Nick Setchfield is a writer, editor and entertainment journalist whose work has appeared in SFX and Total Film, two of the UK's leading movie and TV titles. He's also been a film reviewer for the BBC and a scriptwriter for ITV's Spitting Image. Over a 20 year career he's interviewed untold actors, writers and directors, along with assorted Jedi, superheroes, starship captains, diabolical masterminds and the occasional quotable Dalek.
The War in the Dark is his first novel. Combining a lifelong love of spy thrillers, international adventure and occult weirdness, it begins the adventures of Christopher Winter, a British Intelligence agent battling demonic forces in the Cold War of the 1960s. The Spider Dance continues Winter's story.
The War in the Dark was longlisted for the 2018 Bram Stoker Award for Superior Achievement in a First Novel.
Nick Setchfield was born in Cardiff, lives in Bath and lets his mind wander.
www.nicksetchfield.com
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1
JUNE 1965
There was a human heart in a locker at St Pancras station.
Christopher Winter came to collect it on a Thursday afternoon in early summer. London felt listless; cranes idled on the heat-blurred horizon, ready to peck at the new tower blocks sprouting to the north of the city. There was no wind and the weathervane that topped the gothic spire of the grand Victorian building did not tilt or turn.
The heart cared little for London and even less for the living.
Winter strode through the redbrick arch on Euston Road, into the main concourse, scattering sickly-grey pigeons. The birds took to the roof, settling on its wrought-iron ribs. The station clock hung like a glass moon above the locomotives. It was almost five.
The heart had outlasted centuries. The heart could wait forever. Destination boards clattered, place names spinning in the slats. St Albans. Kettering. Melton Mowbray. There was the promise of more exotic departures too: Liverpool, Manchester, Edinburgh Waverley.
The heart had known many lands.
Winter kept walking, past the walls of diesel-blackened bricks. It was hot inside and this gutter-stained cathedral smelt of soot and engine oil. Soon, he suspected, they would take a wrecking ball to St Pancras. Build something new, streamlined and modern, fit for the times.
The left luggage lockers were ahead of him, bookended by posters for Pall Mall cigarettes and cheap breaks on the Spanish coast. He located his locker and inspected the edges of the door for signs of disturbance. The pinch of gum he had wedged in the crack was intact, his pencil-tip indentations preserved. Standard operational practice in the field. He rather missed it.
A Salvation Army band had gathered outside the ticket office. They began to play ‘The Well is Deep’, the sound of the brass incongruously mournful on such a sultry afternoon. Winter let his gaze skim the concourse, his face blank. Good. He was unobserved.
He took a small key from his shirt pocket. It was wet from the sweat that had seeped into the nylon. The serrated silver slid into the lock. The key turned.
The package was there, just as he had left it. It had arrived in the post two days before, tied with sturdy bows of string and plastered with colourful Ecuadorian stamps. Where to store it? Not at his damp-riddled room in Battersea, that was for sure. His landlady had the infiltration skills of the KGB’s finest. No, far safer to keep it here, concealed behind this anonymous wall of lockers, safe among the suitcases and the hat boxes and the pills and the guns and all the other secrets London banked when no one was looking.
He pulled the parcel from its aluminium nest. It was Karina who had addressed the label, her handwriting as sleek and contained as he remembered her physical presence (those upward slashes, so like the movement of a blade…). She had sourced the heart for him, drawing on her network of contacts who traded in the unobtainable. It was a favour. He tried not to think of it as a final gift.
Winter placed the parcel under his arm and closed the locker door. As he stepped away one of the station’s rat-catchers passed behind him. The man had an inky bottle of poison in his hand and a small but belligerent dog on a leash. The terrier snarled, springing at Winter’s legs and leaving two grimy paw prints on the knees of his suit. The man pulled the dog back with a jerk of the strap. The animal whined, straining to reach the package, half curious, half anxious. It continued to stare as the ratcatcher hauled it towards the goods yard. ‘Get away, boy! Daft thing, you are!’
Winter strode out of the station, the clipped tones of the tannoy fading behind him. He flagged down a black cab at the kerbside.
‘Camden Town. Betting shop on Chalk Farm Road.’
