Angelmaker

II Two Gentlemen of Edinburgh; the Book of the Hakote; Friend in need.

He is nearly at his front door when he hears the shout. It is a breathy, asthmatic shout, more a gasp, but it is penetrating all the same in the stillness of Quoyle Street. Pigeons scuttle nervously in the alley round the side.

“Hello? Mr. Spork?”

Joe turns, and beholds a rare and curious thing: a fat man running.

“Mr. Spork?”

He really is running. He’s not quick—although he’s light on his feet, as so many fat men are—but he has considerable momentum and powerful thighs, and he is not trotting, cantering, or jogging, but actually running. He reminds Joe at this remove of his mother’s father, the meat-packer, shaven-headed and layered with gammon and eggs. This specimen has his bulk, but not his heft, and is somewhere between thirty and fifty.

“Hello? I wonder if we could have a word?”

Yes, “we,” for indeed there are two of them, one fat and the other thin, the little one concealed behind his enormous companion, walking fastidiously along in the wake of the whale.

It is the fat one who is calling him, between breaths, as he hurtles up Quoyle Street. Joe stops and waits, hoping to avoid any kind of cardiac drama or collision, and by some curious trick, the two men arrive at much the same time. The thin one takes over the talking. He’s older, greyer, more measured and more unctuous.

“My dear Mr. Spork. I wonder if we might go inside? We represent—among other people, you understand—we represent the Loganfield Museum of Mechanical History in Edinburgh and Chicago.” But he has no Scots lilt, just a pure English diction with a hint of apology. His sentences do not turn upward at the end, in the modern American style, but conclude on firm, downward full stops. “It’s a matter of some delicacy, I’m afraid.”

Delicacy. Joe does not like delicacy. Oh, he likes it fine in clocks and mechanisms, but in real life it means courts and money and complication. It sometimes also means that another of his father’s debts or wickednesses has found its way home, and he will hear about how Mathew robbed a fellow of his life savings or stole a priceless jewel, and have to explain that no, the treasure of Mathew Spork is not his to disburse, that patrimony is nothing but an empty leather suitcase and a parcel of newspaper clippings detailing Mathew’s mostly unconvicted outrages. Mathew’s money is gone, and no one knows where to, not even his wife, not his son, and not his creditors. On this occasion, however, the matter appears to be related to Joe personally.

There is one person in Joe Spork’s small circle of friends whose life is occasionally complicated by issues of law.

Billy, you bald git, what have you got me into? Soot and sorrow, I know it.

Soot and sorrow: the Night Market’s invocation of desperate seriousness, of doom and disaster. He feels a powerful urge to run.

Instead he says “Please come in,” because it is his conviction that England is a just place, and his experience that even where the law has been bent or broken, a little cooperation and courtesy can smooth over some remarkably large potholes.

The fat one goes first and the thin one second, with Joe bringing up the rear to emphasise that he is not running, that indeed, they are entering his lair at his urging. He offers them tea and comfortable chairs, which they regretfully decline. So he makes tea for himself, and the thin one says that perhaps he will, after all, and helps himself to a macaroon into the bargain. The fat one drinks water, a lot of it. And when everyone is refreshed and Joe has shown them around the more interesting bits of his workshop (the half-assembled chess-playing robot he is making on commission in the style of the notorious Turk, the wind-up racehorses, the Edinburgh case clocks) the thin gentleman steeples his hands, as if to say it is time to begin.

“I am Mr. Titwhistle,” the thin gentleman says, “and this is Mr. Cummerbund. Those are our actual names, I’m afraid. Life is capricious. If you should feel the urge at any time to chuckle, we’re both quite big enough to share the joke.” He gives a demonstrative little smile, just to show he can. Mr. Cummerbund pats his stomach, as if to say that he, personally, is big enough for that one and a number of other jokes besides.

Joe Spork takes this for a species of test. He smiles politely, even contritely, a man who knows what it is to have an odd name and feels no need to laugh. Instead, he extends his hand to them both. Mr. Cummerbund takes it lightly. He has very soft skin, and he shakes gently but enthusiastically. After a moment, Joe unplugs himself, and turns to Mr. Titwhistle.

Mr. Titwhistle does not lean forward for the greeting. He keeps himself perfectly balanced, perfectly inside his own circle. He shakes hands as if mindful that Joe might at any moment slip and fall, that he might therefore need the solidity of his size eight feet on the carpet and the strength in his lawyerly thighs to lend support. He has very little hair; a mere haze embracing his head like the fuzz on a petrified peach. This makes his age impossible to judge. Forty-five? Sixty?

He looks directly into Joe’s face, quite calmly and without embarrassment. In his eyes—which are grey, and kindly—there is no flicker of dislike or disapproval. Indeed, they are more like eyes that proffer condolences, or mediation. Mr. Titwhistle understands that these little disagreements come along, and that persons of intelligence and determination can always get around them in one way or another. If Joe did slip, Mr. Titwhistle would not hesitate to bear him up. Mr. Titwhistle sees no reason for unpleasantness between those who are presently on opposite sides of the legal tennis net. He is before everything a pleasant man.

Joe finds all his old, unused and unwelcome instincts rushing to the surface. Alarm! Alert! Sound the dive klaxon and blow the tanks! Run silent, run deep! He wonders why. He glances at the hand still gripping his own, and sees no watch. Gentlemen of this vintage rarely operate without watches, and watches communicate something of one’s identity. Of course, if one wished to avoid such communication… His gaze flicks to Mr. Titwhistle’s waistcoat, and finds what he’s looking for: a fob watch on an unornamented chain. No charms, no Masonic badges, no club marks. No private signs or colophon. No military insignia. A blank, empty space on an item for display. He looks back at the wrist. Cufflinks. Plain studs. The tie is generic, too. This man is a cypher. He hides himself.

Joe glances back at Mr. Titwhistle’s face. Gazing into those clear, benevolent eyes, he finds he is sure of exactly one thing: that Mr. Titwhistle, congenial sherry drinker and alderman of the city of Bath, would have precisely the same damp, avuncular expression on his face if he were strangling you with piano wire.

