The Doorkeepers (16 page)

“Mr Josh Winward. No, no – tell them it's Julia's brother.”

“Hold the line, please.”

He waited while the phone rang, and rang. Eventually, he heard a quavery woman's voice say, “'Ullo? 'Oo is it?”

“Is that LA Vender Hill 3223? I have Julia's brother on the line. Will you accept the charges?”

“Will I what?”

“The caller is asking you to pay for the call.”

“'Oo did you say it was?”

Josh broke in and said, “Tell her it's urgent, for Christ's sake. It's a matter of life and death.”

“I can't pass on any more information, sir. I'm sorry. Otherwise you could have a whole conversation, couldn't you, and you wouldn't be paying for it.”

“Look, I have to speak to this woman. It's desperately important. My sister's been murdered, and this is the only way I'm going to find out who did it.”

“Hold on, kuller.”

There was a pause, and then the quavery woman's voice asked, “Did you say Julia's brother? Yes … all right. I'll talk to him. Only for a moment, mind. I'm not made of money.”

Josh said, “Mrs Marmion? Mrs Marguerite Marmion? Yes! This is Josh Winward speaking, I'm Julia Winward's brother from San Francisco.”

“You are, are you? And 'oo's Julia Winward, when she's at ‘ome?”

“You don't know her? I found your address amongst her belongings.”

“That must've been a mistake. I've never 'eard of anybody called Julia Winward. I don't know anybody called Julia.”

Josh was just about to shout at her,
Why did you agree to pay for the call, if you don't know anybody called Julia?,
when it dawned on him what Mrs Marmion was trying to tell him. She
must
have known Julia – otherwise she wouldn't have agreed
to talk to him at all. But she didn't want to admit it over an open telephone line.

“So nobody called Julia ever stayed with you?”

“No. I've got a big two-bedroomed flat upstairs in my house. I wouldn't go renting it out to some chit of a secretary, would I?”

“I guess you wouldn't. How long has the flat been empty?”

“Ten months, just over.”

“Do you think I could take a look at it?”

“It's full of stuff. Nobody's been round to collect it all yet.”

“I see. Do you think I could just come down to Lavender Hill and talk to you, then? I'm pretty interested in renting a flat myself.”

“I'm afraid that's impossible. I'm afraid. That's impossible. I really 'ave to go now. Goodbye.”

Mrs Marmion hung up and Josh was left with a long disengaged tone. He replaced the receiver with a frown.

“What's the matter?” asked Nancy. A small man with a bristly moustache was standing outside the phone booth glaring at them impatiently.

Josh said, “Julia was staying with Mrs Marmion the whole time she was here. Mrs Marmion said that she didn't … but she knew that Julia was a secretary. I think she was saying the
opposite
of everything that was true.”

“Why would she do that?”

“Maybe she suspected that her line was tapped. Maybe she's frightened. She
said
the flat was full of stuff, but I think she
meant
that somebody had been round to clear away all of Julia's belongings. When I asked her if I could go visit her, she said ‘I'm afraid that's impossible'. But then she said ‘
I
'
m afraid,'
like she was really afraid. And a pause, and then
‘That's impossible'.”

“You're not reading something into this that wasn't there?”

“She said she didn't know anybody called Julia. But if that was true, why did she agree to talk to Julia's brother?”

“So what are we going to do now?” asked Nancy.

“We're going to go see her, of course.”

“In Lavender Hill? How? It's miles away, and we don't have any parallel-Londonish money.”

“I don't know … maybe I could hock my watch.”

They were still discussing ways to get to Lavender Hill when the man with the bristly moustache rapped a coin very sharply on the window. Josh gave him a wave to show that they were nearly through.

“I still think we ought to go back and change our clothes and work out a way to pay for things,” said Nancy.

“Oh, yes? Supposing we do that, and then we can't find our way back here, ever again?”

