Doctor Who_ The Cabinet Of Light Part 2

Lecha.s.seur had a smile that went right through the skin and into the soul. He got by on charm, politeness and novelty. The darkness of his skin and the Louisiana in his voice weren't impediments though they were never unalloyed blessings. He also had a whispered reputation as a war hero though he couldn't remember doing anything better or braver than the next soldier. So, he did not have a difficult time but even so there were men and women in London who found it easy to hate and the Inferno Inferno club promised to be full of them. club promised to be full of them.

He was not refused a ticket, perhaps the clerk couldn't see him through the dirt smeared on the gla.s.s booth. When he got inside, once his eyes had adjusted to the annihilating redness, he found the club nearly deserted. Even after the sudden influx of young men towards the end of the magic act, fewer than a third of the tables were occupied. The body of the club was below ground. There was a flight of steps down one of the walls, just inside the main door. Coming through he'd got the impression of a cavern with smooth walls honed into angles but still retaining the lopsided and irregular shape of a natural cave. By swastikalight he saw he was mistaken, the walls were a deliberate collection of random angular shapes. They were decorated not with the expected memorabilia but jagged surrealist pictures of zigzagging landscapes, lopsided people and crooked houses. The stage was raised in the centre, tables ranged round it in no obvious pattern.

He sat alone. No one was looking at him. The red light made him invisible.

Walken's act began shortly after Lecha.s.seur arrived and, judging from the low conversation coming from nearby tables, it held no-one else's attention; it wasn't until the magic swastika appeared that the crowd began to take notice. Only Lecha.s.seur sat rapt throughout, but he had come to get a measure of Walken, not his act. There was something perversely fascinating about the show. It was designed to be cold and unengaging, it was performed without any of the flourishes or the humour he expected from a conjuror.

Walken's nameless a.s.sistant had introduced him and he'd come on stage wearing a turban of wasps. Real wasps they exploded in a swarm from his head and were sucked away by hidden tubes, but a few escaped and meandered sluggishly round the club. It was bitterly cold and they were waiting to die. Lecha.s.seur brushed one off his coat. Walken was not a tall man and he had hidden himself in a black robe, worn over a tuxedo. Under the ma.s.s of wasps he had been wearing a cowl, which he did not lower, so it was impossible to judge the shape of his head. His face was part-hidden by a domino mask. He wrapped himself in layers. His tricks were mainly unremarkable but he was a good hypnotist.

Walken called a waitress onto the stage and, with a wave of his hand, convinced her that she loved his a.s.sistant pa.s.sionately and she spent the rest of the act gazing lovingly up at the stage from a spare table. Walken hypnotised a volunteer into thinking he was a dog and, as an encore, brought a dog on stage and hypnotised it into thinking it was a man. It tottered on two legs and tried to speak. While looking for his volunteer, Walken's eyes pa.s.sed over Lecha.s.seur, then moved on.

At the end, he created a swastika from thin air and set it spinning.'This,' he declaimed, goading the suddenly, shamefully alert audience, 'this misunderstood symbol is our miracle. It is not a cross, it predates the Greek Christ. This is the secret knowledge pa.s.sed down to us from the Aryan people of the Indus. This swastika is the great wheel of life.'

Though a small man, he was strong. He scooped up the corpse of his a.s.sistant without effort and carried it back into the cabinet. He set it spinning again, in time with the turning of the swastika.

'The wheel of life unturns death and time!' Walken announced. 'The swastika brings forth a regeneration.'

The swastika-light flared to fill the club and Lecha.s.seur flinched, seeing a brief negative impression of the conjuror, dressed all in white, on the inside of his eyelids. When he opened his eyes, all was red again, except for a pale spotlight on the magic cabinet, which wobbled faintly. No one in the club breathed. Lecha.s.seur wanted to look round for Walken, who had faded into the darkness, but his eyes were fixed on the box.

The magic box collapsed in on itself and the blonde woman was there unharmed in the middle, no longer in black but draped in a red, white, black swastika flag. She displayed bare and unwounded limbs to the clubgoers. Played perfectly, the crowd lurched to their feet, a violent ovation that lasted well over a minute despite the a.s.sistant's squeaks for hush. The magic was over, the cabaret had begun.

Lecha.s.seur saw the shadows ripple where Walken was making his getaway. He rose and slipped after him, into the back of the Inferno.Behind the jagged unsettling walls the club was pokey and unremarkable. Walken slipped down whitewashed pa.s.sageways and into an annexe. Lecha.s.seur went after him, not furtively but still quiet enough not to be heard. At the front of the club, the audience were clapping politely as the flag-draped girl sang and danced.