Unwillingly, he grants the Night Market self a brief leave to remain.

The formalities dispensed with, Mr. Cummerbund sits and lays out his notepad on his lap. From this angle, he is even more bizarre than when Joe first saw him galloping along Quoyle Street. He has a head shaped almost exactly like a pear. His brain must be squeezed into the narrow place at the top. His cheeks are wide and fatty, so that, if Mr. Cummerbund were a deer or a halibut, they would excite pleasurable anticipation in those fond of rich foods and delicacies. He smells strongly of a thin, high-scented cologne. It is a cologne advertised by young men who surf and then trip lightly into tropical casinos with curvy, dark-eyed women. It comes in a bottle made to look like a crystal glass pineapple. It is too young for him, and does not conceal the stinky eau de Cummerbund which is the natural product of his body.

“A matter of some delicacy?” Joe says.

“I’m afraid so,” Mr. Titwhistle agrees.

“Regarding?”

“Regarding some of your late grandfather’s effects.”

“My grandfather?” It is an innocuous word, and Daniel Spork was not a firebrand or a red-toothed crook—unlike his son—but it puts Joe a little more on edge.

“Yes, indeed. Mr. Daniel, I believe.”

“What about him?”

“Ah. Well… I am tasked to acquire your grandfather’s journals, and any correspondence you might be willing to part with. Along with any examples of his work or his tools which you might still possess. And any curiosities.”

“I see.” He doesn’t, or rather, he sees something, but cannot identify it.

“I’m authorised to negotiate the sale so that it can be done quickly, and to arrange for collection. The new exhibitions usually start in January, and they take a while to prepare, so time is of the essence. Have you been to the Museum?”

“No, I’m not familiar with it.”

“So few people are. A great shame. But the curators really do an amazing job. They build up the exhibits in a way which sets them off quite splendidly. You should visit.”

“It sounds fascinating.”

“Once I’ve seen the items, of course, I can give you a better idea of what we’d be willing to pay—but I have a considerable budget. American money, you see, not British. Additional zeroes, you understand.”

“And are there any specific items you might be looking for? I have a small number of rather ordinary tools which belonged to him. Although I think I do have a table clamp he designed for engraving work. The best stuff I’m afraid my father disposed of rather informally, while my grandfather was still alive.” Did he ever. Daniel Spork, measured and frail, shouting fit to raise the roof and shake the foundations. His son was a serpent, a buffoon, a deceiver. He was a crawling bug with no concept of honour, no understanding of humanity’s better urges. He was vile. And Joe’s mother, weeping and holding Mathew’s arm, clutching at the old man. Don’t say that, Daniel, please! Please. He didn’t know!

But Daniel Spork was a pillar of flame. A great trust had been shattered. The world was poorer for it—and Mathew, flesh of his flesh, lying and unforgivable clot, was the weak link in a chain of such incredible importance that it could not be fully expressed. Daniel turned his back and shook and shuddered, and batted away their hands. And then he went down to his workroom to leaf through the remains of Mathew’s “fire sale” and see what was still there and what could be reasonably brought back. It was only after a half-day spent leafing through his books and piling up bits and bobs upon his table, mouth still a bitter line of hurt and the Death Clock set appallingly in front of him ticking away these black moments of his life, that he looked over the remaining clutter and began to calm. His diary, yes, was here. His sketchbooks had gone to a friend in the trade, and could be had back, no doubt. His toolbox was gone—a magical thing of levers and cogs which extended and unfolded into a miniature bench—but the tools themselves remained.

Having lined up the survivors of the auction, Daniel paced and fluttered, opened ledgers and fussed with boxes, and finally gave a shout of satisfaction as he held up a collection of jazz records, old 78s, in a purpose-made satchel.

“Frankie,” he murmured. And then, with a snarl to his son, “Your mother!”

Only the sight of Joe—knee-high and cowering amid all this splashy and appalling adult confusion—broke through his rage, and even then it merely unleashed his grief, which was infinitely worse.

“No,” Mr. Titwhistle says, “nothing in particular. Unusual items always fetch a premium, of course. Anything idiosyncratic. Impractical, even. Or intricate.”

But his hands—which he has raised, palms up, to convey his sincerity—have betrayed him. He is tracing the outline of something, absently sketching it in the air as he speaks. Something which Joe has recently seen. Something strange, of which gentlemen from Scottish museums might in theory be aware, but whose connection with Joe himself should be quite beyond their ken. In any case, what manner of museum sends two fellows with anonymous ties and empty eyes all the way to London on the off chance? Do they not have the electric telephone in Edinburgh?

Mr. Cummerbund has been silent so far, listening and watching with great acuity, and every so often he has made notes in an impenetrable shorthand. The top leaves of the pad he is using have wrinkled, because his hands are moist and because he presses very hard with his cheap supermarket-brand ballpoint—a thin plastic thing which has already cracked along one edge, and which he occasionally puts between his lips to chew. Now, he removes it, and the smell of Mr. Cummerbund’s mouth is briefly added to the smell of tropical-fruit cologne, a tantalisingly disgusting flavour of old mint, tooth decay, and kidneys.

“Rodney,” he says tightly, and Mr. Titwhistle glances at him, then follows the line of Mr. Cummerbund’s gaze back to his own fingers. Joe sees the sequence of events unfolding, and realises a moment too late what will happen next: Mr. Titwhistle and Mr. Cummerbund look guiltily from the shape in the air to Joe to see whether he has made anything of it, and catch him staring guiltily at them. Between the three men, there is a moment of comprehension. Oh, yes. All out in the open, now, isn’t it? Or, not all, but enough. The rusty machinery of his father’s world wakes within him again, unfolding from an old corner of his mind that he barely knew was there; the forgotten instinct which prompts him to lie, promise, misdirect, all in one.

