Seventy-Seven Clocks

∨ Seventy-Seven Clocks ∧

52

Inundation

“Thank God we managed to get everyone out in time,” said May later, as they were heading back towards the PCU’s offices in the Mini. At this hour of the morning it was safe for Bryant to drive, providing you weren’t a cat or a pigeon. “I thought you were a bit hard on them. Did it ever occur to you that it might be just as difficult for them to be who they are?”

“If they don’t like it, they can opt out,” replied Bryant. “It doesn’t work the other way around. The poor can’t choose to be rich.” He stared thoughtfully out at the deserted streets of Camden Town.

“Jerry Gates has been accepted as one of them now. Did you hear Charles Whitstable offered her a job? It will be interesting to see what she decides to do after this.” May blew his nose. “Do you think I’ve caught pneumonia?”

“It’s possible,” said Bryant, never one to look on the bright side. “There’s a distinct chance that I may die in my sleep tonight. I can’t take the pace any more. I’ve got fallen arches, varicose veins, and now my valves feel bunged up. I don’t know how I got to middle age without passing through a misspent youth.”

“I know what you mean. We haven’t done this much running about since that business with the Deptford Demon four years ago.”

“Wait a minute, we can’t go home yet,” said Bryant, slapping the wheel. “We have to pick up Tomlins and bring him in to the station.”

“It’s ten past five, for heaven’s sake. Let someone else do it.”

“We daren’t do that, John. We can’t risk losing him. Somebody on the inside has to relate the full story to Land before he submits his report. Nobody else knows about the astrolabe. Radio Longbright and tell her where we’re going.”

He turned the Mini around and headed for the Maida Vale address that Rand had given them.

♦

The house they sought was pale and pebble-dashed, a bay-windowed thirties villa, far below the social standard of the Whitstables’ homes. On the fifth buzz, a middle-aged woman in a quilted dressing gown opened the door and attempted to stifle a yawn. Bryant and May identified themselves, and asked to see her husband.

“I’m afraid you’ve missed him.” She waved a hand in the direction of the garage adjoining the house. “He got a phone call, said he had to go out, that it was to do with work. I didn’t understand what he meant. I mean he’s not a doctor, he doesn’t get house calls.”

“How long ago was this?”

“About half an hour.”

“Did he say where he was going?” asked Bryant. “I’ve no idea.” She rubbed her pale cheeks, trying to remember. “Wait, he said he was seeing someone called Rand.”

♦

The city was still deserted at five forty-two a.m., as the yellow Mini slid to a halt outside the entrance hall to the Worshipful Company of Watchmakers. The front doors of the guild had remained closed since the night of Alison Hatfield’s death.

“I don’t want to alert him in case he does a runner,” said May. “How are we going to get in?”

Bryant smiled and dug into his overcoat. “I still have Charles Whitstable’s keys,” he reminded May. “We’ll have to bring in poor old Rand as well, you know. I bet Tomlins will try to swing the blame on him.”

“You want me to call for backup?” asked May, looking about.

“After what we’ve been through tonight, I think we can handle the two of them.”

They alighted from the car and walked to the door. Bryant unlocked it as quietly as possible and stepped inside. The foyer was dark and empty, and answered their footsteps with muted echoes. Switching on their torches, they made directly for the staircase at the rear of the building. Using the lift would only draw attention to their approach.

“I’m starting to feel like a mole, all this burrowing around by torchlight,” said Bryant, gingerly descending to the lower landing. “Can you hear something?”

From the darkness below them came the sound of an angry, ranting voice. They increased their pace, descending through the mire of the lower floor. Rand’s office was deserted. They tried the room that housed the astrolabe. The emergency-lighting circuit evidently ran from a generator, for the bulb above the huge brass globe was still lit.

They found Tomlins standing over the little Indian with the sledgehammer in his hands. Rand’s twisted, terrified figure on the floor suggested that he may already have been struck.

Tomlins started at their arrival, his dismayed, disapproving face turned to them.

“Get back,” the guild secretary warned. “This has to be ended properly.” He turned to the prostrate figure beneath him and swung the hammer once more, slamming it into Rand’s back. “I should crush his skull for what he’s done,” he explained dispassionately.

“What has he done?” asked May, stepping closer.

“He’s destroyed everything. Betrayed his sacred trust. To the alliance, to the guild, and to the family.”

