The Wolves of London (16 page)

I tried to tell myself I had no reason to be worried about the same thing happening to me. I had no quarrel with anyone. I was merely following orders; I was nothing but a pawn in a game I didn’t understand. However the darkness had a way of pulling such reassurances out of shape, of turning logic on its head. But it wasn’t just the fear of violence which bothered me; it was also the prospect of deliberately using the heart as a weapon that made me sick to my stomach. I had no idea what the thing was, or what it was capable of, but I knew that people had died because of it. I moved my hand away from my jacket, clenching my fist as if that would make me forget the shape and weight and feel of the heart in my palm. And then, scowling, I bashed on the metal door.

As the echo of my knocking faded I sensed movement above my head. I looked up, and caught a glimpse of something leaping the six or so metres from the top of the building on the opposite side of the alleyway to the one beside which I was standing. The thing moved so swiftly that it was there and gone in a flash, leaving me with nothing but an impression of something as ragged and flappy as a crow, and as spindly-legged as a spider, but far larger than both. For a few seconds after it had disappeared I stared up at the black clouds drifting through the murky sky like blood clots. My mouth was dry and a rash of goosebumps crawled up and down my arms and back.

I was so unnerved that when the door of Incognito opened I almost leaped out of my skin. I pushed straight past Mary and slammed the door behind me, ignoring her indignant cry of, ‘Do you mind?’

‘Where’s Clover?’ I asked, clenching my fists to stop my hands from shaking.

Mary pursed her lips, her face hardening, and then she must have seen something in my eyes. ‘She’s in the bar,’ she muttered, ‘having a well-deserved—’

‘Is that door unlocked?’ I interrupted, pointing at the black door at the end of the corridor.

Mary nodded, and I all but ran along the corridor and shoved the door open. Immediately the heat of the club enfolded me in a sweaty hug and the bass beat of the music thumped in my teeth and chest. On the stage a small, muscly girl in a red bra and thong was pole-dancing, her back arching and her blonde hair flying as she coiled and contorted like a snake. At a glance I’d say there were forty or fifty people in the room, all but half a dozen of whom were men. I could see Clover at the bar, dressed in a little black number which showed off her slender legs. She was sitting on one of the plastic stools, her hand curled around a tumbler containing something red. As I watched she leaned forward and took a sip through a black straw. Next to her was a fat man in a light blue suit whose conversation seemed to be a series of punchlines followed by roars of laughter. Clover was smiling and nodding, but even from the walkway I could tell she was listening to the man more out of duty than because she wanted to.

I hurried down the steps, marched across to the bar and took her arm. She turned with a scowl, and then smiled as if she was genuinely relieved I’d made it back in one piece.

‘Alex,’ she said. ‘Is it done?’

‘Not exactly,’ I muttered.

The relief on her face changed to concern. ‘Why? What happened?’

I glanced at the fat man. ‘Can we go somewhere else?’

‘Sure.’ She turned back to her customer and dabbled her fingers across the top of his forearm. ‘Excuse us, Clive, would you? Duty calls.’

The fat man looked daggers at me. ‘Will you be long?’

‘I may be. Have a drink on the house.’ She beckoned to Robin the barman and pointed at Clive’s glass.

Two minutes later we were in Clover’s office and she was checking her emails at my request. She shook her head apologetically.

‘Nothing. So tell me what happened.’

I told her. About the old man. About what I’d found at the hotel. She paled and her lovely features tautened with fear, her breath starting to come in panicky gasps.

‘Oh shit,’ she said. ‘Oh shit.’

‘Is there anything you’re not telling me?’ I asked.

She looked startled. ‘What do you mean?’

‘I mean is there anything you’re not telling me? Anything you forgot to mention?’

If the hurt look on her face was an act, she was a bloody good actress. ‘Is that really what you think?’

‘I don’t know
what
to think, Clover. This is all so… fucked up.’

‘What you said about the heart…’ She hesitated. ‘There’s no way you might have been mistaken?’

‘About what?’

‘About the way the blade… retracted?’

‘It was
absorbed
,’ I said. ‘That’s the only word I can think of to describe it.’

‘Maybe it folded up. Maybe the… opening it comes out of is so tight it looks seamless when it closes again.’

I shook my head irritably. ‘You weren’t there. You didn’t see it.’

‘Can I see it now?’

I felt weirdly reluctant. Possessive even. ‘I thought you’d
already
seen it?’

