'It's simple really. I travel. A few weeks ago I was attacked as I arrived in the East End. Something of mine was stolen by Abraxas, who is in the employ of Mestizer and I have a history with her that goes back a long way. Tonight I'm going to go to her, now that she's vulnerable. I'll try to get my property back.'

'And what's going to happen?''Oh, I can think of ninety-nine different outcomes but only two are likely. She kills me or I kill her. When I say I'd kill her I mean with great reluctance and only by allowing her to stumble into her own traps, which is exactly what she says about me. Abraxas will probably turn against her he has his price, like all mercenaries that's the way these things tend to go. There'll be a few loose ends, of course.'

Lecha.s.seur ran a hand through his hair and asked: 'It's the blue box, isn't it? The cabinet of light?'

'That's right.'

'Does it belong to you?''Yes.' He hummed suddenly. 'No. No, in the sense that I stole her but that was a long time ago and we've become inseparable. For all I know, she didn't belong to the person I stole her from in the first place. I am the best of all thieves. And sometimes... Sometimes I think that I belong to her, that she stole me, it makes some kind of sense.'

Lecha.s.seur smiled wryly but it was time to steer the mock interrogation back to more concrete matters.

'What about Walken? How is he involved?'

'He's a sideshow he was, I should say. He's the home team and, once he learned what she was up to, he thought he could take on Mestizer. I'm not sure quite what he was hoping to achieve in the long run. Hubris, a dictionary definition case.' He leaned forward and buried his pensive face in the steeple of his hands.

'He wanted to become you,' Lecha.s.seur said. 'He told me. He thought that if he had your cabinet he would turn into the Doctor. As you say, sick in the head sick in the head.'

'I can understand that,' the Doctor murmured from behind his hands, 'but I play me better than anyone.'

'What about the girl in pink pyjamas? The real Emily?''She was there when I was attacked. She helped me get away but lost her memory. You could call her a witness, if you liked. She's got all that locked up inside her now. Sometimes I hate myself.'

'So, she was just someone in the wrong place at the wrong time?''A witness,' the Doctor insisted. He was pulling a sour face, staring at his hands as if they weren't truly his. Again, Lecha.s.seur saw his wounds. Like stigmata, they wept silently. He had never seen a fleshworm, not as the Doctor described, but he suddenly saw the man in front of him as a patchwork of alien fleshes, snapped apart and st.i.tched back into place. Each patch had its own horrors and its own delights. It wouldn't be hard to tap into one of those wounds, sample some of the memory leaking from him. He reached out

and found he was reaching physically, overstretched. He was intoxicated on the heady images, the Doctor was a fresh fountain of time and memory. He felt giddy. He couldn't help himself. He stumbled out of the chair and fell head-first against the Doctor before falling backwards. The Doctor grabbed for him but gravity was faster and he hit the floor.

It was only a second or two before he recovered his senses. He was on his back, his breathing was hard and his hands were clenched into defensive fists. The Doctor was leaning over him and he wasn't a trickster, he wasn't the Devil, he wasn't a hobgoblin. He was a real, flesh-and-blood man with a soft but genuine concern in his sad old eyes.

But he was a man pregnant with worlds.

'The tea wasn't that bad?' he asked.

'You are Mr Sun,' Lecha.s.seur whispered, but the Doctor just shook his head. He offered his hand but Lecha.s.seur kept his fists bunched and smiled it away.

'I have to go,' the Doctor said and stepped out of Lecha.s.seur's line of sight. When he returned, Lecha.s.seur was back on his feet. The Doctor had collected his hat and coat, they seemed to be all he needed, all that he took with him to define himself. He moved behind the Ferris wheel, so that the slow rotating shadows hid his face.

'If you see anything here you like, feel free to take it,' the Doctor said, his voice flattened out. The playful notes had gone. 'One way or another, I won't be back.'

'I should come with you,' Lecha.s.seur said, but the Doctor waved him away.

'I want you to stay in London.' He looked away pensively, then said: 'Here's something for you to think about. You love this city, I've been watching you, I can tell. You probably weren't here in the Blitz, when all these broken buildings blossomed overnight. The nights have changed since the end of the war. It's a real quality, I don't simply mean the absence of falling bombs. Think about that. Work out what's changed.

