The Alembic Valise (14 page)
Read The Alembic Valise Online
Authors: John Luxton
“Assume that what he is doing and who is seeing is a part of his job, until you learn anything different,” he responded. Vale then turned to Agim.
“And what about you, my friend, I sense that you are conflicted, as they say. Have you any questions?”
“You mean apart from this whole parallel worlds thing?”
“Yes, that is something you can accept, or not. To quote Groucho Marx – Who you gonna believe, me or your own eyes?
”
Agim looked at him and then at the floor. After a few moments Vale broke the silence.
“Pour the tea, Lorna,” he said.
The walls of Tinderbox Alley were covered in thick green moss that glittered with ice crystals and beyond was the churchyard, the ancient gravestones burrowing down into the black tilth. In the bell-tower cog and ratchet aligned; seven strikes of the bell. At least I am early, thought Joel. He was not due to meet up with Lorna and Agim until half past the hour; they had arranged to have a drink and maybe something to eat at the Tinderbox, a tiny pub sandwiched between a block of pre-war flats, some allotments and the Thames. Mortlake was a strange area, nothing to do with lakes or death but strange nonetheless.
Above the wall Joel could see the white outline of an arch. He backtracked and entered the small cemetery garden. The gate clanged shut behind him. A notice explained that the freestanding arch was the entrance to the original sixteenth century knave, preserved and erected here in shadow of the present tower. Its shape reminded him of a whale’s jawbone. The central keystone had a faded glyph etched into it. Joel had passed by here before but for some reason never noticed it. He stepped through then looked back to the world he had just left. He could hear voices approaching but they were drowned out by a siren on the main road on the other side off the church. There was not much to explore on this side of the arch, the path did not go anywhere. Joel heard the voices again and turned to see two hooded figures come through the far gate with a squat bullterrier at their feet.
“I was so Mars-bared up, man. I said are you my fucking shine rival? Cos if you are you better put your kipper on the carpet before...”
“Yeah, fuck with the den mother and you will pay the Katie,” the other man interrupted.
“The what?”
“You know, Jordan.” The men stopped talking; they had seen Joel and were looking at him. The dog circled them, excitedly. “Down Nigger,” said the other man flicking his lead at the dog. Joel started to run.
They caught up with him just as he was climbing the wall to attempt a jump into the alley. They dragged him back into the churchyard, threw him onto the ground and began kicking him. Nigger bit him twice. They took his phone, his wallet and his watch, and left after giving him a farewell kick in the back. The only words going through his mind were – den mother. What did they mean? Then he remembered a recent telephone conversation with Dave. The Native American initiation had brought Dave into contact with some interesting fellow travellers, one of who had celebrity status by virtue of the fact that she had been in a US reality TV series, where she had earned the name of ‘Den Mother’. Originally a scouting term that had been repurposed to mean the alpha female in a group of cougars, middle aged women vying for the attentions of much younger men. Dave obviously did not qualify as a younger anything but had apparently sought her help when it was the propitious moon phase in which to consecrate his bear claw.
Joel opened his eyes and realised he was still on the ground; he tried to get up but felt a numbness in his side; rising with difficulty and rubbing away the numbness he felt something on his hand and realised it was blood. They fucking stabbed me, he thought. He tried to call out but all that emerged was a wordless scream of anger and pain. He should never have gone through the arch, now it was too late to go back, if he tried he would surely die. He would have to try and survive on this side. Fuck. Fuck. Fuck. Holding his bloody side Joel stumbled and reeled towards the gate, out of the churchyard, and into the dark alley.
Six foot three but gentle as a kitten; that was what they said about him at the supermarket. Today had been only a half-shift, four till eight; rounding up and returning the trolleys left in the car park; stacking then into long trains, twenty five was his record, and then slowly pushing then up the gradient to the entrance on the main road where more people found them and started the cycle all over again; Vern loved his job.
He was not going straight home; he knew his mother would be watching one of the soaps prior to nodding off. He was going to the allotment to feed the pig and had a bag of over-date fruit and some buns for their supper.
Nobody ever came here, especially in the winter. Most of the other allotments were overgrown, neglected. None of the South American or North African people living in the John Hanning estate had much interest in gardening; and the indigenous occupants were too busy taking drugs or stealing to lay claim to their patch of ground. So Vern was able to keep the pig a secret, so far at least.
