Lecha.s.seur shook his head wearily.

'You're hurt, you won't get far.'

'I can try.'

Exasperation filled the soot-covered face. His rescuer turned to the crumbling brick pile and slapped it in frustration. Then he turned back to Lecha.s.seur and offered him a clear-eyed, hard-faced appeal. He held his arms out, palms solemnly displayed.

'Trust me,' he said. 'I'm a doctor.'

6: TRICKS OF THE DEVIL.

'ISN'T IT FUNNY,' THE DOCTOR REMARKED, 'HOW YOUR LIVING s.p.a.cE, EVEN SOMEWHERE you lay your head for a few days, gradually begins to resemble you? As if you're mapping the contents of your head onto your surroundings.' you lay your head for a few days, gradually begins to resemble you? As if you're mapping the contents of your head onto your surroundings.'

'Funny peculiar?' asked Lecha.s.seur.'No, the other kind of funny. You get anguished because something's fallen down or out of place, or the dust's building up on the shelves you never bother to clean. Then, just when you're about to burst with frustration, you see the joke and you laugh, you can't help yourself, it pours out of you. That's the human condition. So I'm told,' he added darkly.

The Doctor had been living under the heaps of rubble a short distance from Covent Garden. It had been a toyshop once, now there were flowers growing in green clumps from the ceiling. The surviving room must have been a bas.e.m.e.nt store or repair s.p.a.ce. Marionettes hung from a rack on the far wall, their strings frayed, their skins flaking, their carnival clothes stained with mould. Weed fronds crept silently down to strangle them. The vegetable patches were speckled with flowers, Blitzdaisies nourished on blood and fire. Most flowers strained upwards to the light, these subsisted on darkness.

Lecha.s.seur had expected the climb down to be dank and cramped but the crack widened and the Doctor pointed out the fractured but steady steps down to his hiding place. The store was at the bottom and there were lights twinkling in the subterranean gloom. The Doctor moved familiarly through the dark to his candles, lighting them with a match that he'd pinch out, then reignite, without it ever burning down. He tossed an empty matchbook to Lecha.s.seur, who plucked it casually out of the air without taking his eyes from his host.

He held the book up to read the label, through the corners of his eyes.

A PRODUCT PRODUCT OF OF THE THE ETERNITY ETERNITY PERPETUAL PERPETUAL COMPANY COMPANY.'What a wonderful idea, what terrible business sense,' the Doctor declared.

He didn't live in the workshop but in a narrow room to the side. He had some sort of water arranged for the place as he disappeared within and emerged minutes later with a clean, shiny face and a sloshing kettle for tea. He offered Lecha.s.seur the chance to clean up but met with a wary, stone-eyed response. He asked to check Lecha.s.seur's wounds but Lecha.s.seur felt grimy and only a little tender and declined. The Doctor put his everlasting match to a gas stove and set the kettle boiling.

Lecha.s.seur barely said a word in those first few minutes but drew in his surroundings. He tried to imagine what the store had been like before the bombs closed it. He remembered childhood shops as being colourful, untouchable treasure troves and felt unsettled by how faded the memory seemed. This room was the opposite of a toyshop. It was the backstage of the doll theatre, their dreams.p.a.ce, their afterlife. Everything here was broken or incomplete. A shelf of naked china dolls gazed down at him, their gla.s.s eyes unblinking, their bodies s.e.xless and smooth. There were the marionettes with their rotted faces. There was an ornamental clock, its front prised open, its cuckoo snapped off at the spring. Teddy-bears, furless and scorched, were mouldering in a corner. The light he'd seen as he'd first entered this room was a luminous glisten from the skins of dead toys.

There were larger objects that, if they'd been whole, would have been beyond the dreams and piggy-banks of all but the richest London children. Lifelike uniforms on mannequins, nurses and soldiers mainly; rocking horses; cars big enough to fit a small-bodied driver; an oldfashioned steam train, like the ones that first crossed America; and there was the Ferris wheel. It stood five feet in diameter and was resting on a workbench in the middle of the room, almost touching the ceiling. Apart from the black dirt that had acc.u.mulated since this room was last in use, there didn't seem to be anything wrong with it. Before the Doctor retreated to the other room he gave it a tap and set it spinning. The wheel went round and round and never stopped.

The Doctor claimed he had been repairing it during his hours of boredom, but Lecha.s.seur didn't trust a word he said. And he used a lot of words, he was in love with them. He had the gift of the gab.

His other hobby since arriving in London had been researching the history of his hideout. He and Lecha.s.seur sat facing each other on rickety chairs with the Ferris wheel at their side. The Doctor crouched on his seat, his legs drawn up into a squat as if trying to make a smaller man of himself. He held his mug in both hands, like a soup bowl. Lecha.s.seur also had a mug. It seemed easier just to accept one than argue.

