those who knew that such traps were actually destinations? Or were there really no streets there when the traps were set? Perhaps these cul-de-sacs were residues, yawned into illicit existence when the atlases were drawn up by liars.
Well, either way. Those were obviously the streets to investigate. Marge looked for more names.
Chapter Fifty-Four
THE CHAOS NAZIS HID NOWHERE IN PARTICULAR. JUST AN EMPTY building. There was no metaphoric logic to its whereabouts, no cosmic pun: it was just isolated enough and empty enough and easy enough to break into and recustomise from the inside—soundproofing and such—and then to protect that it had been chosen. It was in the far east of London, in a zone depressed enough that not many people took a lot of notice of stuff. It had a deep basement where Dane was being tortured and where Chaos swastikas were cranked and turned. It was near a garage.
The Nazis were alone and unsupervised. An outsourced resource, subcontracting being as fashionable in gangland as in the rubble of Fordism. The Tattoo had told them, vaguely, to continue what they were doing, and to try to extract something, some hint, from Dane, as to where Billy and the kraken were.
Inside, it was decked in memorabilia from the Reich, guaranteed—spattered with genuine spatters, blood, brains, gauleiter cum. Candles in niches beside icons of various deviltry, smoke-damaged posters of Nazi bands and pictures from the camps. Exactly what you would expect.
The Chaos Nazis stood, patchwork fascist fops, all glitz, spandex, leather and eagles. They eyed Dane. He was tied behind a rack of crusted tools. His rack had turned to put a bit more tumourous life in him, so he had eyes and teeth, though not all his teeth, and he could breathe through his nose though it was broken. They had only brought him back a couple of hours ago, had not really got started again yet. He stared at them, alternately spat and raged, and slumped and tried to go into himself.
“Look,” said one. “His lips are moving. He’s praying to his snail again.”
“Stupid Jewish snail scum,” said another.
“Woof,” the dogman Nazi said.
“Where’s Billy, you scum?”
“Where’s the squid?”
“Your dead squid won’t save you.”
They all laughed. They stood in the windowless room. They hesitated. “Stupid Jew,” said one. They laughed again.
There are only so many ways to experience pain. There are an almost limitless number of ways to inflict it, but the pain itself, initially vividly distinct in all its specificities, becomes, inevitably, just pain. Not that Dane was indifferent to the idea of more of it: he shivered as the men mocked him. But he had been surprised that they had taken him twice to the point of death through their bladey interventions and he had still not told them that he knew where the kraken was, nor who had it, nor where Billy might be. That last he did not know himself, but he could certainly have given them leads, and he had not, and they were at a loss.
Still he kept nearly weeping. Dane kept praying.
“You can stop your whining,” one of the Nazis said. “You’re alone. No one knows where you are. Nothing can help. Nothing’s coming to save you.”
HAD THE SEA WAITED JUST FOR THAT MOMENT? DID IT COME WITH a sense of theatre, pausing in the pipework that infested the house as pipes infest all houses, listening for just such an announcement to refute? Whatever: the stars aligned, everything came together for that perfect beat, and just but exactly as if in answer, brine burst every piece of plumbing in the house, and the building began to bleed sea.
Saltwater ripped through the walls. It buckled the floor. Lovingly gilted World War Two knickknacks spilled into new holes.
The Nazis scattered, ran, did not know where to run. Dane shouted without words. Rage, elation, hope and violence. Water gulped at the Nazis; seawater freezing and London muddy sucked and pulled them down with eddies and undertows it imported from its wide ocean self. Some reached the stairs, but more than one was felled by misplaced waves and brutally kept under, and, bewilderingly, in inches in the city, began to drown.
The water reached Dane’s chin. He wondered if it would kill him too. He’d mind, he realised, he would, he would. Kraken let me breathe.
The Nazis ascending the stairs were met. Billy’s phaser cut them down. No stunning now. He descended, shooting as he came. He sent a poker-hot ray scorching through the fur on the Hitler-worshipping dogman.