The War in the Dark E-Book

Nick Setchfield

• Herausgeber: Titan Books
• Kategorie: Fantasy und Science-Fiction
• Sprache: Englisch
• Veröffentlichungsjahr: 2018

Seitenzahl: 462

Beschreibung

A genre-defying page turner that fuses thriller and speculative fiction with dark fantasy in a hidden world in the heart of Cold War Europe.Europe. 1963. And the true Cold War is fought on the borders of this world, at the edges of the light.When the assassination of a traitor trading with the enemy goes terribly wrong, British Intelligence agent Christopher Winter must flee London. In a tense alliance with a lethal, mysterious woman named Karina Lazarova, he's caught in a quest for hidden knowledge from centuries before, an occult secret written in a language of fire. A secret that will give supremacy to the nation that possesses it.Racing against the Russians, the chase takes them from the demon-haunted Hungarian border to treasure-laden tunnels beneath Berlin, from an impossible house in Vienna to a bomb-blasted ruin in Bavaria where something unholy waits, born of the power of white fire and black glass . . .It's a world of treachery, blood and magic. A world at war in the dark.

Leseprobe

CONTENTS

Cover

Title Page

Copyright

Dedication

Semper Occultus ‘Always Secret’

1

2

3

4

5

6

7

8

9

10

11

12

13

14

15

16

17

18

19

20

21

22

23

24

25

26

27

28

29

30

31

32

33

Acknowledgements

About the Author

Also Available from Titan Books

“A deliciously wild fantasy.”

MARIE CLAIRE

“Extremely well written and hugely enjoyable.”

STARBURST

“James Bond meets Indiana Jones... a rip-roaring adventure. This is the book you’ll be reading on the beach even when it rains or the sun goes down.”

MARK MILLAR

“A rattling good read... it’s thrilling.”

RUSSELL T. DAVIES

“This book had a tremendous sense of paranoia and uncertainty, and a plot that kept me riveted to find out how it would resolve.”

GENEVIEVE COGMAN

“Like an irresistible blend of a John Le Carré spy thriller and Hammer’s The Devil Rides Out, Nick Setchfield’s debut novel is a vivid and compelling page-turner, which propels you from scene to scene with such verve and invention that you have no choice but to keep reading. It’s the sort of book you pick up, thinking, ‘I’ll just have five minutes’, and an hour later you’re still feverishly turning the pages, because you have to find out what happens next.”

MARK MORRIS

“Nick Setchfield’s The War in the Dark is a thrilling, shocking, action-packed delight! Its horror and magical elements are firmly grounded in a beautifully realised, strangely topical reality, and its momentum never lets up. An assured, memorable debut.”

TIM LEBBON

“A compelling fusion of Bond-era espionage and occult horror.”

JAMES BROGDEN

“Nick Setchfield’s occult spy thriller is a smooth blend of James Bond and M.R. James, played with tons of wit and style. This is something new that entertains like something old. Triumphantly suave.”

PAUL CORNELL

The War in the Dark

Print edition ISBN: 9781785657092

E-book edition ISBN: 9781785657108

Published by Titan Books

A division of Titan Publishing Group Ltd

144 Southwark Street, London SE1 0UP

First edition: July 2018

1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10

This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents either are the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously, and any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, businessestablishments, events, or locales is entirely coincidental. The publisher does not have any control over and does not assume any responsibility for author or third-party websites or their content.

Copyright © 2018 by Nick Setchfield. All rights reserved.

No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted, in any form or by any means without the prior written permission of the publisher, nor be otherwise circulated in any form of binding or cover other than that in which it is published and without a similar condition being imposed on the subsequent purchaser.

A CIP catalogue record for this title is available from the British Library.

For Dad

SEMPER OCCULTUS‘ALWAYS SECRET’

Motto of the British Secret Intelligence Service

1

OCTOBER 1963

Christopher Winter had never put a bullet in the head of a priest before. The idea felt faintly blasphemous.

He smiled in the half-light. It was the kind of morbid little thought that came to him on these occasions. Sometimes it felt like a ghost trace of conscience. He let it go.

He was a tall man in his forties, lean as fuse wire, his black curls cropped close to the skull, military fashion. His face was nearly as unexceptional as he needed it to be. Only his eyes betrayed him, startlingly green in the London dusk. The lids were hooded, as if trying to conceal the remarkable irises.

It was almost evening. Clouds the colour of ash occupied the sky. Winter waited in the doorway of Kingsland Edwardian Butchers, inhaling a ripe tang of meat and sawdust as he watched the Portobello Road.

Tables filled the street. There were stalls of silverware and bric-a-brac, lamps and decanters, apples and pocket-watches. A sudden gust scattered a sheaf of antique maps. They blew into the gutter, their edges claimed by petrol spills.

No sign of Hatherly, his echo man. Not that Winter was meant to see him, of course. Hatherly was entrusted to be invisible, only revealing his presence if things turned ugly. Once a child’s nanny had caught a ricochet and lay pooling bright, innocent blood on a marble floor in Mayfair. Hatherly had broken cover and taken a bullet in the sternum for his trouble, shot by the same Soviet sniper that had just eliminated a defector. An operational failure, the memorandum had stated. The girl had died two days later.

Winter wanted to spot him, just as a matter of professional pride. It was good practice.

He let his Woodbine flare and die. The streetlamps were on now, their sodium glow exposing a fine rain. Winter buttoned his houndstooth coat and retrieved a pair of driving gloves from its pockets. The lambskin strained over his lean fingers and prominent knuckles. He could feel the dull weight of his Webley & Scott .25 against his heart.

It was time to kill Father Costigan.

As he walked he lit another cigarette and recalled Faulkner’s briefing. The SIS had kept tabs on Costigan for a while now. Given his position his communist sympathies naturally attracted attention. It wasn’t unusual for such men to fall hard for leftist rhetoric – priests often fancied themselves as social reformers – but it was always noted, and never favourably. No one wanted Marxism disseminated under cover of whist drives and evensong.

