Pax Britannia: Human Nature (2 page)

But while some were only just beginning their day, others - like the Reverend - had been up for hours already.

Creed was momentarily distracted by a bobbing shape out beyond the coast, riding the rolling waves like a skittish colt. It was a fishing boat, clinker built, nets slipping from its sides. Whoever was on board would doubtless be feeling every rolling surge and sucking tug of the sea. But then, the Reverend considered, it probably wouldn't bother the lone fisherman, when so many of the townsfolk made their living from the sea.

As he watched the fisherman hauling in the dragging nets, he was momentarily distracted from his melancholy as he considered that when it came to the fishermen of Whitby, what it meant to be a man was to be, in fact, half-fish, or so it seemed.

For the briefest moment something like a wry smile twisted the priest's lips, a mouth unused to smiling forming a gargoyle grimace in its place.

"Father?" a voice called from behind him, from the direction of the cramped graveyard.

In an instant the smile was gone and he turned to face the figure standing there amidst the weather-worn gravestones. His penance was still not done.

He closed his eyes and, with a harsh prayer, offered himself to God.
Take me now
, he willed,
if you are done with me
. He swayed there in the pre-dawn light, the wind tugging at the uncombed wisps of hair at the sides of his head.

"Father?"

He opened his eyes again. The Lord was not done with him yet.

God is jealous, and the Lord revengeth; the Lord revengeth, and is furious; the Lord will take vengeance on his adversaries, and He reserveth wrath for his enemies.

Reverend Creed turned back towards the church, preparing to face another day of dealing with past sins made flesh, and cursed inwardly, the cruel scowl now shaping his features looking much more at home there.

George Craven started, feeling his skin turn to gooseflesh beneath his weather-alls, despite the layers of linen, wool and rubberized fabric.

"Someone must've walked over me grave," he muttered to himself. Still pulling in the net, hand over hand, the hemp rough going unnoticed under the thick calluses covering fingers and palms, he looked back over his shoulder, back towards the black cliffs of Whitby.

He had that uncomfortable feeling that someone was watching him. For a moment, he thought he saw that someone, up there on the cliff, past the church of St Mary's, the squat building silhouetted against the torpid grey-green clouds.

Squinting to perceive any more through the pre-dawn twilight and across such a distance, the fisherman blinked. And then the figure was gone.

"Who was that, I wonder?" he muttered. "Who'd be out at this hour? Apart from you, George Craven," he laughed suddenly, the sensation of being observed passing, his goose pimples diminishing.

Further back, beyond the edge of the grass-tufted cliffs, the ancient, semi-skeletal silhouette of the Abbey rose black out of the gloom. George's goose bumps returned.

"Talking to yerself again, George," he said, hoping the sound of his own voice would shake the renewed feelings of unease, and then stopped, catching himself. "People'll say yer mad if yer not careful," he added.

But he wasn't going mad, not really, and George Craven knew it. Talking to himself while he was out in the
Mabel
, was just a habit of his, something he did to while away the monotonous hours. No, he wasn't mad, bored with the monotony of it all maybe, but not mad.

The fishing boat bobbed and rolled beneath his heavy booted feet, the fisherman bobbing and rolling with it, never losing his footing for a moment.

The Cravens had always been fishermen, for as long as anyone in the family could remember. George had followed in his father's footsteps to the sea, like his grandfather before him, and his great-grandfather before that. It probably went all the way back down their family tree to the bottom, where it was rooted in the very sea bed itself.

George's grandmother would cackle like the fish wife she was, through cracked teeth and blistered gums, that Old Man Craven must have married a mermaid, and that their offspring had been trying to get back to the sea ever since.

George smiled as he remembered his grandmother, a cheery soul, and a dab hand with a net needle and a length of twine, as well as with a penknife and a piece of Whitby jet.

Distracted, George's gaze fell to the nets at his feet, now swamping the bottom of the boat. The haul hadn't been great and he would be making a pretty poor showing at the fish market later that morning. By the light of the swaying oil lamp hanging from the mast he could see that there were precious few fish of any worth, meaning he would be back out again tonight after precious little rest. Octopuses and cuttlefish writhed slimily over the wriggling fish as they all suffocated on the deck of the small boat now that they were in the open air. A spider crab or two crawled over the catch, not large specimens themselves, but worth a bob or two at least. He was almost surprised they weren't bigger though; with the increasing industrialisation of the North of England, the growth in unchecked pollution levels in the sea had gone hand-in-hand with the growth of some of its inhabitants.

"Yer not goin' t'make yer fortune with this little lot," he complained to the salt-sea air. "Yer not ever goin' t'make yer fortune out 'ere," he mused, pensively eyeing the shoreline again. No, he was never going to get rich this way.

And then there was something else... something else that by rights shouldn't even be amongst the catch.

The fisherman squinted again, this time peering at the glistening conglomeration of glistening creatures caught in the net. The catch looked like one grotesque amorphous creature as it pulsed and heaved, all misshapen tentacles, barbed fins, gasping gills, flicking tails, scales and sucker pods.

"Is that hair?" George gasped in surprise.

The catch seethed and moved and there it was again. If it hadn't been right there before his eyes, he wouldn't have believed it. Gasping and choking, the gills at its neck flapping uselessly, the creature was dying, but George just stood there in the rocking boat, staring in dumb amazement.

"Neptune's beard! I don't bloody believe it!" he exclaimed, and dropped the net.