‘I have, but only under glass. I never really paid much attention to it when I worked there.’

I hesitated for a couple of seconds longer without really knowing why – it wasn’t because I was afraid the heart might suddenly become a weapon again; at least, I don’t think so – and then I unzipped my jacket pocket. I reached in gingerly, as if afraid I might get bitten, and lifted out the heart, cupping it delicately in my hand, as if it was a living creature. When I placed it on the desk between us, Clover craned forward to examine it, her face wary.

‘Be careful,’ I said.

‘I
am
being careful.’

For a few seconds neither of us spoke, both of us staring at the heart.

‘Can I touch it?’ Clover asked finally.

I shrugged and she tentatively caressed the thing, her fingertips moving over the veins and bumps and protuberances. After a minute she got bolder and picked the heart up. I felt a stab of anxiety.

‘Watch it.’

‘Don’t worry. I’m not going to put it close to my face.’

She rolled it slowly from hand to hand, scrutinising it from all angles. ‘It looks like it’s carved from a solid lump of obsidian.’

I nodded and asked, ‘What are we going to do?’

She sighed and put the heart back on the desk. ‘Wait for further instructions, I suppose.’

‘And then what? I’m a murderer now. A hunted man.’

Clover frowned. ‘I don’t know. For now our options are limited. We don’t know who our contact is. And we don’t know who killed the men at the hotel, or why.’

‘I’m guessing whoever killed them wanted that,’ I said, nodding at the heart.

‘Which is our only trump card at the moment. The fact that
we’ve
got what everyone else seems to want.’

I snorted. ‘That’s hardly comforting. I feel like the bloke holding the meat while hungry lions close in on all sides. I wish I could just get rid of the thing and let whoever wants it fight it out between themselves.’

‘But where would that leave Kate?’ Clover said. ‘If the heart falls into the wrong hands…’

‘Do you think I haven’t thought about that?’

She looked away. ‘Sorry.’

I felt bad for having a go at her. Unless she was playing a devious game, none of this was her fault.

‘Me too,’ I said. ‘And you’re right. We need to sit tight and wait for email man to get back in touch. Once he finds out about the Japanese guys he’s bound to, isn’t he?’

Clover looked at me strangely.

‘What?’

‘I don’t really want to say it, but…’

‘But what?’

‘What if he thinks you killed them?’

For a minute I was stumped. My head was so messed up that that hadn’t occurred to me. At last I said, ‘He won’t.’

‘How do you know?’

‘Because why would I? What could I possibly gain from it? Besides, those guys had been torn apart. They didn’t even get a chance to fire their guns. I’m not Superman, Clover.’

‘You think whoever killed them is?’

I hesitated. I had already told her that the men had been ripped apart, that I’d found a hand still clutching a gun on the toilet seat, but I don’t think she had fully considered the implications. ‘I think
what
ever killed them… well, I don’t think it was human.’

She gave a nervous half-laugh. ‘What do you mean? That it was some kind of animal?’

I shrugged. ‘If it was, it would’ve had to have been something like a gorilla. But a bloody fast one. One that moved like lightning.’

She frowned, and almost tetchily said, ‘Come off it, Alex. Isn’t it more likely that the men were killed – shot maybe – and then chopped up? Maybe the hand was planted there as some kind of sick joke.’

I was sorely tempted by her theory, but I couldn’t shake the image of how the dead men’s flesh and bone had been twisted and torn.

‘You didn’t see them,’ I said. ‘Besides, I haven’t told you everything.’

‘Oh?’

‘I’ve a feeling I might have been followed back here by whatever killed those men.’

Her eyes widened. ‘What do you mean?’

I told her about the thing I’d seen outside, that had jumped across the alleyway from one roof to another.

‘But that’s impossible!’ she said. ‘The gap’s about… eight metres.’

I shrugged.

‘You must have seen a bird or something. Or a plane in the sky.’

I was about to reply when, faintly, we heard a crash from upstairs.

Our eyes met. I wondered if she was thinking the same thing as me:
Here it comes.

The crash was followed by screams, shouts, a tinkle of breaking glass so faint it was like the sound of distant wind-chimes. Instinctively I snatched up the heart and zipped it back into my pocket.

‘Is there a back way out of here?’ I asked.

Clover circled the desk and ran to the door.

‘Clover!’ I snapped.

She yanked the door open. ‘I have to see what’s happening.’

