The Demi-Monde: Winter (25 page)

‘The séance Crowley is talking about is to be performed before the Leader, Reinhard Heydrich.’ As statements went, Ella knew it was a real revelation. Vanka’s mouth flopped open in astonishment.

‘Heydrich?’ he gasped. ‘Are you sure? How do you know?’

‘I’m a clairvoyant, remember?’

Vanka shook his head, ‘No … not Heydrich … I’m not going anywhere near that fuck … no … bollocks to that.’

Burlesque, by contrast, was enthused. ‘Gor, that’s even greater, that is. The Leader, you say? That trick yous pulled on that Morris bloke musta really got the feathers flying in the Ministry an’ no mistake.’ Burlesque called over to a passing barmaid for a glass of Solution. ‘We’ll be able to arsk a fortune in fees.’

‘Are you fucking insane?’ snarled Vanka, abandoning his usually cool demeanour. ‘Perform a séance for Heydrich? If there’s even a hint of trickery then we’ll be arrested on the spot.’

Burlesque wasn’t listening. ‘Maybe I should ask a century, wot wiv it bin the Leader an’ all.’

‘I don’t care if they’re offering a thousand fucking guineas. I can’t spend it if I’m banged up in Wewelsburg Castle hanging from the ceiling by my scrotum, now can I?’ Vanka shook his head even more firmly. ‘No, I’m not doing it. I’ve one rule in my life and that’s to keep as much distance between myself and those fucking …’ His instinct for self-preservation kicked in: he gave a quick look around to make sure there was no one in the pub listening to what he was saying. ‘… lunatics who run the ForthRight as is humanly or, in their case, as is inhumanly possible.’ He shoved his half-finished glass of Solution across the table. It seemed his thirst had suddenly deserted him. ‘Now, if you’ll excuse me I’ve got to get home urgently.’

‘Wot? But we’ve got fings to discuss, Wanker, like wot share ov the takings I’m getting. As your manager …’

‘Fuck your discussions, Burlesque, I’m going home to pack.’

‘Pack? Where yous goin’?’

‘A place called Somewhere-Else-In-The-Demi-Monde.’

‘Ah, don’t be like that, Wanker. I’d ’ave thought you’d ‘ave bin pleased.’ Burlesque took a stone-cold sausage off Ella’s plate and gave it a ruminative gnaw. ‘Iffn Miss Ella here can do the business wiv a Daemon, well, the sky’s the limit. We’ll be able to charge …’

‘Are you totally fucking crackers, Burlesque? Can you imagine the amount of shit we’re going to be in if our séance goes wrong in front of Comrade Leader Heydrich?’

‘Yeah, but fink abart it, Wanker: wot iffn it goes right! I can see the handbill now. “Burlesque Bandstand Entertainments proudly presents, by royal …”‘ He stopped. ‘Nah, I can’t use the word “royal”, the Party’s still twitchy.’ He paused to scratch his
groin, presumably, Ella decided, searching for inspiration. ‘That’s it: “by Imperial Warrant: Wanker Maykov an’ the Amazing Miss Marie Laveau, the Demi-Monde’s Foremost Physicalists”. You’ll be a star, Wanker. Make a fortune we will: twenty guineas an ‘ead we could charge to attend wun ov your sorries, no problem.’

‘I’m not doing it.’

‘I think we should, Vanka.’

The two men turned to look at Ella. Men in the ForthRight weren’t accustomed to being interrupted by women, especially when they were discussing business.

‘Now yous talkin’ sense, Miss Thomas.’

‘Under no circumstances,’ Vanka continued to protest.

‘I
need
to, Vanka,’ insisted Ella. ‘It might be the only way I have of finding the friend of mine I was telling you about, the one who is missing.’

Vanka shot Ella a venomous look and when he answered his voice had a distinct edge to it. ‘No way. We’ve created far too big a stink as it is. The last thing you want to do is attract more attention. You start being paraded around in front of Heydrich and the Checkya will nab you for sure, and if they nab you, they’ll nab me.’

‘Is that your final word, Vanka?’ said Ella in an equally determined voice.

‘Damned right it is.’

‘Then I’ll do it without you,’ she said quietly.

The mouths of the two men flopped open. ‘You can’t do it without me,’ protested Vanka.

‘Oh, yessen she can,’ interjected Burlesque quickly. ‘I’ve seen ‘er. She don’t need yous, Wanker. I’ll get you a new assistant, Miss Thomas …’

Vanka glared at Burlesque, obviously angered by the abrupt way he’d been demoted from ‘star’ to ‘assistant’.