“I’m sorry, gentlemen,” Joe says confidingly, “you place me in a rather awkward position. I had a similar offer not two days ago from another interested party, and this morning my phone has barely stopped ringing. I’ve made some enquiries and not all my suitors are in fact entirely reputable”—you two, in particular, but we don’t say that because we want everyone to feel nice and safe and not disposed to rash action—“so I’d rather prefer to deal with you. If the price is right, of course.”

He cringes a bit, inwardly. Joe Spork—new and improved and all grown-up—doesn’t think that way. Not any more. There was a boy once, who did—a kid who picked pockets and stood lookout; who tumbled through the tunnels of the Tosher’s Beat in search of pirate treasure, in the certain knowledge that there actually was some; whose nefarious uncles nipped up a drainpipe in the blinding dusk to relieve a duchess of her jewels, while Mathew Spork charmed and smiled and kept her on the hook and his one begotten son leaned against a wall and yoyo’d and kept an eye out for the Lily, as in Lily Law, as in Her Majesty’s Metropolitan Police—but Joe had imagined that person no longer existed. He had no idea he could summon the pattern so easily.

Mr. Cummerbund closes his book, and glances at his partner.

“I’m quite sure,” Mr. Titwhistle murmurs, “that some accommodation could be reached for the full collection.”

“I’m so glad. Your good fortune, of course, is that I’ve begun to assemble it all. Mine is that now I have someone suitable to sell it to.”

“We should greatly prefer to avoid anything like an auction.”

You don’t care in the slightest. This is another test. Why is everyone testing me? I don’t have anything you want. Except, somehow, I clearly do.

Mathew is bubbling in Joe’s brain, commenting and advising:

Don’t sell. Not yet. If you make it easy, they’ll see through you.

To what?

To whatever you’re actually going to do.

Am I not selling, then?

Apparently not.

Cover. Conceal. Hide. Deceive.

A day of ghosts, most unwelcome and unawaited.

“Then I shall expect your pre-emptive offer to be quite striking. I’m sure it would have been anyway! And if you’ll be so kind as to excuse me, gentlemen, I have another client appointment—on an unrelated matter, I assure you—at ten-thirty, and I really need to go. Shall we say, same time on Monday?”

There is a long pause. Jesus, Joe thinks, are they actually going to jump me? And then:

“Ideal,” Mr. Titwhistle says. He reaches into his jacket and produces, between two meagre fingers, a crisp white business card. “Do call if you have any trouble—the Museum has a good many friends. We can help in all sorts of ways.”

Yes. I’m sure you can.

Joe watches them walk away down the road. Neither one looks back. No car stops to pick them up. They seem entirely rapt in conversation, and yet somehow he feels observed, spied upon.

Fine. Then I’m very boring, aren’t I? I do boring things. I live a boring life and no one can say I don’t. I deal in antiques and curiosities, and I don’t do surprises. I’m recently single and I’m about to leave the 25–34 demographic for evermore. I like Chelsea buns the way they don’t make them these days and I fall in love with waifish, angry women who don’t think I’m funny.

I wind clocks like Daniel.

And I won’t turn into Mathew.

“Billy, it’s Joe. Call me, please. We’ve got something to discuss.”

He sighs, feeling the need for some consolation and knowing that he has no one from whom he can easily require a hug, and goes back to work.

Joe winds the clocks every day after lunch. He does not, as is the practice of many in his trade, set them all to different times so that there is always one about to chime. He gets his clients by appointment, by referral. Spork & Co. is what is known in these days when everything is studied and taxonomised as a “destination business.” His customers, for the most part, already know what they want when they come, and they are unlikely to be soothed or cozened into buying something else just because it goes bong while they’re having a quiet cup of tea and a jam tart with the owner. What they want is splendour and authenticity and a sense of craft. They are buying perhaps most of all a handshake with the past.

And the past is here, caught by the crook of the Thames and the endless whispering of ratchets and pendulums, the busy susurrus of oiled mechanical technology. If he is lucky, or when he can schedule an appointment with reference to the tide chart and the radio set he keeps against the waterside wall, the fog will come in and waves will lap against the brick, and some mournful barge will creak down the river or even hoot into the mist, and as the whole place slips loose in time, his client will tumble nose-first into the magic of it and buy that item they came for even though, inevitably, they came expecting to get it at half the asking price. He sometimes has to turn down considerable offers on the building itself. He jokes on such occasions that if one of them owns the other, it is almost certainly the warehouse, with his grandfather’s patient ghost and his father’s restless, relentless magnanimity, which holds the freehold to the man.

Joe winds the clocks. The winders are on a small trolley—a keychain would rattle and scratch against the casements, a bag would mean rummaging through each time for the right key. He pushes it around and tries not to feel like the nurse who wheels the gurney of the dead. Clink, clank, I’m so sorry, it was his time.

In the last year or so he has taken to playing BBC Radio 4 while he winds. The gentle burble of news and artistic wrangling makes a pleasant backdrop, and every so often there’s the forecast for shipping, with its soothing litany of places he need never go. Flemish Cap, seven, gusting nine. Recently, Radio 4 has betrayed him somewhat, because current affairs are a bit tense. Alongside assorted climatic woes, the world is even now passing what is apparently called “peak oil”—the moment after which oil will only ever be harder to get hold of and hence more expensive and ultimately unavailable—and in consequence the latest meeting of the G-whatever-it-is has become tense. Joe hopes this does not mean the sort of tense which prefigures bombing someone. He does not find angry South American diplomats, resentful Irish aviation bosses and fatuously confident Canadian oilmen very restful, so today the radio is silent on its shelf.

And really, that’s the most important thing he does with his days. It’s a small, measurable success, in the face of diminishing sales and an empty double bed and a set of skills which were marketable one hundred years ago, but now look quaint and even sad. Every afternoon for the last six months he has been fighting an uneven battle with himself not to overturn the trolley with its many keys, and scatter them across the room. His better nature has won only because the image of himself on his knees, remorsefully gathering them again, repairing scratched case clocks and whispering apologies to the ghost of his grandfather—and for strange and different reasons also his father—is more than he can bear.

