Christopher Fowler - Disturbia

'What is it?' asked Maggie.

'A review of his book. He already has the critics slavering. According to this he's been commissioned to write another volume.'

'That should please the League of Prometheus.'

'They've gone very quiet, haven't they?' Maggie stirred her tequila and blackcurrant with her little finger. 'Not much good without their leader. One never really knows what's going on. You don't suppose they're planning something new?'

'Someone's always planning something,' said Bryant vaguely. That's what cities are for. The countryside is where you can settle and be at peace with yourself. Cities are there to disturb your thoughts, your dreams, your complacency. I agree with Stanley, though; it's odd that the boy hasn't been in touch.'

'You don't think something's happened to him?'

'Not if the smiling photograph in the paper is to be believed.'

'Funny,' said Masters, examining the picture. 'He looks just like Sebastian Wells here. Must be the angle it was taken.'

'Be careful of my overcoat, would you Maggie?' pleaded Bryant. 'There's a cat in one of the pockets.'

'I wondered where my crisps had been going.' She eyed the garment warily. It was indeed moving. 'You get cats the way other people get colds.'

Jane Masters pulled aside the curtain and checked the wet inhospitable streets.

'Looks like it's in for the night,' she sighed. 'We'll just have to stay here. As a matter of interest, does anyone know why this place is called the Nun and Broken Compass?'

'Bryant can tell you,' said her husband. 'He heard the story from the landlord. It's really disgusting.'

Arthur Bryant leaned forward with a rare, disgraceful grin on his lips. 'Well,' he began, 'it seems that about a hundred and seventy years ago a beautiful young convent-raised woman worked behind the counter here, and customers used to come from miles around to be served by her. Back then, of course, the place was still called the Cromwell Arms, and one night the saloon door was opened by two monks who had lost their way in the foggy backstreets…'

HE STOOD beneath the melancholy greenery of the cemetery, looking at the white marble sarcophagus which bore so many Wells family names, and thought that even here Sebastian had not been able to escape his father. Sir Nicholas had arranged to have his son illegally interred in the family vault instead of being left beyond consecrated grounds, on the sterile little lawn where all the other suicides were buried. If he had known the truth, he would have been saved the trouble.

Vince raised the collar of his Burberry against the misting rain and returned to the gravelled path. He thought back to the events of that eternal night, and how it had crystallised his vague ambitions. Poor Sebastian had wanted to teach his pupil a few lessons in leadership. If only he had known what an ambitious fire he would fan with that first spark. Prometheus was reborn, but not in the way he had intended.

Vince knew he had been given one chance to attain the good life. It was surprisingly easy to make the jump. After all, what was there to give up? He just wanted what the other League members had, to redress the balance a little. And they had offered it to him. No more was he a child of the streets, but an owner of the houses.

And he had to admit that it was a good life, heading up the League. It wasn't called the League of Prometheus any more, of course. Getting rid of all that xenophobic classical crap had been the first big change. Kicking out some of the more useless toffs and replacing them with smart street lads had been the next. He had dumped the racism, the snobbery, the cruder tools of persuasion. He was even thinking about approaching Louie with an offer.

To cover his tracks, he had still written the book. After all he still enjoyed writing. Only, what with all his copies being destroyed, he had recreated it from a new angle. Xavier Stevens's secret file on Sebastian (kept, touchingly, in a shoe-box on top of his wardrobe) had been useful for that. Useful for publicly burning the old-style League and damning its leader, while allowing the core of the organisation to go underground in a new, more nineties-friendly form. Buying and selling, creaming profits, hiding discrepancies, keeping secrets, burying connections, bending the rules, cementing relationships, fixing deals, fiddling the books, prioritising, publicising, damning, demonising, and doing pretty much what all government ministers did, only more so. Beating them at their own game, as it were.

The League's public profile had been getting too high, anyway. The others had much to thank him for. Strictly speaking, there were no League members now, only business men. He had returned the League to its roots, made it truly invisible again. Streamlined its organisation. Modernised its procedures. Now it was on the path to true power.

There had been a major change in attitude. Under the old regime, Sebastian would probably have had Xavier Stevens executed for compiling a blackmail dossier on him. Vince had congratulated the assassin on his initiative, and promoted him. Xavier was now loyal for life.

He never saw Pam any more. She went out of her way to avoid him, never even rang his old home number. It was as though she had sensed a sea-change in his character. He missed her. She and Louie, and the life to which they belonged, were part of the trade. He had not seen Betty again, either. Hey, everyone had to make sacrifices. You couldn't have a new life while still hanging onto the old. It was time to put away the past and look to the future. For him, for the city. The political arena beckoned.

The sleek black Mercedes was waiting at the cemetery gates. Caton-James was his driver now. Not terribly happy about it either, as he wasn't allowed to smoke in the car. He saw Vince appear at the entrance and brought the vehicle to a smart stop, hopping out to open the rear door.

Poor Sebastian, thought Vince as he slipped into the Mercedes. I got to be him, but he didn't get to be me. Prometheus could only pass the light one way. A flaw in the paradox.

Tonight he was taking a young lady to an Offenbach concert, then onto dinner at the Waldorf. The new company – he preferred to think of it in this way, rather than a league, which sounded too Conan Doyle-ish – was turning over a fortune. His book, City of Night and Day, was a best-seller.

Apart from one niggling annoyance, Vincent Reynolds felt at peace with the world.

TAKEN FROM the foreword of City of Night and Day by Vincent Reynolds.

London has changed. Now it is a city built on sand, shifting and eliding into a thousand different lifestyles – ghost-images transmitted through interference. Its residents are finally free to plot a course through the maze of glass and steel and flesh, to locate the coordinates of their dream lives and exist within them. And like waters running over sand, strange new tributaries grow and die with the speed of rolling clouds. The social classes once deemed so necessary to maintain the land's financial structure are being replaced by tribal cults.

London 's architecture has been freed of religious significance, its pagan influences purged, its Mycenean alignments to moon and stars forgotten, Solomon, Boudicea, Blake and Hawksmoor no longer forces to be reckoned with. Now it is styled on sterile American lines, freed from the weight of the past.

London is no longer a city of formalities. Its institutions are falling, its stock exchange no longer a closed shop, its companies no longer tradition-bound, its employees loyal to none but themselves, its intentions no longer honourable. The agreements that existed within a handshake, like the silk top hats of the city, have vanished. The tailored suits were too restricting, too earthbound; flight requires freedom.