'Goodbye, Honore.' He stepped away from the Ferris wheel and was gone.

Lecha.s.seur stood alone while the candles burned down around him. The animating spirit of the room had left with the Doctor. The wheel turned but the toys were just unhaunted old junk, pathetic rather than sinister.

Lecha.s.seur waited for five minutes after the Doctor had gone then he opened his clenched right fist and stared down at the chained key on his palm, the cabinet key that he'd slipped out of the Doctor's pocket as he fell. He reached for the revolver on the table and weighed it in his hand until he knew the shape of it.

'Doctor,' he whispered, a promise, pressing the brutal metal barrel against his skin, 'you're not getting away that easily. I want to know how this ends.'

He left Mr Sun's toyshop in darkness and set off north, on the trail of the Doctor.

7: THE NIGHT OF THE HUNTER.

ORB WAS BRIGHT THAT NIGHT, THERE WAS NO FOG AND HER MOONLIGHT TURNED THE world silver. She had a crisp white face, part-shadowed as if she were distracted away from the Earth. The dark whorls on her surface, which the hunter knew to be thirsty seas of dust, formed a face. world silver. She had a crisp white face, part-shadowed as if she were distracted away from the Earth. The dark whorls on her surface, which the hunter knew to be thirsty seas of dust, formed a face.

With a kick and a silent breathless whoop, Lecha.s.seur dropped from his precarious foothold on the wall and into the dense bushes below. He kept the revolver clutched to his chest. Branches slashed at him but they softened the fall. He rolled and flattened himself face down on the greywhite earth, the revolver probing the darkness ahead of him. He was in his element.

There had been a moment of doubt, as he stepped out into thin air, a moment when he asked himself: why am I doing this? He was a rational man and wasn't entirely persuaded by his own answers.

The Doctor was long gone once he'd found his way out of the toyshop. He hadn't come back for his stolen key, so Lecha.s.seur a.s.sumed that he either hadn't noticed or that Mestizer's goons had caught up with him before he had a chance to turn back. There was a third possibility the Doctor had meant him to take the key, but he dismissed that thought. It left too many variables, too much to chance, even for someone as opaque as the Doctor.

The Doctor had been trying to sideline him. He had drawn Lecha.s.seur into his arcane world, maybe not willingly, but now he wanted to shut him back out. The key was a solid connection to the Doctor and while he had it there was always a way in. It was Lecha.s.seur's lifeline back into the other world. He wore it round his neck, under his shirt, against his skin where it felt warm and icy simultaneously. Once he came off the wall he checked it hadn't come loose.

The fire at the Inferno was fierce red but under control. It had spread to the adjacent buildings and firemen were fighting to contain it. Their faces were coated with ash and sweat, they faded in and out of the smoke and steam like sinewy ghosts. The Blitz must have been like this... No, maybe not. The heat of the flames was real, as were the cries of the men as they worked to turn back the flames, but this fire was isolated. The skies were empty and unthreatening. Lecha.s.seur wondered whether that was the point of the Doctor's riddle, but his gut said but under control. It had spread to the adjacent buildings and firemen were fighting to contain it. Their faces were coated with ash and sweat, they faded in and out of the smoke and steam like sinewy ghosts. The Blitz must have been like this... No, maybe not. The heat of the flames was real, as were the cries of the men as they worked to turn back the flames, but this fire was isolated. The skies were empty and unthreatening. Lecha.s.seur wondered whether that was the point of the Doctor's riddle, but his gut said no. no.

When he'd adopted London he'd been warned that it was liable to burn down from time to time.

The fire had gutted most of the cars at the back of the club and some had popped open like fireworks as the heat reached their petrol tanks, but a couple were still intact. Lecha.s.seur found a sporty yellow number its owner was dead and burning already in the Inferno and drove it away while the police were distracted by the fire. It was a question of touching the right wires together and he saw them instinctively. He remembered the route from his last visit but even so it took an hour for him to reach Mestizer's house.

