The world was swaying when they left. Too many people speaking in too many street-corner hushes, too much foreclosure, the sky closing some deal. Collingswood frowned at the clouds, like she did not like what they wrote. The pub was a dark drinkerie decorated with old London road signs and copies of antique maps. They sat in an out-of-the-way corner. Even so, the other punters, a mix of seedy geezers and office workers, were clearly unsettled by Kath Collingswood’s uniformed—if unorthodoxly—presence.
“So …” Billy said. He had no idea what to say. Collingswood seemed unbothered. She just watched him while Baron went to the bar. Collingswood offered a cigarette.
“I think it’s no smoking,” Billy said. She looked at him and lit. The smoke surrounded her in dramatic shapes. He waited.
“Here’s the thing,” Baron said, delivering the drinks. “You heard Vardy. Parnell and the toothies have eyes on you. So you aren’t necessarily in the safest of all situations.”
“But I’m nothing,” Billy said. “You know that.”
“Hardly the point,” Baron said. It surprised him how hard it jarred him to see Collingswood drink and smoke in uniform. “Let’s take stock,” Baron said. “Now, Vardy … You saw him in action. You know the sort of thing he does. For all our expertise, in this case, vis-à-vis—that is to say, what’s going on at the moment—we could do with some input. From a specialist. Like yourself. We’re dealing with fanatics. And fanatics are always experts. So we need experts of our own. And that is where you come in.”
Billy stared at him. He even laughed a bit. “I wondered if you were going to say something like this, but then I was like, don’t be mad.”
“None of us knows shit about giant squid,” Collingswood said. The animal’s name sounded absurd in her sarky London voice. “’Cause we don’t give a shit about it, granted, but, you know.”
“Fine, then, so leave me alone,” Billy said. “Not as if I’m an expert anyway.”
“Oh come on, don’t be like that.”
“Don’t just mean book-smarts, Harrow.” Baron said. “I have a healthy respect for cultists. And they think you’re something special, which says a lot, no matter what you think. Remember when you saw Dane Parnell? Remember about the bus window?”
“What?” said Billy. “That it was broken?”
“What you said to us was you saw it break. How do you suppose that happened?” Baron let the question sit. “The way we, the FSRC I mean, do things … we need a subtler approach than the rest of the force. It’s handy to have members outside of the actual service.”
“You actually are actually trying to get me to join,” Billy said, incredulous.
“There’s certain privileges,” Baron said. “A few responsibilities. Official Secrets, whatnot. Bit of dosh. Not enough to really make a big difference, to be honest, but, you know, it’s a couple of pizzas …”
“And tell me, does anyone in the FSRC,” Billy said, “ever make a blind bit of sense?” He looked at his drinking partners blearily. “I was not expecting to be recruited today.”
“Yeah, and by the filth, too,” Collingswood said. She blew gusts, gave him a little smirk. Still no one was telling her to stop smoking.
“We want you onside, Billy,” Baron said. “You could help Vardy. You know the books. You’ll understand the squid stuff. Any investigation, we always start with beliefs, but the biology’s going to be part of all that.
“You know, I have to tell you …” Baron shifted as if broaching a painful subject. “You might have heard, it’s an old standard that if you’re looking for whodunit, you start with whoever finds the body. And you did have access to the tank, too.”
Billy’s eyes widened. He began to rise. Baron pulled him back down, laughing. “Sit down, you pillock,” he said. “I’m just saying that if we wanted to, we could approach this a whole other way. Where were you on the night of, et cetera and so on. But you and us can scratch each other’s backs. We want insight and you want protection. Win-win, mate.”
“So why are you threatening me?” Billy said. “And I told you, I don’t have any insight …”
“You going to tell me,” Baron interrupted, tilting his chin in a come now look, “you’ve got no sense of the bloody awesomeness of that thing?”
“… The squid?”
“The Archi-bloody-teuthis, Billy Harrow, yes. The giant squid. That thing in the jar. That. That got took. And is been and gone. Are you really surprised someone might