And then his name had surfaced in Soviet radio traffic. The British monitoring station in Vienna had snagged it, flashed it home. The clergyman was trading secrets with the enemy. Just how the priest of a shabby little church in Notting Hill had access to the finer particulars of British intelligence was a detail Faulkner had chosen not to share.

Winter had no idea what information was bleeding to Moscow. He knew only what he needed to: Costigan had leaked material of national importance. That was enough. His superiors knew more, of course, but secrets built the hierarchy, polished the mirror-maze.

The Church of St John of the Cross stood on the corner, squat and soot-stained. A scruffy noticeboard carried faded flyers for weekly choir practice and the Christmas jumble sale. There was a stone Christ crucified in the doorway, captured in an agony of granite. Winter nearly stubbed his cigarette out on the effigy but he hesitated. He wasn’t an especially good man but he tried to keep his soul as clean as he could. He tossed the Woodbine to the pavement and let it expire among the weeds.

Winter stepped through the porch and into the creamy gloom of the nave. The pews were lit by candles, illuminating the stained-glass window that dominated the interior. There was a striking scent of decay. Something mouldering, halfway between damp and dust.

Winter’s training was triggered as he entered the church, approaching his target: he found himself scrutinising every potential point of concealment and escape, appraising the geometry of threat, just as he had been taught.

His senses bristled. This was a place of worship in the heart of his own country but there was something here that uneased him, something that refused to be measured and evaluated.

A motion caught his eye. He glanced up at the ceiling. For a moment the shadows themselves seemed to swarm across the rafters.

He stepped deeper into the church, past the pews with their threadbare hassocks and dilapidated hymn books. An eyeless bust of St John of the Cross faced him across the nave. The statuette’s blind gaze felt strangely reproachful. Once again something shapeless crawled at the very edge of his vision. He tilted his head and saw nothing.

It was colder now, as if London’s chill had entered the church in his wake. He kept walking, taking care to soften his steps on the flagstones. He passed the font. There was a dull bronze smear on the chipped porcelain. It looked very much like blood.

He hoped Hatherly was close.

‘Onward, Christian soldier,’ said a voice, behind him. The words were gentle, warm and threatening, like a razor dipped in honey.

Winter turned. A figure stood at the entrance to the church, haloed by the glow of the porch light. He was a portly man in a black cassock, jowls bulging over the rim of his dog collar. He wore wire-framed spectacles. The moon-shaped lenses shone with reflected candlelight, obscuring the eyes.

‘Father Costigan?’

‘Of course.’

Not that Winter needed to ask. He knew precisely who this man was. Only an hour ago he had studied a black-and-white photograph in a crisp manila folder, noted every liver spot, registered every mole. Asking the man to confirm his identity was a formality, part of the ritual.

The priest began to walk towards him, past the dimly lit pews. His steps were easy, unhurried. ‘I don’t know your name,’ he said, ‘but I can guess why you’re here.’

Winter wouldn’t draw the gun. Not yet. It would look like he was flinching.

‘Clearly I’ve betrayed Queen and country,’ smiled the priest, softly mocking the words. ‘Time for my divine punishment, in the name of national interest. You people do love your biblical judgements.’

Winter’s voice was even. ‘Kneel on the floor and place your hands at your temples.’

The priest smirked as he drew level with Winter. The man smelt of must and abandoned rooms. ‘And what about your punishment?’

Costigan’s eyes were revealed now. They looked like bags of blood, weighing upon the lids. The priest met Winter’s gaze and matched it.

‘Just look at you. I’ve rarely met a soul so in need of redemption. I can almost taste it. What in God’s name have you done in your life?’

‘Father Costigan. Please. We can do this with dignity. Kneel on the floor and place your hands at your temples.’

Again there was a ripple of shadow at the periphery of Winter’s vision. He kept his gaze locked upon the priest. ‘I won’t ask again.’

Costigan held the moment, contemptuous. And then he turned and walked to the lectern that stood to the side of the nave. A mahogany eagle roosted upon it, its beak carved in a snarl. Costigan picked up a Bible, bound in oxblood leather.

‘By the book, I see. Well, this is my book.’

He wet a thumb and leafed through the pages. And then he paused, with a smile.

‘And I beheld, and heard an angel flying through the midst of heaven, saying with a loud voice, Woe, woe, woe, to the inhabiters of the earth by reason of the other voices of the trumpet of the three angels, which are yet to sound!’

The priest’s voice was commanding, full of religious theatre. The words filled the empty church.

‘Revelation chapter eight, verse thirteen. The King James Bible. Though some say there’s a mistranslation and it’s actually an eagle that’s flying through the midst of heaven. The eagle is, after all, the enemy of the serpent. Are you my enemy, young man?’

Winter was thrown by the priest’s reaction. In his experience men usually anticipated the bullet in a number of ways, none of them especially dignified. There was terror, there was pleading and sometimes there was a frantic attempt to charm. This was something new. Costigan was gliding above this confrontation. He had an arrogance that seemed utterly unafraid.

‘We can go in the back,’ said Winter, flatly.

The priest laughed.

‘Yes, we wouldn’t want to stain the house of God. Dear Mrs Gilligan works miracles with the duster but blood is so troublesome.’

He closed the Bible, left the lectern and walked back to Winter.

‘Tell me,’ he said. ‘You clearly believe in judgement. Do you really think you won’t be judged for killing me? In a holy place like this, no less?’

‘You have betrayed your country.’

‘My country!’ the priest spat. ‘This kingdom of rain? Don’t be so stupid. And tell me, just what secrets do you imagine I’ve traded?’

‘Not my job to know.’

Costigan leaned close, his lips curling. His breath smelt faintly of tar. ‘My secrets will burn the flesh from this world.’

It was time to end this. Winter reached inside his overcoat. The pistol felt reassuring in his hand, heavy and familiar. He ignored the sweat on its lattice grip and removed a silencer from an outside pocket. In a quick, deft movement he screwed the tube to the head of the barrel, twisting it into place. It clicked, locked.

‘On your knees.’

The priest threw a hand towards him. It held a knife, plucked from the cassock. The blade flashed and found Winter’s arm, puncturing his coat and piercing the flesh. There was a hot flare of pain but Winter kept the gun tight in his fist. He smashed it against Costigan’s hand. The knife tumbled to the flagstones.