He eased himself onto the seat behind the driver, the parcel balanced on his lap. Stealing a look in the rearview mirror he saw the spires of St Pancras retreat, the late afternoon sunlight striking the sandstone bricks. Picking up speed, the taxi trundled north along the Euston Road, the traffic a drowsy hum outside the windows.
Sat there in the back of the cab Winter imagined he could hear the faintest throb of a heartbeat. A muffled but insistent drumming, coming from inside the parcel. Tiny, determined, impossible. Once he would have crushed such a thought. He knew better now. He knew that magic was the hidden pulse of this world.
Winter extracted a pack of Woodbines from his jacket pocket. He placed one between his lips, poking the tip into the flame of his gunmetal lighter. He clearly wasn’t about to make conversation and so the driver spun the radio dial. On Radio London Sandie Shaw was singing about waiting a long, long time for love.
The heart had the patience of a dead thing.
Tommy the Face admired himself in the nicotine-clouded mirror that hung in the hot, boxy room behind the betting shop. His new three-button Anthony Sinclair suit was perfect. The lines were lean, the cut trim, the fit modishly tapered. He particularly savoured the way the fine Italian wool clung to his own sharp and flawless angles. Inspecting his sleek, snow-blond fringe he idly adjusted his cuffs, allowing a glimpse of coral cufflink at the edge of each sleeve. He was, he knew, the business.
Tommy saw Winter’s reflection enter the room. ‘Alright, Frosty?’
As ever there was a detectable hint of needle in the young man’s voice. Winter had known him for two months now, ever since the Southwark job, and they tolerated each other’s company like wary cats.
‘Just call me Winter, Tommy. Christopher if you must.’
Tommy smirked, returning to the lure of his reflection. ‘Your call, mate. Just being friendly.’ And then he turned, smiling just a little too much. ‘Tell me, what do you reckon to the suit? It’s a corker, right? I reckon I’ll slay the birds up West in this.’
Winter gave him a weary, dead-eyed look. ‘If I had an opinion on your suit I’d kill myself.’
There was a grunt of a laugh from the armchair, where a doleful, balding man in his late fifties was slicing a pomegranate with a switchblade. This was Albert White, more commonly known as Sparkling.
Tommy nodded, his smile dropping at the edges. ‘Is that so? Well, that’s no surprise, buttercup. Look at the bloody threads you’re wearing.’
He stepped closer and smoothed the lapels of Winter’s rumpled seersucker suit. ‘I can’t tell if this is a fashion statement or a suicide note.’
Sparkling grunted again then fell back into his customary lugubrious silence. Gathering pomegranate seeds on the edge of the blade he flicked them at a bin full of betting slips.
‘I mean, who are you?’ baited Tommy, as if spoiling for a fight in this cramped, windowless room. ‘You turn up one day, no references, no rep. Just a blank little bastard from nowhere.’
He moved an inch closer, making his wiry, welltailored frame as intimidating as he could. ‘Who’s to say you’re not undercover filth?’
Winter’s bright green eyes matched Tommy’s gaze. ‘Get out of my face, son. Or you won’t be so pretty for much longer.’
‘Is that a threat?’
‘More a statistical probability.’
Tommy pushed it. ‘Based on?’
‘Years of research,’ said Winter, evenly.
Tommy weighed his response. And then he flashed his cocky, livewire grin. ‘Well, at least we know your suit’s criminal.’ He turned to Sparkling, expecting a laugh. Sparkling had a mouthful of pomegranate.
Winter sat down on a baggy, cigarette-scorched leather sofa. He tossed a copy of The Sporting Life to the carpet, where it joined an empty bottle of Johnnie Walker and a scattering of playing cards. Next to him was another man, thick-set but matinee handsome in an entirely oblivious way, as if perpetually surprised by his own good looks. Winter had never heard his real name but knew that he was Italian. Naturally he was known to the others as Spanish. That was the private logic of the world he now found himself in.
‘It is not a bad suit, really, Signor Winter,’ said Spanish, with a clumsy sweetness. ‘I’ve seen people buried in worse.’
Winter smiled. ‘Thank you, Spanish. I appreciate the sentiment.’
