Christopher Fowler - Disturbia

'YOU WON'T find much written down about them. They're not the sort of organisation that likes to leave hard evidence lying around.'

Vince finally managed to collar Dr Harold Masters on the steps of the British Museum, where he had just delivered a lecture on the celebrations of the Inca calendar and early Mayan beliefs, and was now hurrying through the early evening drizzle, anxious to get home. Vince was late and lucky to have recognised him at all, considering he only had Esther's description ('absurdly tall, unsuitable tortoiseshell glasses') to go on.

'You'll have to walk with me, I'm afraid,' said Masters, striding ahead. 'My wife will kill me if I'm not on time. We've some Egyptian ceramics people for dinner and they're unfamiliar with the concept of fashionable lateness. Come under shelter. Pity about this weather. It was so nice yesterday.' He was carrying a gigantic green and white striped golfing umbrella.

'In the twenties they were known as the Young Prometheans. Information on them is all rather hazy. No idea why they linked themselves to Prometheus, except of course Mary Shelley's Frankenstein is subtitled The Modern Prometheus, isn't it? Enlightened man, and all that. The heyday of such societies was in the Victorian era, of course. They always picked classic-sounding names with quasi-mystical connections. The League is almost certainly Edwardian in origin, although it seems to have a group of founders rather than one single leader. It began as little more than a splinter group of an Oxford debating society, that much is sure, but its character changed during the Second World War.'

'Why was that?' he asked, hopping ahead to keep abreast of the doctor.

'Oh, for the simple reason that they supported Mosley during the conflict. Around this time they gained the support of the British Union of Fascists, oddly enough through their mutual admiration for Edward the Eighth – the BUF were royalists to a man – and of course the Mitfords began throwing money at them. But the alliance with the Black-shirts marked a move to the far right from which they never recovered. Of course, all sorts of odd things happened in the war. That forecourt, for example,' he indicated the museum at his back, 'was full of onions, runner beans and cabbages, a victory garden dug up by the wife of the Keeper of Coins and Medals.'

'There's something I don't understand, doctor.' Vince paused with him as they reached the kerb. 'What exactly does the League do?'

'That's an interesting question.' Masters rolled his eyes knowingly. He looked slightly mad. 'Their actions certainly seem to be more negative than positive, rather like a radical mini-version of the House of Lords. Basically, they prevent things happening that they don't agree with. From the wealthy backgrounds of their associates I imagine they operate some kind of privilege system that allows their members to get on at the expense of others. You know, do subtle, appalling misdeeds to the underclass and always manage to hush them up, place favoured sons into the jobs their fathers had before them, that sort of thing.

'A few years ago I ran afoul of them when I wrote a monograph on the later history of the city guilds. In the course of my research I upset a few younger members of the Oxbridge set by suggesting that the City of London corruption cases of the eighties could be traced to the exclusion practices of the old boy network, and I went as far as to name a few of the culprits. I had no idea they were Masons. Next thing I know, this chap Wells calls me up – on my unlisted number, no less – and actually has the audacity to threaten me, in the most affable manner conceivable, but still a threat. Tells me my research is based on false assumptions, perhaps I'd care to rethink my proposals, or he'll be happy to have some of his colleagues come around and help me with the revisions.'

'What did you do?'

'What could I do? I'm an academic, not a gladiator. I amended the document to exclude them. Funny thing, though, I was introduced to Wells at a party a few months later and he was charm incarnate. I didn't much care for him, swanning about as if he owned the place. The city, I mean. Struck me as your classic bright boy gone to the bad. A head full of silly ideas and no practical abilities. Wealthy people always assume they have the right to be eccentric.' He halted at the corner of New Oxford Street and peered beyond the edge of the umbrella. 'If you're thinking of getting mixed up with these people, I'd bear in mind that they have some pretty powerful friends. And I should think they can be dangerous. I don't know that they've actually ever killed anyone, although there was some speculation about a journalist who died slipping on some steps, but over the years they've exerted a lot of pressure on specific targets. Still, you can't be too careful. There's nothing more harmful than an opinionated intellectual with too much money.'

'Thanks for the advice. I'll bear it in mind. Just a couple more questions.'

The doctor was busy searching the rainswept street for a cab. 'Fire away,' he said, distracted by his need to find transport quickly.

'How many members of this society are we talking about?'

'There you have me, I'm afraid. Could be five or fifty, although if it's the latter, I imagine there's an inner circle that makes all of the more contentious decisions. An organisation like this tends to have a highly developed internal pecking order providing different levels of information on a need-to-know basis. If you look at the early structure of the Nazi party you'll find pretty much the same thing.' He spotted a cab with its light on and threw out his arm. 'What was the other question?'

'Where do they operate from?"

'I'm sure they recruit at the main universities, and I imagine their membership is swollen by sheer osmosis.'

'What do you mean?'

'Oh, that like-minded individuals naturally drift towards them.'

Funny, Vince thought, that was the same phrase Sebastian used.

'It's pretty much public knowledge that they have a central London meeting-lodge not far from the Holborn Masonic Temple,' the doctor went on. 'I don't have an address for them, though. Didn't get that far, but I daresay I could find it for you easily enough.'

'If you do come across it, could you phone it through to me?'

'Yes, I suppose so. On the condition you don't go doing anything stupid. God, I'd love to see it all brought out into the light. Mind if I ask you a question now? Why would you want to get involved with these people in the first place?'

'I'm a personal friend of the ringleader,' he explained apologetically.

ON A CERTAIN kind of rainy October night some London streets fall back into the past, and it becomes impossible to pinpoint their exact year, like stumbling across an old photograph without a date. On such nights, the dingy dwellings of Spittalfields and Whitechapel still seem to belong to the Huguenot silk-weavers, the prim backstreets of Kensington appear eternally Edwardian, and the houses of the Chelsea embankment, primped with gothic trimmings and standing in Sunday finery like a charabanc of ruddy-faced matrons, remain the province of the Pre-Raphaelites. It is among these latter buildings that the members of the League of Prometheus had set their headquarters.

Although the house itself only dated from 1865, the grounds in which it stood held ancient secrets. Buildings change; sites do not. In later decades London's luminaries attended fashionable parties on its candelabra-filled first floor. Conan Doyle, Whistler, Elgar and Wilde had all taken tea in the Oak Room, a large dark lounge made more depressing by a series of staggeringly ugly morality paintings rendered on fourteen separate oak panels.