The Wolves of London (32 page)

Frank nodded matter-of-factly. ‘Well, you and that box of tricks of yours.’ He leaned forward, winked, his voice dropping to a whisper. ‘The heart.’

Perhaps it would be best just to let go, I thought, to drop into the abyss. At that moment oblivion seemed like a desirable option.

Frank looked at me, not unkindly. ‘Knocked you for six, that one, didn’t it? Thought it might,’ he said.

Even so, I made an attempt to drag my reeling thoughts together. ‘But… how?’ I stammered. ‘I mean… what…’

Frank’s bony shoulders lifted in a shrug. ‘I’ve no idea how your oojamaflip works, Alex. All I can tell you is what I know. We were both called up on the same day, learned the ropes together, got shipped out to the trenches. I wasn’t long out of school, was training to be a draughtsman. I was shit-scared and as green as they come. You looked after me, took me under your wing. Like a regular big brother to me you was. We were sent to Ypres in Belgium – all the lads called it Wipers. It was like Hell – literally like Hell. Barbed wire, mud, rats, everything dead, the town bombed to shit, the stink of smoke and rotten flesh, slop to eat and not enough of it. We were too cold and wet and scared to sleep…’ His voice faltered, and for a moment his eyes looked black, his face like a skull. ‘But you got me through it. In my darkest moments you were there. And then I got shot. Stray bullet, ricochet, I don’t know. Bull’s-eye, right in the heart, snuffed out without so much as a by-your-leave. Then next thing I know I’m opening my eyes to find your ugly mug looming over me. And that thing of yours, that heart, is glowing or burning or some such. I can feel it inside my chest, fixing me up, working its magic. I am the resurrection and the life, all that palaver.’ He grinned cadaverously. ‘Only I came back changed, didn’t I? I came back with something else inside me.’

‘The darkness,’ I murmured.

‘That’s right. It was like that bullet was an infection, like it was part of the war itself. Either that or it created a hole, and when I died everything that the war was – all the blood and pain and death and fear – came rushing into that hole and filled me up. Maybe it wanted to claim me, eat me, like a big fucking monster. But when you brought me back it… trapped it, tamed it somehow. And now it does what I tell it, it dances to my tune.’

This time his grin was savage enough to make me shudder. I reached out and touched his hand in an attempt to calm him, or bring him back, and was shocked by how icy his flesh was.

‘But I don’t understand,’ I said, almost pleading with him. ‘
How
can I have saved you? I’ve never met you before. I wasn’t around in—’

And then realisation hit me and the shock of it stopped the words in my throat.

Frank nodded slowly, a look of grim satisfaction on his face. ‘Penny dropped, has it?’

My mind began to spin all over again. What I was thinking
couldn’t
be true. And yet in the past few days I had been confronted by the impossible on too many occasions to entirely dismiss it. I goggled at him.

‘You’re talking about my future, aren’t you? You’re saying that somehow… I’m going to travel back in time?’

‘Already have, as far as I’m concerned.’ Frank jerked a glance at my pocket. ‘All down to that box of tricks of yours, ain’t it? The things it can do…’

I cupped my hand over the bulge of the heart. Could I feel it thrumming with energy or was that merely my own hot blood racing through my veins?

‘Is this actually happening?’ I said. ‘Or am I hallucinating? Maybe I’m away with the fairies. Maybe I’m strapped to a bed in a looney bin somewhere, dreaming all this.’

‘You’re saying I might be a figment of your imagination?’ said Frank.

‘It’s possible.’

‘How do you know that you’re not a figment of mine?’

‘Oh fuck,’ I said. ‘Oh fuck.’ My head was throbbing, like a boiler under too much pressure. I wondered how much strain a human mind could take before it snapped or shattered.

‘How can I believe this?’ I said. ‘I need proof. What else can the heart do? How does it work?’

Frank laughed. ‘He asks
me
! That’s rich, that is.’ Stemming his mirth, he jabbed a finger at me. ‘You’re the organ-grinder, mate. I’m just the bloody monkey.’

I sat back, breathless, my head thumping, my heart racing. Could it really be true? Was I really going to travel back in time? To Ypres, to the trenches, to the First World War? The fact that I was even contemplating it as a possibility seemed ridiculous. And yet, and yet… How far into my future would it happen, I wondered. And was it predetermined, unalterable? If Frank had already experienced it, and if he was here now, then surely it
had
to happen?