“He didn’t know what the machine was capable of doing.”

“Well, it can’t do anything now, can it?” He raised the sledgehammer again. “All the work, all the years of loyalty and hardship and duty, all for nothing.”

As the weapon began its descent May grabbed Tomlins’s forearm, forcing the hammer back. With a terrified moan, the supervisor scrambled painfully across the floor, heading for the safety of his office. As the two men grappled with the hammer, Bryant tried to pull Tomlins down from behind.

The guild secretary was stronger than either of them had expected. He pushed Bryant away with one hand and threw himself backwards, slamming May hard against the wall once, then a second time. Bryant heard his partner’s skull thump hard on the bricks and watched as he fell into the water. Tomlins turned on Bryant, his teeth bared in fury, and swung the sledgehammer, the weight of its iron head carrying the momentum of the swing.

Bryant jumped back and realized that he was pressed against the edge of the astrolabe. Stumbling, he found himself inside its structure, the brass rings protecting him from his enraged attacker.

The hammer swooped again and smashed against one of the globe’s support poles. The machine clanged sonorously as the blow reverberated through the rings. Bryant’s torch was shocked from his hand. He fell back against the defunct central housing. Another blow hit the poles and they buckled. The entire structure was creaking and starting to turn. Bryant tried to raise himself up in the water, but found the brass arms of the inner ‘planet’ descending on him. In another moment the astrolabe had twisted from its stand to seal him inside.

“You’re not going to get away,” called Bryant, gasping for breath as one of the brass bars was brought to rest on his chest. “It’s over. Your rivals are still alive. The tontine was faulty. It reset all the clocks and killed the family instead. It failed you.”

Tomlins did not reply. Instead, he walked away from the shattered globe to the far side of the room and began to swing the hammer at the seal of the drain door behind him. Instantly, Bryant realized the danger of his predicament.

Bryant’s mind was racing. The old Indian, Rand, had possessed no knowledge of the astrolabe’s assassins, so there had to be an overseer. Someone was needed to organize the details, to take care of payments and arrangements, to help with the cover-ups. Bryant had considered Charles Whitstable most likely to be the remaining link in the chain of command.

But Charles had been handling business in India. It had to be someone in daily contact with the guild. Tomlins had most certainly watched Alison Hatfield getting closer to the terrible truth. Finally he’d been forced to remove her. But there was more Bryant had to know.

“If you were aware of the astrolabe’s existence, you must have seen that it was inaccurate,” he shouted, trying to slide his body from the grip of the brass arm as a blackeyed rat swam past, inches from his face.

Tomlins lowered the sledgehammer for a moment and wiped the sweat from his forehead. “Who’s to say it was inaccurate?” he said. “It was designed to protect the Watchmakers’ investments. The Whitstable family does little more than leech from the guild. Let them all die, and return the money to the system’s administrators.” He swung the hammer at the wall again, and this time the lock cracked, releasing a fine spray of filthy water around its edges.

“If anyone deserves to benefit, it’s the craftsmen,” cried Bryant. “Without them there would be no guild in the first place.”

“Three generations of my family have worked for the Watchmakers,” said Tomlins, grunting as the sledgehammer dented the door. “All of them were paid a pittance for guarding someone else’s fortune, and all were sworn to secrecy. Where did it get us?”

“So the money was coming in to you,” said Bryant weakly. Realizing that the astrolabe had failed, Tomlins had discovered an advantage over his employers. Bryant tried to free himself from the pressing weight of the metal exoskeleton, but was unable to budge any further. His partner had not moved since he was hurt. He prayed May hadn’t drowned while unconscious.

“It was until you interfered,” Tomlins replied.

His next swipe burst the drainage hatch wide. A black fountain rained across the chamber. Bryant knew that Tomlins would easily be able to flood the room, and noone would ever find their bodies. He would be able to claim his share of the tontine after all.

Icy drainage water poured into the shallow depression within the area of the globe, raising the level around the trapped detective. The temperature fell sharply as the vault became filled with the stench of the sewer.

The bitter water swirled itself around Bryant’s trapped body as he strained against the imprisoning brasswork. May had fallen with his head propped up against the fallen bricks, so the rising river was still clear of his nose and mouth. Only Longbright knew where they were, and she had no cause to be alarmed. On the contrary, she would be expecting both of them to take a few hours’ rest before reporting in to Land.