The chimes clink over the door, and he glances up.

The figure in the doorway is tall. It must be, because the top of its head is not so far short of the frame. It is silhouetted by the day outside, but even allowing for that, it must be wearing black. It has long arms and long legs, and wears a strange, cumbersome garment like a dress or robe. Miss Havisham. He wonders if the wearer is unpleasantly scarred. He cannot tell. Over its head, the visitor wears a piece of black gauze or linen, so that the face is quite invisible. The cloth is not cinched; it hangs down over the wearer’s head, so that the top is a smooth curve. There’s just the barest bulge of a nose. Other than that, the head is as blank and featureless as an egg. Vampire. Alien. And then, more shamefully, suicide bomber.

The last makes him feel guilty, and ridiculous, and the feeling propels him to his feet. Clearly, if suicide bomber is unlikely, it has to be conceded that the others are more so.

“Hello,” Joe says. “What can I do for you?”

“Nothing for the moment, thank you.” The voice is deep and scratched, but muffled. It sounds like a recording played through one of the old wood-horn gramophones Joe has in the back. The metal-horns are powerful, they make everything sound like old-time radio. The wood-horns are rounder, but lack belt. Joe automatically leans in to hear, and then away again when the blank linen face follows him, ducks down as if to kiss his cheek, coming too close too quickly. “May I look around?”

“Oh, well, please. Browse away. Let me know if you want anything in particular. I have some very fine gramophones with quite special horns. And a really good fob watch. I’m quite proud of the clean-up. It’s a lovely thing.” Joe lets his tone suggest that anyone who is just browsing should almost certainly conclude their visit with a tour of the smaller items which might have failed to attract attention.

The shrouded head dips in assent, once, and then deeper a second time, like a swan’s.

“Forgive me for asking,” Joe says, when his visitor does not move away, “but I’ve never seen anyone dressed like that before.”

“I am on a journey of the soul,” the other replies, without rancour. “My clothing reminds me that the face of God is turned away from us. From the world. It is worn by members of the Order of John the Maker, who are called Ruskinites.” He waits, to see if this elicits a reaction. Since Joe doesn’t know what reaction would be considered appropriate, he allows himself none.

“Thank you,” he says instead, by way of concluding the conversation. The man moves away with a curious, boneless lurching.

Glancing warily after the eerie, absent face, Joe goes back to work.

The visitor wanders towards a row of music boxes. One of them plays something light and perky, and the man looks down at it like a bird wondering whether it is something to eat. A moment later, he speaks again.

“Mr. Spork?”

“Yes, what can I do for you?”

“I am looking for something. I hope you can help me.”

“I’ll do my best.”

“I believe you have recently dealt with a book I have an interest in. A very unusual book.”

Oh, crap.

“Oh, dear. I can’t help you there, I’m afraid. Music, yes. Books, no.” Joe can feel a sort of prickling on his back. He turns, and sees the figure straighten and turn smoothly away.

“I believe you can. The Book of the Hakote, Mr. Spork.” Laden with significance.

Joe hesitates. On the one hand, he has never specifically heard of the Book of the Hakote (huh-KOH-tay). Like the shroud the visitor is wearing, the word has the flavour of religion, and he takes especial care not to deal in religious items, be they church timepieces or sneaky weeping icons with internal reservoirs and clockwork pumps. They have almost always been pillaged at some time, and in consequence come with aggravation attached. On the other hand, he has recently been in contact with an object of various unusual qualities which might conceivably answer to such an outré name, an object which was brought to him by a moderately nefarious individual by the name of William “Billy” Friend.

Chief among the unusual qualities aforementioned: a fat man and a thin man turned up in his shop and lied, quaintly and unpersuasively, about how they wanted to buy the Grandpa Spork collection entire, when what they really wanted (see Mr. Titwhistle’s betraying fingers) was anything associated with this same “very unusual book.”

“I’m terribly sorry, you’ve lost me,” Joe replies cheerfully. “I sell and maintain items of clockwork. Curiosities, mostly, things that go bong and so on. Pianolas and automata. But in general not books.”

“There are some texts whose importance is not immediately apparent to the uninitiated. Dangerous books.”

“I’m sure there are.”

“There is no need to condescend.” The Ruskinite’s head turns on his neck, the shroud bunching at the shoulders. Joe wonders if it will turn all the way around, like an owl’s. “I mean that the escape of knowledge into the realm of wider society irretrievably alters the nature of our lives. More mundanely, Mr. Spork, the Book and all its paraphernalia are of great value to me personally. I should very much like them back.”

Back. Not: I should very much like to locate a copy, nor even: I have been having some trouble finding the ISBN. This person is seeking an item which at some stage they owned. A singular item. Yes, this has all the hallmarks of a Billy Friend situation, right enough.

“It is not yours, Mr. Spork,” the Ruskinite says with soft finality. “It is mine.”

Joe puts on his most accommodating expression. “Might I take your name? I have, in fact, dealt with a very unusual book recently, but I’m afraid I don’t know the title. It passed through my hands as part of a repair job. I do hope there was no funny business involved.” Oh, I bloody do. But I’m quite sure there was if you say so.

The Ruskinite circles the room in silence as if considering. Joe Spork affects an air of polite, shopkeeper’s dismay, and does not watch. He fusses with his papers and listens, trying to track the other’s progress in the room. Scritch scritch. Is the other man rubbing his chin? Mopping his brow? Clawing at the desk with an iron hook in place of his right hand?

When the man speaks again, his muffled voice is almost a whisper, and alarmingly close. “Very well, Mr. Spork.”

Joe glances around and finds the shrouded face less than a metre away. He jumps slightly, and the head withdraws.

“I am sorry I startled you. If you do not have anything for me, I will leave.”

“Do take a card and give me a call if there’s anything else I can do. Or any other items I have which might be of interest.”

“I shall consider that, and return.”

