Hell to Pay Page 9

  “How about your daughter, Melissa?”

  “I would have loved her, given the chance. But Jeremiah took her away the day William and I presented her to him. We didn’t get a say in the matter. I couldn’t stop him. William did try, bless him—actually raised his voice to his father and called him every name under the sun. Only time I ever saw William talk back to his father. But of course, he couldn’t do anything…so it didn’t do him any good. No-one says no to Jeremiah Griffin.”

  “Can you tell me anything about Melissa’s disappearance?” I said. “I can be discreet. The Griffin doesn’t have to know everything I discover in my investigation.”

  “He’d find out,” Gloria said flatly. “He always finds out. I’m amazed we were able to keep Melissa’s existence a secret for as long as we did. He probably couldn’t bring himself to believe his own son could defy him so completely…Ask me anything you want, Mr. Taylor, and I’ll tell you what I can. Because…I just don’t care anymore. William doesn’t seem to care whether I’m around or not, so I’m probably on the way out anyway. And it’s not as if I know anything that matters. My daughter’s disappearance is as much a mystery to me as anyone else.”

  “I have to say, you don’t seem very upset that she’s missing, perhaps kidnapped, perhaps even murdered,” I said. “Don’t you care what’s happened to her?”

  “Don’t think too harshly of me, Mr. Taylor. Melissa is my daughter in name only. Jeremiah reared her and made sure I was kept very much at arm’s length. Melissa hasn’t wanted anything to do with me in years. And now…it seems she stands ready to steal William’s inheritance. And mine, of course.”

  “There are those who believe,” I said carefully, “that an adult grand-child could mean the death of the Griffin.”

  “If only,” said Gloria. “It’s just another story. There have always been stories about the Griffin, but no-one knows anything for sure.”

  “Does William believe it?”

  “He did once. That’s why he wanted a child. To use as a weapon against his father.”

  “William wanted his father dead?”

  “Dead and gone, because that was the only way William could ever be his own man. Free at last…though free to do what, I couldn’t tell you. Perhaps even he doesn’t know.”

  “Do you want me to find your daughter?” I said.

  “Given that if I do bring her back, safe and well, she could disinherit William and you?”

  “Find her,” said Gloria, fixing me with her calm dark gaze. “It’s all right that she never loved me. You can’t love a stranger. But I gave birth to her, nursed her, held her in my arms…Find her, Mr. Taylor. And if anyone has dared to hurt her…kill them slowly.”

  “Any idea where I should look for William?” I said.

  Gloria smiled. “And just like that, you’re finished with me. I told you all I knew, and you told me nothing. What a marvellous private investigator you are, Mr. Taylor.”

  “You didn’t ask me anything,” I said.

  “No,” said Gloria. “I didn’t, did I? If you want to find William…try the Arcadian Project.”

  And the snake draped across her shoulders looked at me and seemed to laugh silently, as though it knew something I didn’t.

  Like the Caligula Club, I knew the Arcadian Project by reputation; but whereas everyone talked about what went on at the Caligula, no-one knew anything about the inner workings of the Arcadian Project. The most private place in the Nightside, some said. A lot of people go in, but not all of them come out again, others said. Its very location was a secret, known only to the trusted few, and this in a place where the secrets of the universe are sold openly on street corners. But I can find anything. That’s my job.

  I fired up my gift and looked out over the Nightside through my third eye, my private eye. Great forces were abroad in the night, ancient and awful Powers walking unseen and unsuspected, but they were too big to notice something as small as me. I concentrated on the single thing I was looking for, and my Sight rocketed through the streets and alleys of the Nightside, before finally zeroing in on a narrow dark alley, where most people only went to dump their garbage or the occasional body.

  It wasn’t all that far from Uptown, but it might as well have been another world. No private clubs and restaurants here, just paint-peeling doors and fly-specked windows, guttering neon signs with half the lettering burnt out, and sloe-eyed cold-eyed daughters of the twilight on every corner, selling their shop-soiled wares. The kind of place where there’s nothing for sale that didn’t originally belong to someone else, where the pleasures and pursuits on offer leave a nasty taste in the mouth, and even the muggers go around in pairs, for safety.