“Josh, this place is real. I can feel it. I can hear it. I can certainly
smell
it. If it's real, we can get back to it.”

“What about candles?”

“There's a church on the way back to Star Yard. They must have candles in there.”

Josh thought for a moment. He knew Nancy was right. They wouldn't get far without money, or suitable clothes. What would happen tonight, when they needed someplace to stay? And apart from that, he didn't think it was a good idea for them to look so conspicuous. Whoever had taken all of Julia's belongings away from her flat at Mrs Marmion's house obviously didn't want anybody to discover that Julia had ever been here. And Mrs Marmion was plainly frightened of them.

The man with the moustache rapped on the window again. Finally he tugged open the door and demanded, “Look here! Are you going to make another phone call or not? Some of us have trains to catch.”

“Sure, I'm sorry,” said Josh, and they stepped out of the booth and back into the crowds.

They started to walk back toward Fleet Street. The wind began to rise, and sheets of newspaper blew across the sidewalks, catching against the legs of the passers-by. A speck of grit flew into Nancy's eye, and they had to stop for a moment while Josh carefully extricated it with the dampened tip of her headscarf.

They walked as far as Kingsway, jostling their way through the crowds. As they reached the zebra crossing, however, they
realized that they were the only people heading eastward, and that everybody else was hurrying west. Not just hurrying – they were walking as fast as they could possibly go without actually breaking into a run.

Josh stopped again and turned his head. “What the hell's going on here? What's the goddamned rush?”

As they crossed over the road, he looked into the faces of the tide of people coming toward them. They weren't panicking, but there was a kind of determination on their faces that was even more unsettling than panic. When he was a boy, he had seen an audience trying to escape from a burning movie theater in Santa Cruz, and these people had the same grim look.
Me. I have to save me.

Nancy caught hold of Josh's hand to prevent herself from being jostled away. “This is so weird,” she said. “Where are all these people going?”

Josh was buffeted by a large man in a flapping camel-hair overcoat. “Hey – watch it, fellow!” he called, but the man stared at him and hurried on.

“They definitely know something that we don't,” said Nancy.

They reached the wide area of paving in front of the Law Courts. Only a few minutes before it had been crowded with reporters and lawyers and curious bystanders. Now it was almost deserted, except for two barristers who were hurrying into its vaulted interior as fast as they could, with their black gowns flapping.

The eastbound traffic was still solid, but dozens of people were making their way between the cars and taxis, their briefcases and umbrellas held high, as if they were wading waist-deep through water. Passengers were abandoning buses, laden with shopping bags and briefcases, and joining the throng on the sidewalks.

“I don't like this,” said Josh, looking around. “Something has seriously spooked these people. It looks like Godzilla's arrived in town.”

He tried to catch a man's sleeve. The man jerked up his arm, as if he expected Josh to start beating him.

“Hey!” Josh demanded. “I'm not going to hurt you! Just tell me why everybody's running!”

The man fled away without answering, colliding with a young woman pushing a large baby carriage. Josh watched him go, shaking his head. “That's one terrified dude.”

“Whatever's happening, we still have to get back to Star Yard. And we still have to find some candles.”

They pushed their way through the crowd until they could see the grimy facade of St Osbert's Church, which fronted directly on to the street. The traffic was still deafening, but as they came nearer, Josh thought he heard a muffled drumming sound, with a sharper
rat-a-tat-tat!
on top of it that echoed and re-echoed all the way up Fleet Street.

Nancy reached the church door and twisted the handle. “It's locked,” she said. “I thought churches were always supposed to be open.”

Josh gave the handle a hefty tug. The door was definitely locked and bolted, and it was made of studded black oak. There was no possible way of forcing it open.

“What do we do now?” asked Nancy.

“I saw a couple of stationery stores around the corner. Maybe they have candles. I don't know. Maybe we can improvise something out of sealing wax. In any case, I think the best thing we can do is get the hell out of here.”