Joe clamps down on his subconscious before it can make him say “From the grave?” which would be rude. The shrouded man snakes out of the door and disappears into the street.

Billy. You are in so much trouble right now.

Before going to find Billy Friend wherever he is and shout at him in person, Joe makes a phone call.

Harticle’s—more properly the Boyd Harticle Foundation for Artisanal and Scientific Practice—is an endless lumber room, one hundred and fifty years old and more; a winding mass of shelved corridors and display cases punctuated with reading rooms and collections, inadequately labelled and appallingly dusty, so that to go into the Archives is to risk coughing for days. It is stuffed to bursting with odds and ends, acquired and maintained and stored away, against the day when something may be required for a restoration or a recreation. There are pieces of Charles Babbage’s unfinished machines here, and of Brunel’s steam engines. Instruments designed by Robert Hooke rub shoulders with wooden models produced to drawings by da Vinci. Everything has a story, usually more than one. Boyd Harticle’s ugly red-brick house with its unlikely turreted roof and neo-Gothic arched windows is a refuge for the disregarded children of man’s study and conquest of the natural world.

The call is answered on the second ring.

“In this house, only art,” proclaims a woman’s voice, deep and rather forceful.

“Cecily? It’s Joe.”

“Joe? Joe? Joe? What Joe? I know no Joe. The phenomenon known as Joe is an illusion created by my conscious mind to account for the discrepancy between the number of scones I buy and the number I eventually consume. His putative reality has been demonstrated false by empirical testing. In any case, extant or not, he no longer cares. Gone off with some harlot, no doubt, and left me to my lonesome.”

“I’m sorry.”

“And well you might be. How are you, you heartless wretch?”

“I’m fine. How’s Harticle’s?”

“Big and draughty and full of old things no one gives a fig for. Me, among them.”

“I said I was sorry.”

“And you imagine once will get you off the hook, do you? Ask Foalbury how many times he had to apologise for the fiasco with the eggnog. Then try again.” But Cecily’s voice is grudgingly mollified, and a few buttered scones will see her right. The gates of Harticle’s—as Joe well knows, and so does she—are not closed to him.

Part museum, part archive, and part club, Harticle’s occupies one of those weird niches in London’s life, both physical and social, which makes it almost invisible to the wider world and almost inevitable to those in the know. Cecily Foalbury is its librarian and in a way its library. Granted, with a following wind one might find a book or an object via the card-index system. It’s a perfectly respectable arrangement, albeit outdated and—this being Harticle’s—staunchly analogue. It’s also true that Cecily is the codex, the concordance. If you want to find anything within any reasonable time-frame, it’s best to ask her—but very, very politely, and if possible with blandishments. Cecily’s nickname—the Man-eater—is not entirely in jest, and her husband Bob freely confesses himself a serf.

“Cecily, do you know anything about the Loganfield Museum in Edinburgh?”

“Not since it closed. Why?”

Joe Spork nods to himself without surprise. “Just checking. What about dangerous books?”

“Oh! Yes, of course. There are dozens. The churches got in such an uproar after Gutenberg, Joe, because now anyone could print anything and spread it about. Popes got in a bate about all manner of things. Local barons became irate about scurrilous gossip printed in pamphlets—much of it true and I must say almost all of it good reading!” A thunderous laugh down the phone. “There’s even a couple of Bibles with printing errors which make them a bit odd. Thou Shalt Commit Adultery, and all that sort of thing. People collect them, bishops burn them. Silly sods. As if God gives a monkey’s what’s written in botched type.”

“This isn’t one of those. It’s more modern.”

“Come on, then, Joe. What sort of tome,” she hits the word hard, enjoying its kookiness, “what sort of libram are we talking about?”

“He called it the Book of the Hakote.”

There’s a brief cough from the other end of the phone, a muffled bark.

“Cecily?”

“I’m here.”

“What’s wrong?”

“Hakote, is what’s wrong.”

“You’ve heard of it?”

“Of course I bloody have. Drop this, Joe. Run away from it. It’s poison.”

“I can’t. I think it’s stuck to me.”

“Wash. Fast.”

“How? I don’t know what it is!”

“It’s the ghost in the darkness, Joe. From the tip of Spain to the Black Forest and all the way to bloody Minsk. The Witch Queen at the Crossroads. Bloody Mary. Baba Yaga. It’s a curse.”

“Cecily! Come on!”

She doesn’t. The line is silent. Then she asks sharply: “Who’s ‘he’?”

“What?”

“You said ‘he called it’. Who is this ‘he’? Not the nefarious little lecher, please?”

“No. Someone else. He seems to think I’ve got it.”

“And have you?”

“I… no. I may have had it. Or something which could have been it.”

He hears her sigh, or maybe just breathe out hard, letting it go.

“Hakote, Joe. It’s… it’s a bogeyman. All right? It’s a leper or a… a banshee. Like Grendel’s mother. You can die of it. She’s supposed to have built a castle in a village, and one night the sea came up and swallowed the whole thing.”

Joe Spork is trying to laugh. It is, after all, rather silly. Ghost stories are absurd, here and now, under the faint but reassuring sun—but Cecily Foalbury is a tough old bird and not given to fantasy or superstition. On the other hand: this morning, the strange, birdlike man in a linen wrap—a hood? A cowl? A bandage?—which hid his face.

“Leprosy is curable,” he says firmly. Revolting, but curable and natural and not easily caught.

“Joe, they’re not just sick. It’s more than that. The lepers and the Hakote were both outcast groups, all right? So they got lumped together. People started to think of them as the same thing, but they weren’t. And the lepers, Joe, they were more scared of the Hakote than the other way around. This is modern people, not medieval peasants. And… well, I don’t know. It’s like the tomb of the Pharaohs, isn’t it? There’s a long record of people dying from being too close.”

“To what?”

“I think knowing that is what you’re supposed to die of.”

“Cecily…”

“Oh, don’t be so bloody dense, Joe! Of course it’s all hogwash, but it’s hogwash with dead people attached and I don’t want you to be one of them!”