To perish in such an ignominious fashion as this was terrible. To die below the streets of the city he loved, within its very heart. Bryant wished he was at home, surrounded by his records, his books, and his memories. It seemed such a grotesque, undignified way for life to leave him.

He twisted his head to watch as Tomlins swung insanely at the wall. In his impatience to fill the room, he was trying to open up the entire drain. Each blow carried the frustration of a blunted life. The wall was cracked in several places, and had begun to bow outwards.

Tomlins, blinded by his bitter zeal, driven by a lifetime wasted in subservience, once more charged the bricks with his sledgehammer. Suddenly the concrete membrane bulged and split wide in a tsunami of water and brick. Tomlins was lifted from his feet and hurled backwards as the deluge burst over him, slamming him against the fallen astrolabe.

As the unleashed river rocked his metal prison, Bryant seized the moment, shoving against the brass bar across his chest. He could summon little strength. The freezing water was rapidly dulling his senses. He hammered against the bars again, and was astonished to find the cage rising of its own accord.

“You’re pleased to see me this time, are you?” asked Jerry Gates, holding out her hand. Amazed, unable to catch enough breath to reply, Bryant reached out and allowed himself to be hauled to his feet. “John!” he gasped, pointing to the figure floating facedown in the rising water.

Jerry steadied him and set off to help his partner.

Bryant pushed himself free of the mechanical rings and began wading across the room to help her. Through the hole in the wall he watched as the black torrent rushed past. The stench rising from its foul waters was unbearable. The river of darkness thundered on beyond the shattered wall, denied access to the world above.

He had waded halfway across the room when a pair of wet arms seized him around the neck and pulled him back beneath the surface of the vile torrent.

Tomlins’s hands sought purchase on his throat, but as Bryant struggled to twist free, one of them pushed down on the top of his head. The detective forced his eyes to remain shut in the pulsing effluent, knowing that the poison content of the river would kill him if absorbed for too long. Now both hands were locked firmly over his skull, holding him under.

A dull booming sounded in his ears as the deluge thundered through the steel cage, twisting it back and forth. Red flares of light exploded against his eyelids. His lungs were filled with fire.

And then the hands went limp, and Bryant’s head bobbed up above the surface of the river, suddenly released. Tomlins had rolled back in the water. His upper arm had become trapped in the shifting blades of the astrolabe, pulling him beneath the surface.

Bryant fought free as the structure groaned and shifted once more. As soon as he was unsnagged, he allowed the current to carry him across the room. Jerry was wading over in his direction. He could not tell if John May was alive or dead.

He looked back in time to see Tomlins’s arm lift from its mooring as his body swirled towards the opening in the wall, where it was sucked back into the fast-flowing river, to be swept off into the pounding Stygian darkness.

♦

The three of them sat beside one another in the back of the patrol car, soaked and shocked, wrapped in blankets, as an officer drove them to the nearest hospital clinic.

“Do you mind if I open a window, Sir?” asked the driver. “I can’t breathe.”

“Are you insinuating that we smell?” asked Bryant weakly.

“Well, you did get dipped in sh – er, the sewer, Sir.”

“Oh, all right.”

May turned to Jerry. She looked as if she was having a wonderful time. “Why did you follow us back to the guild?” he asked.

“I went to the unit to find Sergeant Longbright, and they told me where she was. I was there in the car when you radioed in your destination. The main door to the building was open, and there was an incredible noise coming from the back of the hall. I just followed it down.”

“But what possessed you to come here?”

“Thought I’d return Mr Bryant’s bleeper,” she answered, pulling the bulky box from her sodden coat. “He’d dropped it again.”

“Why on earth didn’t you wait and give it to him another day?” demanded May, amazed. “He never uses the bloody thing.”

“I had to return it immediately,” said Jerry. “His apartment keys are taped to the back.”

May’s mouth fell open.

“That’s the point,” said Bryant, taking the bleeper and turning it over to reveal a pair of labeled Yale keys sellotaped in place. “I thought I wouldn’t lose it if I needed it to get into my apartment.”

“Do you mean to say that I owe my life to – to – ”

“That’s right,” said Jerry, pleased with herself. “If it wasn’t for your partner’s annoying little habits, you’d have drowned.”

The patrol car sped on across the bridge, towards a lightening sky.