The wall wasn't such a barrier, especially with the car parked up against it, the roof offering a useful step up. He hadn't seen signs of any other intruder-proofing at the house last time, except for the men with guns and he could deal with them. Mestizer had either captured the Doctor or she hadn't and either way she would be distracted. The big problem he reckoned on was the Big Man. Abraxas was bullet-proof, though at least there was only one of him.

He hoped there was only one of him.

His skin shivered with potential. He felt awake for the first time, fully conscious of the world around. The Doctor had done that to him. Time sensitive. Time sensitive. The words didn't sound much, they weren't any kind of explanation, but they didn't have to be. He perceived everything round him sharper and brighter than he had done before. The whole world was interconnected and spread about him. Even if he couldn't see or taste or touch everything it didn't matter, he still saw the threads that bound the world together. Even the moon looked down on only half the world each night. The words didn't sound much, they weren't any kind of explanation, but they didn't have to be. He perceived everything round him sharper and brighter than he had done before. The whole world was interconnected and spread about him. Even if he couldn't see or taste or touch everything it didn't matter, he still saw the threads that bound the world together. Even the moon looked down on only half the world each night.

Lecha.s.seur was a rational man. The Doctor and Mestizer were not rational people, though Walken might have been in his own cracked way, under his disguise. He was here, Lecha.s.seur decided grudgingly, because a rational man should be present at the end to witness it and make sure it made sense.

He rose in a crouch and ran for the trees. He half-ran stealthily with the revolver held low and steady in his left hand, his shoes hardly touching the ground. He wouldn't break a twig, if he could help it. When he hit the trees branches whipped at him, but he leapt and ducked and didn't break the rhythm of his movement. The trees crowded out the sky, their huge deformed hands reaching to block out the moon. The gun shimmered again in his hand he'd squeeze the trigger three times in the coming minutes, he knew it. The shadows parted, the bright sky opened, the trees broke.

There was a stream beyond the trees and beyond that there was a clean neat lawn with a faint downhill incline, at least two minutes' worth of run to the conservatory door, the easiest way inside. He held back at the edge of the trees, scanning the grounds for movement and seeing none, but failing to capture the whole outline of the house with his eyes.

The silhouette bled into the night sky around it. The moonlight made the gra.s.s silver but the house was impenetrably black.

Staying low and praying to all the G.o.ds-that-never-existed that no one was watching from the invisible windows, the hunter set out in a brisk dash across the lawn. He ran hard, half-expecting the gra.s.s blades to grow mouths and scream as he crushed them, anything to alert Mestizer anything to alert Mestizer to his presence, but the lawn stayed silent. If anyone saw his approach they didn't raise the alarm, they stood at their window and did nothing. to his presence, but the lawn stayed silent. If anyone saw his approach they didn't raise the alarm, they stood at their window and did nothing.

He got a st.i.tch then lost it again.

He no longer noticed the cold.

The gun was weightless in his hand. He brought it up to his chest as he reached the conservatory. The door was unlocked and opened outwards. He went inside, into the steaming heat.

Mestizer's thugs were at the banks of the artificial pool but they weren't waiting for him. They were the two he'd met earlier, the fat one and the thin one, and they were too busy amusing themselves to notice Lecha.s.seur approach. They had a long bundle, wrapped up in a black sack. The fat man was up to his waist in the water and held one end of the bundle under the surface, a swollen Baptist priest pushing it down with his two firm effortless hands. The bundle looked shapeless and sodden in the water but enough of it was stretched out on the sh.o.r.e for the second thug to kick at and stomp on. They were a real contrast, the fat man with his still and methodical sadism and the thin one full of twitchy violence.

The fat man pulled the tapered end of the sack out of the water for a moment's respite and it began to cough. It had a human head, revealed through the sodden outline of the sack. Lecha.s.seur realised there was someone in there, barely alive, but then the thug pushed the head back below the waterline to sink it.

Lecha.s.seur stepped forward with his stolen revolver raised. He was queasily certain about the sack and its contents. He knew who it was they were drowning.

'Emily,' he said, helplessly.Something the Doctor had said popped into his head, but it was the wrong time and the distraction was nearly fatal. The thin goon whirled, quicker than Lecha.s.seur expected, slipping his own gun round to bear on the new target quickly and easily. Ex-British military, probably a special service, better-trained and more prepared to kill than a typical American infantryman. Lecha.s.seur knew he was dead.