  I found the alley easily enough and looked down it from the relative safety of the brighter-lit street. The light didn’t penetrate far into the hot sweaty shadows, and I was pretty sure I could hear things scrabbling about in the darkness beyond. The air smelled close and moist and ripe. Ripe for an ambush, certainly. I reached into my coat-pocket and brought out a dead salamander in a plastic globe. I shook it hard, and a fierce silver glow burst from the globe, illuminating the alley ahead of me. Things scuttled away from the sudden new light, hurrying off to hide in darker, safer places. I made my way slowly and cautiously down the alleyway, being very careful where I put my feet, and finally came to a simple green door set into the grimy stone of the left-hand wall. There was no sign over the door, not even a handle on the door, but this was it. The one and only access point to the Arcadian Project. I studied the door carefully, not touching it, but it seemed like simply another door. It wasn’t locked or booby-trapped or cursed—my gift would have told me. So I just shrugged, placed one hand against it, and gave it a good push.

  The door swung easily open and I almost cried out as a blindingly bright light spilled into the alleyway. I tensed, ready for anything, but nothing happened. There was only the golden sunlight, warm and fresh and sweet as a summer’s day, heavy with the scents of woods and fields and meadows. I realised I was still holding the salamander globe, with its sickly inferior light, and put it back in my coat-pocket. And then I walked forward into daylight, and the green door swung slowly shut behind me.

  I was standing on the side of a great grassy hill, looking out over a view of open countryside that took my breath away. Fields and meadows stretched away before me for as far as I could see, and perhaps forever. To one side were sprawling woods with tall dark trees, and down below a stream of clear and sparkling water ran happily on its way, crossed here and there by simple old-fashioned stone bridges. A dream of old England, as it never was but should have been, happy and content under the bright blue sky of a perfect summer’s day. A soft gusting breeze brought me scents rich as perfume, of flowers and grass and growing things. Birds sang, and there was a gentle buzz of insects, and it was good, so good, just to stand in daylight again after so very long away.

  This was the great secret, never to be shared with the unworthy for fear it would be spoiled—Arcadia.

  A single pathway meandered away before me, starting at my feet. A series of square stone slabs resting on the grass, leading down the hillside. I set off, stepping carefully from slab to slab, like stepping-stones on a great green sea. The path curved around the side of the hill, then led me along a river-bank, while I watched birds swoop and soar, and butterflies drift this way and that, and smiled to see small woodland creatures scurry all around me, undisturbed by human presence. Pure white swans sailed majestically down the stream, bowing their heads to me as I passed.

  Finally I rounded a corner, and there on a river-bank before me were my father and my mother, reclining at their ease on the grassy bank, with the contents of a wicker picnic basket spread out on a checked tablecloth. My father Charles was lying stretched out, in a white suit, smiling as my mother Lilith, in a white dress, threw pieces of bread to the ducks. I made some kind of sound, and my mother looked round and smiled dazzlingly at me.

  “Oh, Charles, see who’
s here! John has come to join us!”

  My father raised himself up on one elbow and looked round, and his smile widened as he saw me. “Good of you to join us, son. We’re having a picnic. There’s ham and cheese, and scotch eggs and sausage rolls, and all your favourites.”

  “Come and join us, darling,” said my mother. “We’ve been waiting for you.”

  I stumbled forward and sat down between my mother and my father. He squeezed my shoulder in a reassuring way, and my mother passed me a fresh cup of tea. I knew it would be milk and two sugars, just the way I liked it. I sat there for a while, enjoying the moment, and there was a part of me that would have liked to stay for the rest of my life. But I’ve never been any good at listening to that part of me.

  “There are so many things I meant to say to you, Dad,” I said finally. “But there wasn’t time.”