The priest’s fingers curled around Winter’s forearm. He had remarkable strength. The hand closed, choking a fresh spasm of pain from the wounded arm.

The gun jerked upwards. Winter’s finger squeezed. A bullet fired with a cordite stench. It struck the stained-glass window, splintering a cherub.

The priest’s nails dug into Winter’s wrist, pricking the skin, claiming blood. Winter forced the trembling gun higher, closer to Costigan’s face. Another bullet fired. This one sailed into the rafters, scattering dust, useless as the last.

Costigan’s other hand reached for Winter’s face. The broad palm pressed against his mouth, the nails targeting his eyes. Again the power in the man was astonishing. He seemed possessed by a feral energy.

Winter locked his fist around the priest’s arm and pushed back. As he did so he looked into Costigan’s eyes. Something moved in the pupils. Something that didn’t entirely belong to a man. Something that was one with the church’s shadows.

The priest’s hand moved closer. Winter stared at the greasy flesh. It was bulging, translucent. The skin itself seemed to strain, as if struggling to contain something.

‘Christ,’ he breathed.

The hand was bulbous now. Swollen, it cracked and tore. A shoal of insects burst from the ruptured flesh. Flies, lice, silverfish.

The creatures poured onto Winter. Instinctively he shut his eyes and bolted his mouth, though he wanted to cry out, even scream. He staggered backwards into a pew, shaking the flood of insects from his face even as he sensed them scurry into his hair.

Finally he forced his eyes open and stared at Father Costigan. The priest’s expression was savage now, his face streaked with gobs of bile. He had removed his glasses. The man’s eyes were orbs of pure blood. Tiny albino spiders prised themselves out of the tear ducts, their pale legs curling over the lids.

Winter raised and steadied his gun. He aimed for the head.

‘I am beyond flesh,’ Costigan said, defiantly. ‘Flesh shall burn.’

Winter pulled the trigger. A bullet tore through Costigan’s skull, shredding bone. The priest fell.

Winter stepped forward, kicking insects from his shoes. Hearing only his own fractured breathing he pulled a pencil and a notebook from his pocket, turned his wrist to expose his watch and noted the exact time. His pencil tremored in his hand. His writing was a brisk scratch.

It was then that he smelt smoke. The corpse was burning: flames spread from the cassock and began to consume the body. They leapt from the priest and sought the pews, feasting on the old wood. The lectern, too, caught fire, the carved eagle succumbing to the rage of unnatural flame. Hymn numbers burned and blackened.

Winter’s eyes prickled at the smoke. His lungs began to rebel at the charred air. Turning to go, he glanced at the stained-glass window, seeing the London night through the headless, bullet-smashed image of a cherub. There was a star in the sky, pin-bright.

Winter left the church. He wanted to run but he walked, as calmly and as casually as he could, for all that he was dripping insects. And then, when he had paced the length of the street, he turned into an alley, dropped to his knees and vomited.

He crouched there for a while in the cool dark, his head resting against the rim of a steel bin. His arm pulsed with pain from the knife wound and the sleeve of his shirt felt tacky with blood.

He tried to process what he had just seen. The whole experience had the gauzy feeling of a waking dream. All he knew was that he had encountered something extraordinary. Something that had just rewritten the rules of his world.

He gathered himself, rose to his feet and began to walk back to Portobello. It was raining now, a determined rain that drummed the pavement and turned traffic lights into fairground blurs of colour. This kingdom of rain… Winter heard a fire engine in the distance.

He passed the junction of Chepstow Villas, past its intersection with Westbourne Grove. As he did so he saw a familiar figure across the street, sheltered by a tree. Hatherly. His echo man. Thank God.

Winter quickened his pace. He had no idea how he would explain any of it. He was just grateful for his colleague’s presence. That was all that he needed right now. That and a whisky mac in the cosy fug of The Old Star and Crown.

He nodded as he crossed the road, dodging a black cab and a cyclist.

‘Hatherly, I…’

The man almost had the face of Hatherly.

Almost.

Winter peered through the shadows of the branches that played across the silent figure. Momentarily familiar, the man’s features had shifted like water, resolving into the face of a stranger.

‘I’m sorry,’ said Winter. ‘I assumed you were somebody else.’

The man walked away, barely registering the encounter. Winter watched him cross into Westbourne Grove.

For a moment he had seemed to have no face at all.

2

A white light, sharp and urgent.

It was there at the edge of his perception, inescapable. His eyelids flinched, quivered, resisting its brilliance. He sensed himself moving out of a deep, consuming darkness. The light was summoning him.

Winter opened his eyes. His pupils shrank, instinctively contracting. The electric glare was blinding.

He began to see the room.

There was a tall lamp to his left, its spindly aluminium frame bent into a crouch. The bulb was close and bullyingly hot. He could feel his pores tingling with sweat as the wattage burned.

He looked down at his arms. They lay on the padded rests of a chair. One had a bandage over the knife wound, a rust-coloured smear of blood soiling the gauze. The other was bare, the shirtsleeve rolled to the elbow. There was a fresh bruise below the wrist and a puncture mark where a sizeable needle had clearly entered his bloodstream. Both arms throbbed.

‘So just how do you account for what happened?’ demanded a voice, insistent but weary.

Still muzzy, Winter focused beyond the light. A figure solidified: a stocky, bearded man in a three-piece worsted suit, his hair a silver thatch. Sir Crispin Faulkner, head of SIS. Next to him was a man he didn’t know. He had a dispassionate gaze and wore a doctor’s coat. There was a fat hypodermic in his hand. It held a viscous amber liquid.

So they had drugged him. Sodium thiopental or some kind of hypnotic benzodiazapene, he imagined. Truth serum. Potent. Effective. Standard practice. Not normally applied to one’s own side. It would certainly explain the lurch of nausea he was now experiencing. His body and his memory were reconnecting.

This was no debrief, he realised. It was an interrogation.

Winter reached for words. ‘I… I cannot account for it, sir.’