The thin man snarl-grinned and spat an insult at his enemy, wasting his precious advantage. Lecha.s.seur made a neat hole in his chest then a ragged one in his face. The thug fell backwards leaving a smear of blood on the air. Lecha.s.seur turned to the other man, who seemed to be obsessed with his drowning; he barely registered Lecha.s.seur or the gun. He pressed the hooded head down as far under the water as he could manage. His hands devoted themselves to the head, squeezing and smashing. A haze of pink surrounded the sack, blood from too many wounds.

Lecha.s.seur could not risk another shot for fear of hitting the sack. So he leapt on the thug, tried to knock him back, but the man pushed him away, laughing. He had a child's snide laugh. His hands were empty now and he turned them towards his attacker. The bundle twitched, bloodied, half floating on the surface and forgotten.

Lecha.s.seur would always find it hard to describe what he felt in those next few seconds. In later life, he would only ever tell one other human being what he did to kill the fat man and his explanations were expressed in flattened listless words. The secret meaning of the fight he kept to himself.

It was an uneven struggle. The fat man was a mountain of flesh but it was all muscle, he was another old soldier. They struggled in the waistdeep water, which dragged Lecha.s.seur back while the fat man parted it smoothly. He giggled in his squeaky boy's voice as he drove his fists at Lecha.s.seur, but nothing else about him was crude. Lecha.s.seur let himself be pounded, he had no choice.

Then he did.He felt the first line of blood run down his face. He closed his eyes and saw where the next blow would fall. He twisted away from it and his opponent shuddered in the water. Lecha.s.seur spun with all his weight and this time the pressure of the water lent force to his blow. He cut the fat man's legs out from under him and the whale bulk slipped down beneath the surface, roaring.

There will be a time when the Earth is drowned and humanity will be ruled by men like these, bloated supermen who've learned to breathe underwater.

The thug pulled Lecha.s.seur down with him. He was still giggling under the surface, his face fully visible through the clear fluid, his fleshy chin breaking the surface. His hands clawed at Lecha.s.seur's skin and hair, to pull him down where he couldn't breathe.

Lecha.s.seur's revolver was trained at him, jabbing his exposed face. Lecha.s.seur touched the trigger, felt the kick along his arm and saw the thug's head explode. A red mushroom cloud billowed in the pool from the stump of the neck, the body began its slow fall to the bottom.

Lecha.s.seur took the bagged human bundle from the pool and pulled himself out onto the dry ground. The body was still shuddering faintly and he stripped back the sack to reveal a shattered face.

It wasn't the girl in pink pyjamas. It was Walken.

The conjuror had lost his poise in the water and the violence that once rippled out of him was gone. His hair was dark and slicked across his face and his skin had turned pale white and bloated. He wasn't quite dead, his lips still sucked air and his eyes were open and flicking, but they were fading. He reached out, a sodden paw pushed against Lecha.s.seur's cheek.

'Doctor,' he said, pushing the word out of his lungs. 'You saved me.'Lecha.s.seur looked down on him, saying nothing but letting the man's palm inspect his face. It was something like a last request.

'You're already dead,' he said.Walken rippled, his skin turning golden and thin under the hothouse lights.

'I can still... regenerate. She laughed at me... when I said... that's what I wanted...' He tried to sit and choked and coughed up water and blood. There was some of the old brittle energy in him, he smiled showing sharp teeth. 'It's the end...' That was too much for him and he lay flat on his back, glistening with water and mortality. She laughed at me... when I said... that's what I wanted...' He tried to sit and choked and coughed up water and blood. There was some of the old brittle energy in him, he smiled showing sharp teeth. 'It's the end...' That was too much for him and he lay flat on his back, glistening with water and mortality.

'I always wanted...' The last thing he said that Lecha.s.seur heard, 'to be saved by... you... Doctor.'

Walken's hand slipped down on the floor at his side and lay still. Lecha.s.seur thought that was it, he was gone. Walken's body trembled but there was no life in it. The exposed face and hands took on an unearthly glow but Lecha.s.seur had seen that before and knew it was the phosph.o.r.escent glimmer of the fat in his flesh.

