Jonathan Barnes - The Somnambulist

“So you said.”

“Danger.”

Deadlock rolled his eyes. “Wipe that muck off your face and come with me. Whatever it is, you might as well tell me inside.”

The tramp stumbled to his feet and followed Dedlock as he swaggered into the building. Inside, Mr. Skimpole was already seated and waiting at the round table, fretful and restive. Given the albino’s permanently pasty complexion it was difficult to tell, but Dedlock thought he looked especially sickly today.

At the entrance of his colleague, Skimpole waved away a group of Civil Servants dressed as Chinamen who had been clustering around him, anxiously proffering reports to be read, letters to be signed, schemes and plots to be initialed. “Who’s this?” he asked, looking suspiciously toward the screever, his voice filled with the vexed tenor of a man whose pet dog has just dragged a small woodland creature into the drawing room, dead but still bleeding.

“This is Mr. Grishchenko,” Dedlock said, and the man nodded distractedly in greeting. He seemed jittery and furtive and kept looking about him as though terrified of some unseen menace lurking just beyond the borders of his vision.

“One of yours?” Skimpole asked witheringly.

The scarred man was unapologetic. “One of mine.”

“Who?”

Dedlock lowered his voice to an absurd stage whisper: “He’s our ‘in’ with the Russians. A double.”

“What in God’s name is he doing here? After the Slattery fiasco I’d have hoped you might be more wary about this kind of thing.”

“I think he has information for us.” Dedlock pointed to a chair and barked: “Sit down.” Grischenko, still whimpering, his vagabond disguise only partially removed, did as he was told.

“Why are you here?” Dedlock snapped. “Why that ludicrous disguise?”

Grischenko spoke carefully. His English was slow and thickly accented, his vocabulary antiquated and fussy. “I have to warn you,” he began. “I come here in this most brilliant disguise because the men who track me, they are dangerous. Most probably they watch us even now. I could not allow myself to be seen as Grischenko. You understand?”

Dedlock crossed his arms. “You’re quite safe here, I assure you. And I suspect Mr. Skimpole and myself are more than a match for anything your people might care to throw at us.”

“No, no,” Grischenko suddenly seemed animated. “Of course, I understand that my fellow countrymen would not alarm men so courageous as yourselves. But I am not followed by my own people. Not Russian. No, sir, these men you do not know, though I think you are aware of their activities. They are powerful, sirs. Very powerful. They have long been plotting against the city. You know to whom I refer now, I fancy?”

“Perhaps,” Skimpole said evenly.

“We’ve heard rumors,” Dedlock admitted, blunter than his partner. “We’d be grateful for any information you might be able to offer. The Directorate is a powerful ally. We can guarantee your safety. Who are these people? What do they call themselves?”

“They have no name, sir, but I believe that they are quite without scruple. They hired the Irish Slattery to stop you. He failed, I know, but they will not hesitate to try again. They will not stop until the Directorate is defeated and dead.”

“How do you know this?”

“Mr. Dedlock,” the Russian hissed. “I know because they have tried to turn me.”

“You?”

“Me,” Grischenko repeated, a hint of pride in his voice. “I resisted, of course. I threw their filthy offer back in their faces. I am a man of principle.”

“But of course.”

“There is more.”

Dedlock gestured for him to continue.

“They failed with me, but they have succeeded with another. An old associate of mine.”

“What do you mean?”

“They have a sleeper.”

“A sleeper?”

“Our deadliest. And now this man, this killer, a man we ourselves planted in this country many years ago, now he is recruited to their cause.”

“Who?” Dedlock snapped. “Give me a name.”

“He has many aliases,” the Russian said doubtfully. “His real name has disappeared.”

Dedlock frowned.

Grischenko brightened. “But he has a code name.”

“Tell us.”

Grischenko muttered something which sounded like “The Mongoose.”

“The Mongoose?” Skimpole repeated incredulously.

Dedlock swallowed a laugh. “The Mongoose?”

The Russian shrugged. “We were running out of names.”

“Means nothing to me.” Dedlock sniffed.

“He has killed many dozens and he has yet to fail. He is the worst of men, Mr. Dedlock. Please, gentlemen, on this matter you must be absolutely certain: he is coming for you.”

“Coming for us?” Skimpole echoed.

Grischenko nodded vigorously. “Like a pale rider,” he murmured. “Upon a pale horse.”

Skimpole shivered. Grischenko scrambled to his feet. “I must go,” he said and scuttled to the door, readjusting his disguise as he went.

“Wait,” the albino protested, but Grischenko ignored him.

He paused. “Be watchful. Promise me, sirs. Be watchful.” With this final, gnomic advice, he disappeared through the door and into the street.

“We should have him stopped,” Skimpole said. “Bring him in. Interrogate him properly.”

“Let him go. He’s told us everything he knows.”

“You believe him?”

“It would seem he risked his life to warn us. To be frank, I think we should expect the worst.”

“Who are these people?” Skimpole asked angrily. “What do they want? Good God, if only we hadn’t lost Bagshaw.”

“You don’t look well. Go home. I’ll keep you fully informed of developments.”

“I’d rather stay.”

“Go,” Dedlock insisted, not unkindly. “But be careful. We should both be on our guard. From now on, it seems, the Directorate is under siege.”

The Strangled Boy opened early for business. Even arriving shortly after ten, Edward and Charlotte Moon were far from being the first customers of the day — that dubious honor had already been claimed by those patrons who were even now on their second or third glass of the morning. Charlotte was discomfited by the beery, masculine smell of the place but Moon appeared not to notice. Waving his sister toward a rickety barstool, he ordered drinks.

“You see they’re rebuilding the old place?” he asked as he sat down beside her.

Charlotte peered from the window across the square to the burned-out hulk of the theatre where squads of workmen swarmed about its scaffolding like carrion flies on a corpse.

“This isn’t especially convenient, Edward. I thought we’d agreed not to see one another for a while.”

“It’s an emergency.”

“I’m busy.”

“With what? More ‘debunking’?”

“There’s a psychic in Bermondsey who reckons she can move household objects by the power of thought and bring back the dead in her front room.”

“You think she’s a fake?”

“The objects are raised up on strings, the dead people are her accomplices in white sheets and cheesecloth.”

“Charlotte, if I’ve learnt anything from my recent experiences it’s that it is as dangerous to believe in nothing as it is to believe in everything.”

“Stop pontificating and tell me why I’m here.”

Moon reached into his briefcase and pulled out a folder swollen fat with paper. He swallowed, ill at ease. “I have a favor to ask of you,” he said, extricating a sheaf of documents and placing them carefully on the table. “The Somnambulist and I have not been idle. Whilst you’ve been off running table-rappers to ground, we’ve been pursuing an old obsession of mine.”

“Honeyman?”