There was a third man in the hot, boxy room. A friendlier presence, for all that his face was grim with concern. Winter saw the paisley bow-tie, the familiar watery eyes. Malcolm.

‘It could always be some kind of psychotropic agent,’ said Malcolm Hands, stepping from the shadows. He rested an arm on a filing cabinet. ‘Hallucinogen of some sort. Airborne dispersal or contact activation. Skin on skin, that kind of thing. I’ve heard that the CIA are making remarkable progress in the field.’

‘I doubt it’s the Americans,’ said Faulkner, curtly.

‘Well, I’ve no idea where the Soviets are with the technology.’

‘You bloody should. We should be on top of all of this.’

There was a scratch of a match. Malcolm lit a Capstan and offered the packet to Winter. ‘Cigarette?’

‘God, yes.’

Winter borrowed the matches and lit a cigarette. He took a quick, hungry drag and let the smoke disperse through his nostrils. The bitter vapour troubled his throat and he coughed. There was still a furtive taste of chemicals on his tongue.

‘I don’t care what the Americans or the Reds have,’ he said. ‘There’s no hallucinogen in the world halfway powerful enough to do that. I know what I saw in that church.’

‘Do you?’ asked Faulkner.

Winter buried a mutinous comeback. He took a moment to steady his thoughts. ‘Sir, it was real. Whatever I saw, it was real. I am not lying to you. And I am not losing my mind.’

‘The psychiatric officer will assess that,’ said Faulkner, briskly. ‘Now consider yourself relieved of active duty, pending his findings. When we finally find your blasted echo man we’ll be sure to let you know.’

Faulkner gathered a wad of paper, jammed it inside a manila folder and took his leave of the room, trailing an irritable pall. The quiet man in the doctor’s coat locked his syringe in a silver case and followed him.

‘I’ll be outside,’ said Malcolm, softly.

Winter nodded, extinguishing the Capstan. He rolled his cuffs down, taking care not to snag the shirt on the bloodied bandage. He raised himself up and, unsteady for a second, grasped the chair for support. The room tilted around him. Then he regained his bearings and collected his jacket. It had been neatly folded and placed on the desk. They were nothing if not considerate.

Winter straightened his tie, closed the door and stepped into the corridor. It was as dismal as all the other passages in the building, part of the decaying connective tissue of 54 Broadway. It could have been a drab, dusty corner of some neglected public school. And sometimes that was exactly what the service felt like. A crumbling fiefdom, breeding the charcoal-suited officers of empire while the world raced on outside.

Winter had no idea what time it was. His watch had been removed. It was probably in his jacket pocket. As he hunted for it he peered through the window. Sunlight made a greasy haze of the glass. Was it morning? He saw neat rows of dark cars, their bonnets gleaming like ranks of beetles in the autumn light.

He found his watch and buckled the cracked leather strap. Almost midday. He had the feeling that time had been taken from him. How long had he been in that room? He could barely remember entering it.

Malcolm stood at the end of the corridor, admiring a painting. It was a gloomy portrait of an Elizabethan, mounted in an ornate gilded frame. The man in the picture had a hard, unreadable gaze and a trim satyr’s beard. A white ruff circled his throat.

‘Interesting man, Sir Francis Walsingham,’ said Malcolm, indicating the portrait with a languid jab of his cigarette. ‘Elizabeth’s favourite. The first spymaster. Set up a network that reached as far to the east as Turkey. He understood the value of intelligence, that chap. We’re all his children, you know.’

‘I remember,’ said Winter, joining him beside the painting. ‘You showed me this picture on my first day here. You told me we were the New Elizabethans. I tried not to laugh.’

‘Did I really? It sounds like me.’ Malcolm smiled and the skin wrinkled around his wan grey eyes. ‘Precious little sense of history these days. But the wars we fight are still his wars, for all the new names we give them. Do we really imagine this is the first Cold War? We’ve been fighting them for centuries.’

Winter regarded the brushwork. There were tiny cracks where the paint was flaking. ‘You told me something else he said. “Knowledge is never too dear.”’

‘I’m touched, Christopher. You have an excellent memory.’

‘You’re a bloody good teacher, Malcolm. When you’re sober.’

Malcolm’s eyes narrowed and his voice fell by a register. ‘Here’s another one of the old boy’s little sayings. “See and keep silent.” Not the worst words to live by.’

He leaned closer, though they were quite alone in the passageway.

‘Tea dance at nine,’ he said, with a quick, tight smile. ‘Don’t be late, dear heart.’

And then he turned in the direction of the fire doors, his heels ringing on the hardwood floor.

Winter stared after him, intrigued. Typical Malcolm.

* * *

The Fairbridge Hotel had taken a bomb in the war. A V-2 had torn out of a starless sky in 1944 and punched through the roof, piercing five elegant storeys and killing over three hundred people. The building’s jagged, scaffolded remains still stood derelict in Knightsbridge, waiting for someone to give its ghosts a future.

Winter entered the penthouse ballroom. Rainwater ran between the broken tiles, pooling in dark corners of the dance floor. An elegant bronze of a female dancer lay toppled, her severed head flung amid the rubble. There was a charred Art Deco bas relief, decorated with pelicans, and a large mirrored door, blackened and blistered by the heat of the blast.

The roof was gone, of course. Shards of masonry framed the night sky like a jawful of smashed teeth. Winter looked down. The bomb had left a hell of a hole. The innards of the hotel lay exposed: a spine of lift cages and great steel struts that still held its shattered grandeur together.

There was the sound of a piano. Someone was artlessly picking out a tune with a single finger, like a child. The strings were clearly damaged. It made the melody even sadder. Winter took a moment to place it. ‘A Nightingale Sang In Berkeley Square’. One of his mother’s favourites.

‘How do the words go?’ asked Malcolm Hands, ending the tune in a discordant ripple of chords. ‘Something about angels dining at the Ritz… Your mother liked it, didn’t she?’

‘She did. I told you that?’

Malcolm nodded. ‘Funny the things that lodge in the memory.’

