“Who’s here?” Muttered censuses. “He’s got everyone. Nu-Thuggers, St. Kratosians, the lot.”

“No gunfarmers.”

“Yeah, I heard they were in the city. Not here, thank God. Maybe they’re on another gig. Tell you who is here. See the bloke over there?”

“The twat dressed like a new romantic?”

“Yeah. Know who he is? A Chaos Nazi.”

“No!”

“Shit you not. All limits out the window, obviously.”

“I don’t know how I feel about that…”

“We’re here now. Might as well see what’s on the table.”

THERE WAS A COMMOTION ON THE STAGE. TWO OF THE TATTOO’S enforcers stepped forward in their uniform of jeans and jackets, wearing helmets as they always did, not speaking. They cracked their knuckles and swung their arms.

Between them was a ruined man. He was slack-mouthed and empty-eyed; not so much balding as threadbare, his scalp pitiably tufted. His skin looked like rotting, soaked wood. He walked in tiny little steps. Protruding from his shoulder like some grotesque pirate parrot was a boxy CCTV camera. It clicked and whirred, and swivelled on its stalk in the man’s flesh. It scanned the room.

The nude man would have kept walking, fallen from the edge of the stage, but one of the helmeted guards held out an arm and stopped him a foot from the edge. He swayed.

“Gentlemen,” he said suddenly, in a deep staticky voice. His eyes did not move. “Ladies. Let’s get to business. I’m sure you’ve heard the rumours. They’re true. The following are the facts. One. The kraken lately stored in the Natural History Museum has been nicked. By persons unknown. I have my suspicions, but I’m not here to feed you ideas. All I’d say is the people you think are dead have a habit of not being, especially in this bloody city. I’m sure you’ve noticed. No one should’ve been able to get that thing out. It was guarded by an angel of memory.

“Two. There was a man in my custody, name of Billy Harrow. Knows something about this. I didn’t think he did, but more fool me. He did a bunk. That’s not alright with me.

“Three. Word is that Mr. Harrow was aided in his unacceptable bunk-doing by one Dane Parnell.” A murmur went around the room. “Long-time stalwart of the Church of God Kraken. Now, Dane Parnell has been excommunicated.” The muttering got a lot louder. “From what we gather, the whys of that have something to do with his making Billy Harrow his bumboy.

“Four. There’s something badly bollocksed up with the universe right now, as I’m sure you know, and it’s something to do with this squid. So. Here’s the commission.

“I want war. I want terror.

“I want, in descending order: the kraken, or any sign of it; Billy Harrow-alive; Dane Parnell-couldn’t give a shit. Let me stress that I do not give a tinker’s shit what you do on the way. I do not want anyone to feel safe as long as I don’t have what I want.

“Now…” The voice in the sick man’s throat got crafty. “I’m going to pay a stupid amount for this. But cash on delivery only. This is no-win-no-fee. Take it or leave it. I can tell you, though, that anyone who delivers the kraken will not have to work again. And Billy Harrow’ll give you a good couple of years off.” The camera scanned the room again. “Questions?”

The swastika-wearing man in mascara texted a set of exclamation marks to a comrade. A renegade Catholic priest fingered his dog collar. A shaman whispered to her fetish.

“Oh, shit.” The voice came from a mild-looking young man in a shabby jacket whose creative gunplay would astonish most people who met him. “Oh shit.” He bolted. The man hunted by empathic homing, an annoying side effect of which, in his case, was an allergy to other people’s greed (not, he regularly thanked Providence, his own). The gust of venality that had gone through the room at that moment was strong enough that he never had any hope of reaching the toilets before vomiting.

Chapter Thirty-Two

“THIS IS A LIST OF PEOPLE WHO OWE ME FAVOURS, WHO AIN’T IN the church, and who won’t screw me over,” Dane said. There were not many names. They were in a hide way out in zone four, in what both was, and mystically masqueraded as, a deserted squat. They were waiting for Wati.

“What’s a-does that say ‘chameleon’?” Billy said. “That name rings a bell…”

Dane smiled. “Jason. He’s the one I said. He goes from job to job. Yeah, him and me go back.” He smiled at some reminiscence. “He’ll help if it comes to it. But it’s Wati who’s our main man, no question.”

“Where was that workshop where the Tattoo had me?” Billy said.

“What do you want to know for? Have you got some stupid idea, Billy?”

“What would be stupid? You’re a soldier, aren’t you? You’re worried about the Tattoo getting hold of your god. Is there a reason we’re not taking all this to him? You know I want to do whatever I can to him. I’m honest about that. And Goss and Subby. We want the same thing, you and me. If we can mess with them, everyone’s happy. Except them. Which is the point, right?”

“Billy,” Dane said. “We ain’t going to be storming the Tattoo’s place. Not without an army. First off I don’t know where he is, not for certain. That’s one of his gaffs, but you never know where he’s going to be, or where that workshop’ll be. Second, his guards? They’re not nothing. And plus he’s one of the biggest powers in London. Everyone owes him a favour, or money, or their life, or something. We mess with him we’re bringing down no end of shit on ourselves, even if we got to him, which we wouldn’t.”

“Has he got…? Can he…?” Billy swirled his hands suggestively.

“Knacks? It ain’t about knacks with him: it’s about money and smarts and pain. Look, someone out there has the kraken, and no one knows who. The only thing we’ve got at the moment is that Tattoo’s as buggered by that as us. I know you want to… But we can’t waste time going after him. What’ll screw him over worse is if we get hold of it. He’s too big to hunt, I’m sorry. We’re just two guys. With my know-how and your dreams.

“You should start dreaming for us. You can’t pretend they’re nothing anymore: what you’re seeing’s real. You know that. The kraken’s telling us things. So you got to dream for us.”

“Whatever it is I’m dreaming,” Billy said carefully, “I don’t think it’s the kraken.”

“What the hell else would it be?” Dane did not sound angry, but pleading. “Someone is doing something to it.” He shook his head and closed his eyes.

“Can you torture a dead god?” Billy said.

“’Course you can. You can torture a dead god. You can torture anything. And the universe don’t like it-that’s what’s got the fortune-tellers sick.”

“I have to tell Marge Leon’s dead.” Billy rubbed his chin. “She should-”

“I don’t know what this is about, mate,” said Dane, without looking at him. “But you better let it go. You ain’t going to talk to no one. You can’t. It’s for your sake and it’s for her sake too. You think you’d be doing her a favour if you got her interested? I know this ain’t really about her, but still…” He left Billy feeling unfinished.

On the floor between them was a plastic gnome. They were waiting for Wati. Dane showed Billy truncheon strikes using a wooden spoon, showed him slowed-down punches and neck locks. “You did good,” he said.

His tuition was distracted. But when Wati did come, it was so quietly that neither man had any intimation of his presence until he spoke. “Sorry I’m late,” he said, a snarly voice in the chubby plastic man’s pipes. “Emergency meetings. You got no idea.”

“Everything okay?”

“Not even. We got attacked.”

“What happened?” Dane said.

“Look, it ain’t a picnic and everyone knows that, right? But they came in hard, and they came in brutal. André’s still in hospital.”

“Cops?”

“Pros.”

“Pinkertons?” The agency’s name was a byword for mercenary strikebreaking.

“They weren’t secret about it. It was the Tattoo’s bastards.” Dane stared at the statuette, and it stared back at him.