The other two men, the two he'd killed, were just dead.He stepped away from the corpses and the pool and pushed into the interior of the conservatory, towards the house itself. He was soaked up to the ribs and the steaming humidity of the hothouse made him damp and sticky. It suddenly became harder to move stealthily and comfortably. His shoes squelched with every step and he left a trail of dirty water and earth behind him. He'd given away half his bullets. His break-in was about to become a lot harder and more dangerous.

He was surprised by how easy it was.The door at the back of the conservatory led into a short narrow tiled pa.s.sage. It was cooler but there was a refreshing blast of warm air as he stepped through that seemed to dry him. The damp weight in his clothes evaporated, the trail dried up behind him, he began to move easily again. He couldn't explain it, not at first and never rationally, but...

...but as he penetrated further into the house he became convinced that he wasn't just moving through s.p.a.ce but also through time. Mestizer's house, with its baffling decor and many rooms, felt more like a maze than a home. The floor had a downward slope and without being able to help himself, he knew that every step was taking him towards the centre and the bottom of the labyrinth. He was supposed to be a time sensitive but he picked up nothing from his surroundings. The key dragged heavily round his neck. When it moved it swung like the pendulum of a clock. When it touched his skin it itched. He didn't scratch but he imagined it worming into his chest like a parasite. It was leading him, he knew, towards the low point of the house and the dark heart of the past.

Perhaps that had dried him off? Maybe each step toward the centre had rolled back time enough so that he was dry again. It was an imperfect theory when he checked his revolver there were still three empty chambers and he knew that the three men he'd left in the conservatory were irrevocably dead.

The walls were pocked with geometric shapes for most of the way. They weren't the lurid occult symbols he'd seen on the walls of the Inferno cl Inferno club. They were simple universal symbols, too obvious to have any meaning for him. The walls were sometimes black, sometimes white, sometimes grey, but there was no colour in them. His memories were often monochrome, so it came as a natural conclusion that he was walking into the past.

The house was inhabited but all he saw of the occupants at first were huge angular shadows looming on the walls of distant corridors. He ran after them but never caught sight of their owners. He heard their voices, muttering like sleeptalkers, from rooms on the far side of the wall, but he'd never find a door. He caught sight of a group of huddled figures, moving faintly at the end of a corridor. They ignored him. He thought of grabbing the nearest and asking directions but he held back, afraid that he'd reach for them and his hand would just pa.s.s through thin air.

The first truly solid living creatures he found were monsters.He walked into a room and found them dressing. There were three of them, each one different, each was being helped into patterned yellow robes with high collars and hoods. The closest to the door was about seven foot tall and spindly with a narrow lizard head on a high tapering neck. Its body was squat and solid. It turned and regarded Lecha.s.seur through yellow cat-like eyes. Next to that, but further back in the redtinted gloom was something more human and he felt this one was male. It had a hard obsidian skin, truly and deeply black, but it paid the newcomer no attention as it struggled with its robe. It had red eyes smouldering like coals in the hollows of its face. The third, and hardest to make out, made a little ululating shriek and began to harangue him in a sweet voice full of clicks and hums. She had a pasty face with a narrow trunk and she pulled on her robe to cover her body.

The gun swung unthreatening in his left hand. Lecha.s.seur tapped his temple and said: 'I beg your pardon.' He had a smile on his lips when he walked out. He felt excited and oddly calm. He'd recognised the monsters' dressers, they were all waitresses from the Inferno, Mestizer's hijacked hypnotised army. hijacked hypnotised army.

Soon after that, he found the Doctor.One of the pa.s.sageways opened onto a metal gantry over a well shaft that sank another two storeys below him and rose up to a faraway ceiling. He craned over the edge of the gantry and saw an intense ritual of activity beneath his feet. The floor of the shaft was packed with machinery, not big industrial engines but compact pillars, consoles and nodules that throbbed with light and heat and energy. They were strung together with cables into one vast complex device that covered the floor and climbed the walls. Each part of the machine whistled and winked light, playing its part in the unfathomable whole. Indistinct human figures with shaved heads and drab coveralls moved among it, like little cogs, or insects caught in the mechanism.