  “You have all the time in the world here,” said my father, lying on his back again and staring up into the summer sky.

  “And despite everything that happened, I would have liked to get to know you, Mother,” I said to Lilith.

  “Then stay here with us,” she said. “And we can be together, forever and ever and ever.”

  “No,” I said regretfully. “Because you’d only ever say what I wanted you to say. Because this isn’t real, and neither are you. My parents are gone, and lost to me forever. This is Arcadia, the Summerland where dreams can come true, and everyone is happy, and good things happen every day. But I have things to do, and people to meet, because that’s what I do and who I am. And besides, my Suzie will be waiting for me when I get home. She might be a psycho gun nut, but she’s my psycho gun nut. So, I have to be going now. My life might not be perfect, like this, but at least it’s real.

  “And I’ve never let down a client yet.”

  I got up and walked away, following the stepping-stone path again. I didn’t look back to see my father and my mother fade away and disappear. Perhaps because I liked to think of them there together, picnicking on a river-bank forever and a day, happy at last.

  The path led me along beside the river-bank for a while, then turned abruptly to take me up a grassy hillside towards a stretch of woodland, standing tall and proud against the sky. I could hear voices up ahead now, loud and happy and occasionally bursting into laughter. It sounded like children. When I got close enough, I could see William Griffin, lying at his ease on the grassy slope, looking out over the magnificent view, while all around him his childhood friends laughed and played and ran in the never-ending sunshine of Summerland.

  I knew some of them, because they’d been my childhood friends, too. Bruin Bear, a four-foot-tall teddy bear in his famous red tunic and trousers and his bright blue scarf, every young boy’s good friend and brave companion. And there beside the Bear, his friend the Sea Goat in a long blue-grey trench coat, human-sized but with a large blocky goat’s head and long, curling horns. Everyone had those books when I was a kid, and we all went on marvellous adventures with the Bear and the Goat in our imaginations…There was Tufty-Tailed Squirrel, and Barney the Battery Boy, and even Beep and Buster, one boy and his alien. There were others, too—child-sized toys and anthropomorphic animals in cut-down human clothes, and happy smiling creatures of the kind we all forget as we grow up and move on. Except we never do forget them, not deep down, where it really matters. They played together all around William Griffin, squabbling cheerfully, laughing and chattering and chasing each other back and forth. Old companions, and sometimes the only real friends a child ever had.

  They all stopped abruptly and looked round as I approached. They didn’t look scared, just curious. William sat up slowly and looked at me. I held up my hands to show they were empty, and that I came in peace. William hugged his knees to his chest and looked at me over them, and finally sighed tiredly.

  “You’d better go,” he said to the toys and animals.

  “This is going to be grown-up talk. You’d only be bored.”

  They all nodded and faded away, like the dreams they were. Except for Bruin Bear and the Sea Goat, who stood their ground and studied me thoughtfully with calm, knowing eyes. The Sea Goat pulled a bottle of vodka from his coat pocket and took a long pull.

  “That’s right,” he said thickly. “We’re real. Sort of. Get used to it.”

  “Not many remember us anymore,” said the Bear. “We’re legends now, so we live in Shadows Fall, where all stories have their ending. We commute into the Nightside now and again, to be here for those who still have a need for us.”

  “Yeah, right,” said the Sea Goat, belching loudly. “I just come here for the view and a bit of peace and quiet. And the free food. You’re John Taylor, aren’t you? You’ll probably end up a legend yourself, after you’ve been dead long enough for people to forget the real you. Then it’s Shadows Fall for you, whether you like it or not. I’ll tell you now, you won’t like it. And don’t you mess with William. He’s with us. You spoil his day, and I’ll shove this bottle so far up you, you’ll need a trained proctologist with spelunking gear to get it out again.”

  “Don’t mind him,” Bruin Bear said fondly. “He’s just being himself.”

  They moved off into the dark wood, still arguing companionably. They didn’t seem quite as I remembered them. I moved forward and sat down beside William.