He struck a key, and struck it again, repeatedly. ‘This song makes me think of Phillipa. 1942. April. Early morning. We were on Primrose Hill, still dressed to the nines, still rather sloshed. She looked at the city and she turned to me and said, “I think the war’s over.” I asked her what she meant. She smiled – she was pretty – and she said, “Because I think I just heard a nightingale sing in Berkeley Square.” Two months later she was dead. Aerial bomb. Just like this place.’

Malcolm struck the key again. This time he let it resonate. ‘Yes, funny the things that stick in the mind.’

He looked at Winter. ‘Now Von Braun’s working for the Americans on their precious rockets. Sometimes I wonder if there are any true sides anymore. Maybe we just take turns being friends and enemies with everyone. Stops it getting boring, I suppose.’

It was nine o’clock. The Fairbridge was a shared secret between them, an occasional private meeting place beyond the eyes of the service. Sometimes you needed spaces like that. A refuge. A chance to breathe, to confide. The two men were close – or as close as their choice of career allowed them. They had begun almost as mentor and pupil. Now they enjoyed something that felt close to real friendship. And still, Winter realised, there was much about Malcolm’s life that he didn’t know. He had never mentioned a Phillipa before.

Winter edged past the crater in the floor, moving around the stiff-backed chairs. Some of the tables still had champagne glasses upon them. Their once immaculate tablecloths were filthy with soot. ‘Any sign of Hatherly?’

‘Not a word. I’ve sent Haynes in as a priority. He’ll find him.’

‘It should be me.’

‘You’re relieved of duty, remember. We wouldn’t want to undermine Sir Crispin, now would we? I doubt he’d take it terribly well.’

‘I don’t need psychiatric assessment, Malcolm.’ The words felt hot on his tongue.

‘I know you don’t. That’s why we’re meeting here. There’s a lot I need to tell you. Take a look…’

Malcolm gestured upwards, through the rent in the roof. Winter saw only the London sky, deep blue and full of stars…

‘What am I looking at?’

‘I believe it’s called the future, though I could be mistaken. Go on, take a really good look. You might see them. Their orbit occasionally takes them over London.’

‘I don’t know what I’m looking at.’

‘Telstar 1,’ smiled Malcolm. ‘Telstar 2. Our communications satellites. The clever twins, up there giving the Sputnik boys a run for their money. Sometimes I imagine I can see them winking, but it’s probably only Venus.’

Winter knew of the Telstar project, of course. The first satellite had launched the summer before last, its successor earlier this year. They were a bright hope for Britain. A sliver of tomorrow. God knew the war still clung to this country like silt. What was the phrase Harold Wilson had used in that speech the other week? The white heat of technology? You could feel it beginning to burn these days.

‘We have placed new stars in the sky,’ said Malcolm, grandly. ‘In 1572 Dr John Dee saw a new star. That winter it lit up the skies of Europe. People feared it, naturally. They’d always believed that the heavens had been fixed at the point of creation. They’d studied them, mapped them, pinned them down in their charts. This was something new. This meant the universe could change. It could alter. All things were not eternal. It must have been a bloody terrifying prospect for the poor bastards.’

Malcolm paused, his pale eyes more alive than Winter had ever seen them. ‘Now here we are. The New Elizabethans. We’re not afraid of the skies anymore. Perhaps we should be.’

‘Malcolm,’ pressed Winter, impatient for a straight answer. ‘Why am I here?’

Malcolm took a breath. ‘The world is more than we know, Christopher. And less than we hope.’

Winter let his frustration show. ‘What does that even mean?’ he snapped.

‘It means that the true Cold War has been fought for millennia. The oldest war we know. The war we fight at the edges of the light. The war in the dark.’

Winter heard the words but took a moment to make any sense of them. If not for his experience in Notting Hill he might have imagined Malcolm was suffering some kind of breakdown.

‘What did I encounter in that church?’

‘A demon,’ said Malcolm, bluntly. ‘We caught one in Kursk, once, back in the forties. They’re an absolute bugger to interrogate. All available intelligence suggests they’re a lower order of unearthly being. Powerful, amoral, frequently feral. They don’t tend to take sides as such. They’re players and chancers. Very much out for themselves. An absolute nuisance, really.’

‘How long have we known about them?’

‘I can show you files dating back to the court of Elizabeth. Accounts of these beasts that would freeze your heart. John Dee was one of us, you know. Not just a scholar and an alchemist but a spy and an agent of Walsingham. We’ve always been engaged in this war, Christopher. Always.’

Winter paused to process this. He half heard the hum of Knightsbridge traffic through the torn roof. It seemed to belong to a whole other world. ‘So what was Costigan trading?’

Malcolm’s tongue wet his lips. ‘Runes, as far as we can ascertain. Occult symbols and signifiers. We’ve seen them before. Intercepted some in ’59 in Krasnoyarsk. We’ve had codebreakers on them. Turing’s mob. No luck.’

Malcolm pulled a metal flask from his jacket pocket. He twisted the cap and took an anxious swig. There was an aroma of whisky. Winter declined the offer of a sip.

‘Whatever these symbols are, whatever they mean, they are clearly important. So important that the Russians want them very badly indeed. I know men who believe these secrets may be more powerful than the atom bomb.’

‘How is that possible?’

‘Oh, I’ve stopped thinking in terms of the possible. It gets you nowhere.’

Malcolm pocketed the flask. ‘There’s not really that much difference between spycraft and magecraft, you know. It’s all symbols and enchantments. Crack a code, cast a spell. We’re all walking in the shadow realms, Christopher.’

Winter considered Malcolm’s words. He needed to make some kind of practical sense of all this.

‘So Costigan was trading with the Russians?’

Malcolm shook his head. ‘That’s what we thought at first, when we fished his name from the Soviet chatter. Turns out there’s a third party. A man in Vienna, rather well connected. No politics. That’s who the priest was trading with.’

‘That’s not how I was briefed. I was told Costigan had Soviet principles.’

Malcolm snorted. ‘Do you think these creatures have any kind of principles? Look, it’s messy. You didn’t need the details.’

‘Who’s in on all this?’

