Christopher Fowler - Disturbia

'Then we'll have to figure it out from the clue. Call Vince again.'

'Are you going to tell him about Sebastian's plans?'

'I have to. God, we owe him that.'

'Suppose he doesn't want to go on once he knows?'

'I don't think it will make any difference to him,' said Bryant. 'I mean. Would you stop now?'

He picked up the telephone receiver and dialled.

I CANNOT by the progress of the stars give guess how near to day, he thought, feeling like Brutus in his long night of torment before the death of Caesar. The rain pattered against the windows in ripples, a drenching cloak for an inhospitable world.

Sebastian felt that the false-fronted church, featured with such neat hypocrisy in Hogarth's painting, provided an appropriate setting for this latest envelope. Its discovery would wind Vincent up and send him off again like a little clockwork toy along a track. The poor lad had never supposed that there might be more than one level to the game. A pity really, for it reduced his status as a player.

Sebastian could afford to sit back and watch the fireworks. Rather more than fireworks, perhaps. The Semtex-derivative that Xavier's boys had planted was quite untraceable, thanks to the fact that it had been passed on a false (and very expensive) route through several different countries. An explosive device, the traditional choice of traitors from Guy Fawkes onward, classic and simple, a truly London weapon. It had been a stroke of genius to coat the envelopes in traces of the stuff so that by now it completely covered Vincent's hands and clothes.

A warm dark feeling grew within his chest. Prometheus was placing a spark to his kindling, about to bring fire to mankind once more…

Thanks to his careful planning, the coming day's events were now a foregone conclusion. Following the tip-off Caton-James was preparing to make, Vincent would be picked up and interrogated. The police would realise that the boy had no alibi for the night. They would discover that he could be placed at every single member's London address, with the proof neatly provided on ten separate videotaping systems.

Vincent could tell them of his challenge, but would be able to offer no proof beyond some indecipherable shards of paper (if he had managed to keep any of them) which only made him look more of a fruitcake. That had been another smart move, to use paper stolen from his apartment. He would take them to the Holborn chamber, and they would find nothing. He might even be able to lead them to their Chelsea headquarters, but the police would still find nothing. No doubt at one stage Vince would cite the death of his agent as proof of unseen forces at work, but here Sebastian had boxed clever. With admirable restraint he had avoided the obvious route of planting evidence that would incriminate Vincent in the murder – for how could the boy have been in two places at once? The videotapes that had filmed him through the night were time-coded. Instead, Xavier had been instructed to make his violence appear to be the result of a bungled burglary.

Then there was Harold Masters. The doctor might attempt to lodge some kind of complaint, but he had a history of attacking the League. Better still, he had a history of mental instability, having suffered a nervous breakdown in 1987. The only loose cannon was the girl, Pam, but she was presumably lost at sea along with the other one, Louie, and anyway her word meant nothing to anyone. Nobody really listened to people like that. No proof, no power, any of them. It was perfect.

Sebastian tipped back his chair and rooted around in his jacket for the Cuban cigar he had been saving. In a little over an hour the power of Prometheus would be fully restored. A gesture would have been made, and its effects felt. In time, there would be other gestures, just as successful as this. He exhaled a plume of blue smoke and permitted himself a small grim smile of satisfaction.

'I've got the ninth envelope,' said Vince, 'it was sellotaped behind a pillar at the other end of the church, the real front. Can you hear me? I'm having to shout because the rain's coming down so hard.'

'What does it say?'

'Hang on a minute.' He had trouble tearing open the plastic bag inside which the envelope had been sealed, and then managed to rip the foolscap sheet in his haste.

'Oh, great.'

'Well?'

'Listen to this little lot. You're going to need a pencil.' He looked back at the page.

The Challenge Of Decimus Burton

To keep this baby free from hurt,

He's dressed in a cap and Guernsey shirt;

They've got him a nurse and he sits on her knee,

And she calls him her Tommy

Bevy

Descent

Muster

Murder

Obstinacy

Pod

Serge

Smack

He waited while Masters relayed the list to the others.

'The poem feels like it's a word short in the last line.' Maggie rechecked the words she had copied into her notebook. 'It doesn't scan properly.'

'For God's sake, that's hardly important, is it?' complained Purbrick.

'Perhaps you're meant to supply the missing word,' she replied indignantly. 'Perhaps that's the whole point.'

'What does it need in order to scan? I mean, how many syllables?'

Maggie bounced her fingers over the page. 'Dum-dah-dah. Three.'

'Chimpanzee,' said Harold Masters, rising and going to the bookcase behind his chair. 'Chim-Pan-Zee. Decimus Burton. I mean, I'm guessing but it seems the most likely answer.'

'Forgive us, Harold,' said Maggie, with more than a trace of sarcasm, 'we're not all as well-read as you. Explain please.'

'Decimus Burton planned out the Zoological Society of London, as it was then known in 1826. London Zoo, as it's now called. There's a book here somewhere.'

'Conservation In Action?'

'That's the one.'

'To your left, up one shelf.'

Masters pulled down the photographic volume and opened it at the first chapter.

'Tommy the chimpanzee arrived in 1835,' he explained. 'A wonderful novelty in those days. Someone called Theodore Hook was moved to write a poem about him.'

'Vincent's poem?'

'I can't imagine there are any others. During the war the keepers packed off most of the animals to stop them from getting shell-shocked, but they ate the contents of the aquarium. This is interesting; someone cut a foot off Alice the elephant's trunk one bank holiday in 1870. Why would anyone do that?'

'More to the point, why would Sebastian send Vince to London Zoo?' asked Maggie. 'Nobody lives there. He doesn't need to have him appear before surveillance cameras at the monkey house, surely.'

'You're forgetting one thing. The only way to get to the zoo is by passing some of the most politically sensitive homes in the whole of London, the grace and favour properties of Regent's Park.'

They called Vince. Within another three minutes he was on his way north, precisely on time and exactly as Sebastian had planned from the start.

VINCE CRUNCHED two more uppers between his teeth and sat back in the cab, listening to the rain beating on the roof. He tried to force the puzzle through his tired brain. If what Masters had just told him about Sebastian and the creation of evidence from the surveillance cameras was true, what was the point of traipsing onwards to the zoo at all? His role in the game was almost finished. It only remained to be photographed in the last position and captured by the police, so that he could be blamed for whatever atrocity Sebastian had planned for his father's convention.

So why bother fitting in with Sebastian's plans? Wasn't he safer heading home right now? Except, of course, the League would have considered such an eventuality. It would not be safe to return to his flat. He had no doubt that if the police didn't get him, Sebastian's more violent acquaintances would be standing by to finish the job.