The tea tasted foul.'Until it was bombed, this shop was owned by a man called Sun. It's always been run by a Mr Sun, as far back as local history recalls. The first Mr Sun seems to have arrived here from China in the mid-18th century and set up his business on arrival. Possibly he inherited it from someone else and I've found it impossible to trace who's actually owned owned the place in the last two hundred years. the place in the last two hundred years.

'Each Mr Sun appears to have been a stooped man, maybe only middle-aged, prematurely old but never ageing. Even if the shop was pa.s.sed down through the generations, this is still a bit of a mystery. All the Mr Suns were thoroughly Anglicised and never dressed up to suit orientalist fads. They all seem to have enjoyed the company of children.

'One woman I spoke to, who is now in her nineties but grew up round here, remembers the Mr Sun of her childhood inviting the street children into the shop, rich and poor alike, for parties. There would be food, magic and other entertainment and the children would all come away with small toys as gifts. She also recalls that a later Mr Sun was imprisoned during the Great War, not because he was a foreigner but because one day in 1915 he took a train to Hove and shot dead, for no readily apparent reason, a professor of economics who later turned out to

have been spying for the Austrians.

'I also spoke to a woman who met the most recent Mr Sun in 1938. They were intimates. He told her that he had a dishonourable ancestor in ancient China. This earliest Mr Sun had been a betrayer, a spy and a poisoner of wells. He was captured, imprisoned and sentenced to death. The night before his execution, a man came to his cell, a stranger, an occidental who promised to help him escape in exchange for an unspecified favour. If they hadn't made this deal, there would have been no Mr Suns in London, no toyshop at all.

'The last Mr Sun walked out of his shop one evening six years ago and was never seen again. That's nothing unusual in wartime. The shop was bombed a week later, again not unusual. According to local legend, the shop would sometimes disappear. You'd go to the door and find the whole facade vanished with nothing but a brick wall in its place as if it had never been there at all. And one day in 1943, it really wasn't. nothing but a brick wall in its place as if it had never been there at all. And one day in 1943, it really wasn't.

'I don't know who Mr Sun was but he sounds like a remarkable man,' the Doctor concluded. He put down his mug. Somehow he had managed to drain it without Lecha.s.seur ever seeing him drink. Lecha.s.seur set his own mug down and addressed him.

'For a while,' he said, not sure of what words were going to come, 'I thought you were just a hoax. I didn't think you were real at all.'

The Doctor brought his hands together, a hard solid clap. He was smiling slightly, fussily. The lips would almost have smirked if the eyes weren't so pained. He'd shed coat, hat and m.u.f.fler while washing and emerged in a soft black velvet smoking jacket and pristine white shirt. The collar was loose, exposing a narrow neck, a p.r.o.nounced throat. His features were large but not thick, quite the opposite, very graceful and aquiline. His hairline was receding, revealing an expansive dome over a face given to sly frowns and flashes of confusion. He wasn't a tall man and without the disguising bulk of his coat, he was gangly.

He wasn't at all what Lecha.s.seur had expected.The wound of his face wasn't visible, not like any other damaged man Lecha.s.seur knew, but when he closed his eyes the scars he wore under his skin were clear. His wounds had burned, they were ancient smouldering things. Lecha.s.seur couldn't see much about this man's life, there was too much s.p.a.ce and time inside his body. He saw the Doctor, both much older and much younger, handing a burning briar to the naked hairy heavy-browed cavewoman, a smug-worried smile on his mouth. His fingers were faintly scorched by the fire.

In the dark, the Doctor had lit his everlasting match and put it to a cigarette. He offered it to Lecha.s.seur then drew it to his own mouth when it was refused.

'Are you sure? Improves your singing voice. To tell the truth, the last time I smoked I was a whole other man. But right now I have a body with cravings.' His eyes lost focus and his voice softened into a reverie. 'I remember visiting the city by the bay, meeting a woman in black, a beautiful lady with no pity. Then someone shot me and that's what made me the man I am today. I'm hazy on the details, Mr Lecha.s.seur, my memories aren't fixed in time in the same way as yours. Or may I call you Honore?'

Lecha.s.seur nodded before he realised what he was being asked.

He wasn't tired but he ached. He had sat restlessly through the Doctor's story of Mr Sun, impatience gathering like silt at the base of his spine, but the Doctor's easy manner was relaxing even as it irritated him. The Doctor wasn't like Walken or Mestizer. He didn't need hypnosis. He was genuinely disarming. Besides...

There had been the hand thrust out in the alley, pulling him up when he was down. He owed this man some polite time for that, whoever he really was.