“Nor do I. Well, fine. They’re bad. Pirates, murderers, whatever. I don’t have the book, but someone thinks I do, and that could be a problem.” He can hear her pursing her lips to argue, pushes on. “I need to know more. If it’s dangerous, that makes it more important. I’m in this somewhere. I think it might have something to do with Daniel. Can you check that, too?” He wants to get off the phone. He’s irrationally angry with Cecily for turning his day into an emergency.

“Daniel Spork? Your grandfather Daniel? Why would you think that? Who have you been talking to?”

But Joe doesn’t want to answer that one, not yet, so he mumbles something and repeats his request. Cecily, after a moment to make it clear she has noticed that she’s being fobbed off, doesn’t press.

“I’ll check the file. You’ve got most of his things there, though. What there is.”

“Just some old clothes and his jazz collection.”

There’s a brief silence, then: “His what?”

“Jazz. Music.”

“I am aware, you young pup, that jazz is music—and one of the highest forms thereof. All right, then, start with that.”

“Why?”

“Because unless I’ve gone completely mad, Joe, your grandfather hated jazz. Loathed it. Apparently there was a jazz band playing in the ship he came over from France in during the war. They came down into the hold and played for the refugees when the convoy was under attack. Bombs falling, the whole iron tub clanging and banging, and they danced their way to Blighty. Daniel couldn’t listen to it afterwards. He said all he could hear was shells falling and men screaming.”

“Oh. I didn’t know that.”

“Well, no. It’s not a story for children, I dare say.”

No. Apparently his day is going to be rather dark.

“I need anything you can find out.”

“Be careful, Joe. Please.”

“I will. I am.”

“Yes. You are. All right. Give me a day or so, and bring me a pork pie.”

Joe laughs for the first time, brief respite. Cecily is strictly forbidden pork pies by her doctor, but the Rippon Pie, which she regards as the Platonic form, is her absolute favourite and she will brook no denay. For a Rippon Pie, Cecily Foalbury, at twelve stone, five foot two and seventy-one years old, would gladly walk naked through Piccadilly in winter.

He puts down the phone and leans back, staring at the warehouse ceiling and listening to the Thames.

Beware of Greeks bearing gifts.

Oh, sure. It’s easy to say that now.

“Tell you what,” Billy Friend says, three days ago and cab-driver confidential, “I’ve got something which might be useful to you in your professional capacity, not to say your artisanal practice. And a bit of actual paid work, a commission, so to speak, for a reputable client, all above board and squared away. Right? So, what say you do something for me in exchange and call it a finder’s fee? Mutual courtesy, no paperwork, no VAT, everyone’s a winner.” He waggles his eyebrows over the rim of his teacup.

Billy Friend’s eyebrows receive considerable prominence on his face because they are thick and black, and he has no other hair of any kind upon his head. Around about the time that Joe’s father was called to account by Her Majesty for being in loco parentis to a large quantity of imported cocaine (rather than being in loco parentis to, to take a random example, his son) Billy Friend acknowledged that his personal battle with male-pattern hair loss was at an end. On the day of the trial—quite coincidentally, there was no very strong connection between Joe Spork and William Friend back then—he ditched his fiancée, bought a shiny new suit, and had the last of his mortal youth removed by a Knightsbridge barber. Since which time, beyond varying the ridiculous waxes he uses to produce a manly gleam on his alarmingly sexual pate, he has changed not at all. Billy Friend, riding the coat-tails of Patrick Stewart’s supersexed telegenic baldness—though Billy would tell you he was there first.

Joe generally avoids Billy in his professional context. They go out on the town every so often, share a meal, maybe some drinks. Billy is brash and embarrassing, and therefore exactly the kind of person who can force a moody Joe Spork to have a good time, even talk to women he finds attractive. It’s the kind of friendship which endures, despite minimal tending and no apparent central plank. Billy in mufti, ordering another bottle from a cheerily scandalised waitress, is a part of the landscape, awkward and familiar and finally indispensable.

Billy the dealer is a trickier proposition, fraught with complex questions of murky legal ownership and tax-free cash jobs—but on this occasion Joe was so unwise as to pick up the phone without checking to see who it was, got blindsided, and as a consequence is here in this greasy spoon drinking thick, orange tea. An object lesson in paranoia, but not in the end a bad result, because Joe has to confess he is having minor money issues at present, and Billy Friend, when not attempting to sell him a pup or persuade him to take part in some dubious scheme involving Latvian modelling agencies, is a good source of gainful employment as well as a genuine if barmy long-time pal.

“What sort of commission?” Joe says carefully.

“Well, Joseph,” because Billy likes to be formal when he’s conning you, “it is—and at the same time, you understand, it is not—for it’s an equivocal and quirky sort of object, hard to get to know and spiky about the edges, which is what made me think of you… It is a what you might call without fear of immediate contradiction though at the same time without expressing the fullest truth… a doodah. From an estate sale.”

“Estate sale” meaning, most probably, nicked. Although Billy Friend, when he is not dealing in knocked-off antiquities and seducing the daughters of provincial publicans, is a member in good standing of the Honoured & Enduring Brotherhood of Waiting Men, which is to say he is an undertaker. He is therefore well-positioned to come across estate sales before the actual sale has begun, but Joe does not automatically accept that Billy actually buys from the bereaved, because in one of his many other professional hats, Billy is a freelance spotter of thievable items for burglars in London and the Home Counties.

“I’ve got a lot of doodahs, Billy,” Joe says. “My life is in some measure awash in doodahs. How is your doodah different from everyone else’s doodah?” And he realises too late that Billy has set him up.

“Well, Joseph, one doesn’t like to brag…” Followed by a huge laugh which turns heads all around, and most particularly the head of the young, flirtatious waitress, whose personal attention Billy Friend has been working to secure since they sat down.

“Billy…”

“It’s a book, Joseph.”

“A book.”

“Of sorts, yes.”