Malcolm wiped his mouth, mopping a smear of whisky from his lips. ‘I can’t tell you. I’m not meant to tell you any of this. But you’ve just become involved, haven’t you? And once you’re involved there’s no easy way out.’

The older man stepped close to him. In a gesture that was almost fatherly he smoothed the collar of Winter’s overcoat.

‘Go home to Joyce. Make sure she’s safe.’

Winter found himself bristling in spite of the kindness in Malcolm’s voice. ‘Joyce? She’s never been a part of this!’

‘They won’t care,’ said Malcolm. And then, more gently, ‘I’ll do what I can.’

And with a small, weak smile he walked away. His body was quickly claimed by the shadows of the ballroom.

Winter stood there in silence, aware of how cold he felt in this broken place. Other, sharper instincts kicked in: was he alone? His eyes examined the darkness. He tilted an ear and heard a drip of water, pinging on an overturned table in the far corner. The only scent was the lingering trace of Malcolm’s whisky. Yes, he imagined he was quite alone – unless they were very, very good.

He raised his head, looking through the ragged remains of the roof.

There were new stars above London.

3

The corpse of Carl Hatherly was waiting in the car. It was propped up in the passenger seat, gazing blindly through the windscreen. The dead eyes were almost accusatory.

Winter sighed. The sight of his colleague’s body rattled him. It also made him feel weary.

He had parked his Ford Zephyr in a quiet alley at the rear of a hotel, close to a loading bay. As he approached the vehicle he saw that the door had been jimmied, and expertly so. He noted the telltale scratch of wire on the chrome of the lock. The car had only been there half an hour. They had known he was coming.

He scanned the alley and quietly unlocked the driver’s door. There was a clatter of metal on tarmac and he froze. Just a fox, bothering a bin. The animal pattered into the shadows and the street was silent again. Winter eased himself into the driver’s seat, glaring into the alleyway. His fingers tattooed a rhythm on the wheel. And then he turned to examine the body.

There was a hole in the exact centre of Hatherly’s forehead. The melted flesh formed a tiny, blood-ringed whorl around the wound. It was a neat, unshowy job. Precise. Efficient. Professional.

Winter caught himself. Christ. He was actually critiquing this kill.

He closed the eyes of his echo man, almost tenderly. And then he lifted the cold, bloodless hand, shuddering at the fish-scale texture of the skin. There was a vicious imprint in the flesh. Hatherly’s wrists had been scored by cord. He had been bound before he died.

Winter knew this for what it was, of course. A piece of theatre. A warning. A totem.

Again he caught himself. A totem? Peculiar choice of word. Wasn’t that something to do with voodoo? Malcolm’s talk of an occult war had clearly had an effect.

Winter rummaged among the clutter of Ordnance Survey maps on the back seat. He found his grey felt trilby, dusted it down and placed it over Hatherly’s eyes, hiding the bullethole but not the frozen scream of the mouth.

He peered into the alley once more. There was a sweep of headlights in the distance, the nearby growl of an engine. A lorry, perhaps, reversing. He clicked on the dashboard radio and tuned aimlessly between the channels. A gust of static resolved into the clipped tones of the Home Service and then the sound of The Shadows playing ‘Wonderful Land’ on Radio Luxembourg. He listened to the feeble, fading signal as it clutched the airwaves, then he switched the tune off. It felt inappropriate in the company of a dead man.

He started the car and drove out of Knightsbridge, doing his best to ignore the body beside him. He had to get rid of it, clearly. There was no other choice. It would deny a decent man a funeral but his other options would lead to complications. Hatherly would have understood. Field agents knew how ugly practicalities could be.

Best not to report this to Faulkner, he reasoned. Malcolm had put the worm of doubt in him. He needed time to evaluate just whom he could trust.

He drove to the docks at Wapping, taking the side streets where he could. He let the car purr through the wharves, past the filthy Victorian warehouses with their shattered windows and grime-blackened names of sugar traders. Great cranes rose over rusting hulks of boats, their towering steel frames like a fossil army against the horizon.

A fog prowled the quays, grey and spectral. These docks were meant to be a place of activity. By night they felt like a place of abandonment. A place where things could be abandoned.

Winter tucked the car into a cobbled alley. He rooted around by the gear stick and found a tin of Simpkins travel sweets. He twisted the lid, reached inside and broke apart a congealed cluster of fruit drops. He popped one in his mouth and looked out at the docks. He imagined Telstar gazing down on them in disdain. This was an old world, an old Britain. Its time would soon be gone.

It was then that Hatherly spoke.

‘Hurts…’

It was a single word, a single syllable, but it sounded as though it was being torn from his throat. The dead man said it again and this time it was even more wracked. ‘Hurts…’

Startled, Winter lifted the brow of the hat. Hatherly’s eyes were open now. Something glimmered in the pupils; something alive, but not quite life. The mouth forced itself wider and there was the sound of bone grinding in the jaw.

‘Hurts!’

The breath was rank, like the buried air of a grave. Winter almost gagged. He watched, incredulous, as the man’s right hand began to move. The death-locked fingers juddered, creaked apart, unfurled.

And then, with uncanny speed, they reached for Winter’s throat. The hand encircled his windpipe, clammy and determined. Winter countered Hatherly’s arm with his own and tried to force it away but there was an extraordinary amount of power in the dead man’s chokehold. His vision began to blacken at the edges.

Fighting to focus, channelling all of his strength into his forearm, Winter smashed the fist of the corpse into the dashboard. The undead fingers flexed and curled.

Winter’s free hand snatched the pistol from his shoulder holster. He jammed the barrel of the Webley against Hatherly’s head and pulled the trigger. A bullet tore through the man’s skull and pierced the glass of the passenger door, striking the wall of a warehouse with a bright, fleeting spark.

A soup of blood and brain matter lay splattered on the windscreen. If there had been life in Hatherly’s body it was now expelled.

Winter lay back in the driver’s seat, his heart hammering. And then, very much aware he had just fired a bullet without a silencer – the docks were bound to be patrolled – he exited the car. He hurried to the passenger door and dragged out Hatherly’s remains.