He coughed. 'What I mean is, I've heard a lot about you. The Doctor is this. T this. The Doctor does that. I've been told to stay away from the Doctor and I've been told I am the Doctor. You say you're the Doctor, the real thing, but I'm not sure I should believe you.'

The Doctor tapped his head politely. 'Anyone who claims to be me but isn't is sick in here.' His hand went into his watch pocket and pulled something out. The candlelight caught it and set it shining. 'Recognise this?' he asked.

Swinging hypnotically on its chain was the key the false Emily had given him.

'Amber had that,' Lecha.s.seur said cautiously. 'How did you get it?''This is my copy. Amber and now Mestizer I imagine has the spare.' The key went back in his pocket. 'I'll need that later tonight. Actually, I'll let you inspect it if you're still not sure. Didn't Miranda tell you we'd be able to recognise each other with the key? Not that I ever needed help recognising you.'

'You were spying on me.''I've kept an eye on you whenever I've had the chance. I don't get out of here a lot. Mestizer has been combing London for me over the past few weeks. She has agents everywhere, many of whom don't even know who they're working for. It's a sinister way to operate. I've had to lie low.'

'How did Miranda get the key?' Lecha.s.seur rapped.'I gave it to her. That reminds me ' He rose suddenly and slipped through the side door, returning moments later with a revolver held gingerly in his fist. Lecha.s.seur tensed, ready to throw himself to one side, but the Doctor let it go, expelling it from his hand as though it were diseased. It clattered down on the table at the base of the Ferris wheel, its barrel aimed towards a rank of tin soldiers.

'Never let it be said that I don't carry guns,' the Doctor said, trying to sound breezy but with a genuine twinge of disgust on his face. 'They lend authority to moral argument, in the right hands,' he added but he didn't sound convinced.

Lecha.s.seur recognised it. 'That's Miranda's.'The Doctor nodded and resumed his seat opposite. With his hands free, his props all vanished, he suddenly seemed larger and more dangerous. He saw what Lecha.s.seur was thinking and said: 'That's right, Honore. I'm a Holy Terror. I am what fear itself is frightened of. I'm the sleep of reason. So I'm told, but I can't keep up with what I am most of the time.'

He had big hands, not rough or powerful or crude or clumsy, just big.'I took the gun before the police arrived,' he explained, and Lecha.s.seur imagined those hands gently easing the revolver from Miranda's mouth. 'They have a record of your prints and that would only complicate matters.'

'Miranda thought you would protect her,' Lecha.s.seur said quietly, though still loud enough for the man opposite to hear. 'She killed herself because you didn't.'

The Doctor shook his head and couldn't look him in the eye. 'Is that what happened? She didn't trust me enough. She should have let Abraxas take her prisoner. I could've got her out again. I'm good at that. Oh, oh dear,' he finished, and it was a pathetic thing to hear coming from his lips.

'It was you, wasn't it?' Lecha.s.seur said, stabbing with the sound of his voice. 'Miranda was working for you when she hired me.'

The Doctor nodded but said nothing.

'So, I was hired to track down the Doctor by the Doctor?'

'That's right.'

'Wasn't there anything better you could spend your money on?'

'I never meant for you to find me. The way you searched, what you turned up, that was the important thing. You were already involved. Mestizer's agents had identified you. They were planning to bring you in.'

'Why?'

'They mistook you for me.'

Lecha.s.seur gazed into the doleful white face of the Doctor, at the clean shaven chin and lip, at the slick thinning brown hair that had turned gold in the candlelight, at the deceptive heaviness of his face. The man was smoking again, the same cigarette returned to his mouth as though he'd had it simply slipped away in his pocket.

'It's like looking in a mirror,' Lecha.s.seur said.'I don't mean physically,' the Doctor replied, his head shivering from side to side. 'You have an aura that resembles mine. Not to the trained eye, it wouldn't have fooled Mestizer for a minute if she'd set eyes on you. But it was enough to trick Walken and Mestizer's agents.'

Lecha.s.seur reached lazily for the gun, pulling it off the table and into his lap. The blood rushed out of his hand as he touched it, numbing uselessly. The blood flowed back, pins-and-needles p.r.i.c.kling inside his trigger finger.

The Doctor adjusted his poise in the chair, where he crouched like a Puck. Like Walken his body was a barely-sealed container, twitching and ready for release, but while the conjuror was reining in a violent energy, the Doctor was holding back something else, something more abstract. Different shapes, different voices, different versions of himself. Lecha.s.seur felt coolly sympathetic. He could understand that.

He had a sudden mental image of the Doctor, Mestizer and Walken as a family, husband, wife and damaged son. He saw them as if it were a photograph, sepia and faded so that the Doctor's face was now almost obscured. They were an unholy trinity. It was a persuasive image but he knew it wasn't true.