Walken had his back to the door, running his hands under the tap at a washbasin. He didn't turn when he heard Lecha.s.seur enter. He slipped off his robe and mask and hung them on a wallhook. Then he stood studying himself in a mirror, pulling at the flesh of his face before turning. He looked unexpectedly young, maybe only thirty. His hair was slicked back, a faintly old-fas.h.i.+oned look that made Lecha.s.seur think at once of Weimar elegance and Walken's own hyperbole about turning back time, but beneath that he had an unmistakable c.o.c.kney street style, a tight rage in his eyes, a wiry thug-body, a sour lopsided smile.

'Heil Hitler,' Lecha.s.seur said, leaning on the door frame, his arms folded.

'Hitler was a Jew. Hitler and Himmler both. They were self-hating Jews. That explains a lot about what went wrong, don't you think?' The words spilled out in his practised stage voice but then his accent turned pure North-of-the-River. 'Now get out of here.'

Lecha.s.seur was laconic, American. 'I'm here on business. I hear you're looking for the Doctor.' here on business. I hear you're looking for the Doctor.'

Walken balled his fists, looked ready to pounce. 'Get out or I'll call the police.'

'You'd really call the police? To your club? With all that goes on here?'

Walken grinned viciously at him. 'No one would care. This week's enemy is Stalin.' Lecha.s.seur thought that Walken would order him out a third time but instead the conjuror softened and said: 'What do you know about the Doctor?' His tongue was moving visibly under the skin of his mouth.

'I know you're looking for him.'Walken stood still and suspicious for a second, then his face hardened. 'Get out,' he said and the third time meant it was serious. Lecha.s.seur nodded and turned away but Walken was talking again, reverting to his conjuror's voice.

'I worked for the British during the war. I used my magic against the Germans. I stood at the dawn of time where my spirit wrestled with the Fuhrer in psychic combat. I was a patriot.'

'I'm sure you did your bit,' Lecha.s.seur agreed. Walken slid alongside him and offered him his hand.

'I can see you're an educated man,' he apologised. 'Perhaps next time we meet, we can start afresh.'

Lecha.s.seur shook the offered hand, and sensed a powerful hunger in the magician's grip.

It seemed a good idea to get out of the Inferno quickly. It took him less than five minutes to break back in. The evening dark offered him cover and once he'd scaled the back wall no one could see him from the alley. The doors were locked but the least-cracked ground floor window wasn't and opened smoothly. Singing and cheering rose through the floor from the club below, the mood had turned rowdy since he'd confronted Walken. The conjuror himself was probably still changing. Most cabaret nights he acted as MC, or simply held court at his table with his entourage and his mistresses to watch the show. Lecha.s.seur's contacts said that Walken had simply watched too many gangster flicks but Lecha.s.seur wondered if he wasn't modelling himself on the occult charlatans of Weimar Berlin. Many of them, he remembered, gave themselves t.i.tles like D quickly. It took him less than five minutes to break back in. The evening dark offered him cover and once he'd scaled the back wall no one could see him from the alley. The doors were locked but the least-cracked ground floor window wasn't and opened smoothly. Singing and cheering rose through the floor from the club below, the mood had turned rowdy since he'd confronted Walken. The conjuror himself was probably still changing. Most cabaret nights he acted as MC, or simply held court at his table with his entourage and his mistresses to watch the show. Lecha.s.seur's contacts said that Walken had simply watched too many gangster flicks but Lecha.s.seur wondered if he wasn't modelling himself on the occult charlatans of Weimar Berlin. Many of them, he remembered, gave themselves t.i.tles like Doctor.

The ground floor was a nest of dirty grey pa.s.sages and unsuspicious store rooms. Lecha.s.seur flitted from one to the next in the darkness, his eyes s.h.i.+ning, listening carefully to the rhythm of the subterranean noise for any change. He took a narrow flight of steps up to the next storey, where the floorboards vanished under carpet and the bare walls were papered over. The first door he found was an office. The window offered a disheartening view of the back yard, nothing magical. Most of the drawers on the desk were locked, the others were empty or full of stationery. There was a folder on the top with a Sh.o.r.editch address inked neatly by the spine. He picked it open. Newspaper clippings, all the same subject but arranged chronologically with reportage giving way to filler, what the press called lifestyle pieces. He didn't recognise the photographs of the girl at first but she was familiar and a browse through the headlines and articles jogged his memory. She was the girl with amnesia they'd found in the East End, the girl in pink pyjamas. girl in pink pyjamas. No explanation, no notes, nothing connecting her to the Doctor, but still he felt he'd found a new line of enquiry. No explanation, no notes, nothing connecting her to the Doctor, but still he felt he'd found a new line of enquiry.