He took out the key; his father had been the caretaker on the estate and had passed it on to Vern. Now there was no caretaker and the stairways and grounds of the two pre-war blocks were unclean and unloved.
A Colombian woman from the West Block had seen him carrying bags of pig food down the alley a few weeks ago and asked him where he was going. Marina; he knew she was married and lived at number forty-two. He had shown her his secret garden, seeing the amazement in her eyes as he pushed the door open wide. But he had not mentioned Esme; that was his pig’s name. She seemed to be getting fatter by the day and he wondered if she could somehow be pregnant; Esme that is; not Marina.
Stooping to pick up the carrier bag, Vern saw a leather wallet on the ground; it was empty. He placed it carefully on top of a nearby dustbin seeing as he did so Joel on the ground; not looking like he was resting but rather dead. As devoid of life as the blocks of polystyrene that he lay amongst; packaging that had protected a benefit funded plasma screen TV, recently acquired by one of Vern’s sink estate neighbours.
Vern was big and strong and could probably have carried Joel’s limp body for at least a couple of hundred yards in any direction. But as the garden gate was open he carried the sticky corpse through it, along the curved path to the shed. Vern’s father had spent twenty five years building it from scrounged and found timber and had only stopped when it was more of a three room bungalow, but they continued to call it the shed.
He laid Joel on a divan, the same spot that three weeks ago Marina had knelt and they had kissed. He shook his head as if to clear the image. There was lighting, run from batteries that were kept charged by a petrol generator that he fired up once a week, and running water. Vern washed his hands then crossed the room to check out his silent visitor. Esme was harumphing in the pen outside, expecting supper. Vern phoned his mother. She did not answer so he texted Marina then went to feed the pig.
“Burundanga,” said Marina after she had gently examined Joel. She was a nurse so Vern had expected her to say something more medical sounding.
“And that is?” he queried.
“In Colombia they call it the CIA drug. It is used by criminals to drug tourists, small amounts make the victim becomes compliant; they go to cash machines and empty their accounts. Girls get raped. Passports are taken. Larger doses knock the victims completely out and they remember nothing afterwards. It’s odourless and colourless and is usually put into drinks but it can also be absorbed through the skin. At the hospital I worked in Bogota we always had several cases a week; had to inform the police and everything. Not something they put in the travel brochures. Rarely proves fatal though.”
“Are you sure?” asked Vern looking worried.
“Either that or something similar, look at his pupils, it’s not an opiate induced coma.”
Vern remembered that she had been a doctor back in Colombia, although she could only get a job as a nurse in London. He trusted her judgment.
“So he’s not dead, it’s zombie voodoo shit?”
“I prefer to call it an ingestion of an organic psychotropic originating from L’America.”
“How long?”
“How long what?”
“How long have we got to keep him here?” asked Vern patiently.
Could be days, he has been drugged, beaten and robbed, oh yes, and bitten; I’d better dress that. We don’t really know how bad his injuries are.” They both stood over Joel. Marina had already put him into the recovery position.
People thought he was the boss but he was only the messenger. Baba Zum crossed the room and laid the field glasses on the table; a monstrous piece of furniture fashioned from an old aeroplane wing; all rivet and aileron.
The Ice Tower, although only sixteen stories, was easily the tallest structure in Mortlake. The panoramic view from the penthouse where he currently resided and held dominion was to die for.
Death and dominion: Dominion and death. Joel had certainly looked dead, when observed by Baba through the powerful military field glasses, as he was carried along the sodium-lit alley, to the soft darkness of the allotment by the ‘big lunk’. Those prismatic multi-coated lenses were certainly a wonder. Baba sat down heavily in an Eames recliner. He wanted some iced water but first he must make the call, then he could yell out to Jada to bring him the drink.
“He’s here,” he said into the phone.
He listened to an instruction and then confirmed. “Bring him to you and let the woman go. Yes, I mean send her back. That’s what I meant.”
He put the phone down and sighed. All knowing and all seeing was obviously a tough gig; the boss sounded peeved, even though everything was going to plan.
“Jada,” he shouted.
