And, finally, there was a portrait of Her Majesty the Queen, taking pride of place behind the Boss’s desk. The whole face seemed to follow you around the room.
Having run out of excuses not to meet the Boss’s gaze, JC decided to get his retaliation in first. He arranged his crossed legs so casually it was practically an insult, leaned back in his chair, and looked down his long nose at the Boss.
“What is so important that we had to be summoned here, like peasants to the Great Hall, so soon after our last case?” he demanded. “We are entitled to sufficient downtime between cases. It would say so in our contracts if we were allowed contracts, which we aren’t, and is another matter I’d like to discuss. Hold everything; don’t tell me one of the Royal corgis has got possessed again . . . I keep telling you, they’re too inbred these days. The corgis, not the . . . Look; we do all have lives, you know, outside the Institute . . .”
“I know all about your lives,” said the Boss, in her usual calm, thoughtful tone. “I know everything there is to know about you and your team, Mr. Chance. Including all the things you think I don’t know. You, for example, run a bookshop in Charing Cross Road; ostensibly antiquarian, but actually specialising in rare and dangerous volumes of forgotten lore, forbidden knowledge, and forsaken arts. The erudite scholar’s equivalent of the back-pack nuke. Merely opening some of those books was enough to set off alarms in organisations like this all over the world.
“You recently acquired a folio copy of that damned and utterly poisonous play The King in Yellow. Reading it is enough to drive most men mad. On its one and only performance in Paris in 1898, the audience stormed the stage and killed and ate the entire cast. And I am here to tell you that those specially enchanted blast goggles you purchased on eBay will not be enough to protect you if you try to read it.”
She switched her thoughtful gaze to Happy, who jumped in his chair and giggled nervously.
“You, Mr. Palmer, are an accountant. Because there’s always good money in accounting, and because you find numbers soothing. You can make numbers make sense, unlike people. You work for us because I know what else you do with numbers . . . And as long as you continue to work for us, no-one else will ever have to know.”
She turned to Melody, who glared right back at her. Melody was only ever impressed by technology.
“Miss Chambers, I believe you like to say you’re Something in Publishing. In fact, you publish specialised erotica for the fetish community. Some of it so specialised I’m frankly hard-pressed to see where the erotica comes in.”
“People have always liked to play dress-up,” said Melody. “I just take it a bit further than most.”
“How shall I love thee, let me count the ways,” murmured JC. “I should come here more often; I learn the most intriguing things . . .”
“For once, the three of you are not here to be judged on your many and various misdeeds,” said the Boss. She stopped to fit a new cigarette into her holder and lit it with a monogrammed gold Zippo. “Annoying though they frequently are. I have told you before, Mr. Chance; travel expenses do not extend to first class.”
“Only way to get a little peace and quiet, these days,” said JC.
The Boss glared at Happy. “Nor am I happy with your continuing demands for new medications. When you finally die, we’ll have to bury you in a coffin with a child-proof lid.”
Happy sniffed. “I only stay with the Institute for the free prescriptions and access to unstable chemicals. I am a medical miracle. Universities have been bidding against each other for years, for the rights to my body for scientific research. Some don’t even want to wait till I’m dead.”
“And I’m only here for the tech,” Melody said firmly. “Can’t do the job without the right equipment.”
The Boss’s nostrils flared slightly. “You just like to play with the latest toys. And break them.”
JC realised, with something like wonder, that the Boss was only saying these things in order to avoid saying something else. She was distracting herself with familiar complaints so she could put off having to tell them about the new case. Which meant it had to be something really bad . . . He watched, impressed despite himself, as the Boss squared her shoulders and got down to business.
“All of this . . . is irrelevant. You are not here to receive the various dressing downs you so thoroughly deserve; you are here because the Institute is faced with a major emergency. Something bad has happened, down in the London Underground. Oxford Circus Tube Station is haunted. A Code One Haunting.”
JC sat up sharply. “A Code One, right here in the heart of London? That’s supposed to be impossible! The whole city’s covered with overlapping layers of pacts and protections, laid down ever since Roman times.”
“The unprecedented nature of the haunting is what makes this such an emergency,” said the Boss. “If what we suspect is true, all hell is about to break loose in the Underground.”
“What’s happened?” said JC. “Tell us everything.”
“It started slowly, sneaking in around the edges, almost unnoticed,” said the Boss, leaning back in her chair and watching the shapes her cigarette smoke made in the air. “Stories of odd-looking people on overcrowded platforms, who never seemed to get on any train. Uneasy presences, felt rather than seen, on deserted platforms late at night. Lights that flickered on and off, or changed in intensity, for no reason anyone could explain. Strange announcements, by unauthorised voices, saying awful, disturbing things. People travelling up the escalators who never arrived at the top. Horrid laughter in the tunnels, and never anybody there.
“Then things got worse in a hurry. Indistinct figures were seen throwing themselves in front of approaching trains; but after each train had been stopped and the tracks inspected, no body was ever found. Men and women claimed to have been pushed violently from behind, just as a train was coming in, but when they turned and looked, no-one was anywhere near them. More and more travellers were reported missing—seen going down into the Underground system, then never heard from again.
“And people came and went . . . who didn’t look entirely like people.
“It all came to a head at Oxford Circus Station, at eight thirty-five this morning. We’ve had to stop all the trains going in and out and shut the whole place down; no-one in or out, until further notice. I have a few witness statements, recordings, for you to take a look at. No comments, please, until you’ve seen them all.”
She spun her desk-computer screen around so they could all see it and stabbed at her keyboard with two fingers, her cigarette-holder jutting grimly from one corner of her mouth. The first witness was a man in his late forties, neat City suit, respectable. You’d have believed anything he said in a court of law. But his face was grey and shocked, and his mouth was slack, as though he’d just been hit. His eyes were frightened, desperate.
“Trains were running when none were scheduled,” he said, in a voice that sounded on the edge of tears. “Bad trains. They didn’t stop, only slowed down as they passed by, so everyone on the platform could get a good look. Strange trains with strange markings, in the kinds of writing you see in dreams. The metal of the cars steamed, blazing with unbearable heat, and inside . . . there were things, terrible things . . . awful shapes, not human . . . beating fiercely against the closed doors and windows, fighting to get out, to get at everyone waiting on the platform. We all screamed. Some turned and ran. The things in the cars laughed at us and beat on the windows with their fists. They would have killed us all if they could. I won’t go back into the Underground again. It’s not ours any more.”