“Killing Lazarus” – Chapter One

Ezekiel Barker sipped his gin, sat back in his sagging armchair, and thought about killing himself.

He stared out of a filthy window, the orange glow of the streetlamps turned into a shifting blur by the sleet that spattered against the glass. The rotten window-frame creaked and rattled, letting in an icy draught. As a result the room was barely warmer than the street outside; Barker was wearing a thick woollen overcoat with the collar turned up. The landlord, who was a rogue if Barker had ever seen one, had pointed out that the bedsit was equipped with a device called a “storage heater”, but had neglected to explain its operation. Despite meddling with its baffling array of switches and dials for the best part of an afternoon, Barker hadn’t been able to extract more than a tiny, apologetic waft of warm air from the thing.

He’d considered calling the landlord up to the room to repair the heater, but Barker didn’t want to draw any more attention to himself than was necessary. As a positive it at least meant that he wouldn’t have to face another dose of the landlord’s horrendous breath, which seemed a likely cause of the discoloured wallpaper.

Barker’s own breath fogged the inside of his glass as he took another sip of gin. He’d spent the first few days of his tenancy expecting the door to be kicked down by a squad of angry Custodians at any moment, and as such he’d barely slept. But now, weeks later, he found himself spending the majority of his time in a comfortable stupor. If the Custodians weren’t going to deal with him, then it seemed he had a simple choice between a quick death by bullet or a slow death by bottle.

Despite the late hour, cars continued to swish past beneath the window. Before his escape from Brackenford Barker hadn’t been back to London since the nineteenth century, and little remained of the city he’d once known well. The sheer size of the place had astonished him, although it gave him hope that he might be able to disappear forever among its scurrying millions.

After some wandering he’d found himself in the district of Whitechapel. In Barker’s day its reputation had been unenviable – dark, cramped alleyways teeming with drunkards, thieves and whores – and he’d hoped that it might still be a place the authorities feared to venture. It wasn’t. Aside from a few familiar buildings on the Whitechapel Road, in particular the Royal London Hospital, the district was unrecognisable. Even the notorious Dorset Street was now respectable.

Walking the streets, Barker had come upon a dilapidated terrace of Victorian houses. Staring at them he’d felt a moment of strange disconnection, as if the buildings’ decline had happened in an instant, before his eyes, rather than over many years. Unlike Barker himself they showed every bit of their age, crooked, dirty and neglected; a row of rotting teeth awaiting the dentist’s pliers. Barker was unsurprised to find a room to rent in one of them. It felt somehow inevitable.

The sleet attacked his window with fresh vigour. Barker topped up his drink, the neck of the bottle rattling against the glass. His revolver lay on the table nearby and the black mouth of its barrel was a continuous presence in his peripheral vision. The old Webley had been a reliable companion for over a hundred years, and Barker flexed his hand, imagining the feel of the weapon as he lifted it, slipped the barrel under his chin…

One twitch of the finger, and you’ll be with her again, he thought.

Florence.

To save her he’d entered into the service of the maniac Francis Ducrow, and allowed himself to be used as a weapon. An unquestioning, unfeeling killer. Ducrow had turned him on strangers, colleagues, even friends. Barker had been given a choice: their lives, or Florence’s. It was a choice that became easier to make each time.

Barker stared into his glass. Countless murders, all to save the life of a woman who was already dead.

The telephone rang.

Startled, Barker grabbed his gun and looked around the room, trying to identify the source of the noise. The landlord had pointed out the wall-mounted telephone when he had shown Barker around the bedsit, but it had never rung before. Nor had Barker expected it to. He didn’t even know the number.

He put down the Webley and frowned. The telephone continued to ring, the sound seeming more and more shrill with each repetition. A mistake, it must be, Barker thought. Some fool has dialled incorrectly. Whoever it was, they were certainly persistent. The telephone rang and rang.

There was a thump from downstairs, where the landlord had his own accommodation. ‘Are you going to answer that bloody thing, or what?’ the man shouted, his muffled voice coming up through the floor.

Barker hesitated. His instinct was to ignore the telephone in the hope that whoever was calling would eventually give up, but if it kept ringing the landlord would come upstairs before long and Barker didn’t want that. He already felt that the landlord was suspicious of him, and getting into an argument would hardly help matters.

He glared at the telephone, which failed to silence it. Angrily, he got up from his seat and lifted the receiver.

‘Yes?’

‘Evening, Ezekiel,’ said a voice. Barker stiffened. How could anyone possibly know where he was?

‘Who?’ he replied.

‘Good try,’ said the voice. There was something very strange about it. It sounded artificial, as if Barker were talking to a machine rather than a person.

‘Who is this?’