‘I don’t think that’s a good idea—’

But she was already out the door and heading down the corridor. I hesitated a second, wondering whether to find my own way out of there, but even as the thought crossed my mind I knew there was no way I could abandon her. ‘Fuck,’ I said and gave chase.

I caught up with her unlocking the door into the club. From beyond came the sound of mayhem – people shouting and screaming, things breaking and falling over. I grabbed her hand as she reached for the door handle.

‘Clover, wait.’

She tried to twist out of my grip. ‘Let me go.’

‘Listen to it out there,’ I said.

She swung to face me, her eyes wide. ‘Alex, it’s
my
club.
My
responsibility.’

I clenched my teeth in exasperation. ‘All right,’ I muttered. ‘I won’t stop you. But we need to be careful. Clover, look at me.’

There was anger on her face, but she did as I asked.

‘The likelihood is that whatever’s on the other side of this door killed the two guys at the hotel. That means that even though this is your club, you can’t just walk out there and start shouting the odds. So let’s not be reckless, okay? Let’s take this nice and slowly. Do you understand?’

She still looked angry and scared, but she gave a quick, sharp nod. ‘Yes.’

‘Okay,’ I said. ‘So let me go first. You stick close behind me.’

‘What are you?’ she asked. ‘My indestructible human shield?’

‘Hardly.’

As carefully as I could I opened the door. Just a crack at first, and then I pulled it wider. The first thing I saw was a man lying on his face a few metres to my left. He was motionless, but in the dim light it was hard to tell what had been done to him. I heard Clover gasp and knew she had seen him too.

‘Take it easy,’ I whispered.

I eased my way through the gap, Clover sticking close, like a shadow. Although the music was still thumping away, in the last minute all the other sounds we’d heard – the crashes and thuds and screams – had ceased.

Further to my left I could see that many of the optics behind the bar had been smashed, various coloured liquids dripping from the jagged remains of the upturned bottles. There was no sign of Robin the barman, or anyone else for that matter – no one upright and moving, at any rate. From where we were standing in the doorway, partly sheltered by the stairs to our right, I could see three other bodies. One belonged to the fat man in the light blue suit who had been talking to Clover earlier. He was spreadeagled on the floor like a cartoon drunk, his head propped against the bottom of the bar. There was a dark, lumpy smear on the glassy surface above his head, and for a few seconds I was puzzled by the fact that he appeared to be wearing shades which had partly melted and dribbled down his face, before realising that his eyes had been gouged out and the empty sockets were leaking tears of blood.

I looked away from the fat man and focused on the other two bodies, both men, sprawled in awkward positions as if they’d been felled while running. At first I wondered whether they had been shot and then I saw that what I’d taken to be a bunch of dark clothing on and beside the belly of one of the men were his innards. He’d been gutted.

I was about to suggest to Clover that we go back through the door and lock it behind us when she gave a squeal of shock. I looked to my right and saw a squat figure appear round the bottom of the staircase and come blundering towards us. I tensed, ready to defend myself, and then realised it was Mary. At first I couldn’t see what was wrong with her, apart from the fact that her eyes were bulging and her mouth was open in a silent scream. I noticed she had something around her neck, something that appeared to be part thick grey muffler and part… what? In the dimness I could make out what looked like the cannibalised innards of an old clock: cogs and spools and little brass levers all working against one another.

What the hell could it be? A collar of some kind? A torture device? Whatever it was, it was wound tightly around her neck and those parts that weren’t mechanical seemed to be made of some strange, glistening material. I stepped forward with the notion of aiding Mary in some way, and that was when the collar came alive. It whirred and
slithered
, and a portion of it reared up behind Mary’s head.

Clover screamed.

The thing had the face of a grey-skinned baby. But one that had been nightmarishly modified, stretched over some kind of circular brass frame and held in place with metal pins as long as my own fingers. It had black, gleaming orbs instead of eyes and its plump grey lips were peeled back to reveal not gums and a tongue, but a whirring, clicking mass of minuscule clockwork components. The body of the thing was eel-like, but as thick as my arm and several times longer. As it tightened its coils around Mary’s throat, she dropped to her knees. Her hands came up and scrabbled weakly at the creature’s glistening grey flesh. Her face was purple now, the whites of her eyes filling with dark spots as the blood vessels burst. Her mouth was all tongue, which stuck out between her lips, so bloated with blood it looked almost black.