‘What do I look like in the past, Frank?’ I asked, amazed that I was even entertaining the notion. ‘When you knew me, I mean. Did I look any different to how I do now?’

Frank shook his head without even scrutinising my face. ‘Not that you’d notice. Different haircut, of course. Army short back and sides. But apart from that…’ He shrugged.

‘So you’re saying this happens soon?’ I said. The magnitude of it swept over me again, leaving me dizzy and breathless. ‘Shit.’

Frank grinned, seemingly amused by my predicament. ‘Least you’ve got an idea what to expect – from history books and that, I mean. How do you think
I
felt being sent in the opposite direction? Talk about a fish out of water.’

I stared at him, still trying to put together all that he was telling me. ‘Are you saying it was
me
who sent you here?’

‘To help you out. Gave me a right mission briefing, you did. Dates, times, all that.’

‘So… you know what’s going to happen to me?’

‘Some of it,’ Frank said, and tapped his nose. ‘But that’s classified information. No foreknowledge, you said. Too dangerous. Even I only know the bits I
need
to know.’

I rubbed my forehead. My hand was trembling and my heart was still beating hard. ‘This is so fucked up.’

‘You’d better get used to it,’ said Frank. ‘I’ve a feeling this is going to be your life from now on.’

I rubbed my hands briskly over my face, as if my confusion was a grey fug, a caul, I could shred and discard.

‘What about Kate?’ I asked, almost afraid of what his answer might be. ‘What do you know about her?’

‘I know she’s your daughter and that you’re looking for her.’

‘But you don’t know where she is?’

He shook his head and I felt something slump inside me. ‘Sorry, guv’nor.’

When we reached Paddington, Frank got off the tube with me, telling me he would be sticking with me for a while. Walking back to the hotel I felt as if I were floating or dreaming, as if not only my surroundings, but my entire life was no longer real. It was hard to believe that only a few days ago everything had seemed set and immovable – time, the universe, life and death, whereas now it all seemed unstable, temporary, ephemeral.

Reaching the hotel, I drifted across the reception area, Frank at my side. It was only when we were ascending in the lift that I remembered the circumstances in which I had left Clover, and began to wonder what sort of mood she might be in and how she might react to my account of what had happened tonight, what I had discovered.

‘Did I tell you about Clover?’ I asked Frank, who was staring at the digital floor indicator on the panel beside the door as if suspicious of what it might do. ‘Did the future me tell you, I mean?’

Still with his eyes on the panel, Frank said, ‘Girlfriend of yours, ain’t she?’

‘No,’ I said. ‘At least…’ I had been about to say ‘not yet’, wondering whether in my future – when Frank met me – my relationship with Clover might have changed. But I balked at even suggesting that it might become a possibility, for the simple reason that it seemed too weird and inappropriate to contemplate. ‘No,’ I said again. And then, after a pause, ‘We’re just friends.’

‘Whatever you say,’ Frank said, after which the lift reached the fifth floor and there was no time left for discussion. As soon as the doors opened, Frank stepped smartly out as if he didn’t trust them not to slam shut on him. I exited behind him and looked across the landing at the door to our room. It was ajar.

Dread seized me.

There was no way, given the current situation, that Clover would have been so lax as to leave the door open. Which meant that something must have happened, almost certainly something bad. I shot across the landing, overtaking Frank, and leaped into the room, barging the door open with my shoulder and reaching for the heart in the same way that Benny might reach for his gun.

It needed no more than a cursory glance to see that the room was empty.

Not that the sight of it, nor even the fact that there was no evidence of a struggle, was any kind of relief. Remembering what had happened the last time I had found a hotel room unexpectedly empty, I crossed to the en-suite bathroom and (muttering a quick and silent prayer) pushed the door open.

The light was on, the harshness of the high-wattage bulb seeming to pulse at the backs of my eyes in time with my queasily pumping heart. Seeing that this room too was empty I allowed myself a small sigh of relief. There was still plenty of cause for concern, though; I couldn’t believe Clover would simply pop out for a change of scene, or to do a bit of shopping, or even that she would have tried to follow me (I had given her no indication in my note of where I might be going). The alternatives, therefore, were that she had either been abducted or, like me, had been lured into a trap.