Ten minutes passed in an itchy silence. Tommy continued to preen like a mod Narcissus in the mirror while Winter found himself examining every last detail of the stamps stuck to the package. If the heartbeat had ever been there it was gone now. Finally the door opened and a pre-emptive fug of cigar smoke and peppery aftershave declared the arrival of Jack Creadley.
The room changed in his presence. There was a sullen charisma to the man that assumed and won respect. Winter estimated Creadley must have been in his early sixties – the black hair was neatly clipped and parted with pomade, the face pocked like animal hide – but he carried the ghost of his younger self, the lad who had flashed knives in Thameside dockyards, the boy who had earned the wide, pale scar at his throat, curved like a smile.
‘Checked the merchandise?’ he asked, indicating the parcel on Winter’s lap.
‘Of course,’ said Winter, tetchily. And then, more gently, because Creadley had the temper of a landmine, ‘It’s exactly what they’re looking for.’
Creadley exhaled cigar smoke between his teeth. ‘Good. I hate to disappoint a client. Especially one with real money. Alright, Winter. You’re staying on the payroll.’
He turned to address the room. ‘The trade’s at four am. We leave at three. Get some food down your gullets. No booze. And I mean no booze. If there’s booze I slice you.’ He nodded to a small trestle table in the corner. It was stacked with firearms. ‘Let’s be professional about it.’
And with that commandment Jack Creadley left the room. Sparkling sighed and reached for the copy of The Sporting Life that Winter had flung to the floor. ‘Nine bleedin’ hours.’
Tommy consulted his watch, hitching his shirt-cuff so that the elegant dial was fully exposed, the light from the room’s lone, bare bulb bouncing off the glass. He stepped nearer to the sofa, making a concerted attempt to snag Winter’s attention.
‘Like the watch? It’s new.’
Winter peered at Tommy’s wrist. ‘You know,’ he said, with a dark little smile, ‘I don’t think that’s how you spell Cartier…’
The North Circular had a profound emptiness at three in the morning. There were other people on the road, to be sure – black cabs, transit vans, the occasional greaser on a twin-cylinder Triton – but to Winter they were all complicit, part of an unspoken fraternity in these dead hours. Ghost traffic, anonymous and slippery.
He sat in the back of Jack Creadley’s Jaguar saloon, wedged like a kid between Sparkling and Spanish, the package on his lap. Tommy the Face was driving. Creadley was in the passenger seat upfront, a fresh cigar on the go. No one spoke but the bass growl of the Jag’s engine thrummed through the upholstery.
As they powered along the dual carriageway Winter considered just how many bodies might be buried in the tarmac beneath them. Creadley had doubtlessly put some of those bodies there himself. Snitches, competitors, former business partners. Perhaps the man who had slashed his throat. Christ, the company Winter was keeping these days. He turned to the window, peering past Spanish, trying to tune out his own disquiet.
He needed a job. This was a job. It was that simple.
The road took them past garage forecourts and
transport cafés, sleeping industrial estates and unlit
factories, the bright hub of London retreating as the
asphalt snaked toward Watford and beyond. Winter
watched as the roadside landscape became bleaker, more
derelict, husks of buildings consumed by countryside.
These were the abandoned edges, the outermost margins
of the capital, where an alliance of rot and wild shrubs
claimed the city for itself.
Maybe it was the hour but this part of London felt liminal, a shadowy threshold between the lawful world and everything that lay outside it. No wonder a man like Creadley favoured such a location. Home turf, thought Winter.
Creadley glanced in the wing mirror. He was convinced they had been tailed ever since they left Camden. A gangster’s instinct. ‘We shaken it?’
‘Nothing there,’ Tommy reassured him. ‘We’re clean, I told you.’
‘We better be, son. Keep an eye out.’
The Jaguar took a side road, following a half-obscured signpost for Scratch Hill Junction. Ahead of them lay a deserted car park, its concrete walls choked by briars. A wasteground now, it sat beneath a brambled railway cutting, close to the black maw of a foot tunnel. Beyond the embankment rose a viaduct, spanning a straggly width of river.
