Slippery Creatures Page 6

  “You tell me. Start with what you did in the war.”

  Kim was absolutely still for a few seconds, then he blinked once, a little too slowly. “I take it you’ve been listening to gossip.”

  “Not so much listening. I had the War Office round again, accusing you of a lot of things. I went and asked someone to verify what I could. Now I’m asking you.”

  “So you are. I don’t think I ever claimed to be a hero, did I?”

  “I didn’t ask for one. I met a lot of conchies out at the Front, mostly bloody brave men who did hard work and got kicks in return, and I don’t suppose it was a picnic for the ones who went to gaol for their principles. Nobody had to be a hero, but I’ve no time for shirkers, let alone anyone who made our job out there harder.”

  “And you’re the judge of the difference, are you?”

  “There’s a difference between people who did their bit and people who didn’t!”

  “Yes, the former supported the war,” Kim said flatly. “If you did war work, you kept the war going. If you respect principles, you should applaud the ones who refused to do that.”

  “Principles, my arse. If you didn’t go to the war or do the work and you didn’t face any consequences for it, that’s not principle, it’s privilege. I was out there with a lot of men who didn’t want anything to do with it, but they didn’t have lawyers to keep them out of prison. Or a title to keep them out of trouble at home, Lord Arthur.”

  “My friends call me Kim.”

  “Dare say they do, Lord Arthur.”

  Kim gave a tight smile with no humour in it. “I see you’ve made your mind up. I’m a little surprised: I didn’t have you down for the patriotism-or-death type.”

  “I’m not,” Will snapped.

  “Then why does my lack of war record distress you so much?”

  “I could respect it if you’d gone to gaol. Not to parties.”

  “Life did go on back here, you know. Parties weren’t illegal. Are you interested in my side of things at all?”

  “Very,” Will said. “Were you a Bolshevik?”

  “I was,” Kim said calmly. “I believed that they had the right of it.”

  Will clenched his fists. “While Russia was on our side?”

  “Exactly so. I was against the war: why should I have demanded that the Russian people support it?”

  “And now? Is that why you’re interested in Draven’s work?”

  Kim looked entirely blank for a second, then he gave a crack of laughter. “Are you serious? You think I’m a Communist spy? For God’s sake, is that what’s being trotted out these days? I’ll freely admit I mixed with some ugly customers for a while, but as to aiding the enemy, I can’t imagine what help I could be, then or now.” His lips twisted ironically. “I’m of very little account, you know. Just a younger son with a bit of money and no particular purpose. I did actually try to get myself gaoled as a prisoner of conscience, if that makes you feel better, but my father put paid to that. He’s a marquess, as you have doubtless discovered, and privilege works wonders. I attempted to follow my principles without success, and made a damned fool of myself which I am in no danger of forgetting, but it’s delightful to see people are still inflating it into He was a Russian agent or He drank champagne while his brother died.”

  Will couldn’t help a wince. Kim’s expression was stark and ugly. “Yes, I’m not surprised you heard that. People do love to be appalled. If I told you— Well, it doesn’t matter. I dare say I deserve the punishment, even if they’re wrong about the crime. But I’d just ask yourself if you’re quite sure you want to be divided from your allies like this.”

  “Allies? Not with you lying to me.”

  “I didn’t.”

  “You didn’t tell me the truth.”

  “Why should I have? Do you blurt out all your worst acts and features on first acquaintance? I’m quite sure there’s parts of your life you’d rather not reveal to me.”

  That was true, and thus intolerably unfair. Just as unfair was Will’s sense that his anger, which he was quite sure had been justified, might be on shaky grounds. “I didn’t ask you to trust me!”

  “I didn’t ask you to trust me. I offered you help, and I don’t see I’ve let you down.”

  “You’re engaged.”

  “Yes, I am.”

  He didn’t follow that up, didn’t ask why Will raised it, and that was as infuriating as anything. “Tell me this, would you trust a man with your record?”

  Kim flinched, very slightly, but his voice was quite calm as he said, “I might. Honesty begins at home, and at least I admit what I’ve done. You should try it.”