‘You don’t need to know that,’ said the voice. ‘But I’m not your enemy. Don’t worry, I won’t be letting slip your location to the Custodians, or anything like that.’

Barker swallowed. ‘What do you want?’

‘Well we’ve noticed that you’ve fallen on hard times, so we’d like to offer you some work.’

Whatever Barker had been expecting, it certainly hadn’t been that. ‘Work?’

‘Yes, work. Paid work, more to the point. There can’t be much left of that money you took from your previous employer by now. Am I right?’

‘I am not a thief,’ Barker said, bristling at the implication in the words.

‘I don’t remember saying you were,’ said the voice. ‘After everything that Ducrow did to you, I think you were more than entitled to take a little backdated pay from him.’

‘Who are you?’ Barker snapped. ‘How do you know these things?’

‘Knowing things is our business, Ezekiel. Now, are you in the market for some work or not?’

Barker’s hand tightened on the receiver. ‘What kind of work?’

‘Not killing, if that’s what you were thinking,’ said the voice. It chuckled. The sound was unpleasant. Barker knew very little about twenty-first century technology, but he suspected that his mysterious caller was using a device or apparatus to change the sound of his or her voice.

‘I am glad to hear that.’

‘Are you? You’ve killed a lot of people, Ezekiel. We’d assumed that you enjoyed it.’

‘No,’ Barker croaked. ‘I did not.’

‘Really? It doesn’t fit with what we know about you, but I’ll take your word for it.’

‘You know nothing about me,’ Barker said.

‘Ezekiel Charles Barker, born on the seventeenth of January, eighteen fifty-two,’ said the voice. ‘An only child, born to wealthy parents. Successful military career, including distinguished service in the Anglo-Egyptian War of eighteen eighty-two. Joined the Custodians, Britain’s supernatural police force, the following year. Enjoyed a meteoric rise, and tipped as a future leader of the organisation. Became engaged to Florence Urquhart, a young lady of impeccable breeding, in eighteen ninety-one. She is abducted and murdered by the scientist Francis Ducrow later that year, but the promise of her release is enough to draw you into Ducrow’s service. You are kept cryogenically frozen – in a process that the Custodians’ best scientists have yet to understand – and thawed out as required. In the period that follows, you amass some sixty-eight murders at Ducrow’s request, most of those members of the Custodians. This run ends when you discover Ducrow’s deceit and kill him. Since then you’ve spent most of your time in the bottom of a bottle. Anything substantial that I missed out?’

Barker said nothing. Hearing the facts of his life set out so dispassionately had unnerved him. It was like hearing someone read out his obituary.

‘Ezekiel?’

‘Who are you?’

‘You don’t need to know that, I told you already. Now, we’re willing to pay one hundred thousand pounds for successful completion of this job. That ought to keep you in gin and pipe tobacco for a while, eh?’

Barker’s head swam. A hundred thousand pounds? What could the job possibly be, if not an assassination? ‘Two hundred thousand,’ he heard himself say.

‘I hadn’t pegged you as the greedy type,’ the voice chided him. ‘One hundred and fifty thousand. Take it or leave it.’

‘What do you need me to do?’

‘Find a missing item.’

‘What item?’

‘Does this mean you’re taking the job?’

‘What item?’ said Barker again. ‘As I already told you, I am not a thief.’

‘That’s fine, because the item is already stolen,’ said the voice. ‘We need you to get it back from the person who stole it.’

‘Am I to assume that you would also like this thief brought to justice?’

‘We’re only interested in the item itself,’ came the reply. ‘How you deal with the thief is up to you, though we should warn you that he isn’t likely to give it up without a fight. But of course you can handle a fight, can’t you?’

Barker said nothing. His eyes were drawn to the revolver; he’d almost made up his mind to put an end to himself. Almost.

‘Ezekiel?’

‘If I decline?’

‘Then no hard feelings. You can go back to your busy schedule of getting drunk and waiting for the Custodians to find you.’

And they will find me, Barker thought, because if I decline your offer you’ll tell them where I am, will you not?

‘How long do I have to consider your proposal?’

‘We need an answer now, I’m afraid.’

‘Very well,’ said Barker. ‘I… accept.’

‘Excellent,’ said the voice. ‘An envelope has just been delivered to your address which contains your instructions, along with a small amount of money to cover expenses. We suggest you go and grab it before your landlord gets nosy. We’ll be in touch.’

There was a click as the caller put down the receiver. Barker took a long breath and then went to find the envelope.

The following morning the sleet had become snow. Barker stepped out of the Underground station at Knightsbridge and buttoned his coat. He was glad to be in the open air, despite the cold and the flakes of snow settling in his beard. He disliked travelling on the Underground, for all the improvements that had been made since nineteenth century. It suffered from the same problem he found wherever he went in London: there were just too many people. And in the Underground they were all crammed in against him, jostling, shoving, elbowing. It played on his nerves. There could be someone in that crowd who recognised him. A Custodian, or worse.

