Kraken (14 page)

The Teuthex recited the service, his words drifting in and out of English, into Latin or Pig Latin, into what sounded like Greek, into strange slippery syllables that were perhaps dreams of sunken languages or the invented muttering of squidherds, Atlantean, Hyperborean, the pretend tongue of R’lyeh. Billy had expected ecstasy, the febrile devotions of the desperate speaking in tongues or tentacles, but this fervour—and fervour it was, he could see the tears and gripping hands of the devout—was controlled. The flavour of the sect was vicarly, noncharismatic, an Anglo-Catholicism of mollusc-worship.

Such a tiny group. Where were others? The room itself, the seats themselves, could have contained three times as many people as were there. Had the space always been aspirational, or was this a religion in decline?

“Reach out to enfold us,” Moore said, and the congregation said, “Fold us,” and made motions with their fingers.

“We know,” the Teuthex said. A sermon. “We know this is a strange time. There are those who think it’s the end.” He made another motion of some dismissal. “I’m asking you all to have faith. Don’t be afraid. ‘How could it have gone?’ people have asked me. ‘Why aren’t the gods doing anything?’ Remember two things. The gods don’t owe us anything. That’s not why we worship. We worship because they’re gods. This is their universe, not ours. What they choose they choose and it’s not ours to know why.”

Christ
, thought Billy,
what a grim theology
. It was a wonder they could keep anyone in the room, without the emotional quid pro quo of hope. That’s what Billy thought, but he saw that it was not nihilism in that room. That it was full of hope, whatever the Teuthex said; and he the Teuthex, Billy thought, quietly hopeful too. Doctrine was not quite doctrine.

“And second,” said Moore. “Remember the movement that looks like not moving.” A small frisson at that.

There was no communion, no passing out of, what, sacred calamari? Only some discordant and clunky wordless hymn, a silent prayer, and the worshippers left. Each as they filed out glanced at Billy with a strange and needy look. The young men looked positively hungry, and nervous to meet his eye.

Dane and Moore came to meet him. “So,” said the Teuthex. “That was your first service.”

“What was that squirrel?” Billy said.

“Freelancer,” Dane said.

“What? Freelance what?”

“Familiar.”
Familiar
. “Don’t look like that. Familiar. Don’t act like you’ve never heard of one.”

Billy thought of black cats. “Where is it now?”

“I don’t know, I don’t want to know. It did what I paid it for.” Dane did not look at him. “Job done. So it’s gone.”

“What did you pay it?”

“I paid it nuts, Billy. What would you think I’d pay a squirrel?” Dane’s face was so deadpan flat Billy could not tell if what he was facing was the truth or contempt. Welcome to this world of work. Magic animals got paid in something, nuts or something. Billy examined the pictures and books in Moore’s own dark grey chambers.

“Baron …” Billy said.

“Oh, we know Baron,” said Dane. “And his little friends.”

“He told me some books got stolen.”

“They’re in the library,” said the Teuthex. He poured tea. “Can’t use a photocopy to persuade the world.”

Billy nodded as if that made sense. He faced Moore. “What’s happening?” he said. “What did that … man … want? And why are you keeping me prisoner?”

Moore looked quizzical. “Prisoner? Where is it you want to go?”

There was a silence. “I’m getting out of here,” Billy said. And then very quickly he said, “What did … Goss … do to Leon?”

“Would you be very offended if I said I don’t believe you?” Moore said. “That you want to get out? I’m not sure you do.” He met Billy’s stare. “What did you see?” Billy almost recoiled at the eagerness in his voice. “Last night. What did you dream? You don’t even know why you’re not safe, Billy. And if you go to Baron and Vardy you’ll be considerably less so.

“I know what they said about us.” He almost twinkled, a vicar being a good sport. “But that little faith-gang called ‘police’ can’t help, you know. You’re in the Tattoo’s sights, now.”

“Think about the Tattoo,” Dane said. “That face. That man’s face on another man’s back. How was you going to deal with that, Billy?” After a silence Dane said, “How you going to get the police to deal with that?”

“It isn’t just that, either,” Moore said. “As if that weren’t enough. I know it’s all a bit … Well. But it isn’t just the Tattoo, even. Suddenly, ever since something or other, everyone agrees the end’s in sight. Nothing unusual in that, you might say, and you’d be right except that I do mean
everyone
. That has … ramifications for you. You need to be with a power. Let me tell you. We are the Congregation of God Kraken. And this is our time.”