'So what's so special about my aura?'

The Doctor fixed him with a devilish grin. 'You have dreams where you can see the past and the future as if they were there in front of you. Sometimes you dip into your memories and change them. You have premonitions you know you can thwart. You're a time sensitive, Honore. You have a unique perspective on the physics of the world. One day you'll look at a woman and think she's going to die in 1926 and 1951 or at a man and see him in four dimensions, as a flesh-worm extending continuously from cradle to grave.' or at a man and see him in four dimensions, as a flesh-worm extending continuously from cradle to grave.'

'And this is how you see things?'He shook his head. 'No, not me. I'm the opposite. I face time the other way. I see snapshots.' He whistled suddenly and said, 'Your aura is like mine, but inverted, so it honestly is like looking in a mirror. Half the time sensitives I've met are clinically insane, by the way.'

'And the other half?' His fizzing hand was on the gun now, warily.'They're bitter, cynical people. They look at the flesh-worm and think that's all there is. Then they start to think that it doesn't matter if the worm lives or dies. It's just a worm, like any other. It'll stop moving and decay and go into the ground. They can't let people into their lives, that's their trouble.'

'Thanks for the warning,' Lecha.s.seur said. He was smiling faintly. Time sensitive, t Time sensitive, the idea rolled round pleasingly inside his skull. 'I had a doctor once another doctor tell me that.'

'Really? Then I'm your second opinion.'Lecha.s.seur nodded. He was sitting in the hospital again, in his smock and wheelchair. It was the moment when he'd been trundled out to meet the head-shrinking Dr Paterson for the first time, his eyes full of sullen hostility, those he met full of genial intelligence. He couldn't breathe, the air was gone. He felt physically propelled back to the hospital, slipped back in time through his memories. Then he snapped back to the present, to the dead toyshop and the Doctor.

He coughed, the gun trembling faintly in his hand. The Doctor was watching him thoughtfully, waiting for him to speak, so he said: 'Who was Mestizer's agent, the one who identified me?'

'Does it matter?''It does matter,' Lecha.s.seur said. 'You know I have this revolver pointing at your chest. I can put a bullet through your heart.'

The Doctor jiggled his head enthusiastically. 'a.s.suming that the gun's loaded. There's only two ways you can find out: take a chance and pull the trigger; or open the chamber and give me the opportunity to grab it from you. That's a horrible image, don't you think? Two grown men grappling for a gun in a toyshop.'

Lecha.s.seur shrugged. 'Would it make a difference if I shot you dead now? You've caused enough trouble. Your body might never be discovered. The candles would burn out I don't think they're everlasting and I'd leave you dead in the dark.'

The Doctor climbed down from his chair and turned away, presenting his back as a big blank target. 'You see what I mean about bitter bitter and and cynical. Y cynical. You won't shoot me, though I know you can. I think you have a sense of natural justice. I saw that when you left Mrs Beardsley's. You came out of that door with such a look on your face. Brute empathy, that's what they call it. I've never seen such compa.s.sion.' that's what they call it. I've never seen such compa.s.sion.'

As the Doctor spoke, Lecha.s.seur span open the barrel of the revolver and found a bullet tucked into each of the six chambers. He pushed it closed then slid the gun back onto the table. He didn't make a sound but the Doctor's shoulders sagged.

'How about we just pretend I'm pointing a gun at you?'The Doctor turned, revealing a hard humourless smile. He perched back on his chair, hunched still and squinting like a bony-limbed gargoyle. 'Miranda Sessions was Mestizer's spy. She mistook you for me. Then after she'd identified you to Mestizer she had a change of heart. That was when I went to her with my plan. You were already involved, you had to be, and I wanted to set you on the offensive. And it's worked. You confused Mestizer's agents and gave me cover to move around freely. You distracted Walken and you drew Mestizer out into the open early. She gave away her entire hand tonight. Poor Miranda.'

'And you suggested she use the name Emily Blandish?'

'Just another clue to point you in the right direction.'

'So' he shrugged you just wanted me to stir up trouble? I was a patsy?'

The Doctor shook his head. 'All of what you did has helped me, a lot, and I am grateful but I've had something else in mind for you from the start.'

'Yeah?'

'You're a smart man,' he said. 'You'll work it out.'

Lecha.s.seur raised a pistol shaped of his fingers and shot the Doctor through the head. 'Bang.' He laughed then, a laugh that he couldn't help, that poured out of him.

'Good,' the Doctor purred, leaning forward, his chin on his hands, good.'

Lecha.s.seur turned his pistol back into a hand. 'So what is this all about?'