“I should have been there,” Ellis said. “I would have made a difference.”

“Maybe. It happened very fast. Did you get a trace on the Land Rover?”

“What? Oh, that. No. Guess Russell flaked on it. I clean forgot myself. Anyway it was the vamps, evidently.”

“Looks that way,” I said, although Mia, I quite clearly recalled, had said “bring the van” not “bring the car.” Competition for my attention was fierce, however, and the Land Rover question was lightweight.

“We’re going to have to redirect the pickup,” Ellis said. “Where are you?”

“Tell your guy ten a.m. outside the Masonic headquarters in Long Acre.”

“Jake …”

“Listen, Ellis, I’ve had more than two weeks of not being able to go for a piss without someone’s say-so, and then with someone else listening in while I’m having it. You can give me one night of privacy. You know I’m not going to run. You’re still holding the cards. I just need to get my head together. What’s your driver’s name?”

Over the phone I could feel his will to autonomy. There was someone he should okay it with, someone he didn’t like. Whoever this person was their days of unchallenged leadership were numbered. Ellis liked me more than he liked them.

“Okay,” he said. “But don’t dick me, Jacob. You know the cause-and-effect reality.”

“Hundred percent.”

“Driver’s name is Llewellyn. He’ll know you, but just in case, he’s in a BMW four-by-four license plate Foxtrot Tango six seven two Echo Uniform Delta. Code word is lupus . Ten a.m. Don’t let me down. Don’t let your lady down. And no”—as I drew breath to ask—“you can’t talk to her now. You’ll see her tomorrow. Trust me, she’s fine. She’s comfortable.”

I spent what was left of the night on the hotel phone.

53

THE DRIVER, LLEWELLYN, young, fair, leanly muscled, with the cleanliness and near-skinhead haircut of a Mormon proselytiser, was precisely on time. The code word seemed redundant but I asked for it anyway and received “lupus, sir” in reply. Sir . Okay. Picked for this job because he followed orders to the letter. You will treat Mr. Marlowe courteously, but you will not engage in conversation . Fine. I was in any case itchy with sleeplessness and inwardly ajabber with Hunger. “I’m going to have to chain-smoke, Llewellyn,” I warned him. “I hope that’s not going to be a problem for you?”

He opened the rear nearside door. “Not a problem, sir,” he said. “We’re partitioned in any case.”

Indeed. Bulletproof glass, by the look of it. Ditto the windows. “Are we expecting to be shot at?” I asked him, giving it a rap.

“Fitted as standard on these, sir,” he said. “Do you want the radio on or anything?”

He called in to let whoever it was (not Ellis, the ether said) know I was on board, then we were on our way. It was a pretty morning. Blue spring sky and lively sunlight and a breeze that shivered the puddles and set London’s buds nodding on their stems. Not that much of it got through to me, quietly bearing up as I was with the Curse’s foreplay, the phantom elongation of snout and finger, the compressed spasms, the importunate erections, the occasional prescience in toenails and eyeteeth. My teeth chattered , actually, as in the first phase of the flu, prompting Llewellyn to remind me I had my own heat controls in the back. Meanwhile Piccadilly, Park Lane, Marylebone, the Westway, the M40. I tried to sleep. Failed. Instead pictured the effects of the dumped money, the fertility of the down payment. Impossible to know yet how many men a breakout would need, but I’d paid Aegis for a squad of fifty up front, nonrecoverable. My guess was that wherever they had Talulla there wouldn’t be a large defence. Ellis’s London renegades couldn’t number more than five hundred and the majority would be carrying out regular WOCOP duties as normal. Poulsom’s installation would rely on concealment rather than a standing force.

Alongside these ruminations I kept up a more or less continuous self-harangue. You fucking idiot, you’re going to get yourself killed. They’ll torture Talulla and rape her and do experiments and mate her with animals and if you’re not already dead force you to watch and this whole fantasy of rescue and survival you’ve cooked up is obscene and preposterous and even Charlie at Aegis had trouble not laughing at you down the phone and only didn’t because he knows you’ve got the money and it’s your fucking funeral you stupid cunt she’s going to die and so are you—

The Ellis phone rang.

“Jake, you’re en route I hear.”

“Is she with you?”

“Not yet. Calmez-vous . You’ll see her tonight. Now listen. To confirm: Moonrise is 18:07 tomorrow. It’ll just be me and Grainer. He’s already up there, so don’t deviate: Stay in the hotel. Llewellyn’ll pick you up at 14:30 tomorrow and drop you in Beddgelert. You’re on foot from there. Obviously you know the way.”

“Aren’t you going to be on the drive-by tonight?”

“Can’t. I’m going up to meet Grainer now. After that he’ll want me with him. I do the weapons check. There’sa routine, a set of rituals. Don’t worry, Jake, she’s in safe hands, I promise. Just stay in your hotel room until you get the call.”

The rest of the journey was febrile peaks and troughs. Moments of vividness—the huge wheels of a truck very close; a crow flapping up from fresh roadkill; a green verge covered in crocuses—and long blurred stretches, pre-Curse hypersensitivity that amounted to perceptual distortion or fuzz. My face tingled, eyes itched, limbs lost their edges to the pins-and-needles ghost of the wolf. The memory of killing with Talulla was a root that clutched from balls to brain. Neither fear nor fatigue obscured it. Wulf went out from it, ranged to tearing point, searching. She was here, somewhere, close, somewhere …

Just after three o’clock, under a pied sky of cumulus and silvery blue, we arrived in Caernarfon.

54

I MANAGED AN hour of reiterative calls to Aegis before the batteries on Russell’s and Wazz’s mobiles died within minutes of each other, like an ancient couple who couldn’t bare to be parted. Daren’t risk the room phone. It’s probably bugged, but there’s also the possibility they’ll call in on it for the drive-by with Talulla. Either way I’ve left it alone.