T
HEY EXPLAINED
.

London was full of dissident gods.

Why? Well they have to live somewhere. A city living in its own afterlife. Why not?

Of course, they’re all over, gods are. Theurgic vermin, those once worshipped or still worshipped in secret, those half worshipped, those feared and resented, petty divinities: they infect everybloody-where. The ecosystems of godhead are fecund, because there’s nothing and nowhere that can’t generate the awe on which they graze. But just because there are cockroaches everywhere doesn’t mean there aren’t cockroaches in particular in a New York kitchen. And just because angels keep their ancient places and every stone, cigarette packet, tor and town has its deities, doesn’t mean there’s nothing special about London.

The streets of London are stone synapses hardwired for worship. Walk the right or wrong way down Tooting Bec you’re invoking something or other. You may not be interested in the gods of London, but they’re interested in you.

And where gods live there are knacks, and money, and rackets. Halfway-house devotional murderers, gunfarmers and self-styled reavers. A city of scholars, hustlers, witches, popes and villains. Criminarchs like the Tattoo, those illicit kings. The Tattoo had run with the Krays, before he was Tattoo, but really you couldn’t leave your front door unlocked. Nobody remembered what his name had been: that was part of what had happened to him. Whatever nasty miracle it was had en-dermed him had thrown away his name as well as his body. Everyone knew they used to know what he was called, including him, but no one recalled it now.

“The one who got him like that was smart,” Dane said. “It was better when he was around, old Griz. I used to know some of his guys.”

There was a many-dimensional grid of geography, economy, obligation and punishment. Crime overlapped with faith—“Neasden’s run by the Dharma Bastards,” Dane said—though many guerrilla entrepreneurs were secular, agnostic, atheist or philistine ecumenical. But faith contoured the landscape.

“Who’s Goss and Subby?” Billy said. He sat guarded between them, looking from one to the other. Dane looked down at his own big fists. Moore sighed.

“Goss and Subby,” Moore said.

“What’s their …?” Billy said.

“Everything you can think of is what.”

“Badness,” Dane said. “Goss sells his badness.”

“Why did he kill that guy? In the cellar?” Billy said.

“The preserved man,” the Teuthex said. “If that was his handiwork.”

Billy said, “That Tattoo thought I stole the squid.”

“That’s why he was hunting you,” Dane said. “See? That’s why I had that familiar watching you.”

“You preserved it, Billy. You opened the door and found it gone,” Moore said. Pointed at him. “No wonder Baron wanted you. No wonder the Tattoo wanted you, and no wonder we were watching.”

“But he could tell I didn’t,” Billy pleaded. “He said I had nothing to do with anything.”

“Yeah,” said Dane. “But then I rescued you.”

“We got you out, so we’re allies,” Moore said. “So you
are
his enemy now.”

“You’re under our protection,” said Dane. “And because of that you need it.”

“How did you take the
Architeuthis?”
Billy said at last.

“It wasn’t us,” said Moore quietly.

“What?” But it was a relic. They would fight for it, surely, like a devout of Rome might fight for a shroud, a fervent Buddhist might liberate a stolen Sura. “So who?”

“Well,” said Moore. “Quite.

“Look,” he said. “You have to persuade the universe that things make sense a certain way. That’s what knacking is.” Billy blinked at this abrupt conversational twist, that word unfamiliarly verbed. “You use whatever you can.”

“Snap,” said Dane. He clicked his fingers, and with the sound came a tiny fluorescent glow in the air just where the percussion had been. Billy stared and knew it was not a parlour trick. “That’s just skin and hand.”

“You use what you can,” Moore said, “and some what-you-cans are better than others.”

Billy realised that Dane and his priest were not, in fact, changing the subject.

“A giant squid is …” Billy petered out but he was thinking,
Is powerful medicine, a big thing, a massive deal. It’s magic, is what it is. For
knacking. “That’s why it’s been taken. That’s why that tattoo wants it. But this is
craziness,”
he added. He couldn’t stop himself. “This is craziness.”

“I know, I know,” Moore said. “Mad beliefs like that, eh? Must be some
metaphor
, right? Must mean something else?” Shook his head. “What an awfully arrogant thing. What if faiths are exactly what they are? And mean exactly what they say?”