“Then you’re wasting your time. I don’t do books. I mean, I like books. Books are good and we should have more of them. But I’m not a bookbinder, a paper specialist, or a restorer. I can’t help you with a damaged book.”

“You can help with this one.”

“Is it a clockwork book?”

“It is.”

“Because if it’s not a clockwork book, there’s not very much I can do, is there?” Joe pauses. Some part of the last exchange did not play out as he imagined when he ran it through in his mind.

“What do you mean, ‘it is’?”

Billy waves his arms to indicate the magnificence of what he has to offer. “The item is a combination book and device. The textual part is in acceptable if foxed condition, nice leather cover, looks like a diary. The peculiarity is that the outer edges are punched in a grid, so that the book as a whole functions or appears to function as a set of punchcards. One might think of it as equivalent to the drum on one of your music boxes. Yes?”

Joe Spork nods assent. Billy goes on, waving his hands for emphasis, which he is pleased to call “emf-arse-is,” because it generally gets a rise out of the ladies.

“And in, as it were, the same sack, the same rattling old box, the same shabby loft where the book was located, there is a collection of mucky, disassembled bits and bobs which could, under the right circumstances and through the intervention of a skilled craftsperson such as yourself, form some sort of mechanism which appears, on close and expert examination by me, to attach to the written volume along the spine. Further, there is what I can only describe as a large gold ball forming part of the mechanical apparatus, whose function I have not at this time been able to discern. Thus, a conundrum. A book which is more than a book, and the implication of a machine which does something with it. Hence, to avoid the practice of neologism, Joseph, which as you know I despise, I call it a doodah.”

Joe Spork gazes at Billy through narrow eyes. It does not please him to be so easily led about by the nose. He knows that Billy knows this kind of thing is his particular delight. He anticipates some species of hustle, or possibly just a task of mind-numbing boredom by way of compensation for his pleasure.

“And what do I have to do in exchange for this doodah job?”

“Nothing dreadful, Joseph, just a bit of repair on something, nothing base nor wicked nor criminal—” Billy falters. He must see something in Joe’s face which tells him the Sporkish forbearance is at an end. He holds up a hand in acknowledgement. “Let me show you the patient, all right? It’s a bit special.” And he already has the parcel on the table, so it’s only a second before it stands revealed. It’s quite a sight in a quiet café. “Spicy, eh? Those Victorians, they liked their toys. Their erotomata, to coin a phrase. Their ’ow’s yer father, though this looks more like ’ow’s yer father, madame, and can I get you something to drink after, and maybe for your sister, too? I knew some sisters like this once, mind. Frightful handful.”

The object is indeed an automaton, a clockwork tableau in tin and lead paint, with fabric to flesh out the figures and a brass-and-steel movement visible through the glass floor. A lusty gamekeeper sort of fellow with red cheeks stands on one side, and two ladies in riding dresses stand on the other, and when Billy Friend flicks a switch the figures move around one another in a decreasing spiral until the gamekeeper’s trousers come down and the ladies’ dresses come up, and a somewhat improbable object emerges from the gamekeeper’s burlap undergarments and goes smoothly into a matching aperture on Sister 1, while Sister 2 reclines on a wall and satisfies herself quite frantically, and then the whole thing starts to shake and Sister 1’s head goes all the way around and the gamekeeper suddenly gets what appears to be a hernia and cannot continue, and the whole assemblage grinds and stutters to a halt.

Joe is furious to find that he is blushing. Billy Friend smirks at the waitress, who is staring with wide eyes at the contraption and looking not entirely unlike a sort of Sister 3. She collects herself and smirks back, then wanders off to the kitchen.

“For God’s sake, Billy…” Joe says.

“Ahh, dear. Handsome fella like you, Joseph, you’re a bit young to be so old. Tell you, why don’t we go out together one night?”

“No, thank you. Tell me about the clockwork book.”

“You used to be a lot more fun, Joe. You’ve got sensible, is what it is. Terrible thing to happen to anyone, puts years on you. I know a place in Soho. No, not that kind of place, though if you’ve a mind… no, thought not. No, just a bar, matey, with convivial clients. Australians, mostly. Bored and up for it.”

“Billy, I’m only going to say this once more, and then I’m going to assume you are pulling my pisser. And then we’re going back to formal payments, cash on delivery. Right? Because I’ve got to open the shop. So, God help me: tell me about your doodah.”

Billy Friend measures Joe and sees, if not resolve then boredom, and knuckles down.

“Party wants it cleaned up and repaired, made ready for use, and delivered to a gentleman in Wistithiel. That’s Cornwall, by the way. Cash in advance, naturally, this being a hard and dishonest world.” Billy Friend, in his time both hard and dishonest, sighs the sigh of a disappointed philanthropist. “Party has also supplied a tool to go with. I have taken to referring to this object as the whojimmy. It resembles no tool the like of which I have ever seen, and I am to inform you that you are permitted to keep it as a souvenir or part-payment. The whojimmy is apparently necessary to gain access to certain of the moving parts of the doodah. Thus not, in fact, merely a twofer, as our American cousins would have it, meaning two-for-one, but a threefer, which I believe is heretofore unknown in the world but which I am proud to bring before you now in the spirit of commerce and collegial respect.” Billy smiles his winning smile.

“Who’s the party?”

“A gentleman never tells.”

“A lady.”

“I think we may say without fear of breaching the seal of professional confidence that she is of the female persuasion.”

“And there’s no question that she owns these items?”

“None at all. Very respectable old duck, I thought.”

“She acquired them in this estate sale you mentioned.”

“Ah. There, Joseph, you have me. It is my unfortunate habit to refer to any object whose origin I am not at liberty to divulge as coming from an estate sale. It defers questions and creates a proper sense of gravitas.”

He lifts his brows so that Joe can admire the clear, unquestionable honesty in his gaze. He waits. And waits. And waits, looking just a little hurt. Finally—

“Drop them round to me this afternoon,” Joe says. Billy Friend grins and sticks out his hand to seal the deal. He pays the bill and collects a phone number from the waitress. Joe wraps the erotomaton in its tissue paper again, for transport.

