Double or Die Page 21

‘I need to go to Hackney Wick,’ said James. ‘I need to find my friends.’

  ‘You ain’t goin’ nowhere looking like that, soldier,’ said Kelly.

  James looked down at his damp and ruined clothing.

  ‘Come back to ours,’ said Kelly. ‘You can rest a minute, I’ll find you some decent clobber and I’ll get me mum to give you some proper nosh.’

  James was too tired and weak to protest and he followed as Kelly led him through the streets. The area around the Eton Mission had been grim, but this was far worse. James had never seen anywhere so poor. The houses were small and crowded together. Tired women in heavy black dresses scrubbed their doorsteps or stood gossiping. Children with no socks and shoes ran, playing, in the gutter. There were hardly any shops, and those that they passed had only a few tatty things for sale in their windows. The sign outside a butcher’s shop advertised the price of almost every part of an animal except its meat – tails, innards, hearts, head, feet, livers, kidneys and dripping.

  People stared at James as he passed. For the most part they seemed friendly and cheerful, but groups of small tough-looking men stood around on the street corners having serious conversations and smoking. It was impossible to tell how old anyone was. They all looked worn-out and ancient, battered by hard living and poor food.

  As they passed another pub, two drunken women spilt out of the door, screaming and pulling each other’s hair. They then set to in the street, hammering and clawing at each other and attracting a noisy crowd.

  ‘Typical Sunday lunchtime entertainment on Cable Street,’ said Kelly.

  Further on they passed a group of girls who had tied a length of rope to a lamppost and were spinning round it, screaming with laughter.

  They turned into a side street and were soon lost in a maze of tiny alleyways and passages. After a while they came out in a street where the houses were slightly bigger. Halfway down Kelly stopped and opened a door that led straight off the pavement. Inside the front room was a tiny shop, selling cans of food and bottles of fizzy drink, Batey’s Lemonade, Vimto, Tizer and Kooper’s Kola.

  A curtain separated the shop from the rest of the house, which was clean but cramped, and the family appeared to own almost nothing.

  ‘Mum!’ Kelly yelled. ‘Look who’s here. It’s Jimmy Bond.’

  A wiry, raw-boned woman appeared, wiping her hands on an apron.

  ‘So this is him,’ she said. ‘Let’s have a look at you.’

  She held him at arm’s length, staring into his face with coal-black eyes. She nodded.

  ‘You’ll do,’ she said. ‘But you’ve had some sadness in your life, haven’t you, James?’

  ‘Oh, leave him, Mum,’ said Kelly. ‘He’s had some gin in his life, is all. He needs a lie down.’

  ‘You can put him in Red’s bed.’

  Upstairs there was a tiny back room crammed with broken-down iron bedsteads.

  James sat on the bed nearest the window. He wondered what Perry was up to, and if Pritpal had solved any more clues. Maybe he should telephone Pritpal at the mission.

  But he was so tired…

  ‘Don’t let me fall asleep,’ he murmured. ‘There’s so much to do. I have to stop Charnage –’

  ‘Go on with you,’ said Kelly Kelly. ‘Five minutes’ shut eye won’t kill you.’

  But James was already snoring. Lying spreadeagled on his back, fully clothed and with his boots on.

  21

  The Knight Who Did a Deal With the Devil

  ‘Are you sure we shouldn’t have just gone straight to the police?’

  ‘We’ll stick to our plan. If he doesn’t show his m-mug by this evening, we’ll tell the police, and damn the consequences.’

  Pritpal and Perry were on a train, rattling westward through the countryside towards Eton. It was a Sunday service that stopped at every tiny station along the way and the journey seemed to be taking forever.

  ‘He could be in real trouble,’ said Pritpal

  ‘Not our James,’ said Perry. ‘Something tells m-me he’s all right. He’s out there somewhere, three steps ahead of us, probably even now solving the last part of the puzzle.’

  ‘I hope so,’ Pritpal sighed. ‘I sincerely hope so.’

  ‘We need to give him m-more time,’ said Perry. ‘And, besides, if we can solve one more clue then we’ll have something concrete to go to the police with, won’t we?’

  ‘I suppose so,’ said Pritpal, though he looked miserable.

  ‘James will be all right,’ said Perry. ‘He always bounces back.’