‘… maybe even a new frock. That old bit ov curtain ain’t suitable for a Star like wot yous will be.’

‘Wait a minute, Burlesque. Ella here is
my
assistant. This is
my
act.’

Burlesque shrugged his protests aside. ‘Times change, Wanker. Opportunities like wot this is don’t come around very often and when they does, they’ve gotta be grabbed wiv both ‘ands. Gor, I can see it now, Miss Thomas ‘ere playing the Palladium.’

Burlesque lapsed into a lucrative daydream, leaving Ella to deal with a scowling Vanka. ‘Vanka, it’s a great opportunity. We’ve got to do it. I need your showmanship, Vanka; I need you to work the audience.’

Vanka shook his head. ‘I can’t, Ella, there might be people there, people I don’t want to meet.’

The penny dropped: now Ella understood Vanka’s reluctance. ‘For the love of God … for the love of ABBA,’ she quickly corrected herself, ‘there are people I don’t want to meet either.’ Wasn’t that the truth: the prospect of being in the same room as Reinhard Heydrich certainly wasn’t flipping her bananas. ‘But that’s not a problem, Vanka. I’ve been thinking about how we could spice up our act and I’ve come to the conclusion that we need to be a bit more theatrical. You’re already been billed as Mephisto so no one will know your real name and if we come on stage wearing masks …’

‘Masks?’ asked Vanka incredulously. ‘Like they wear in the Quartier Chaud?’

‘Yes, that way no one will be able to recognise either of us.’

‘I like the idea of making your act a bit more theatrical,’ mused Burlesque. ‘We could ‘ave a coupla birds wiv really big charms wandering around in the …’

‘Shut up, Burlesque,’ snapped Ella, and to her amazement,
that’s just what he did. ‘I need you, Vanka, I need you to help me design a trick so big that no one will ever imagine that it is a trick.’ Ella suddenly became aware that Burlesque was hanging on her every word. ‘I need you to help me design the temple, the hounfo.’

‘Wot’s a
hounfo?
’ asked a suddenly nervous Burlesque. ‘Is it expensive?’

An hour later Ella and Vanka – having left a half-pissed and very happy Burlesque asleep in the Pig – were sitting back in Vanka’s rooms.

Vanka had lapsed into a fretful silence as though he knew what he should do, but couldn’t bring himself to actually do it. It took half a bottle of Solution and nearly an hour’s worth of dark brooding before he pulled himself out of his mood. ‘Is this Daemon – the one Crowley was talking about – the one you want to take back to NoirVille?’ he asked.

There was no point in lying. ‘Yes, I got that much out of Crowley. He was a tough one to read and he blocked most of his mind off to me, but I found out about the Daemon and one or two other bits and pieces of useful information. The main thing though is that Crowley has given me a golden opportunity to rescue the Daemon.’

‘So come on, tell me: why is it so all-fired important that you abduct this Daemon? Are you mixed up with the Blood Brothers? Are they making you do this? Do they want the Daemon back in NoirVille so they can milk it of its blood?’

Ella sighed. ‘It’s too difficult to explain, Vanka. All I can tell you is it’s something I have to do; I have to help the Daemon escape Crowley and take her to NoirVille.’

‘I don’t like this, Ella. I think all this milking of Daemons is wrong.’

‘Vanka … please … you’ll just have to trust me: this has got nothing to do with stealing the Daemon’s blood. I don’t mean the Daemon any harm, quite the contrary in fact. But I do need your help to rescue her.’

Vanka shook his head. ‘It’s madness, you know. To kidnap a Daemon from under the nose of Heydrich is … madness. And even if you succeed, the SS will hunt you down.’

‘The Demi-Monde is a big place. And once I get to NoirVille I intend to disappear.’

Wasn’t that the truth?

‘Yeah, but anyone helping you will have to disappear too. They’ll need a new name, a new identity, a new home, a new life. To evade the SS will cost a lot of money. It’ll take a fortune in bribes and hush money.’

‘How much?’

He shrugged. ‘I dunno. Probably half a million guineas.’

‘Vanka, how would you like to earn a million guineas?’ enquired Ella quietly.

Vanka looked up from the doleful consideration of his near-empty glass of Solution. ‘A million guineas?’ He laughed. ‘No one’s got a million guineas. That’s more money than in all of the ForthRight.’

‘No it isn’t. The Ministry of Psychic Affairs has over fifteen million guineas to its credit in the Blood Bank in Berlin.’

‘You learnt that while you were holding Crowley’s hands, didn’t you?’ There was a distinct flavouring of admiration in Vanka’s voice.

‘Correct. I now know all the Ministry’s bank account details, all the passwords they use to access it … everything. I could clean out their account like that.’ She snapped her fingers.