According to the final item before the clippings ran out, she was staying at a guest house in Sh.o.r.editch, six months' rent paid for by the yellow press. Lecha.s.seur replaced the file but made a note of the address.

There was another unlocked room on this storey and Walken was standing just inside. Lecha.s.seur caught his voice coming through the walls and checked himself before pus.h.i.+ng at the door. He eased it open a crack and saw the black line of the magician's back.

'I know,' he was saying, 'I said we'd take the girl tonight but things have changed. Something's come up. We can still shadow her.'

Walken wasn't alone no, he moved his head to one side and Lecha.s.seur caught sight of the telephone still there was someone else there. It was a big room and he sensed at least two others present. He caught sight of a stocking'd leg and thought of Mrs Blandish but the woman leaned forward to kiss Walken on the cheek and it wasn't her. The room seemed big, a conference room with a curved, probably round table.

Then Walken said: 'I met the Doctor today' and Lecha.s.seur strained to hear more. 'No, he came here... No, and I'm not going to tell you where he is. I wouldn't be surprised if she can tap into the phones... Yes, Yes, but I recognised him... and, but I recognised him... and, no, no, I'm not sure, but anyone can be persuaded, even the Doctor, and I'm an expert.' I'm not sure, but anyone can be persuaded, even the Doctor, and I'm an expert.'

Then Walken turned and, without looking, pushed the door closed.

Lecha.s.seur cycled home, his head bloated with new information. He turned the pink pyjama girl's address into a mnemonic, a little poem that he could visit tomorrow. The rest of the clues he processed calmly: the amnesia case girl was implicated somehow and presumably she was the one Walken was planning to 'take', though not tonight at least; Walken had found the Doctor, or the Doctor had found him; Walken was holding this knowledge from someone; his relations.h.i.+p with the Doctor wasn't close, not yet... ... and, best of all, the Doctor is real.

So absorbed was he with all this information that he'd cycled to his front door before spotting the two rough men ugly, with big hands waiting outside for him. He ignored them at first but as he locked his bike away they strolled up behind him. They were ugly at different ends of the spectrum, the first a squat ma.s.s whose face had been flattened by repeated pummelling, the tall second as crooked as any man pictured on the walls of the Inferno. They were the thin one and the fat one, the Laurel and the Hardy, and the Laurel had a Luger in his big hands. The barrel pushed into the small of Lecha.s.seur's back.

Lecha.s.seur believed he had time to turn and knock the gun away but the Hardy was probably armed as well and since he recognised neither he expected they would at least pause to offer an explanation before shooting.

'Don't cry out, don't say anything, that's our car there, we're going for a ride and if you do as we say you'll be back here unhurt by midnight, nod if you understand.'

Lecha.s.seur brought his head down and up, and on the up he saw the double-act's car at the kerbside. Silver Ghost. Wh Silver Ghost. Whoever was pulling their strings was both wealthy and ostentatious, not a good sign. He saw intense mindless cruelty in the puppets' eyes but they would do as they were told. He let them put him in the car, the Hardy getting in beside him, the Laurel slipping his gun away before climbing into the driver's seat.

With the guns hidden, Lecha.s.seur chanced a question: 'Where are we going?'

Four beads of contempt from the Hardy: 'Mestizer wants to talk.'

He smiled thoughtfully and nodded. The name meant nothing.The Silver Ghost slid away and soon pa.s.sed out of the familiar neighbourhood, heading north beyond Camden. The journey was smooth and he reflected that he should be abducted in style more often. His kidnappers were silent but he doubted they had much to say, so he pa.s.sed the time watching the streets. The others made no attempt to stop him.

There was a reinforced leather bolster separating the back seats from the front but Lecha.s.seur had soon realised that there was a fourth person in the car with them, sitting ahead of him in the front pa.s.senger seat. They were not Laurel and Hardy then but Groucho, Chico and now the ghoulishly silent Harpo. The bolster blocked Lecha.s.seur's view but the Harpo looked bald, or was perhaps wearing a skullcap or leather helmet. He had a large blank dome of a scalp.