There was the steady slosh of water against the wharves. From a nearby quay a ship’s horn sounded through the fog. Winter opened the boot and gathered up a sheet of tarpaulin, unused since a camping trip to St Ives. He wrapped Hatherly’s body inside it, coiling the ends and fixing them tight with twine.

He rolled the bundled body to the edge of the cobbles and looked down. The Thames waited. With a makeshift prayer he kicked the corpse away. It landed with a splash in the river, bobbed among the weeds and the empty ale bottles then sank into the dark water. As it vanished, Winter wondered if he had seen the tiniest stir of movement inside the tarpaulin.

He walked back to the car, took a handkerchief to the windscreen and drove away.

* * *

It had gone eleven o’clock when he returned home to Jubilee Close. He parked the Ford Zephyr in the drive, having smashed its passenger window. An attempted robbery was so much easier to explain than a bullethole. A damp rag had dealt with the remaining blood and brains.

He took a moment to look around the cul-de-sac, hearing the rumble of the overground line in the distance. This corner of Croydon always felt impregnable, a whole other life away. He could be another man here, sometimes.

He put the key in the lock, pushed at the frosted pane and called Joyce’s name. The house was warm. A little too warm. The radiators were on full blast again. There was the queasy-sweet smell of washing drying in the heat.

He followed the sound of orchestral music to the living room. Joyce was in the spare chair, dozing as a Mantovani disc swirled on the Dansette. He watched her for a moment. As if sensing his presence in the room her eyelids opened. She gave him a sleepy but delighted smile. It was the smile of the girl he had met in Bentley’s Shoes, all those Saturdays ago.

‘Hello, Chris.’

He walked over and gave her a desperate hug. She put her arms around him in response, crossing her wrists and pulling him tight and close for a kiss. He buried his face in her black lacquered hair and inhaled her. A long moment passed. He heard the loyal sweep of the carriage clock.

Joyce knew what he did, to a point. There were lies, inescapably, but he had always taken care to emphasise the duller side of the service, the dossiers and the boxes. It made the conversations simpler.

She pulled away and looked at him, searchingly. ‘What’s the matter?’

He gave her the usual word. ‘Work.’

‘Talk about it?’

‘Not now.’

‘Later maybe? Your casserole’s in the oven. I couldn’t wait any longer.’

‘It’s fine. Thank you, sweetheart. I appreciate it.’

He left the room and walked to the kitchen, still in his overcoat. It was even warmer in here and there was a rich, comforting fug of cooking. He turned on the hot water tap and let it run. He reached for the plastic bottle of Quix washing-up liquid and squeezed a dollop onto the palm of his left hand. He ran it under the tap and let it foam. And then he scrubbed. He scrubbed until the water steamed, until his flesh hurt, until every trace of that dead man’s touch had been erased.

He returned to the hallway. As he eased his shoulders out of his coat he saw a note by the phone, scribbled on a flyer for a local production of Gilbert and Sullivan. There was a single word on it, in Joyce’s handwriting. Malcolm.

‘Joyce,’ he said. ‘Did someone ring for me?’

‘He said his name was Malcolm,’ she called from the living room, shouting above a sudden surge of Mantovani. ‘Said he works with you. Said it was urgent. Wouldn’t say what it was.’ She laughed. ‘He sounded in a state!’

Winter slipped his shoulders back into his overcoat. He put his head around the door. ‘I need to go out again.’

Joyce looked genuinely dismayed. ‘You’re joking… It’s almost midnight!’

‘I’m sorry. It’s really important.’

‘What’s so bloody important?’ she demanded, a rare but familiar flash of anger in her voice.

He reached for the word again and felt a swine as he said it. ‘Work.’

4

The fog had found Belgravia.

Winter watched as it curled through the moneyed square, past the white stucco-fronted terraces. It came from the city’s chimneys, its firesides and its factories, a throng of soot and sulphur that joined with the dank mists of the Thames Valley. It turned the streetlamps into hazy blooms and it condensed as oily smears on the windscreen of the Ford Zephyr.

The wipers turned. So much for the Clean Air Act, he thought.

It was cold in the car. The night air came through the broken glass in the passenger window. Winter had watched Malcolm’s home for twenty minutes now, unsure what to do. There was an etiquette to these things, after all, a professional discretion. You simply didn’t make direct contact outside of the Broadway office. If you had to meet it was in secret, and mutually agreed, as with the Fairbridge.

And yet Malcolm had called him at home, and spoken to Joyce. That was a breach of procedure in itself. Something was wrong tonight.

There was a muted light in one of Malcolm’s windows. A reading lamp, perhaps, or the television – if he even had a television, and knowing Malcolm he would prefer the wireless, or a volume of biography. Winter had spotted no signs of movement behind the glass and no one had left or entered the building by the front door.

He stepped out of the car. He could feel the fog on his skin, damp and close. The square was hushed. Mindful of the rap of his steps on the cobbles he crossed to Malcolm’s townhouse.

The door was open, just an inch. Suspicious, Winter pushed it further. The heavy mahogany swung into a darkened hallway. Some fog floated in ahead of him.

Best to keep the lights off.

Winter entered the hallway, his eyes decoding the gloom. There was thick carpet beneath his shoes. A pigeonhole stood to his left, still filled with items of unclaimed post. He reached out a gloved hand and found a sturdy banister. He took the stairs slowly, as quietly as he could. These old Regency buildings could betray you. He reached the first floor. He climbed to the second.

A shape came barrelling out of the dark, a cannon of a man. He rammed into Winter, sending him stumbling back down the stairs.

Winter struck the wall of the landing. Winded, he struggled to his feet.

A headbutt. A fireflash of pain in the skull. The man had him by the coat collars, his fists bulging like meat. Winter glimpsed a crested tie and military hair.

The man swung a punch. Winter ducked and the great blunt fist connected with the banister, splintering wood. Another fist came. This time Winter blocked it, then kneed his assailant hard in the crotch.

The man reeled. He took a third strike at Winter’s head. Again Winter evaded it. The man’s fist hammered into the Gainsborough print on the wall, the impact shattering the frame. There was a drizzle of glass.