They had almost reached the lower end of Chancery Lane. The muffled drumming grew louder and louder, and the
rat-tat
rhythm was bouncing off the windows all along Fleet Street like hailstones. It was then that they saw what everybody was hurrying away from.

It was frightening because it was so solemn, and so out of place, like a funeral being held in the street. A procession of men all dressed in black, old-fashioned clothes, cloaks and britches and tall black hats were making their way up Fleet Street, past the Olde Cheshire Cheese pub, led by two dog-handlers with four black dogs between them, straining at their leads. Behind them came six or seven drummers, also dressed in black, with wide triangular black caps that looked like rooks' beaks. The larger drums were beating a dead-slow
march time,
poom
and
poom
and
poom.
The smaller drums were rattling out an aggressive volley of noise that made it almost impossible to think.

Behind the drummers came a group of ten or eleven men, all wearing tall black hats and black capes that trailed along the sidewalk. They carried drawn swords, which Josh could see glinting in the gray daylight. Their faces looked gray, too, until Josh realized that they were wearing hoods over their heads … hoods with exaggerated black eyes painted on them.

“The Hooded Men,” said Josh. “This may be London, 2001, but they still have those Puritan guys patrolling the streets.”

“Come on, Josh, I think we ought to stay
way
out of their way.”

“You're right. Let's get back to Star Yard. Maybe we won't need candles for the trip back.”

They jogged up a Chancery Lane whose sidewalks were increasingly deserted. A few spots of rain began to fly in the wind. They reached Carey Street and crossed over to Star Yard.

As they entered it, however, two young men came toward them. One of them was dressed with almost ridiculous elegance in a long gray coat with a black velour collar. The other was much more bulky, with a round brown face that looked half-Burmese.

Josh took hold of Nancy's arm and drew her to one side of the yard, so that the two young men could pass them. But the thin young man stopped right beside them and the larger one moved himself in front of them so that they couldn't go any further.

“What is this?” said Josh. “A mugging, or what?”

“Depends what you've got to offer, guvnor. We're always on the lookout for novelties. Especially if they come from
over there.”

“I don't know what you're talking about.”

The thin young man leaned forward and looked into Josh's face so closely that he could smell the cigarette smoke on
his breath. He was elegant, he was so handsome that he was almost beautiful, but he was a wreck.

“Jack be quick?” he ventured.
“Now
do you know what I'm talking about?”

“What do you want?” asked Josh. “If you're thinking of mugging us, you're out of luck. We don't have any money at all.”

“You're a Yank,” said the thin young man, cocking his head on one side like a parrot. “How about that, then? We don't often get Yanks.”

“Look, we're just tourists.”

“Tourists?
You're taking a chance, ain't you?”

“What's wrong with being a tourist?”

“What's wrong with being a gob of spit in a hot frying pan? You ought to thank your lucky moons that the Hoodies didn't catch a hold of you first.”

The Burmese-looking youth had his eyes half-closed in concentration and his hand cupped to his ear. “They've just turned the corner, Sy. We'd better get weaving.”

The thin young man took hold of Josh's arm with a bony hand covered in silver rings. “Come on … let's scarper before the dogs pick up the scent.”

“Listen, pal, we're not going anyplace. Especially with you.”

“You ain't got much in the way of viable choices,” said the thin young man. “You can't get back through the door, not today. So it looks like the dogs'll have you, less'n you follow us along. You ever see a man noshed on by dogs? Not an appetizing sight.”

“You know about the door?”

“What door?”

“You said we can't go back through the door, not today. So you know about the door.”

“I know where you and your good lady come from, guvnor; and I've got a good guess where you're going now. But it's no use your trying to get back there, not till the same time tomorrow. Surprised you didn't know that.”

“What are you talking about?”

“It's as plain as mud, guvnor,” he said, and slowly spun his finger in the air. “You can only go through the door once in every turn of the earth. Don't matter which way. Once only
per diem
and that's your lot.”