Lecha.s.seur noticed that the whole of the front pa.s.senger seat had been removed, so the Harpo must be squatting in the gouged cavity.

Beyond Camden he was in unfamiliar territory. Still, they said he'd be returned by midnight, which meant they couldn't be going far. It turned out to be another half hour's journey, into the comfortable northern suburbs of London. There was more green out here, more s.p.a.ce between buildings though the trees were November-naked. The car followed a back road along the line of a high brick wall. The trees behind the walls were healthily leafed as if their enclosed world was still in summer. Up ahead the wall was broken by elaborate iron gates that had somehow escaped their war-duty. Lecha.s.seur wasn't entirely surprised when the car turned into the driveway. The gates yawned and the car swept down a gravel track into the grounds beyond the wall.

The house in the grounds was in silhouette and blotted out the night sky with a different darkness. The car's headlights pa.s.sed over the walls as it approached but picked out only fiddly detail on the edifice. It had a deep gravity that hurt Lecha.s.seur's eyes when he tried to take it in, it was too large. The car turned down a side path rather than approach the main doors and slowed by a dark-gla.s.sed conservatory extension.

The Hardy produced his gun and prodded Lecha.s.seur out of the car. The Silver Ghost's engine hummed and it slid away once the two men were out of the back. With a twitch of his gun, the Hardy pointed him to a side door on the conservatory. Lecha.s.seur tugged it open and took a blast of sweltering air in the face.

In London, Mrs Bag-of-Bones' guest house had a small sc.r.a.p-filled yard and a patch of yellowing gra.s.s. The conservatory here was at least five times that size and filled with colour. It was a paradise of hothouse orchids and exotic fruits feeding from the scalding hot lights arranged in gantries along the ceiling and from the fecund red earth that coated the floor. November had been banished from the gla.s.shouse, which had seemed so much smaller on the outside, and there was a ripe stench of vegetation and dry soil in the sweltering air. But there was no birdsong, no sounds except the tread of the two pairs of feet and a babble of water. Everything was still and fake. If he broke a plant's stem Lecha.s.seur was sure he'd find it artificial, ultra-modern.

There was a model pool in the centre of the room, fed from a false spring among the plants and lined with pebbles. They walked round the edge and Lecha.s.seur resisted the urge to touch the water to find if it were as cold as he suspected. The conservatory was baking hot and wet, not enough to make him uncomfortable but the Hardy was sweating. He stopped Lecha.s.seur by the poolside, where wicker chairs were arranged around a table. Lecha.s.seur sat and watched the Hardy remove his coat. The goon's flesh was blotched with heat, he grunted and any resemblance to the pompous, dignified Oliver Hardy of Hollywood left him. He laid his gun on the table it wasn't worth grabbing for produced a pocket-sized magazine from his coat and began to read, all the while keeping a low eye on his captive. Astounding, read the cover, in a grey so faded it was hard to see. With its cold, painted ill.u.s.tration of an impossible domed city it looked far more elegant than the man holding it.

Lecha.s.seur blinked. The magazine's journey by freight across the Atlantic; the thug's head underwater; a red mushroom cloud, billowing outwards. He looked up, his captor was staring at him with a curled sneer on his lips, followed by spittle. The thug began a furious rant, his voice on fire:

'Wipe that c.o.c.ky grin off your face you filthy heathen b.a.s.t.a.r.d you'll not be smiling when the Big Man sees you He will cut you in two with your guts hanging from your wretched black body He is worth ten times any man and a hundred of you He is the machine-man that we will all become G.o.d-willing when men are born from metal wombs when He was a man He fought the Hun those wicked b.a.s.t.a.r.ds of Satan cut Him apart and left Him to die the dogs! but now He is repaired His mortal skin and bone rebuilt with steel and pumps and electrics that will not wear or fail He is the Steersman of Future Time no man commands him not least you the lowest thing that walks on two legs.'

Lecha.s.seur folded his arms but didn't change his face. It was important to stay cool. The thug might only have paused for breath but there was a gentle rustling of vegetation from deeper in the room. Lecha.s.seur turned, saw the Big Man and realised that his advocate had not been exaggerating.

