Simon Green - The Spy Who Haunted Me

“A chip off the old block, I suppose,” I said. “Alexander King was quite the lady-killer in his day. Sometimes literally. Oh, look; I think Peter’s found some more sheep droppings.”

“How lucky can one man get?” Blue said solemnly. “Have you noticed, Walker seems quite at home in this primitive and entirely uncivilised place. Not what you’d expect from a man who spends his whole life walking the mean streets of the Nightside, where the sun never shines . . . It’s as though nothing here can touch him.”

“Nothing here would dare,” I said. “Everyone’s heard of Walker. Hello; now Honey’s going over to talk to him. I think perhaps we should wander over and do a little shameless eavesdropping. We can’t afford to be left out of anything. Not in this group.”

“Hear all, see all, and keep our thoughts to ourselves,” said the Blue Fairy.

“You see?” I said. “You’d make a good Drood.”

“Now who’s being nasty?”

We laughed briefly, and then he looked at me with an expression on his face I couldn’t read.

“It’s all right that you never liked me,” he said finally. “Not many do.”

“I liked you well enough,” I said. “I just never approved.”

“I liked you,” he said. “Admired you, even. For having the nerve to tell your family to go to hell, and make it stick. For having the courage to live your own life, and go your own way, and to hell with what anyone expected of you. When you brought me into your family, I really did mean to make you proud of me. But . . . you should never trust an elf, Eddie. And a desperate, lonely, stupid half elf least of all.”

“Let’s go see what Honey and Walker are up to,” I said. Why is it always the ones who aren’t really your friends who insist on baring their souls to you?

We joined Honey and Walker just as she stuck her face right into his and demanded he use his legendary Voice to summon the monster to the surface of the loch. Walker, not one bit intimidated, stood his ground and gave her back stare for stare. Peter and Katt hurried over, not wanting to be left out of anything.

“Voice?” said Peter just a bit breathlessly. “What Voice?”

“They say many things about Walker, in the Nightside,” I said. “Most important, they say he has a Voice no one can resist, that can compel anyone to say or do anything. A Voice so powerful even the high-and-mighty gods and monsters of the Nightside must bow their arrogant heads and answer to it. There are even those who say Walker once made a corpse sit up on its mortuary slab and answer his questions.”

“It was just the once,” said Walker. “I wish everyone would stop making such a big fuss about it.”

“Oh,” said Peter. “That Voice.”

“Would it work outside the Nightside?” said the Blue Fairy.

“I don’t think it works at all,” I said, making a sudden connection. There was nothing in Walker’s face or bearing to give the truth away, but suddenly I just knew . . . and a great many things made sense. “You don’t have your Voice anymore, do you, Walker? Because if you did, you would have used it on Alexander King to make him give up his secrets. You never jumped through hoops for anyone before this. No, your Voice was bestowed on you by the Authorities, when they first put you in charge of policing the Nightside. How else could one mortal man be expected to keep the peace in a place like that? But the Authorities are dead and gone now, and so is their gift. Right, Walker?”

He looked at me coolly, saying nothing, but sometimes silence is its own answer. I felt like jumping in the air and doing high fives with myself. I knew now what Alexander King had offered Walker to tempt him into this contest: a new Voice. Honey made a short, exasperated sound and moved abruptly away from Walker to stare out over the loch again.

“What do we know about this place?” she said loudly. “I mean, I know the story, the legend of Nessie; everyone does. But that’s about it.”

“I can tell you that Aleister Crowley once lived here,” said Walker unexpectedly. “He had a great house, right on the side of the loch, to which he summoned his pathetic followers to teach them the ways of magic. And in that dark and feverish place, he and his circle danced and took drugs and had all kinds of sex, driving themselves to exhaustion and beyond, all in the service of one great unholy ritual.”

“Crowley,” said Katt. “I sort of know the name, but . . .”

“Kids today,” said the Blue Fairy, shaking his head.

“The Great Beast,” Walker said patiently. “Called by some, not least himself, the Wickedest Man in the World. Back in the thirties, his name was a curse on the lips of the world, hated and feared and reviled, and he loved it. People would cross themselves when they saw him in the street. Perhaps he started to believe his own press; I don’t know. But he came here, and in that house, in that place, he and his followers tried to invoke and summon a great and primal power. But when he caught a glimpse of precisely what it was he was trying to bring through into our reality, he was so horrified he broke off the working and ran away screaming, along with his shattered followers. He ran all the way back to England, and many said he was never the same after that. The house is still here. It’s said to be haunted by bad dreams.”

“Was he really?” said Katt after a pause. “The wickedest man in the world, I mean?”

Walker smiled. “No.”

“You’d know,” I said generously.

“Well, that was all very interesting, I suppose,” said Honey. “But when I asked if anyone knew anything, I meant anything relevant. ”

“Legends about the monster of Loch Ness go all the way back to the sixth century,” I said briskly. “Saint Columba was supposed to have come face-to-face with it while crossing the loch in a boat. He spoke gently to the creature, and it turned away and did him no harm. There were various stories after that, all for local consumption, but the first modern sighting was in 1933, which was when the world first learned about Nessie.”

“Why then?” said Peter. “I mean, why 1933 precisely? What happened then?”

“They built a road alongside the loch,” I said. “Up to that point, Loch Ness was way off the beaten track. But once the road was opened up to regular traffic, linking two major cities, people started seeing things. There have been all kinds of sightings since the thirties, some photos and even a few short films, but never anything definite or definitive. Never any proof. Nessie is apparently a very shy beastie and never pops her head above the surface for long.

“As for the loch itself, it is twenty-four miles long, averaging a mile or so in width, and reaches a depth of some seven hundred feet. If you’d care to consider the waters for a moment . . . Yes, they are pretty dark, aren’t they? That’s peat, stirred up from the bottom. Any disturbance in the water churns up even more peat, and soon enough you can’t see a damned thing.”

“Teacher’s pet,” said the Blue Fairy.

“How is it you know so much about our first mystery?” Katt said suspiciously.

“He’s a Drood,” said Walker. “They know everything.”

“Pretty much,” I said cheerfully.

“Anything else?” said Honey.

I shrugged. “Not unless you want to argue over the merits of the various photographs and films. The exact nature of Nessie’s identity is a much discussed and disputed matter. Some driven souls spend their whole lives here, perched on the edge of the loch, hoping for a sighting. No one knows anything for sure. Not even the Droods.”

“That is why we’re here, after all,” said the Blue Fairy.

“Oh, come on,” said Katt. “We’re supposed to solve a fifteen-hundred-year-old mystery, just like that, after everyone else has failed?”