“Stop trying to make sense of it and just listen,” Dane said.

“And what,” Moore said, “if a large part of the reason they’re so tenacious is that they’re perfectly accurate?” He waited, and Billy said nothing. “This is all perfectly real. The Tattoo wants that body, Billy, to do something
himself
, or stop someone
else
doing something,” Moore said.

“All these things have their powers, Billy,” he said intensely. “‘There are plenty of currents on the way down deep’ is what we’d say. But some go deeper, quicker, than others. Some are
right.”
He smiled not like someone joking.

“What would someone do with it?” Billy said.

“Whatever it is,” Dane said, “I’m against it.”

“What wouldn’t they?” Moore said. “What couldn’t they? With something that holy.”

“That’s why we need to get out there,” Dane said. “To find it.”

“Dane,” said Moore.

“It’s a duty of care,” Dane said.

“Dane. We need understanding, certainly,” Moore said. “But we have to have faith.”

“What could show more faith than getting out there?” Dane asked. “You understand what’s going on?” Dane said to Billy. “How dangerous it all is? The Tattoo wants you, and
someone has a kraken
. That’s a god, Billy. And we don’t know who, or why.”

A
GOD
,
B
ILLY THOUGHT
. T
HE THIEF HAD A BLEACHY
Formalin-preserved mass of rubbery stink. But he knew truths were not true.

“God can take care of itself,” Moore said to Dane. “You know things are happening, Billy. You’ve known for days.”

“I
seen
you feel it,” Dane said. “I seen you watching the sky.”

“This is an end,” Moore said. “And it’s our god’s doing it, and it isn’t in our control. And that’s not right.” He splayed his fingers in a ludicrous prayer-motion. “That’s why you’re here, Billy. You know things you don’t even know,” he said. The fervour in it gave Billy a chill. “You’ve
worked on its holy flesh.”

Chapter Eighteen

“Y
OU COULD JUST STAMP YOUR LITTLE FEET, COULDN’T YOU,
Subby? You could unbuckle your shoe and throw it in the lake.”

Goss stamped. Subby walked a few paces behind him, his hands behind his back in crude mimicry of the man’s pose. Goss was bent forward and beetling with energy. He uncoupled his hands repeatedly and wiped them on his mucky top. Subby watched him and did the same.

“Where are we now?” Goss said. “Well you may ask. Well you may ask. Where indeed are we now? Not often his nibs is wrong, but that Mr. Harrow clearly not so butter-wouldn’t-melt as he’d give you to think, if he’s got bouncers like that ready to spirit him away. Still not sure who that was who banged your bonce, you poor lad. You doing better?” He ruffled Subby’s hair to the boy’s openmouthed gaze.

“What
is
he like? He’s all snotted up in this like slurry in alveoli. Still our best lead, of which his skin-inked eminence now admits, and, what do you say, once is never enough. We’ve caught up with him before, we’ll do it again.

“Where? That’s the question mark indeed, my young apprentice.

“Ears to the ground, Subby, tongues aflap.” He did as he said and tasted where they were, and if pedestrians or shoppers in that pre-suburban shopping precinct noticed his slurping snake lick they pretended not to. “Mostly we’re after Fluffy, so any flavours of the you-know-what, a distinct and meaty-bleachy-gamey bouquet I’m told, then veer we go, but otherwise, seems Mr. Harrow knows a little smidgeon, and of him I still recall the savour.”

T
HERE WERE ALL KINDS OF DRAMAS OCCURRING IN THE CITY IN
those days: machinations, betrayals, insinuations and misunderstandings between groups with distinct and overlapping interests. In the offices, workshops, laboratories and libraries of angry scholars and self-employed theorist-manipulators were screamed arguments between them and those nonhuman companions still around. “How can you do this to me?” was the sentence most regularly spoken, followed by, “Oh go fuck yourself.”

In the headquarters of the Confederation of British Industry was a hallway between a much-frequented toilet and a small meeting room, that, if most members of the organisation noticed, they did so to briefly wonder why they had never done so before; and they tended not to again after that first time. It was not as brightly lit as it should be. The watercolours on its walls looked a bit vague: they were there, certainly, but rather difficult to pay attention to.