She came out of the bedroom wearing only shorts and a sports bra, dancing on the balls of her feet, jabbing the air with her fists, rolling her shoulders, moving her head from side to side, then spinning around to deliver a roundhouse kick to the thin air millimetres from Baba’s immobile face. He held up his empty glass and rattled the ice shards.
“The Big Lunk found him and took him to his shanty shack, then called that slut from 42.”
He was still holding up the glass and ignoring the emanations from the sweat soaked pudenda directly in his sight line. Jada had the most mellifluous and enchanting voice he had ever heard, and using it she finished the narrative that he had begun.
“Where together, against all odds, they will nurse Mr Joel Barlow back to life.” They both began to laugh. When their mirth subsided he lowered his gaze to her crux and placing the glass on the wing tip indicated that she should straddle him.
“Ah, granddad wants to get jiggy. I hope you have taken your blue pill.” She pulled the sports bra over her head and threw it behind her. As it sailed through the air it clipped the empty glass, sending it rolling down the wing’s incline, to shatter on the marble floor.
Baba always slept with one eye open. Not literally of course but he was always attuned to the congruency of the activity within his domain. He called it scanning the A-Field, and had woken at dawn feeling the definite thin end of a potential wedge encroaching upon the periphery of his A-Field. He sat up in bed: Rise and fucking shine.
He felt a quadricep in Jada’s thigh twitching as he brushed against her still sleeping body. Over-training again, he thought. She was now one of the top Grid Girls on the network having graduated through low grade shows like Mojo Hoes and Cage Cluster; her career going ballistic since moving up from the 115lb to the 135lb weight division. And just last year Baba’s production company had scooped the prime fight slots that carried global syndication. In his office at Hammerfall Productions he had a steady stream of strike-girls desperate to join his roster.
He walked naked from the bedroom into the living area, careful to avoid the splinter of glass from the night before, and stood in the centre of the vast apartment scratching his arse vigorously. He crossed to the window and looking down could see a clear channel etched into the grey shroud below. It arced towards the jetty below the church. Frowning, he reached for his field glasses and stood in the bowl of the atrium, his eyes trying to decipher the emerging patterns. Behind Baba’s left shoulder the sun was rising; soon it would burn off the morning mist.
The tiny boat moved through the dawn mist. Buster was at the front his paws braced against the prow. Agim was in the centre rowing. Lorna was at the stern; there was no rudder but she was whispering the directions required to ease them beneath the overhang of a large willow that canopied the jetty. Everything was still along the Mortlake riverfront and now she could see stone steps across the towpath and beyond the high walls of Tinderbox Alley leading inland.
The previous night Vale had advised against this enterprise but they came anyway. He had told them about the old jetty on the bend in the river; the place where Queen Elizabeth the First had come to seek advice from John Dee, the magus of the north, who communed with spirits, lived outside time, and released an illuminated melange of science and magic into the psyche of Elizabethan England. Vale had also told them about the arch in the churchyard and explained that it would be their route back, with the rescued Joel, if they were successful.
Lorna, Agim and Buster had at midnight then driven to Joel’s boat, by Hammersmith Bridge, their intention being to rest up for the night, then just before dawn to row up the river to Mortlake in Joel’s skiff. Here, according to Vale, the barrier between the two worlds was weak enough to allow them to cross over and begin searching, with Buster’s help, for Joel.
Alembic Valise had in fact held a surprise. Sophie was there, remembering nothing apart from getting off a train at Waterloo Station and then taking a cab to Joel’s boat; tired but seemingly none the worse for wear, arriving only minutes before them. She had insisted that she did not want to go back to the Gate and the inevitable police questioning; tomorrow she would face all that, she said, but for now she just wanted to sleep.
Buster was ashore first and stood on the jetty sniffing the air as Lorna and Agim secured the boat. Only he saw the flash of reflected light from the glass tower, it’s upper stories floating above the mist. He growled quietly to himself.
The three of them moved slowly along the alley, taking care on the uneven slippery cobbles. There was no vestige of odour from Joel’s trail for Buster to follow, but he
could
smell the glorious golden peppery pong of Esme the pig; sweet tendrils of excitement that drifted down to the foreshore and insinuated themselves into Buster’s damp leathery nose. He took the lead and speeded up; he just could not help himself.