The saloon edged into the car park, its headlamps dimming as it crawled to a stop. The men got out, buttoning jackets, smoothing the outlines of guns. The breeze was surprisingly warm ahead of the dawn. There was already a chorus of blackbirds in the trees.
‘We’ll wait for them inside,’ said Creadley. ‘Let’s see them arrive.’
They walked in lockstep to the shell of the station. It had been bombed in the war, clipped by the tail end of a raid on a local munitions factory. The remaining structure was officially condemned but the money or the will had never been there to demolish it. And so Scratch Hill had been left to decay, saving a not inconsiderable amount of paperwork. Over the years the land had gradually clawed the area back. Nature was vengeful, but she was patient, too.
Inside, wartime propaganda posters peeled from the walls. Dig For Victory. Hitler Will Send No Warning. Keep It To Yourself – War’s Not A Family Matter. Someone had taken a Stanley knife to the last one, blinding the eyes of the handsome, apple-cheeked brood until only jagged white shreds remained.
The men moved into the shadows of the waiting room, fragments of timber and glass splintering beneath their shoes.
‘I’m not happy with any of this,’ said Sparkling, his voice a dry whisper. ‘What do they want with this thing? It’s obscene…’
Creadley was patient. ‘It’s fine. It’s a trade. Just a bit of unusual merchandise, that’s all.’
‘We’ve never dealt with these people before,’ Sparkling persisted. ‘They’re a breed apart, by the sounds of it.’
‘They’re clients, same as anyone. If they try to stiff us, they’ll soon know about it, believe me.’
The thought of imminent violence – as close as Jack Creadley came to a personal guarantee – seemed to mollify Sparkling. He lapsed into a glum silence, staring out through the shards of glass that hung like icicles in the window frames.
At a little after four a glare of headlights swept the room. A fin-tailed Mercedes-Benz slid into the car park, a milky smear of moonlight on its gleaming black bodywork. As the engine died the driver’s door opened and a man in a chauffeur’s cap and breeches exited the vehicle. He glanced impassively at the ruined building then strode to the rear door of the Mercedes, opening it with a slick twist of the handle.
A woman climbed out of the car. She was dressed in a crisp, dark business suit and wore her silver-blonde hair in an ornately braided bun. There was a sinuous elegance to her, noted Winter, almost like Shrimpton or one of those other bony wonders who were forever in the fashion pages of the Sunday supplements. She looked, in truth, like the last person who belonged in this place.
The woman strode towards the station entrance, the driver a discreet number of paces behind. There was a trim black attaché case in her hand, swinging on a leather handle.
The pair entered the waiting room, prompting Creadley and his men to step from the shadows. The two parties exchanged nods. There were no introductions, no pleasantries, but the edges of the woman’s mouth danced as Tommy emerged from the gloom. She put a hand to the young gangster’s face and let it glide across his cheek, the motion unmistakably sensual.
‘Such an exquisite boy.’ The accent was impossible to place but the words rippled like silk.
Tommy gave a forgivably smug grin, relishing the attention. And then the smile became a grimace, as if the woman had just trailed thorns across his face. Curious, Winter peered at Tommy’s skin but it was unmarked.
He let his gaze skip to Spanish, who was stood next to Tommy. There was a fine sweat on the Italian’s forehead. He didn’t meet Winter’s eyes.
‘Let’s see the money,’ said Creadley, prioritising.
‘Of course.’ She unlocked the latches of the case and raised the lid, revealing tight clumps of banknotes, stacked against baize lining. ‘Ten thousand, as we agreed. Now you show us the heart.’
Creadley gave the nod. Winter took a step forward, the parcel in his hand. The woman regarded him, a glitter of fascination in her pupils. They had expanded to almost eclipse her irises but Winter had the feeling they were hungry for more than just light. It was as though they were absorbing everything in the room, every potential stimulus. Her eyes were cool but they craved.
She raised her hand again, her lean, almond-nailed fingers eager for Winter’s skin. He caught her by the wrist and gave a polite shake of his head. She let her hand fall, disappointed but amused.