  “What the hell do you mean by that?” Will demanded, his cheeks reddening.

  “I didn’t mean anything in particular, but it obviously hit a nerve,” Kim said, with a nasty edge to his voice and a slight tremor to his hand. He shoved it into a pocket, evidently aware of Will’s scrutiny. “I’m going to go before anything else regrettable is said. Should you calm down, you can find me at the Junior Antinous, Pall Mall.”

  CHAPTER FIVE

  Will could barely concentrate for the rest of the day. He wasn’t sure if he’d been entirely right or entirely wrong or, worse, if there was no right or wrong, just a whole tangled mess of mistakes and human failings that needed picking over with care, but which he’d trampled over like some bellowing colour sergeant.

  He went through another box of his uncle’s letters at his desk, working mechanically, serving customers out of bloody-mindedness rather than enthusiasm. None of them seemed surprised by his attitude. Maybe he was getting the hang of bookselling.

  Around quarter to five, he pulled a sheaf of invoices out of a thick-stuffed envelope, then sat there and stared at them.

  The fact was, he couldn’t do this on his own. Either he had to call Ingoldsby and tell the man to do as he pleased, or he had to take the job on himself, which meant recruiting help, and there was nobody else ready to help him. Kim obviously wasn’t a Bolshevik: he’d tried from the start to persuade Will to give the War Office what they wanted. He had been fair, and Will had a nasty feeling that was more than he’d managed himself.

  He propelled himself to his feet, shoving the papers back in the envelope. The bookshop wasn’t on the telephone but the shop next door was. He strode out, only realising as he locked the door that he still clutched the invoices, and went next door, demanding, “Can I use your telephone?”

  His neighbour, Norris, purveyor of umbrellas and walking sticks, waved an uninterested hand. Will picked up the receiver.

  “What number please?” asked the operator.

  Will had no idea. He hadn’t decided who he was going to call, only that it had to be someone. The War Office, or Kim?

  “Caller?” demanded the operator tinnily.

  “Uh. The Junior Antinous please, on Pall Mall.”

  “One moment please.”

  Clicks and whirrs, then a deep and respectable male voice. “Good evening, this is the Junior Antinous.”

  “Good evening. I want to reach Lord Arthur Secretan. Kim Secretan.”

  “I regret Lord Arthur is not available.”

  Will wasn’t sure if that was a relief. “Could you take a message please? Ask him to get in touch with Will. Will Darling.”

  “Mr. Darling,” the voice repeated. “I’ll give Lord Arthur the message. Thank you, sir.”

  Will put the phone down, and tuppence for the call, and returned to his shop with his envelope, wondering if he was doing the right thing. Sod it: he could always call Ingoldsby another day.

  He didn’t feel like going through more papers now. He put them all away and tidied up instead, sweeping the place as best he could. Kim wouldn’t get the message for a while and there was every chance that, when he got it, he wouldn’t be inclined to listen. Will hadn’t listened to him, after all.

  He made himself bread and cheese for supper, and a cup of tea to wet his dusty throat. What he actually wanted was a
pint. Maybe he’d nip up to the Black Horse, get a game of darts or a chat about the football, something to distract himself. He glanced at the clock and was slightly surprised to see it was half past eight. That settled it: of course Kim wouldn’t be coming back at this hour.

  He put on his jacket and hat, made sure Draven’s letter was safe in his pocket, and let himself out. It was pitch dark in May’s Buildings since the close was unlit and the tall houses on both sides blocked out the ambient electric light from more important thoroughfares, so he had to lock the shop up by feel. He needed a couple of tries to get the key in the lock and was concentrating so hard on doing that, he didn’t register the footsteps coming up behind him until it was almost too late.

  He ducked violently to the side by pure instinct, and felt the swish of air against his cheek as something swung past, missing by an inch. Cosh, he realised, and flung himself violently at his attacker, sending him skipping back. Will barrelled into him, wishing he had his knife, and then pain exploded through the back of his head and he found he was face down on the cold, wet cobbles.

  Ah. There were two of them.