He looked across the street at the imposing, glass-fronted façade of One Hyde Park, a huge complex that consisted of expensive retail units and even more expensive apartments. The instructions in the envelope had told him to present himself there for a meeting with a Ms. Nichola Fisher. He’d dressed smartly, in a three-piece suit, and carried a black umbrella. The Webley was a comforting weight in his coat pocket.

A young, bespectacled man, who was so fussily groomed he looked like an ambulatory waxwork, was waiting for Barker at the entrance and took him up several floors to an opulent penthouse apartment. The main room had been converted into an office, with a huge desk, bookshelves and filing cabinets.

Nichola Fisher sat at the desk. She was a woman of perhaps fifty years of age, with wavy dark hair and a pale complexion. She gave Barker a perfunctory smile as he was ushered in and dismissed the bespectacled man.

‘Mr. Barker,’ she said, extending a hand. ‘Fascinating to meet you.’

Barker shook the offered hand. ‘Fascinating?’

‘Yes. It’s not often I get to meet someone of your… vintage.’

‘I see.’ Barker tried not to let his discomfort show.

‘Please, sit down.’ Fisher settled back in her own chair. ‘You needn’t worry. I’m not going to report you. I’m no fan of the Custodians, they’re bad for business.’

‘And what precisely is your business, Ms. Fisher?’

‘It’s Nichola,’ Fisher said. ‘And I deal in artefacts, relics and curiosities. Items of specific interest to the supernatural community.’

‘It must be a lucrative trade,’ Barker said, spreading his hands to encompass the luxurious apartment.

Fisher flashed her little smile again. ‘I get by.’

‘Indeed.’

‘So, I imagine you want to know about our missing item.’

‘Yes. My enigmatic employer has been somewhat reticent on the matter.’

‘Enigmatic is the right word,’ Fisher agreed. ‘But they paid a lot of money for the item so I didn’t feel the need to ask questions.’

‘Really?’ said Barker. ‘In your position, I would be sure to know the identity of my buyers.’

Fisher snorted. ‘If I insisted on that, I wouldn’t sell much. My customers value discretion.’

‘Of course.’

‘Anyway, this is what we lost.’ Fisher entered some details into her computer and swivelled the screen to face Barker. It showed a colour photograph of a circular object. Barker leaned forwards. The item appeared to be made from bronze, and showed signs of great age. It was shaped like a wheel with four spokes; the “hub” of the wheel was inset with a small milky-white crystal.

‘How large is it?’ Barker asked.

‘You could hold it in your hand,’ Fisher replied. ‘Four or five inches in diameter, something like that.’

‘And what is it? What is its function?’

‘No idea. None of our experts had ever seen anything like it before.’

‘Yet my employer was willing to spend a great deal of money to purchase it. That implies that they, at least, know what it is.’

Fisher nodded. ‘Not just them. They had competition.’

‘A rival bidder?’

‘Yes. One of my regulars, as it happens. Though I’ve never seen him bid anything like as high on an item as he did on this one.’

‘Intriguing,’ said Barker. ‘And how did you come by the item in the first instance?’

‘We always have people out there looking for merchandise,’ said Fisher. ‘This one had been passed down through a family. The story that had been passed down along with the item was that a nineteenth-century ancestor had found it while he was salvaging a train-wreck – the Brackenford Bridge disaster, apparently. Remember it?’

Barker nodded. ‘Of course. Eighteen seventy-nine. Two Custodians were among the victims. It was very similar to the Tay Bridge disaster, which happened a few months later.’

‘Oh right,’ said Fisher. ‘So anyway, they decided to sell it, and it eventually came to our representative. We weren’t expecting much for it, a few thousand pounds, maybe ten thousand on a good day. It sold for just over a million.’

‘My employer bidding against your “regular”,’ Barker mused.

‘Yes.’ Fisher tapped on her computer keyboard again and a photograph appeared on the screen of a white-bearded man in a tweed suit and bow-tie. ‘Stanley Beaufort. He was bidding against your employer. We think he might have been involved in the theft, but we can’t prove it.’

‘Why do you think that?’

‘I’ll show you what happened,’ said Fisher. ‘It was all a bit odd. I’d be interested to get your take on it.’

Barker shrugged. ‘Very well. Although I am no detective. Quite why I have been employed to act as one is a mystery to me.’

‘They didn’t tell you?’

‘Tell me what?’

‘About the thief. He sent us a message after the theft.’

‘What did it say?’

‘I can’t believe they didn’t tell you,’ said Fisher. ‘The message told us where the item was. And it told us to send you to get it.’