Winter delved into Karina’s parcel. His hand emerged holding a small, plump bundle of wax paper. He cradled it in his palm, almost tenderly, and began to peel away the semi-translucent layers, as if unwrapping a butcher’s cut. There, in the centre, was a leathery, blood-blackened heart, the mound of veins and tissue shrivelled by age but recognisably human. Perched on Winter’s hand it began to beat in the stillness of the room.
‘This is Frontenac’s heart?’ the woman challenged, watching as it throbbed, the ventricles quivering almost imperceptibly in the half-light.
Winter nodded. ‘Guaranteed.’
‘What do you want with it?’ asked Sparkling White, an ill-concealed note of disgust in his voice. Tonight was beyond both his experience and his understanding. This deal clearly didn’t sit well with him.
The woman kept her gaze on the heart. ‘We just want to keep it safe. Such a precious object.’ She almost purred, a kitten with a wounded bird.
‘No more talk,’ said Creadley. ‘We trade now.’
Winter prepared to exchange, motioning for the woman to hand him the money. She moved the attaché case closer, keeping her right arm parallel to his. For a moment they were synched in perfect mutual distrust.
There was a sudden flurry of dust on Winter’s face. It had come from directly above him.
He stared up, blinking the soot from his eyes. Something had disturbed the rafters of the old station. There was a shape there – but barely there, almost indistinguishable from the darkness that hid the rotted joists. A coiled, compact mass of shadow, as if the dark had contorted itself into something solid.
The darkness uncurled and dropped from the rafters as a man.
Winter barely had time to register a midnight-blue suit and wormy white skin before the heart was snatched from his hand.
As one the gangsters pulled their guns. Sparkling was the first to fire and Sparkling was the first to die, his throat ripped by a slash of nails. Blood hit the wall, spattering the propaganda posters. The coppery arc of fluid stained the torn white eyes.
Spanish waved his gun, protesting the death. ‘No! This is not what we agreed! No killing! We agreed no killing!’
The figure in the dark blue suit turned to confront the young Italian. He had a pale, bald head, embroidered with veins. The skin was dragged taut across the bone, hugging the skull like a sheath. There was a scent in the room like spoilt fruit.
‘What do you mean we agreed?’ demanded Creadley, fighting to process what he’d just heard, let alone what he’d seen. ‘Who did you agree with?’
Spanish battled the tremor in his throat. ‘Mr Creadley… I… Boss…’
Now Creadley swung his gun at Spanish. ‘You cut your own deal? You sold us out to this bastard? You did this to me, you cheeky little sod?’ His knuckle tightened around the trigger. There was fury in his face.
A bullet thumped into Spanish’s chest. He staggered, knock-kneed, to the wall, a surge of blood on his lips. Then he sank to the ground, his eyes dead.
Creadley switched his aim to the figure in the blue suit. The blade-like nails sliced the hand from his wrist, severing the flesh in a swift, feral motion. Creadley’s hand smacked the floor, a slab of meat now, still clasping the butt of the gun, a signet ring gleaming. He barely had time to stare at the wet stump in his sleeve before the nails came again, shredding his face to rags.
In the chaos the woman and her chauffeur had fled the room. Winter could see them racing to the Mercedes outside. They had abandoned the attaché case, spilling its upper tier of banknotes in the dust of the station floor.
The man in the midnight-blue suit turned to face Winter and Tommy, the stolen heart in his hand. Winter stared at the intruder, taking in the bloodless skin and the curiously upswept ears with their jagged little tips. The eyes were robbed of colour, pale as quartz. It gave him the look of some blind fish in a lightless ocean trench.
What was left of Jack Creadley wailed in the corner of the waiting room. The man who had taken the heart turned and ran.
‘Come on,’ said Winter, urging a clearly reluctant Tommy to follow him.
‘Right bastard night, this is,’ muttered Tommy, Creadley’s blood decorating his Turnbull & Asser shirt.
They set off in pursuit, hearing the Mercedes tear out of the car park with a furious rasp of tyres. The man in the blue suit had already reached the mouth of the old foot tunnel. They saw him disappear inside, his thin frame quickly taken by the darkness. Winter and Tommy sprinted towards the archway.
The entrance to the tunnel stank of dead water. Winter took the lighter from his pocket and cracked a flame, exposing the slimy ceramic tiles that lined the pitchblack hollow. It was a feeble attempt at illumination – the shadows in front of them were still a thick, forbidding wall – but it was all they had.