  He scrabbled to get purchase on the slippery stones and push himself up, but there was a knee in his spine, a hard hand twisting his arm up behind his back, and then the thin biting line of a blade at his throat. That last made him stop struggling.

  “Get up,” said a soft voice. “If you make a sound, I’ll cut you.”

  Will got up, dizzy and sick. They marched him back into the shop, which the other man had opened up again, and he was curtly ordered into his chair. The first man stood behind him with the knife pressed against his throat, point digging in, while the second, who wore a scarf tied over his face, fumbled to let down the blinds, sending a shower of dust and dead spiders over the newly swept floor. That done, he switched on Will’s desk lamp, pulled out cord from his pocket, and lashed first Will’s hands then his ankles to the chair.

  The knife moved away from his throat, and the second man came round to stand in front of him.

  It was the tattooed man, Will saw with no surprise at all. Libra, Ingoldsby had said, and now he thought about it, the tattoo might be a pair of scales. He’d seen a mark on the other man’s wrist too as he dealt with the blinds.

  Libra looked down at him. Will noted the healing cut on his face without surprise. “As you see, Mr. Darling, we’ve run out of patience. Where is it?”

  “The information? I don’t know.”

  Libra hit him hard, a backhander that smacked Will’s head sideways and cut his cheek against his teeth. He shook his head to clear it. “Want to try that when I’m not tied up?”

  “No,” Libra said and hit him again, in the same place. It hurt. “I’ve had enough of this. Where is it?”

  Will spat pink-tinged saliva at Libra’s feet. “I don’t know. I haven’t found it.”

  “You found it today.”

  “What? Balls I did. What are you talking about?”

  Libra leaned down, glaring into his face. “You found an envelope. You took it with you to telephone.”

  “That wasn’t anything important, just a lot of old invoices. See for yourself, it’s in the box over there.”

  He indicated the direction with a nod. The second man—he had blue eyes, Will saw above the scarf—went to search, as Libra demanded, “Then why did you take it to the telephone?”

  “I didn’t take it. I just forgot to put it down when I went out.”

  “Who were you telephoning?”

  “A friend. I asked him to come round tonight.”

  Libra’s scathing expression suggested the improvisation hadn’t been a particular success. “No more games. You’d better know where it is, or it’ll be the worse for you.” He lifted the knife meaningfully, and traced a half-circle with the point under Will’s eye, scraping the skin.

  “Well, I don’t!” Will strained against the rope, but it was strong, and had been well tied. “For God’s sake. You can’t do this!”

  “I can do whatever I want, Mr. Darling. This is an unfrequented street and if anyone were passing, they couldn’t see in. You have nobody expecting you to come home. With a gag in your mouth, no-one will hear you scream. I can spend all night working on you.”

  “But I don’t have anything to tell you!”

  “We’ll be the judge of that.”

  Will stared up at him, mind racing. His bonds were well tied, the chair was too sturdy to smash apart if he went over backwards, and there were two of them anyway.

  He could give them the letter, since it wouldn’t do them any good. They’d demand he reveal the code word of course, and he could give them a false one—but would they believe it, would they even believe it if he gave them the true one? Would showing he knew anything simply make things worse? What could he do, with nothing meaningful to hand over, tied to a chair, with nobody at all to know what was happening to him?

  He was in the middle of the biggest city in the world, and he was so alone it hurt.

  “Listen,” he said. “You know I only inherited this shop a few weeks ago. All I know about any of this is that whatever you’re after, the War Office wants it too. If you kill me, they’ll be in here going over the place with a fine-tooth comb, and I bet they have more manpower than you. Is that what you want?”

  “There’s nothing of any use in here,” the second man said. He’d been searching through the box of papers all this time. Will saw him stand out of the corner of his eye. The movement seemed deliberate, and threatening.

  “I’ve been through half a dozen boxes and found nothing but invoices and correspondence,” he said. “You’re welcome to try for yourselves. I cannot help you.”

  “Let’s test that, shall we?” Libra moved closer, pressing the point of the knife hard against the bottom of Will’s eye, pricking the skin and putting a sharp, sickening pressure on his eyeball. He couldn’t breathe for fear of moving too much. Libra held the knife there for a second, then slid it down Will’s cheek.