He was big, at least eight feet tall and maybe half as broad. Lecha.s.seur realised at once that this was the Harpo he'd been sitting behind and understood why the pa.s.senger seat had been cut out of the Silver Ghost. Whether he was a man or not was difficult to tell as he was covered in oily brown leather. He had a long brown coat, jangling with buckles; its hem brushed the floor, hung more like a cloak than a coat. Despite his width he didn't seem fat or ungainly, he moved swiftly and Lecha.s.seur got a sense of a powerful muscular ma.s.s hidden under the leather. He wore thick black gloves and his head was covered by a tight leather hood that eliminated his features. He saw through darkened gasmask goggles and breathed through a tapering, trembling proboscis. The high collar on the coat hid his neck. or not was difficult to tell as he was covered in oily brown leather. He had a long brown coat, jangling with buckles; its hem brushed the floor, hung more like a cloak than a coat. Despite his width he didn't seem fat or ungainly, he moved swiftly and Lecha.s.seur got a sense of a powerful muscular ma.s.s hidden under the leather. He wore thick black gloves and his head was covered by a tight leather hood that eliminated his features. He saw through darkened gasmask goggles and breathed through a tapering, trembling proboscis. The high collar on the coat hid his neck.

The other newcomer was a woman. She walked in front of the Big Man and seemed diminutive in his shadow, though in fact she was about as tall as Lecha.s.seur. She dressed in black, a long bare-shoulder dress that looked almost as uncomfortable as the Big Man's leathers. She was also gloved, elegantly and up to her elbows. She had long, straight black hair and her eyes were hidden behind round smoked-gla.s.s spectacles. Her skin was ice-white, almost blue, especially around her lips. The Big Man stopped when she did and stood guard as she knelt down to run a gloved hand through the pool water. She was laughing faintly. Lecha.s.seur understood which of the two was in charge and the more dangerous.

'Mr Lecha.s.seur,' she said precisely, rising and approaching him she had a condescending English Rose voice. 'I think we've brought you all this way for nothing. I am Mestizer.'

Her gla.s.ses came off and she was staring into his eyes, she had warm blue irises, flecked with gold, they sucked at him hard as though trying to draw his soul out of his body. He thought of the dancing dog at the Inferno, Inferno, and realised how petty Walken's powers were. This woman could have had the dog playing Hamlet. and realised how petty Walken's powers were. This woman could have had the dog playing Hamlet.

He didn't need to be hypnotised. With an effort, he changed the way he looked at her. She blinked, a moment of frustration, then covered her eyes with her gla.s.ses.

'Oh, very good,' she said airily. 'Let me introduce you.' Casual wave at the leather giant. 'That is Abraxas, my lieutenant. Do as you're told and you'll never see him again. You've already met' finger twisting at her hired gun 'thing.'

'Delighted,' Lecha.s.seur said dryly. Mestizer offered him a drink, then a swim. He said no to both.

'A shame,' she pouted, 'I come here each night to swim, when no one's around. You know, you really are very good. If I'd seen you from a distance I might have been fooled. You've been giving us quite the runaround. Let's hope we don't b.u.mp into one another again. It might make me unhappy.'

She sat and wrinkled her face as if to indicate the seat were still warm. Abraxas moved closer. He couldn't sit, he would have broken the chair. Lecha.s.seur could feel him, less than a foot away, a looming oily presence. Abraxas seethed when he breathed, a coa.r.s.e mechanical sound.

'Any man would be fooled,' Mestizer continued, showing a mouth full of white teeth and hidden menace. 'But I'm not a man. How much is Walken paying you?'

Lecha.s.seur shrugged. 'I'm not working for Walken.'That seemed to be the wrong answer, she looked bitter in disappointment. 'Only Walken would try something like this. I believe he has guts but no brains, though someday soon Abraxas will slice him open so we can be sure.' She got to the point: 'You were seen coming out of the Inferno today.' today.'

'My first visit.' He was reasonable. 'Walken threw me out.'But Mestizer didn't want to hear this. She was staring at him through the dark globes of her spectacles and there wasn't a bead of sweat on her perfect cool-white body. He could see blue faultline arteries under her skin and she looked back at him with an odd mix of revulsion and fascination. She wasn't looking at his face or his skin, she was looking into him, at the soul she'd tried to pluck.

'Tell Walken the cabinet is mine. Tell him that if he bothers me I will kill him. I will kill everyone with him. I will kill his friends. I will kill his debtors. I will kill his family and their friends. I will kill everyone he has ever loved. Tell him he is meddling with forces he doesn't understand that usually goes down well. Tell him to forget the cabinet and forget the Doctor.'

Mention of the Doctor caught his attention. If he hadn't been so nervous he might have been more cautious, but he said it anyway: 'And what about the girl in pink pyjamas?'

Mestizer craned her head upwards, addressing Abraxas. 'Loose ends,' she said. 'Tell Walken I don't care what he does to her. She can't tell him anything. He can have her.'