  “So this is the Arcadian Project,” I said. “Nice. I really like the view.”

  “What do you want, Taylor?” said William. “And how did you know to find me here anyway? This was supposed to be the one place where no-one could bother me.”

  “It’s a gift,” I said. “Gloria pointed me in the right direction. I think she’s worried about you.”

  William snorted briefly. “That would be a first.”

  “What are you doing here?” I said, honestly curious. “Why…this?”

  “Because I never had a childhood,” said William. He wasn’t looking at me. He was staring out over the view, or perhaps seeing something else in his head, in his past. “For as far back as I can remember, my father’s only interest in me was to groom me as his heir and successor. So he could be sure everything he built would still continue, even without him. He wanted me to be just like him. It wasn’t my fault that I wasn’t, and never would be. There’s only one Jeremiah Griffin, which is probably for the best. But even as a small child, I was never allowed much time to play, to be myself. Never allowed to have any real friends because they couldn’t be trusted. They might be spies for my father’s many enemies. It was always work, work, work. Endless lessons, on family business and family duty. My only means of escape was into books and comics. I lived in my dreams then, whenever I could, in the simpler happier realms of my imagination. The only place that was truly mine, that my father couldn’t reach and spoil or take away.”

  I couldn’t have stopped him talking if I’d tried. He’d held this bottled up inside him for years, and he would have told it to anyone who found him here. Because he had a terrible need to tell it to someone…

  “That’s why I started body-building as a teenager,” said William Griffin, still not looking at me. “So I could have some control over some part of my life, even if it was only the shape of my body. By then I knew I wasn’t up to running the family business. I knew that long before my father did. I liked to think…I might have managed some smaller triumph if I’d been left to myself. If I’d been left to choose my own way, follow my own interests. But the Griffin couldn’t bear to have a son who was anything less than great.

  “These days, I’m just a glorified gopher, there to deal with all the things my father can’t trust to anyone who isn’t family. We both pretend I’m someone important, but everyone knows…I carry out the policy he sets, but God help me if I should ever dare to make even the smallest decision on my own. I move papers from one place to another, talk to people with my father’s voice, and every day I die a little more. Do you have any idea what that’s like, for an immortal? To die by inches, forever and ever…

&nb
sp; “For a while I filled my time by indulging my senses and my pleasures…I must have belonged to every private club in the Nightside, at one time or another. Tried everything they had to offer…and everyone. But while that distracted, it never satisfied.”

  He turned suddenly to look at me, and his eyes were dark and angry and dangerous. “You can’t tell anyone about this, Taylor. About me, being here. With my friends. People wouldn’t understand. They’d think me weak, and try to take advantage. And my father…really wouldn’t understand. I don’t think he ever needed anything in his life. In fact, it’s hard to think of the mighty and powerful Jeremiah Griffin ever having had anything as normal and vulnerable as a childhood. This is the only thing I have that he isn’t a part of. The only place I can be free of him.”

  “Don’t worry,” I said. “Your father doesn’t need to know about this. He hired me to investigate Melissa, not you. I’m only interested in what you can tell me about your daughter and her disappearance.”

  “I wanted to be a father to her,” said William, his eyes lost and far away again. “A good father, not like Jeremiah. I wanted her to have the childhood I never had. But he took her away, and after that I was only allowed to see her when Jeremiah said so. I think Melissa sees him as her real father. Her daddy. I spent years trying to reach out to her…but even when I timed my visits so Jeremiah wasn’t there, somehow Melissa was never there either. She’d always just gone out…Hobbes is my father’s man, body and soul. He runs the Hall, and no-one gets past him. In the end…I just stopped trying.”

  He looked at me, and there was something beaten, and broken, in his face. “I don’t hate my father, you know. Don’t ever think that. He only ever wanted what he thought was best for me. And for so long…all I wanted was for my father to be proud of me.”

  “All sons do,” I said.