  After the attack, Perry had hidden in a corner of Highgate cemetery. He’d spotted the Smith brothers leaving and watched them get into their car without James and drive off. He’d searched the grounds, but, finding no sign of his friend, he’d left and taken a taxi home. He’d waited up for James, but had finally given in to tiredness at half past one and gone to bed. When James still hadn’t shown up in the morning, he’d called Pritpal at the mission to see if he’d heard anything from him.

  Pritpal had also heard nothing, although a parcel had arrived for James that morning wrapped up in brown paper. Pritpal had had a breakthrough on another clue, however, but he told Perry that they would have to travel back to Eton to fully solve it.

  In an act of uncommon boldness Pritpal had lied to the Reverend Falwell and told him that he was going to be spending the afternoon with Perry’s parents. Instead, he had met him at Charing Cross station and they had boarded the train for Eton.

  ‘So, are you sure we’re on the right track?’ said Perry.

  ‘As sure as I can be,’ said Pritpal. He had his notebook open on his knee and a copy of Fairburn’s original letter. He had been showing Perry the poem about the Wall Game.

  Come on, we cry, ignore the pain!

  Tingling with excitement in the rain,

  Knuckling, pressing, panting, now they’re stuck,

  Nigh twenty minutes in a heaving ruck,

  All muddy in a mighty scuffle,

  Mishaps galore, but what a battle!

  Atop the wall we curse the other side,

  Villains! They have won the ball,

  A shout goes up as some brave chap

  Eludes the pack and throws for goal.

  ‘I tried every type of clue I could think of to crack it,’ he explained. ‘Container clues, anagrams, double definitions, but nothing would unlock it until I decided to try looking for hidden-word clues.’

  ‘And what are they?’

  ‘A hidden-word clue is simply a clue that contains the answer hidden among other words,’ said Pritpal.

  ‘Show m-me.’

  ‘Well, your name, Mandeville, for example, would give us both man and devil. But a better example would be super rye where your name – Perry – is hidden across two words,’ said Pritpal.

  Perry smiled.

  ‘And you’re telling m-me this poem contains some hidden words?’

  ‘Yes.’

  Perry looked at the poem, to see if could find any of the hidden words.

  ‘There’s the,’ he said. ‘Hidden inside with excitement. Do I get a prize for that?’

  ‘Afraid not,’ said Pritpal. ‘Look at the ends of the lines.’

  Perry looked at the first couplet:

  Come on, we cry, ignore the pain!

  Tingling with excitement in the rain,

  ‘Aha,’ he cried. ‘I see what you m-mean, pain tingling gives us paint.’

  ‘It gives us more than paint,’ said Pritpal, ‘it gives us painting. A soon as I spotted that I knew I was following the right scent. The clues are across the joins of each couplet.’

  Perry read out the next couplet.

  Knuckling, pressing, panting, now they’re stuck,

  Nigh twenty minutes in a heaving ruck.

  He scratched his head. ‘Can’t make head or tail of that one,’ he said.

  ‘The clue is hidden across three words,’ said Pritpal. ‘Stuck, nigh and twenty.’

  ‘Knight!�
�� said Perry. ‘That was well hidden.

  The next couplet:

  All muddy in a mighty scuffle,

  Mishaps galore, but what a battle!

  gave them Flemish. And the rest of the poem:

  Atop the wall we curse the other side,

  Villains! They have won the ball,

  A shout goes up as some brave chap

  Eludes the pack and throws for goal.

  gave them devil and chapel.

  ‘It has been staring us in the face for days,’ said Pritpal. ‘I kick myself that I didn’t see it sooner.’

  ‘But what does it add up to?’ said Perry. ‘Painting, knight, Flemish, devil and chapel? What’s the significance?’

  ‘You also have to look at what the poem is supposedly about,’ said Pritpal. ‘The Wall Game. This clue is a game about a wall, or more precisely a wall painting.’

  ‘So we’re looking for a chapel with a Flemish wall painting of a knight and a devil in it, then, are we?’ said Perry.

  ‘Yes,’ said Pritpal. ‘And the poem is about Eton’s famous game. Fairburn was an Eton pupil and master, and the letter was sent to an Eton boy. I concluded that the obvious place to start looking for this wall painting was in Eton itself, which, let’s face it, has a very famous chapel. In fact it was one of the very first structures to have been built at the school. Now, I do not know much about College Chapel, but are there some wall paintings there?’