ACT ONE

The Curious Case of the Whitby Mermaid

November 1997

Chapter One

Gabriel Wraith Investigates

The waiting room was opulent to the point of over-extravagance, Miss Michelle Powell considered, grander and more grandiose than what she was used to certainly, even though her father's legacy had made her independently wealthy. London's foremost consulting detective was obviously doing very well for himself off the back of such a reputation. But then it was also patently clear that he was someone with money and breeding as well. A house in Bloomsbury, no less, only a stone's throw from Russell Square and the austere edifice of the British Museum.

Rising from the chair to which she had been guided on being admitted to the town house, Miss Powell began to pace the room, as one would if enjoying the works of the grand masters on show within the National Gallery.

She admired the Qing dynasty vase above the mantelpiece, the black ebony-wood pedestal bearing a marble bust of the Roman emperor Hadrian and a decorative screen from nineteenth century Japan. She paused before the portrait of a girl in seventeenth century Dutch dress. It was of the Flemish school, she believed, and as a result she strongly doubted that it depicted a distant family member of the house's owner. The oil painting was just another adornment, something of monetary value to be collected and then subsequently shown off.

There was something of the air of an art gallery to this room, in fact, as if everything were on show for appearance's sake, rather than it being there for any reason of emotional attachment or because it spoke to the soul of the house's owner. But then that, in its own way, spoke volumes about the mysterious Mr Wraith.

"Miss Powell?"

The young woman jumped, and gave an involuntary cry of alarm, startled by the sudden reappearance of the manservant. Where a moment before she had been alone, the hawkish butler had suddenly appeared in the doorway, as if he had miraculously materialized out of thin air.

"Are you all right, Miss Powell?" the butler asked, in that forbidding monotone drone of his. It was how she imagined the Grim Reaper would speak, which was an analogy that went well with the manservant's pallid features and hollow cheeks, their gauntness merely serving to highlight the underlying bone structure, giving his features a knife-edge sharpness.

"Y-Yes. Th-Thank you. I'm fine," she stammered, trying to regain her composure. Nervously she adjusted the purple velvet top hat that was already carefully positioned on top of her immaculately coiffeured hair, held in place with half a dozen hat pins, before straightening the bodice of her fitted crushed velvet jacket. She looked - and indeed was - the height of fashion. Only the brass-trimmed velocipede driver's goggles hanging around her neck seemed incongruous when put with the rest of the outfit. But then where was it written that chic young ladies couldn't be budding amateur engineers as well, in this more socially-enlightened Neo Victorian age?

"Very good, ma'am. Then, if you are quite ready, Mr Wraith will see you now."

"Very good," Miss Powell repeated unconsciously, her tone clipped - possibly over-severe she considered, her cheeks reddening at the thought - in an effort to regain her composure.

Why did she feel so intimidated by this place? There was no need to; she wasn't some silly working class girl applying for the position of scullery-maid. She was the client here after all. Then why did she feel so nervous?

"We'd best not keep your employer waiting," she went on. "I'm sure he must be a very busy man."

"Very well, ma'am. If you would like to follow me?"

The butler, dressed in the regulation black, as if he was going to a funeral, turned and marched out of the waiting room with carefully paced strides. Miss Powell followed, the skirts of her dress sweeping the floor as she kept pace with the man, who moved with all the precision of a fish-stalking heron.

He led her back into the just-as-opulent entrance hall of the Bloomsbury house and from there up a mahogany and marble staircase to the first floor. From there they crossed a landing and came to a halt by a pair of grand doors. Seizing the gleaming brass door handles in his white-gloved hands the butler opened the doors and entered the room.

"Miss Powell, sir," the butler announced before promptly backing out of the room again.

Michelle stepped forward, suddenly feeling self-conscious again. There, standing before an unnecessarily large marble fireplace was Maximum Londinium's foremost consulting detective, Gabriel Wraith. He was standing straight as a beanpole, staring disinterestedly out of one of the windows on the opposite side of the ballroom-styled chamber. His profile looked as sharp as a stiletto dagger - hawkish nose, jutting chin and pointed, vespertilian ears - accentuated by the way his boot black hair had been scraped back from a widow's peak and kept in place with so much hair lacquer that it gleamed in the light of the ostentatious crystal chandeliers that lit the room.

The room was almost bare of furniture, other than for a leather-topped desk in the far corner, on which stood a reading lamp and a carefully positioned copy of
The Times
, a large magnifying glass resting conspicuously on top of it. It certainly didn't look like the sort of room where a consulting detective could actually do any work, Michelle thought. Was all this ostentation really just for show, she wondered.

She cleared her throat nervously, even though she wasn't really sure that she should be so presumptuous as to speak first in the presence of the gentleman detective.

His head snapped round and he studied her with unblinking ophidian eyes. He appeared thin almost to the point of anorexia. Michelle caught her own curve-endowed figure in one of the tall mirrors that stood between the windows on the other side of the room and, unable to help herself, automatically found herself thinking that she was looking rather less than totally stunning that day, even though no right-thinking male would have ever agreed with her.

"You sent word, Mr Wraith," she said, trying to hide the anxious excitement from her voice. "You have, I take it, something to report?"

"I have news, Miss Powell, good news."

"You have recovered it?"

Gabriel Wraith put a tapering white finger to his lips and the young woman was almost surprised to find her words faltering into silence. He had hushed her without saying a word.

The thin man flicked aside a tail of his jacket and dipped long fingers into a waistcoat pocket, pulling out a glittering silver chain, and the pendant that dangled from it.

Wraith stared at the jewel as it spun and sparkled in its setting on the end of the chain. Michelle watched him intently. There was a hungry, almost lascivious, look in his snake-like eyes. She almost expected him to lick his lips in delight at any second, as if the jewel was good enough to eat.