She'd kept her hands close together, steepling her fingers as she talked, but suddenly she flung them open. 'Bored now!' she sang. 'I want to swim. The water has regenerative properties, it's good for me, if no-one else. Go on, go away, you don't want to see me naked anyway.' now!' she sang. 'I want to swim. The water has regenerative properties, it's good for me, if no-one else. Go on, go away, you don't want to see me naked anyway.'

Lecha.s.seur, his heart still thumping from the stupid moment when he'd said too much, decided to risk it: 'I wouldn't complain.'

She had a smile like nothing in nature, a crooked thing the wrong shape for her mouth. 'No. You don't want to see me when I take my skin off.'

Only the ex-Hardy laughed and maybe for him it was a joke.

'Take Mr Lecha.s.seur home,' Mestizer ordered. 'One thing before you go stick your nose into my business again and I will have it cut off. It's been a pleasure.'

With the gun brandished once again and the copy of Astounding tucked back into his pocket, the ex-Hardy led Lecha.s.seur out into the bitter dark, where the car was waiting. This time Abraxas came with them, a rasping shadow at Lecha.s.seur's back.

Nothing was said in the Silver Ghost during the journey home. One thought came back to him, in the silence and the dark. If these were the men Mrs Bag-of-Bones had been warning him about for days, then they had been looking for him since before he'd heard of Eric Walken or the Doctor or even Emily Blandish, and that made no sense.

Unless I really am working for Walken, with Emily as a go-between. That's possible.

They stopped the car at his doorstep before midnight, but as he moved to open the car door his name was spoken.

Lecha.s.seur Lecha.s.seur An electrical voice, like the distort on a radio, flecked with static.

Without warning the bolster separating the front and back seats was ripped apart, leathered wood and metal rods parting like b.u.t.ter. Abraxas' bulbous leathery face peered through the gap and Lecha.s.seur saw himself mirrored in the discs of his eyes.

I will be watching you will be watching you One wrong move and you will belong to me Lecha.s.seur stepped out of the car and stayed to watch it move away.

3: THE GIRL WHO WASN'T THERE.

'LOOK,' SAID THE LANDLADY. 'THERE'S A BLACK MAN HERE TO SEE YOU.'.

Lecha.s.seur spent the night trying to make sense of the previous day's events, but eventually he'd given up, the pattern loomed large and unfathomable. There was too much new information. He would have to report back to Mrs Blandish before he could make the connections. He reached for the whiskey bottle and stared entranced at his window until the sun came up to sting his eyes. His waking dreams were hazy and confused. Looking at the twilight steel skyline, he imagined he was back in the Dorset hospital where he'd spent the last months of the war. He displaced himself into the past, into a memory of a time when he was confined to a wheelchair in a building with infinite whitewashed corridors and no exit.

Later, he watched the dawn through reddened eyes and felt more hopeful. He had a plan for today: he would visit the girl in pink pyjamas and there didn't seem to be any harm in that. No one had got much sense out of her over the past weeks but maybe they hadn't been asking her the right questions.

Questions like: 'Do you know where I can find the Doctor?'When he asked, she just stared and blinked, it meant nothing to her, nothing at all.

It was drizzling over Sh.o.r.editch that morning. The slow spots of rain felt dirty-warm on his skin as he cycled to the address he'd stolen from the club. The house stood towards one end of a long, meandering brick lane. At the east end of the street, further up than he had meant to go, there was nothing, no buildings, just redbrick mounds where children played.

The number he wanted was in an unscarred stretch of terrace, one of a sequence of near identical narrow houses with lace over the windows and doors painted different colours in a stab at individuality. The door was opened by a st.u.r.dy middle-aged woman in a faded floral dress. There was a sour curl of suspicion on her lips, this was what the papers had called the Blitz Spirit. A card in her window said NO IRISH, NO DOGS but she'd left room for more. Lecha.s.seur tipped his hat and announced he had come to see the girl in pink pyjamas, this and a ten bob note helped improve her mood and he was invited inside. He was, she apologised, earlier than most callers who came to visit the living mystery.

'She hasn't remembered anything,' he queried, 'not even her name?'

The landlady shook her head and didn't look at him. She led him up the stairs towards the girl's room. He was an unannounced visitor, a surprise.

'What name do you call her?' Lecha.s.seur asked, but she had stopped listening.

She knocked on the door and pushed it open. 'Look,' she said. 'There's a black man here to see you.'