They pushed ahead, into the tunnel, kicking through dank troughs of water, the tiny flame dancing and dwindling in Winter’s hand. It felt as though they were carving their way into solid night. There was no sign of the man they were chasing, no sound of footfalls in the tunnel’s depths. The smell of putrefaction almost made them gag.
And then there he was, caught in the oily shadows cast by the lighter. He stood directly ahead of them, motionless, the heart still clutched in his fist. Gobs of moisture fell from the ceiling, striking his skull and running the length of his face.
Winter and Tommy stumbled to a stop, their own breathing all they could hear in the echoing length of the tunnel.
The figure regarded them with those colourless eyes.
Tommy flashed his cocksure grin. ‘Nice tailoring, gorgeous.’
For a moment the man made no response. And then the edges of his mouth parted, the lips peeling to expose a chain of teeth. The incisors were the size of nails. It was a smile, of a kind.
Winter levelled his Mauser. But he didn’t shoot.
Something was massing in the deep, wet shadows of the tunnel. Something that was gathering strength in the dark.
The sounds came ahead of the shapes, echoing along the cracked tiled walls. A scratching and a thrashing and a shrill, half-crazed screech.
A flood of sewer rats burst from the darkness.
They swarmed upon the walls and surged through the potholes, their bodies tangling together, skinny tails whipping each other’s matted hides. There was another noise now: a sustained, incessant chittering, like hunger itself.
Winter and Tommy ran. They turned on their heels and raced to the entrance, thrashing through water, skidding on the slick tiles. Breaking back into the night they made for the car park. The mass of rats pursued them, scrambling through the withered undergrowth, fast and ravenous.
Tommy was the first to reach the Jag. He tore the keys from his pocket and cursed as he missed the lock on his first attempt. Then he hauled the door open and threw it shut behind him.
Winter slammed the passenger door, sealing them inside. ‘Start the car!’
Tommy stabbed the key into the ignition. No response.
The windscreen darkened. The rats were upon it, their countless teeth and tiny, almost ludicrously human hands squeezed against the glass.
Again the engine failed to fire. ‘Shit!’ cried Tommy, again and again. He had the voice of a boy now.
Something thumped the roof. And then came another thump, and another, and another, harder and louder, the weight of the things accumulating by the second. The windows of the car were running with the vermin. Now the only light came from the dim glow of the dashboard.
The Jag’s engine finally turned over. Tommy thrust the gear lever into first. Releasing the handbrake he floored the throttle.
A series of fine cracks suddenly filled the windscreen. Beyond it was a shifting mass of darkness.
The car was gaining speed but Tommy was driving blind, swerving erratically in a bid to shake the rats. He accelerated, stamped on the brake, accelerated again, trying to throw them free. The protest of the tyres merged with the squeal of the creatures.
The windscreen was fracturing. Winter took a look behind him. The rear window was black with rats.
No choice now.
Winter twisted the door handle. Flinging the door wide he hurled himself out as Tommy accelerated again. Tarmac slammed against his body, tearing his hands as he tumbled. He rolled, fighting to steady himself.
The Jaguar slammed into the wall of the car park, its bodywork crumpling on impact. Winter heard a shattering of glass. And then a scream, a scream that was quickly engulfed, then gone. The rats had found Tommy’s mouth.
The ruptured fuel tank exploded. The Jag ignited with a hot bloom of flame, lighting up the car park and the ring of ash trees beyond it.
Winter pulled himself to his feet, shielding his eyes from the fireball. Through the haze of heat he could see the man in the blue suit, emerging from the other end of the foot tunnel. He was on the hillside now, making for the viaduct, his thin body outlined against the early London light.
Winter took a brass knuckle-duster from his jacket pocket and squeezed his bloodied fingers through its thick, scuffed rings. In his other hand he gripped the Mauser. He sprinted across the car park and scrambled up the wooded embankment, following the fox path through the brambles, thorns snagging his suit.