  ‘I’ll say,’ said Perry, who had always been something of an art buff. ‘They’re rather famous. Very old, fifteenth century, been rather m-mucked about with over the years.’

  ‘And are they Flemish?’ asked Pritpal.

  ‘There’s no ish about it,’ said Perry. ‘They’re totally Flem. They were slapped up by a crack team of artists the college shipped over from the Netherlands, probably didn’t have any bods of our own who knew one end of a paintbrush from the other. They’re not m-much to look at, rather dull and m-murky if the truth be told, but they’re probably the m-most important pieces of art in the whole of Eton. I’ve been in to sketch them a couple of times with the Drawing School.’

  ‘Do you think they’ll let us in there today?’ asked Pritpal.

  ‘Don’t see why not,’ said Perry.

  Pritpal stared out of the window. ‘I just wish this damned train would hurry up,’ he said.

  James didn’t want to wake up. He needed to sleep for much, much longer. Someone was roughly shaking him, though.

  ‘Go away,’ he grumbled. ‘Leave me alone. I’ve only just gone to sleep.’

  ‘Wakey, wakey. Up and at ’em!’ It was Red’s voice. James opened one eye. It was growing dark outside. Red was an indistinct black shadow in the unlit room.

  ‘It’s nearly three, mate,’ said Red.

  James forced himself up on to his elbows and blinked. His eyelids felt as if there were lined with sandpaper.

  ‘Nearly three?’ he said, trying to take in this information. ‘I told your sister not to let me sleep too long.’

  ‘You needed a proper kip, Jimmy-boy. You was knocking at death’s door. In fact you was trying to kick it in.’

  ‘But, Red, you don’t understand –’

  Red interrupted him. ‘Keep your shirt on, Jimmy-boy. What were you gonna do? Where were you gonna go?’

  ‘I’ve got to solve the rest of the clues,’ said James sleepily. ‘I have to find out where Fairburn is.’ He swung his legs over the side of the bed and, as his bare feet touched the freezing linoleum, he winced.

  He noticed he was wearing just his shirt and underpants. Somebody must have undressed him. He didn’t ask who. The room was cold as the grave.

  ‘By the sound of it, you been working on them clues for days,’ said Red. ‘Did you really think you was gonna solve them the state you’re in? With the king of all hangovers?’

  ‘I have to do something,’ groaned James. ‘You shouldn’t have let me sleep so long.’ He stopped himself and looked at Red. ‘I’m sorry,’ he said softly. ‘I’m tired and fed up and my head hurts like hell.’

  ‘Don’t apologise, mate,’ said Red, with a big grin. ‘It’s good to see you again.’

  James stood up and brushed his hair back out of his face with his fingers. As usual a stray lock fell forward over one eye. His skin felt sore and his face and hands were spotted with tiny red marks from the potassium explosion.

  A grubby-faced boy who looked like a smaller version of Red came in, a huge flat cap covering his flame-red hair. He was carrying James’s jacket and trousers, which had been dried by a fire and pressed to remove the wrinkles.

  ‘Your mum told me to bring these up,’ he said to Red, then looked at James with a sad expression. ‘She had to throw out your coat, though, mate, it was in tatters.’

  ‘Thanks, Stanley,’ said Red and he took the clothes and tossed them to James.

  ‘James,’ he said, ‘this is me cousin, Stanley MacCarthy.’

  ‘I’m gonna tell all me mates that James Bond slept in me bed,’ said Stanley, staring at James with big, round, shining eyes.

  ‘Your bed?’ said James, pulling on the trousers. ‘I’m sorry. I thought it was Red’s bed.’

  ‘It is,’ said Red. ‘I share it with Stanley. Top and tail, like a couple of sardines in a tin. ’

  James stood up.

  ‘Is there a telephone somewhere I can use?’ he said.

  ‘There’s one in the boozer,’ said Red. ‘It’ll be shut right now, but Lou will open up if we knock loud enough.’

  ‘I’ll need to borrow some money for the call,’ said James. ‘But don’t worry, when this is all over I can pay you back.’