  “I know you have it,” he said softly. “You will give it to me.”

  Will strained against the rope, fingers flexing with the frustrated urge to hit. Libra looked down at his hands and smiled. He moved the knife-point to Will’s right hand, trussed uselessly to the arm of the chair, and rested the point of the blade between the bones that led to his index and middle fingers.

  His eyes were locked on Will’s and there was a deep, dark pleasure in them. Will knew that expression. You didn’t want men who wore it at your back on a raid, no matter how good they were: they enjoyed the work in the wrong way. “All I have to do is push down. Do you want me to do that?”

  “I don’t know where it is!”

  Libra glanced up and nodded. A hand from behind seized Will’s nose; he clamped his mouth shut, knowing what was coming, but Libra slammed a fist into his gut and he couldn’t help a gasp for breath. As soon as his mouth was open, a cloth was thrust into it. He thrashed uselessly, trying to spit it out again, rocking the chair violently so that Libra had to grab both arms, anything to stave this off—

  There was a sharp papery thud and the second man cried out. Libra’s head jerked up, his eyes widened, and he leapt away as the second man’s cry became a scream. Will twisted desperately against his bonds, couldn’t shift them, and wrenched his neck round to see.

  The second man was crouched against the wall, right arm pressed against his chest as if it hurt, left up in urgent defence. Libra was in a fighting stance, knife out. Opposite him, in front of the open door to the back room, was Kim.

  He was bareheaded but otherwise in evening dress—white shirt, white waistcoat, black tailcoat, smart as you like—and he had Will’s trench knife in his left hand, the dull grey blade absurdly incongruous with the dinner clothes. It was a lot bigger than Libra’s knife, but that wasn’t going to help him if he didn’t know how to use it, and the way he stood, feet placed and arms out like this was fencing for God’s sake, made it quite clear he didn’t.

&
nbsp; Will urgently tried to force the cloth out of his mouth, shoving at it with his tongue. He needed to tell Kim not to be such a fucking fool, to run like hell, but he couldn’t shift the cloth, and then it was too late.

  Libra moved first, a swift, vicious attack. Kim’s arm was held far too high, and Libra’s lunge hissed under it in a single, lethal strike that went straight up into his ribcage.

  Except somehow it didn’t, because in that second Kim twisted his own long blade down, caught the attack to flick Libra’s arm away, turned like a dancer, and swung the Messer back round and up in a snakelike strike that ripped through Libra’s clothing and only failed to open his belly because the man jumped away in time.

  Libra found his feet and brought up his knife again, this time defensively. Kim adopted the fencing pose again. Somehow, it seemed a lot less amateur now.

  Will’s jaw had sagged. He took the opportunity to spit out the cloth and bellowed, at the top of his lungs, “Fire! Fire!”

  Kim and Libra engaged again, blades scraping. “Fire!” Will yelled. The second man was edging around him, with blood running down his hand. Will tried to kick him even though his ankles were tied, out of pure desire to hurt. “Help! Fire!”

  There was an answering cry from the street, and a rattle at the door. The second man turned urgently to Libra and his eyes widened. Will twisted back just in time to see Kim’s knife slice into Libra’s wrist. Blood flew, and Libra’s knife hit the floor point first.

  “Go on. Pick it up.” Kim’s teeth were bared in something close to, but not, a smile. “Fair fight, eh?”

  Libra hesitated, as well he might, because if ever a man looked like he planned to kick his opponent while he was down, it was Kim. Will wouldn’t have put a vulnerable spot within five yards of him at that moment, and Libra clearly reached the same conclusion because he backed away a step, then another. The door rattled again, and Will bellowed, “Help!”

  The second man broke, and ran for the door. Libra snarled and followed on his heels. The bell jangled and Will heard a scuffle and shouting.

  Kim was by him, slicing through the rope at his wrist with the Messer, a knife you didn’t want near any blood vessels you were fond of. “Go after them!” Will snapped.