Downtime - Marc Platt [63]
The boy sat up with a yell. His eyes staring, wide awake.
He was shaking. Harrods, one hand still on the boy’s mouth, shushed him quiet and nodded at the door.
They stared at the silhouette on the sacking. A bulky figure of a man, slowly sweeping a stick before him. Harrods thought of a metal detector.
An unearthly voice broke the stillness. A dry ancient whisper that was full of weariness and hatred. ‘Daniel Hinton.
You are summoned.’
Harrods felt the boy’s body go so taut it might snap.
The shadow stick jerked forward and the rest of the silhouette followed. The shadow focused darker as the figure approached. The sacking was pushed aside and the light flooded in.
‘Daniel,’ commanded the figure.
Harrods could not make out the features against the glare, but the white hair was like a halo.
The tramp and the boy scrambled backwards to the wall as the intruder entered, his stick swinging as if it was searching rather than the old blind man. Something like web seemed to be drifting in around him.
Harrods edged back further. The stolen phone dropped from his pocket with a clatter.
The stick swung in on him and pinned him to the floor.
‘Daniel Hinton?’
Harrods lay there terrified. Strands of web were gathering on his coat, in his hair. ‘Get off me, sir! Sir, get off!’
With a yell, the boy barrelled against the old man, toppling him against the wall, sending a cascade of Harrods’
belongings to the ground. The stick dragged him up again, swinging wildly, beating against the fallen objects.
‘Daniel Hinton. You were chosen. I claim you now. My summons binds you!’
The boy pushed Harrods towards the door. He paused and glanced back at the phone lying on the floor. He dashed at it and snatched it away as the stick cracked down in its place.
As they turned to run, the figure, still disorientated, was blundering about among the detritus of Harrods’ violated home.
The Brigadier had had enough. He was less than a mile from his first appointment and he was going to be late. No traffic had even crept in the past twenty-five minutes and it was plainly not going to get better. There had been a punch-up across the street between a taxi driver and a policeman whose radio had gone wrong. A lone cyclist kept biking up and down the rows of stationary traffic, laughing loudly. Further along the street, he had seen several people abandoning their vehicles.
That was it. He got out of the car, locked it up, tipped his cap to the family in the vehicle alongside and joined the steady flow of pedestrians.
He cut through towards St Paul’s and Fleet Street via Watling Street. Ahead, through the crowds, he saw two youths in yellow baseball hats and green sweatshirts. Logos emblazoned on their fronts proclaimed the ‘New World University’. They were distributing leaflets. As soon as they saw the Brigadier, they made a beeline for him.
As they approached, he could hear the irritating tinny beat of their headphones. ‘Excuse me, sir,’ said the first with a sickly smile, ‘can I tell you about the New World?’
‘I’m not interested.’ The Brigadier tried to push past, but they were very persistent.
The second youth barged in front of him, catching his sleeve. ‘We want to tell you about our good news, sir.’
‘I said, I’m not interested,’ the Brigadier snapped. He angrily pushed between them and hurried away. Behind him, he heard one of them call, ‘Have a better one!’, but he was in too much of a hurry to argue.
Christopher Rice sat back and drank in the elegant, history-steeped surroundings. The House of Commons dining-room, overlooking the river, evidently kept an extensive cellar.
‘White Burgundy?’ suggested the immaculately coiffured Desmond Pennington and ordered the Criots-Bâtard-Montrachet, ’88 vintage. ‘We had a bottle at Glyndebourne last year and I’ve drunk nothing else since. But then I’m very unadventurous once I find something I like.’
Christopher smiled. He glanced around again, counting the number of famous political faces with whom he was