Carl Sargent - Streets of blood

“By the way, might I know who I have been speaking to?”

To his surprise, it was the man who’d remained quiet for almost all of the journey who leaned forward and shook his hand. The mouthpiece had done all the talking, but the other man was the real puppeteer.

“Paul Bernal the Third, my Lord. Be seeing you.”

The limo swept off into the distance. Paul Bernal III, Geraint thought. The new Deputy Chairman of Hildebrandt-Kleinfort-Bernal, the most ruthless financial corporation in the City of London. The shadow lurking in the sea of little fish. The great predator.

King Of Swords .

Geraint had only just been smuggled back into his flat by a posse of twitchy Cheyne Walk security men when his doorbell rang. He ignored it for a while, but it just kept on ringing, so he slouched to the door to shout at the intruder to rakk off. A reptile already. He just couldn’t face the media tonight.

But it wasn’t the media, nor was it a visitor he could ever have expected.

“Must speak with you, old fellow. Political crisis. Very important indeed.” The flatulent Earl of Manchester ignored Geraint’s pleas to he left atone and bustled in, parking his gross frame in an armchair. Wearily, Geraint closed the door behind him and poured two large brandies.

“Please, sir, make this quick. I’m not feeling very well tonight,” Geraint said as he handed him a glass. The Earl looked at him most appraisingly.

“Well, old feller, this Ripper business of yours has been causing a bit of a stir, I must say. Duke of Clarence. you know, he's related to the Gordon-Windsor side of the Royal Family.”

Related to the pretender to the throne. After the Royal Schism of 2025, it had been a long-running internecine war between the Windsor-Hanoverians of George VIII’s circle and the rival Gordon-Windsor bloodline. The appearance of the Ripper would drive a stake through the heart of the rivals to the throne. Or, at least, set them back a long way. Utterly idiotic and illogical, but a smear was a smear. Geraint took a large swig of brandy, but did not taste it.

“Well, that’s all well and good for the King in one way. Rival fellow a cad and a bounder, hands steeped in gore, all that kind of thing. But, old chap, it does make people wonder about royalty generally, you see. Any thing that weakens the family weakens the King.”

Now Geraint saw it in all its glory.

He knew Hildebrandt-Kleinfort-Bernal was one of the corporations behind King George VIII. The Ripper gave them a perfect double strike. On the one hand, the scandal struck a possibly decisive blow against the rival to their man. On the other, it weakened the King himself. even if only slightly, and made him more dependent than ever on his political and corporate backers. What a payoff HKB had bought for their seventeen million.

“Now’s the time for all good men to rally to King and country, old boy. I can tell you, there’ll be something in this for you. And there’s little personal thank you, too.”

Geraint experienced a fleeting moment of something close to depersonalization. He knew he was going to have to listen to words he would later dread having heard, but right now he felt almost completely uninvolved in what was happening.

“I want to thank you for keeping young Lawrence’s name out of all this with that Eddowes woman. I know what you did there, old boy. Damn decent of you.”

“ I can’t tell you how glad I am you’re keeping quiet about this .”

It was a thunderbolt, the slow emphasis of the final sentence. What it meant was so simple: keep your mouth shut.

He remembered the words of the man in the back of the limo: You'll learn a little more about that later. For a second, Geraint wondered whether Lawrence had possibly been sent to the woman, and even arranged for him to come there deliberately. It would be part of the plan. increasing the chances of Geraint becoming involved in the Ripper killings when he knew one of the victims. That would mean the Earl would have been in on it. He made a mental note to check Manchester’s stock holdings in HKB.

“Well, my boy. I have to say that the Prime Minister will be making some minor modifications to the Cabinet tomorrow afternoon. Consensus of opinion is that Farquahar isn’t too sound at the Foreign Office. I’m delighted to say that you can expert to be named Junior Minister of State at the Foreign Office at five tomorrow afternoon. How does that suit you, eh? We need a man we can trust there to keep an eye on the Foreign Secretary, my dear boy. We need one of our own. That is, unless you’d prefer something a little less onerous at the Treasury?”

Geraint hardly knew what it was he mumbled, but the Earl took it as acceptance of the Foreign Office offer and saw himself out. Staring blankly across die room, Geraint saw the vellum and red ribbon sitting on his table. Wearily he pulled himself up and went to investigate, already knowing exactly what he would find. Reading the header, he discovered that he had been owner of ten thousand HKB shares for three months. He had little doubt that his own financial transactions would have been retroactively altered to show when, and how, he’d bought them.

How did it go again?

We need one of our own.

The telecom messages kept piling up until well after midnight. There were journalists, tridstars, media agencies offering their brokering services, image consultants, a couple of psychics, wackos, even some faces he would have known, if he had looked at them.

Francesca called twice from Oxford to say she was recuperating and wanting to arrange dinner for the next day.

Serrin called twice from Cambridge. saying he had found what he’d gone there to find, and wishing Geraint success and happy dreams. He’d see him Tuesday.

Rani called a couple of times too, drunk and flushed, saying that she couldn’t track down Mohinder, but apart from that, everything was great and she loved Wales and he was the best thing that had happened to her and she’d be around tomorrow and where was he?

The man sat at his desk in the electronic twilight. Screens flickered around him. As the telecom poured out its endless stream of calls and cries and messages, he sat with his cards, turning them over and over and over.