“They miss you at the Night Market,” Billy informs him from the door to the street, “ask after you. It’s not the same without… well. You should come by.”

“No,” Joe Spork says. “I shouldn’t.”

And even Billy Friend doesn’t quarrel with that one.

A tugboat hoots out on the river. Joe Spork puts Billy to one side—bad news always finds you in the end—and picks a key from the trolley and walks moodily across the road and down a narrow, mean little alley to a padlocked gate, and through a gap between two buildings, and finally to a row of rusted and barnacled doors facing the river. Traitor’s gates, perhaps, or boathouses for very small boats. Or maybe, when the river was lower, nuclear-hardened bathing cabins. He has no idea. Ghost architecture, hanging on when the reason for it is past. Now, though, one of them stores the remaining bits of his past he doesn’t wish to think too much about. He opens the door once every few months to make sure the water hasn’t risen above the level of the little red splot of paint he marks on the wall each autumn, but aside from that he lets the place keep its secrets.

And secrets, undoubtedly, it has. One of the other doors, he happens to know, is not for storage at all, but dips down into an old ammunition dump, itself connected by a bit of Victorian sewer tunnel to a medieval crypt, which in turn gives on to a brewery. A man with an accurate map might walk from here to Blackheath, and never see the sun.

And somewhere down there, though he has never seen it, is the hallowed den where Mathew Spork prepared his first assaults on London’s banking community. In a vaulted room of red brick and York stone, Mathew first fired his Tommy gun and learned to ride its kick. The young Joe, raised on a steady diet of comic books and tall tales, imagined that his father held off a Russian army in the sewers, killed aliens and monsters, and kept London safe for small boys. Every day was the day Dutch Schultz and Murder Inc. fought it out at the Palace Chophouse, and every day Joe’s father came away unscathed. Through blazing, worshipful dreams, Mathew walked like a titan, wreathed in cordite smoke and glory.

Joe wonders, from time to time, where the gun is now. It sat for years in its case in Mathew’s study, and the son of the House of Spork was not permitted to touch it. He would stare, wide-eyed, as Mathew cleaned it, and sometimes made bullets for it. But the gun was not a thing to be played with, not ever, not even on high days or birthdays.

One day, son, I’ll teach you the proper way. But not today.

And never, as it turned out. Perhaps the gun is waiting down there, somewhere.

London is old, and each generation has added to its mysteries.

The door sticks, and he has to kick at it. Muck and more barnacles, and a splash as something alive makes itself scarce. A sign the river is getting cleaner. Mind you, that also means the door will rust faster. Oxygen, a bit of salt, and plenty of bacteria. He’ll have to come down here and replace it. Or he could let the Thames have its way, and see Daniel’s last bits and bobs go sailing away to Holland, and maybe walk a little lighter. Emptier, but lighter.

There’s a wind-up torch hanging from a peg at shoulder height. It amuses him that crank-handle torches are all the rage now. He made this one under Daniel’s supervision when he was nine. They even blew a bulb together, a glass balloon with a filament, pumped full of inert gas. This almost immediately exploded and had to be replaced with a commercial one.

The white lamplight picks out a mess of odds and ends: a china cow; a red and black molasses tin which Joe knows is full of decaying rubber bands; a terrifying marionette with all the strings cut. And there, on the far shelf, a stern, upright leather case in a clear plastic sack to protect it from the damp: Daniel’s record collection.

He takes it down and then, for reasons he does not fully understand, draws out one record at random and puts the rest of the collection back on the shelf. After a moment he extracts from his pockets two further items—recent acquisitions, both—and rests them next to the record bag.

This is absolute paranoia. Like checking under your car for bombs because there’s a bit of wiring on the tarmac.

He carries the record back to the warehouse under his coat.

The gramophone is a classic: horn in rich brown mahogany and body in inlaid oak, turntable covered in felt and chased in silver. Even the crank is beautiful. It took him months to repair it. The previous owner had had it stored in a loft full of bats.

He winds it slowly, because even in extremis and excitement you don’t hurry a lady. The needle is old, so he puts in a new one. Then he makes a cup of tea, and reads the sleeve notes. Slim Gaillard. Joe has heard of Slim Gaillard. Tall, arachnodactyl Slim, who drank a bottle of whisky with every show and smoked all night, and could play the piano with his hands upside down. Not, please note, with his hands crossed while he himself lay on the piano stool, but actually inverted, with his knuckles.

He puts the record on the felt, and brings down the needle.

Well, that’s not Slim Gaillard. That much I do know.

A woman’s voice, soft and old and filled with emotion. She is not English. French? Or something more exotic? He isn’t sure.

“I’m so sorry, Daniel.”

A bucket of ice water over his head and down his neck. Hairs on his arms like guilty nightwatchmen, all awake. Impossible, impossible. A dead woman’s voice. The dead woman. House of Spork’s very own family ghost, speaking to him. It has to be. Who else would apologise to Daniel Spork by phonograph recording, made in some tiny booth in Selfridges for a few Imperial pennies? Who else would Daniel conceal in this bizarre way, discarding brother Slim and moving the label to this record so that no one would ever know what he had?

Frankie.

“I’m so, so sorry. I could not stay. I have work. It is the greatest thing I have ever done. The most important. It will change the world. The truth, Daniel. I swear it: the truth shall set us free!” Rich, splendid, throaty. An Edith Piaf voice. An Eartha Kitt voice. A voice filled with all the passion and regret of a refugee, and all the certainty of a prophet.

“You must never tell. They will stop me. The thing I must do now… it will uproot so many old and rotted trees, and there are men who have made their houses in them. There are men cut from their wood. All the bows and arrows in the world are made of this, and I will bring it down. I will make us better than we are. We must be better than this!”

Joe waits for her to say “I love you,” but she doesn’t, and the other side of the record is blank, an endless white noise spatter, like rain on old cast-iron guttering.