I scanned the bathroom again – toiletries around the sink, a damp towel on the heated rail, the plastic shower curtain still beaded with moisture – and then I went back into the main room. Frank was standing in the gap between the twin beds, hands in pockets, rocking gently back and forth on his heels.

‘She’s been taken,’ I said.

He gave a brief nod. ‘So it would seem.’

I narrowed my eyes suspiciously. ‘Do you know something I don’t?’

‘I’ve
seen
something you haven’t.’ He looked pointedly across the room. ‘There. Propped against that white jug.’

He meant the kettle. I followed his gaze and saw what appeared to be a business card. I crossed to it, snatched it up. The card was pristine, ivory-coloured, expensive-looking. Across the top, in gold, embossed script, was the heading: Commer House, followed by an address in the Isle of Dogs.

I handed the card to Frank. ‘What do you think?’

Frank took it and read it. ‘I think it’s an invitation.’

‘I think it’s another trap,’ I said, ‘with Clover as the bait.’

Frank gave the card back to me and shrugged, seemingly unconcerned. ‘Same difference.’

T
hanks to the still-expanding Canary Wharf development, the Isle of Dogs had become afflicted with something of a split personality over the past couple of decades. Enclosed within a noose-like loop of the River Thames, some of the most prosperous parts of the capital, if not the country, now stood shoulder to shoulder with some of the most deprived. Not that there was much evidence of the latter when Frank and I disembarked from the Docklands Light Railway at Mudchute, which cut between Millwall to the west and Cubitt Town to the east. After consulting my
A–Z
beneath a street lamp we began to walk up a road which would eventually bring us to the A1206, which looped all the way around the outer perimeter of the ‘noose’ like an artery serving a major organ, and thence to the dockside developments facing out across the wide stretch of the Thames. The address on the card that had been left for us in the hotel was Commer House, Britannia Wharf. Whether this was an apartment complex, an office block or an old still-to-be-developed warehouse was anyone’s guess.

For an area with a once fearsome reputation, the long, meandering stretch of Spindrift Avenue, which Frank and I were following, was surprisingly quiet, even genteel. The houses and apartment blocks lining the road were neat, compact and modern, all sharp angles, red and black brick and port-holed windows. There was much greenery in evidence – regimented rows of identical trees and little patches of parkland squeezed into the urban sprawl. Yet, preferable though this was to the crumbling, rat-infested hovels and patches of litter-strewn waste ground that had once filled these streets, it was all a bit bland for my taste.

By the time we neared our destination it was creeping towards 11 p.m. We emerged from the tangle of streets on the outer edge of the A1206 to find that a low wall of shiny chocolate-coloured brick was all that stood between us and the rushing Thames. Across the river pinpoints of light combined to form a softly glowing halo above the buildings they illuminated. A cold breeze blew in off the water, freezing my hands and face and making me shiver.

‘This way,’ I said, pointing to the right. Frank and I hurried along a herringbone walkway which followed the course of the river, dwarfed on our right by the imposing, flat-fronted edifices of former warehouses converted into flats, their tiny, myriad windows bedecked with window boxes, their forecourts neatly paved and fenced and lined with shrubs.

Something flapped ahead of us, and I faltered for a moment, imagining the wing of a giant bird or bat. Then the sound came again, making more of a crack this time, and I realised it was only the loose edge of a piece of plastic or tarpaulin, animated by the wind.

Moving closer, I saw that beyond the apartment block on our right was a slightly smaller building, set back a little across a muddy patch of ground, as if timidly squatting in the shadow of its more illustrious neighbour. This building was encased in an exoskeleton of scaffolding, its upper floors wrapped in green netting. A chain-link fence formed a barrier in front of it, from which hung a pockmarked metal sign warning:
DANGER! CONSTRUCTION SITE
. Beneath, in smaller letters, was another sign:
TRESPASSERS WILL BE PROSECUTED
.

Even before I saw the Building Regulations notice stuck to the lamp post a few metres away, I knew that this would be Commer House. I looked at Frank and he looked at me.

‘Here we go again,’ he said.