  ‘No problem, Jimmy-boy. You just do what you gotta do.’

  The operator put James through to Perry’s house in Regent’s Park. James spoke to Braeburn, the butler, who told him that Perry had been expecting him to call. He explained that Perry had gone off somewhere with a friend but had asked for James to leave a contact number if he called. James left the number for the pub and then called the Eton Mission.

  Pritpal wasn’t there but he got hold of Tommy Chong who filled James in on events. Again James left the number for the pub.

  He hung up.

  The pub was closed for the afternoon and landlord Lou was cleaning up after the lunchtime session, sweeping up broken glass and dirty sawdust.

  Red and his sister Kelly had been listening to James’s conversation.

  ‘What you gonna do then?’ asked Red.

  ‘There’s nothing I can do except wait,’ said James, glancing at the clock. ‘If Pritpal and Perry are on to another clue it might be the one we need to finally solve this puzzle and find out where Fairburn is, but time’s slipping away. Today’s Sunday, it’s our last day. I just hope they come up with something, and come up with it fast.’

  The Holy Poker was waiting for Perry and Pritpal beneath the vast, elaborately decorated organ that filled the space above the entrance to College Chapel.

  Holy Poker was the nickname given to the chapel usher because of the silver-topped rod he carried as his staff of office during services. Most boys – these two included – had no idea what his real name was.

  ‘You are interested in our wall paintings, I gather,’ he intoned. He was a dry, stiff-backed man whose hair was as silver as the top of his staff.

  ‘That’s right,’ said Pritpal, looking around the chapel.

  It was a tall, narrow building, with elegant stone pillars supporting a vaulted wooden ceiling. Rows of carved, gothic pews stood on either side and behind them on the walls were the famous paintings.

  ‘They were painted some time between fourteen seventy-nine and fourteen eighty-eight,’ said the Holy Poker. ‘And then whitewashed over by the college barber in fifteen sixty-one, for which he was paid sixpence.’ ‘Why would anyone want them painted over?’ said James. ‘It was the Reformation,’ said the Holy Poker. ‘Henry the eighth had abolished Catholicism and converted the whole country to Protestantism. Any paintin
gs showing fictitious miracles were banned.’

  As he spoke, the Holy Poker slowly led the way down the aisle towards the altar and then turned and climbed some steps towards the paintings on the right-hand side. Just as Perry had warned, they looked slightly shabby and faded, like a blurry photograph of something that had once been bright and colourful.

  ‘Later on, wooden panelling was fixed over the wall,’ explained the Holy Poker. ‘And the paintings were completely forgotten until eighteen forty-seven, when the panelling was removed. Although nobody seemed to have taken much interest in them at the time and the clerk of works was allowed to scrape off almost the entire upper row of pictures until he was stopped by one of the Fellows. It was still thought, however, that the images were unfit for Protestant eyes and they were covered over again. Now, at last, we can see them in all their glory, if glory is the right word. They have been restored, but years of neglect have left them rather forlorn.’

  Pritpal studied the pictures on the wall, which showed various medieval scenes, but he could see no sign of a devil.

  ‘The paintings here on the south side tell the story of a mythical empress,’ said the Holy Poker. ‘Those on the north side show various miracles performed by the Virgin Mary.’

  ‘May I look?’ said Pritpal.

  ‘You may.’

  Pritpal crossed the aisle and climbed the banked pews towards the other wall. One of the first things he spotted was a man talking to a weird naked figure with horns whose face had been completely rubbed away over the years.

  ‘Is this the devil?’ he asked.

  ‘It is,’ said the Holy Poker.

  ‘And who is that with him?’ said Pritpal.

  ‘Ah,’ said the Holy Poker, ‘that is a knight, Sir Amoras. It is an amusing story. Amoras tried to sell his wife to the devil, but was prevented by the Blessed Virgin. I’m sure he’s not the only man in history who has wanted to sell his wife to the devil,’ he added with a dry chuckle.

  Now Pritpal could see that Sir Amoras was exchanging a contract, or perhaps money, with the horned figure.

  He wondered how desperate someone would have to be to do a deal with Satan himself.

  James had been sitting by the telephone for nearly three hours when it finally rang. Without waiting for Lou to answer it, he jumped up and snatched the receiver from the cradle. ‘Hello?’