Winter scrabbled on the carpet, seizing a shard. He slashed upwards in a brisk, vicious arc, slicing the glass into the man’s face. In retaliation his opponent snatched a statuette from an alcove window, wielding the white marble like a club.

Winter dropped, twisted, dodging the Grecian nymph as it swung close to his head. He kicked at the man’s arm and sent the improvised weapon flying into the wall. The nymph cracked in two. The man grunted, blinking, his face a mess of blood.

Then both men froze. There was the sound of a lock unlatching. A landing door opened. An elderly man peered out, wrapped in a candy-striped dressing gown, his sparse white hair awry. He had a stiff, regimental air. With ill-concealed disgust he appraised the broken statuette, the scattered glass, the ruined banister.

‘Gentlemen,’ he declared. ‘Words fail me.’

Winter’s opponent slugged the old man and knocked him out cold.

And then he was gone, bolting down the stairwell, impossibly swift for his bulk. Winter pulled his gun and levelled it into the dark but the man was too fast. He was already out of the doorway. Winter realised he had no stomach for pursuit. Let the bastard run.

He took a moment to recapture his breath. The old boy at his feet wouldn’t be waking any time soon. Winter stepped over the prone body and climbed the stairs to the third floor. He felt sure he could smell burning.

The door to Malcolm’s apartment was ajar. Winter studied its edges, noting the shreds of burgundy paint, the buckled brass of the catch, the indentation in the woodwork. It had clearly been forced.

He nudged the door wider with the tip of his shoe. The bitter, burnt tang was more pronounced now. There was a sound, too. A rasping, a scratching. It was insistent.

He entered the apartment. There was a 78 revolving mindlessly on the turntable, the needle scouring its run-out groove in an endless loop. Each futile cycle was amplified by the small black speakers mounted above the door. The needle sawed through the dead vinyl.

The room was dim and warm, sleepily lit by lamps. A large leather sofa dominated the space, blocking his view of the floor. There was a tumbler perched upon it, a tiny swill of whisky in the glass. Winter noted the empty bottles of Glen Moray stacked against the side of the sofa.

The air was acrid. Something had recently been on fire in here. There was another scent too, oily and pungent. Kerosene, perhaps?

Winter stepped around the sofa, past the discarded bottles and the strewn broadsheets. He saw the shoes first.

Christ. Malcolm.

The body lay on the floor, the arms and legs splayed, as if ritualistically. The clothes were singed – Winter saw the familiar paisley bow-tie – but the face, the flesh blackened and peeled by heat, was barely recognisable as Malcolm.

There were no eyes.

There were no eyes, and in the charred sockets someone had jammed a brace of snakes. A third, fat serpent filled the mouth. They coiled obscenely.

Winter’s stomach spasmed in repulsion. This was ungodly. He snatched the rug from the back of the sofa and flung it over the body. It was the only decent thing he could do for Malcolm now. But he’d also done it, he knew, to try and bury the sight. It was too late, of course. He would always see it. The horror of it had branded his memory.

He looked around the room. If there had been time – and a chance – then Malcolm would surely have found a way to leave a clue. Some desperate final communication, secreted in plain sight. Winter’s eyes picked over the ivory carvings on the mantelpiece, the hand-painted military figurines on the glass table, the Elizabethan globe in the corner, its undiscovered reaches patrolled by sea monsters. There were no family photos.

His gaze moved to the bookshelves. Milton. Marlowe. Bunyan. And there it was; a thin volume of Blake, bound in dark cherry leather. There was a flash of blue chalk on its spine, the same discreet indicator they used to mark dead drops in the field.

Winter pulled the book from the shelf. It opened at the frontispiece. William Blake, it announced, 1757– 1827, and it showed one of Blake’s pictures, Angel of the Revelation. A towering, golden-curled figure stood halfway between the sea and the land. One hand clasped what looked like a page of verse, the other was raised to the sky, palm upturned, touching the edge of the picture as if testing the frame that held it. There was a light behind the angel, celestially bright, streaked with amber fire.

He knew what this meant. Good old Malcolm. Winter pocketed the book and left the room. As he did so he glanced, inevitably, at the body on the floor. There was a squirm of movement beneath the rug, coiling and serpentine.

* * *

Winter shinned over the padlocked gates of Matilda Park. Taking care to avoid the spear-tipped railings he dropped to the ground, landing in an autumnal mulch of leaves.

The fog was thicker now. It filled the park, great grey banks of the stuff, massing between the bony October branches of the trees. London’s streetlamps looked like ghost lights in the distance, or ships at sea. Winter began walking, rain-slick leaves clinging to his shoes.

He soon found the statue. It was another of Blake’s angels. This one had granite wings, sweeping forward in the moonlight. They guarded another figure, a girl. She wore the crown of a queen. There was an inscription chiselled on the base of the statue and rainwater ran between the words. ‘And I wept both night and day, And he wiped my tears away; And I wept both day and night, And hid from him my heart’s delight.’

Winter plunged his fist into the earth. His fingers rooted in the wet soil. They found a metal spike and pulled it free.

It looked like a long nail. The centre band was knurled, the rest of it smooth steel. Winter wiped the dirt from the object and, with an effort, unscrewed the cap. Then he removed the lean winder that nestled inside the spike, pulling it carefully past the O-ring seal that was still tacky with glue.

There was a message wrapped around the winder. Malcolm’s writing. The hollow spike also contained a sheaf of money – big notes – and a tiny sliver of microdot film, along with a business card. Winter pocketed them all and lobbed the dead-drop spike into a nearby bush.

It was then that he saw her.

‘Joyce?’

Surely it was Joyce. She stood ten yards away from him, dressed in a coat he was sure he had once bought her – an anniversary present, maybe, or something for Christmas. She had Joyce’s stance, the familiar chocolate-dot mole beneath the lower lip and a fringe of black hair that skirted her eyes, just as Joyce’s did.

She was looking directly at him, her expression inscrutable. The fog wreathed her.

It had to be Joyce. But why was she here? It was impossible. He began to walk towards her, his eyes blinking through the condensation in the air. ‘Darling?’