‘Then why are you telling me this?’ asked Vanka suspiciously.

‘Why aren’t you down at the Bank now, making yourself a very rich woman?’

‘Because I need your help. I need your help to make that Daemon vanish from Dashwood Manor.’

‘A million guineas?’

‘Yeah.’

‘Just tell me why you put on that act with Crowley. Why did you vamp him?’

‘Crowley is suspicious of me so I acted out what he expected me to be: a pantomime WhoDoo mambo. It worked too: he just dismissed me as a brainless, oversexed Shade. And a man who’s thinking what it would be like to jump my bones ain’t thinking about the things he should be thinking about.’ She gave Vanka a grin. ‘I thought I vamped him pretty good: what do you think?’

‘I think you could … well, never mind what I think.’

For five minutes Vanka strode up and down the shabby room lost in thought. Finally he turned to Ella. ‘Okay, Miss Thomas, you’ve got a deal.’

Ella leapt up out of her chair, threw her arms around Vanka’s neck and pressed her lips firmly against his.

It was Vanka who broke away. He gave Ella a sideways look. ‘Remember, Ella, I’m only human.’

And that, Ella decided, was the big problem.

The greatest and most compelling aim of UnFunDa -Mentalism is to reclaim the racial purity of the Aryans (as the direct descendants of the Pre-Folk) lost during the Fall and to eliminate all contaminating UnderMentionable aspects from the population. Whilst modern Eugenical studies contend that, over ten generations, it will be possible to breed out the UnderMentionable impurities from the Aryan people, it will also be necessary to sup -plement these more considered aspects of Eugenical policy with Exterminationist strategies designed to eliminate – finally and totally – UnderMentionables from the breed -ing pool. This policy of Extermination I call the Final Solution.

– My Struggle: Reinhard Heydrich, ForthRight Free Press

It was bad enough when word came that Comrade Leader Heydrich would be personally interviewing the Daemon and that the interview would be taking place at Dashwood Manor. That, by itself, was enough to throw the household into panic.

It was the codicil to the message that had threatened to reduce Trixie’s governess to gibbering insensibility. The instruction that His Holiness Comrade Crowley was intent upon holding a séance in the Manor’s ballroom, a séance that the
Leader and other notables would be attending, had been almost too much for the woman’s fragile constitution to bear, especially as it was to be, according to the note, ‘a séance designed to unlock the Daemon’s darkest secrets and to use whatever conjurations and adjurations are necessary to make said Daemon pliant and obedient’.

Trixie’s governess almost crumbled under this weight of responsibility and the thought that the Manor would soon be the venue for something as outré as a WhoDoo séance. To have her home playing host to a psychic and – so they had been warned – a Shade witch was intolerable. And when the gang of rather uncouth workmen had arrived to construct this mysterious thing called a hounfo in the Manor’s ballroom she became nigh on hysterical. But after a quiet word from the master and a glass of twenty per cent Solution, she rallied and turned all her nervous energy towards preparing Dashwood Manor for the Leader’s arrival.

Under Governess Margaret’s impassioned – and often tearful – instruction the servants polished and scrubbed, swept and tidied until the Manor was immaculate and smelt of beeswax and bustle. Never had the Manor been so clean and polished nor the wooden floors buffed to such a dangerously lustrous sheen. But for Trixie the most singular aspect of this premature Spring-cleaning was the servants being instructed to take down all of the mirrors that hung in the hallway and in the drawing room.

Her father noted Trixie’s confusion. ‘The Leader has an aversion to mirrors. He will not look into them,’ he said by way of explanation. This only fuelled her curiosity.

‘But why?’

A shrug from her father. ‘Who knows, Trixie? The Leader is different from the rest of us mere mortals. Perhaps,’ he added in a whispered aside, ‘he does not wish to see what he has
become.’ This thought made the Comrade Commissar pause for a moment and then he edged closer to his daughter. ‘And we must be careful of what Reinhard Heydrich has become. As my daughter, Trixie, you will be introduced to the Leader, but it is doubtful whether he will deign to talk with you. But if he does, you must answer his questions correctly as a good Daughter of the ForthRight. No demurral and none of your famous sarcasm. You may be young, Trixie, but your youth will not protect you: just remember it is treason to express doubts about the rightness of what the Leader says or does. For a female to question the ForthRight’s ultimate victory over the other peoples of the Demi-Monde is HerEsy.’ He paused for a moment as though running through a mental checklist. ‘You know your UnFunDaMentalist catechisms? You may be asked to recite them by Heydrich; the man is a stickler for Party dogma.’