On the crown of the hill the full span of the viaduct lay revealed. The abandoned bridge straddled the river on a row of semi-circular arches, squatting above the water like an infinitely patient spider. Winter estimated the ribbon of rail track had to be two hundred yards long, perhaps sixty feet high. The once-proud Victorian structure was crumbling now, shorn by the Luftwaffe strike in the war.
Winter ran along the maintenance walkway, clattering down the plates and rivets. He took a rash shot. It was a waste of a bullet, lost to the sky.
Another running shot. Another miss. The bullet rebounded, embedding itself in brickwork.
Winter raced along the rusted tracks, closing in.
The man in the blue suit tilted his tapered ears as Winter approached, hunting sound. He stopped running and began to turn. The motion was unhurried, utterly confident.
Winter smashed the knuckle-duster into his face. Then he punched him again, harder still, straight across the mouth. The brass took the impact that would have cracked his own bones.
The man reeled, Frontenac’s heart still clutched against his chest. With an irritated swipe of his free hand he knocked the Mauser from Winter’s fist. The pistol spun away to the ground.
This part of the bridge had been half razed by the Blitz. The rails ended in scorch-blackened prongs, torn forks of metal that framed a gaping hole in the tracks. Directly below was the dirty-dark water, swilling over weeds and boulders. The wall, too, was gone, blown away on the right-hand side, leaving a vertiginous drop.
The man in the blue suit snatched at Winter’s jacket, hauling him to the very edge of the breach. Brickwork broke beneath their shoes, tumbling through the gap to the river.
Winter was half treading air, fighting to hook his heels on the broken spurs of the rails.
He grabbed his opponent’s wrist, using him for leverage as much as blocking a potential blow. As he struggled to keep his balance he saw the man’s nails glint in the grey light. The hand was opening, the fingers flexing as they unfurled.
At first Winter thought the man must be injured; blood was leaking from his palm, running from a halfmoon scored in the skin. It was almost a stigmata.
And then the skin broke like a wound. Twin rows of teeth emerged from the fissure.
It was a mouth, yawning out of the flesh.
It reached for his face, the tiny teeth shiny with blood and spittle. Winter thrust his head away but the hand was closing against his throat.
Suddenly his opponent twisted, spasmed. Winter felt
a shock of impact pass into his own body. He recognised
it at once: the emphatic wrench of a gunshot. He flinched,
wondering if the bullet had found him too.
The man tottered, his colourless eyes narrowing with
anger. He spat a single syllable, a word that Winter didn’t
recognise. Then he lurched towards the shattered wall and
dropped from the bridge, the heart held tight in his fist.
He had chosen to fall.
Winter reached the wall in time to see the figure hit the river. It smacked into the greasy water, sending everwidening ripples to the banks. The body began to drift, claimed by the current. The heart remained in the man’s hand, cradled triumphantly against his chest as he floated deeper into this unloved tributary of the Thames.
Winter exhaled. It was a pained breath. ‘Next time you might want to try a head shot. It’s a little more satisfying all round.’
The girl faced him across the bridge. She was in her early twenties, dressed in a short, belted raincoat, her chestnut hair cropped urchin-style. The Webley & Scott revolver in her hand undercut her waif-like appearance.
‘Well,’ she said, ‘they did warn me you were a wanker.’
Winter bent to retrieve his gun. ‘I’m grateful. Who are you?’
There was a trace of north-west London in her voice as she replied. And something proud, too, just on the edge of defensive. ‘Libby Cracknell. British Intelligence.’
Winter slid the gun into his shoulder holster. ‘Not interested.’
She scrunched her nose as she considered this. ‘Not how it works, mate.’
‘I know how it bloody works.’ Winter looked away.
The sky had brightened over the hills, the first streaks of
blue emerging from the crush of grey. Another good day
was promised.
‘Sir Crispin wants you,’ she said, simply. ‘At least hear him out. What have you got to lose, Mr Winter?’
Winter gave a hot sigh. ‘Right now, damn all.’
He returned his eyes to the river. Something nagged
at him. A detail he’d clearly registered but his conscious
mind had missed. He stared at the dark rush of water,
replaying the man’s plummet from the bridge.
It was then that it came to him, as obvious as it was inexplicable.
The figure had fallen without a shadow.
(C) Nick Setchfield 2019