Jon Grimwood - End of the World Blues

The kid in the car kept playing his game, Maxim smiling every time the boy twisted his handheld controller frantically, trying to make his sled corner faster.

“What are you thinking?” Amy asked Kit.

“About Neku.”

“Me too,” said Amy, then blushed. Kit was still trying to work out why, when he realised that both Maxim and the Brigadier were watching from their mirrors.

The Cut turned out to be behind the main station at Waterloo, and their destination a nondescript flat above an Indian newsagents, with walk-up stairs and bars over all the windows.

“See you in a minute,” Maxim told Brigadier Miles.

The kid said nothing. Just got back into the car.

A table in the main room held local maps for South London and a manila folder full of forms that the Brigadier spent at least fifteen minutes signing.

“What’s all that?” asked Kit.

“Paperwork,” Amy told him.

“Yes,” he said. “Obviously. What kind?”

Amy’s gaze slid to a shelf of cheap paperbacks and old magazines. A novel at the end seemed to hold particular fascination. She was wondering whether to tell him, or maybe she was just hoping he’d forget the question.

“Well?” he demanded.

“She’s taking responsibility if it goes wrong. You know, if the Brigadier’s plan fails and…”

“I get killed,” said Kit, finishing Amy’s sentence for her.

Amy nodded a little too fast.

Not just me, Kit decided. Neku too.

He spent the next few minutes looking at the paperbacks and magazines. Crime novels, thrillers, and romance. A couple of back issues of Cosmo and an American edition of Esquire . A handful of locally produced booklets about the area. Holding up a pamphlet, Kit showed Amy the title. Necropolis Railway.

“Great,” she said, and left Kit to his reading.

As the living crowded London to such an extent that speed limits were introduced for horse-drawn traffic, the dead began to take more space than the city could provide. In the winter of 1837 fever took victims so fast that families had to stand in line in London churchyards to wait for the funerals ahead to finish.

So, when it was suggested that corpses be freighted out of the city and buried at a purpose-built necropolis big enough to take London’s dead for a hundred years, funds were raised quickly, and work begun. Necropolis Station opened in 1854, allowing the dead to make their journey to the grave in three levels of comfort, first, second, and third class.

“Interesting?” Amy asked.

“In a sick sort of way,” said Kit, putting down his pamphlet and looking round the room. “Are we done here?”

“I reckon so.” She glanced to where Maxim and Brigadier Miles were folding up a huge map and talking into their phones, fingers in one ear and both obviously irritated by the noise they considered the other was making.

“Demarcation,” said Amy.

“Security forces and the local police?”

Amy looked at Kit. “God no,” she said. “We don’t involve them.”

“Five squabbling with six?” guessed Kit, naming both security and counter intelligence.

“It’s internal,” said Amy.

Kit scowled.

“What?” she demanded.

“You’re enjoying this,” said Kit, “aren’t you?” He watched Amy begin to deny it and then stop. That was Amy, honest to a fault even with herself.

“Well…” she said. “It beats the milk run. Is that bad?”

“No. Of course not.”

“But what?” Amy said, voice flat.

“Nothing,” said Kit. He checked his watch, worked out how long he had until de Valois’s deadline ran out, and remembered Charlie all in the same breath. “I need to make a call,” he said. “I left a friend of Neku’s at the flat…”

“Charles Olifard,” said Amy.

Kit looked at her.

“It’s okay,” she said. “He’s fine. The Brigadier sent him home last night.” She caught Kit’s expression. “Charlie’s on an Mi6 scholarship,” she said. “He’ll be working at GCHQ when he’s done at Imperial.”

“Sweet fuck,” said Kit, more loudly than he intended.

Across the room Maxim and the Brigadier, who’d just been flipping shut their phones and smiling grimly, stopped looking pleased with themselves and glanced across.

“That’s what Charlie was?” asked Kit, his words little more than a savage whisper. “Someone to shadow Neku? Still, at least he didn’t crawl into her bed.”

Amy slapped him.

“Feeling better?” Kit asked, watching her walk away.

“You want to tell me what that was about?” demanded Brigadier Miles, after Amy had slammed the bathroom door, leaving the entire flat ringing with silence.

“Charlie,” said Kit.

The old woman frowned. “I doubt,” she said, “Amy slapped you over Charlie Olifard. They’ve never even met.”

“You know Charlie?”

“No,” said Brigadier Miles.

“You didn’t put Charlie up to meeting Neku?”

Dragging on her cigarette, the old woman shook her head. “GCHQ and my lot don’t really talk,” she said. “Not these days. Still, he’s obviously a good boy.” Brigadier Miles spoke with the Olympian detachment of someone at least four times Charles Olifard’s age. “And he left you a message.”

Kit scowled at her.

“Keep rolling the dice, whatever that means. Charlie called the police, you know, yesterday afternoon. When you didn’t come back. Told them about the kidnap. Guess what they found?”

“Charlie?”

“Ten thousand dollars in used notes, wrapped in book covers, packed in the bottom of a kid’s rucksack. You want to explain that to me sometime?”

“I can’t,” said Kit.

“Of course not,” said the Brigadier, grinding out her cigarette. “I imagine it belongs to your little friend. Word is, she takes after her grandmother.”

The problem with boys was that they were too easily impressed. The correct response on entering a cleft in the shell of Schloss Omga was interested boredom, where the interest was ice-thin and the boredom deep and obvious.

A casual comment from Luc that his family’s castle was bigger or smaller, simpler or more ornate, would also have been adequate: provided it was said in such a way as to turn any compliment inside out. Alternatively, he could just have mentioned the obvious, that Schloss Omga was dying, and having crawled up the side of a high mountain, the vast mollusk had nowhere left to climb.

So sad, he could have said. How awful. It must be terrible to watch.

And since shells existed to create ideal internal conditions, as much as for protection, he could have mentioned that hole at the tip of Schloss Omga, while undoubtedly making it easier for Lady Neku to land was not, in itself, a good thing.

Neku would have mentioned it. Casually, in passing.

“What are we doing here?” asked Luc.

“Arriving,” said Lady Neku, then smiled to show she was joking. “You’re about to meet my father.”

Luc’s mouth dropped open as fast as if someone had cut a wire on his jaw. “But he’s…”

“Dead,” said Lady Neku. “Yes, I know.” Waiting for the pod to open, she reached for a grab bar and hauled herself from her seat, landing lightly on a mother-of-pearl deck below.

“Don’t worry,” she added, when Luc slipped. “It’s always tricky at first.” She led him towards a leathery wall that opened as she approached, sealing itself behind the two of them, before opening again into a curving corridor beyond. In the handful of steps it took to enter Schloss Omga, the air grew less sour and the ambient temperature dropped by several degrees.