enough phrase in everyday life, but here somehow unsettling, shocking in its incongruity.

“God be with you.”

With this final cry, the Fly threw himself from the steeple. Mercifully, the fog masked his fall, but they all heard with sickening clarity, the terrible bone-snapping crunch as his body hit the ground.

Merryweather ran across to him and felt for a pulse. “Quite dead,” he confirmed.

Moon stood over the unfortunate creature’s corpse. An oddly frail thing it seemed in death. One could believe it almost vulnerable. “The death of a human fly,” he murmured.

“Quite right.” The inspector chuckled. “Looks like we swatted him.”

Moon stared at the policeman, distaste etched upon his face. “This is not the end,” he said softly and disappeared into the fog.

One week later, on London Bridge, the conjuror met the ugly man again.

“Mr. Moon!”

Hunched halfway along the bridge, a curious figure stood shouting Moon’s name and waving his hat in greeting. He resembled a gargoyle crawled down from the roofs of the city and left to roam its streets with impunity. “You’re a little later than I’d expected.”

Moon eyed the squat-featured stranger suspiciously. “Have we met?”

The ugly man seemed palpably disappointed. “Surely you can’t have forgotten me so soon?”

“Mr. Cribb?”

A sudden grin. “The same.” This said more as proclamation than confirmation, as though he believed his name to be instantly recognizable. He held out his left, four-fingered hand.

Moon ignored the gesture. “I thought you promised we’d never meet again.”

Cribb wore an infuriatingly amused look. “Did I? Well, doubtless that was true from my perspective. From yours… let’s just say that time runs differently for the two of us.”

The detective snorted in irritation and began to walk away.

Cribb shouted after him, “I can tell you the truth about the Fly.”

Moon stopped short but, his face blank and unreadable, did not turn back. “What do you know?”

A smile insinuated itself across Cribb’s unlovely face. “Walk with me.”

“Why?”

“Because this is what we do. What we must do, will do, have done already. Viewed from a certain angle, of course, we did it months ago.”

“I’m too busy,” Moon protested, but already he could feel curiosity, his old, persistent mistress, tugging at his coat sleeves.

“Just walk with me.”

A moment’s hesitation and uncertainty. A heavy sigh. An ostentatious glance at his watch as if to imply some deliriously hectic schedule. Then a nod, a half-smile, a reluctant agreement. And as they strolled back across London Bridge, Cribb began to talk.

“The Vikings were here,” he said, apropos of nothing in particular. “Nine hundred years ago they tore down this bridge.” He began to gesticulate expansively like an overzealous don keen to impress at his first lecture, his intonation shifting from the conversational to the rhetorical. “The Norsemen tied their ships to the scaffolding of the bridge, chained them to its beams, its bolsters and supports — and they rowed. Dragged downriver, the ships dislodged the structure of the thing, brought the whole, glorious enterprise toppling into the Thames. London Bridge is falling down. You see? But it was built, rebuilt, many times. The city endures.”

“Why are you telling me this?” Moon asked, bemused by the impromptu history lesson.

Cribb did not reply, as though he thought the answer entirely beneath him. Instead he turned to Moon and said: “You’re not a man accustomed to failure.”

“True.”

“You’re used to solving crimes after an hour or two in the Stacks, to unraveling riddles from your armchair, to coming up with vital insights in the arms of some misshapen girl at Puggsley’s.”

Moon sounded almost afraid. “How do you know all this?”

Cribb shrugged. “You told me. Or rather you will. But there is so much you have to learn. You never understood the Honeyman case. You don’t know why the Fly recognized your name. You have so many questions and so terribly, achingly few answers.”

“If you know something, I suggest you say so at once. If need be, I can bring down the full weight of the law to support me.”

“Please.” Cribb’s tone was that of a disappointed but still indulgent headmaster. “There’s no need to bandy threats. My hands are tied. There are rules.”

“What do you want?”

“All crimes have a context, Mr. Moon. All murders take place as the result of an intricate sequence of events. Occasionally that sequence may be a matter of hours or days or weeks. More commonly, it is a question of months or years. But in a few — in a very few remarkable instances — a single death may represent the work of centuries. You lack perspective. I have in mind a modest tour. I’d like to show you the city.”

“I’ve seen it.”

“London is spread out before us like a great book. Follow me and I shall teach you how to read.”

Leaving the bridge behind them, they walked swiftly along Upper Thames Street, into Queen Street and from there to Cannon Street, where they paused outside a forlorn, neglected-looking church.

“Saint Swithin’s,” Cribb explained, in the peremptory manner of the career tour guide. He strolled inside. Moon followed.

Between services, the church was all but deserted. The smells of must and incense hung heavy in the air and a handful of the faithful sat scattered among the pews, a few deep in prayer or meditation but most asleep or, in the case of one row of bulbous-nosed old lushes, stupefied by drink. Of any priest or rector there was no sign — theirs was a foundering flock, deprived of its shepherd.

Moon watched his companion crouch beside the altar, peering intently at something just out of sight.

“Edward!” he called in a hoarse whisper. “Over here!”

Moon bridled at the man’s overfamiliar manner. “What are we doing?”

Cribb pointed. “There. Do you see it?”

Built into the dark fabric of the wall, set high above the altar beneath two mildewed cherubim, was what appeared to be a large chunk of masonry, dappled with spongy patches of damp, etiolated by age and gloom, utterly alien to the rest of the building. Lime, perhaps, Moon guessed, or sandstone.

“What am I supposed to be looking at?”

“The London Stone,” Cribb breathed, his voice tinged with reverence.

The detective flung him an exasperated look.

“There are many stories about the origins of the city,” the ugly man began, ignoring the glances or irritation directed toward him by those still-conscious faithful. “According to legend, its founders were the children of the Greeks. Brutus is said to have sailed here guided by a dream from the goddess Diana in which she foretold the whole of London’s history. ‘Beyond the setting of the sun,’ she said.” At this point in his narrative, Mr. Cribb adopted a slightly embarrassing approximation of a woman’s voice. “ ‘Beyond the realms of Gaul, there lies an island, once occupied by giants, now desolate and empty. I have prepared it as a sanctuary for your people. In years to come, It shall prove a second Troy. A race of kings will be born there from your stock, and the round circle of the earth shall be subject to their rule.’ ”

Moon yawned.

Cribb forged on, the old story flowing easily from his lips. “The goddess gave Brutus this stone. She promised that as long as it endured, so the city would flourish. But her warning was clear — if the stone is lost then the city shall perish.” He looked about him at the church’s shabby interior. “Frankly, I think we ought to take better care of it.”