Read Online Pax Britannia: Human Nature by Jonathan Green - Free Book Online Page B

there could be no doubt. The crumbling square smelt of damp, mould, rotting wood and ammonia. A stream gurgled under the planking at their feet, a steady flow of piss and effluent sloshing its way along the boarded-over drain emptying out of the seemingly lifeless slum around them - an indication that there must be some life here, despite initial appearances - on its way to join the Thames or one of the capital's lost waterways, like the Fleet, or the Effra or the Wallbrook. Ulysses might have had an idea as to which if he had had a better notion of where the boy had led them.
    The boy stopped beside a dusty tarpaulin, abandoned on the ground and covered in a dusting of broken plaster. He looked back at Ulysses and Nimrod, who looked the most uncomfortable, picking his way through the dust, filth and wreckage. Ulysses knew, however, that he had put up with much worse in his time.
    Perched on the boy's shoulder, the monkey scratched its arse and then nibbled at something it found there. Sidney watched the progress of the other two with a look akin to delight on his face.
    "At the risk of sounding trite, are we there yet?" Ulysses asked, suddenly conscious of how loud his voice sounded in the muffled near silence of the octagon. You wouldn't have known you were at the heart of the largest metropolis on Earth, not here.
    The quiet unnerved him. There was the steady drip-drip-drip of a pipe overflowing somewhere, or a tear in an awning letting in overspill from the Upper City way overhead. There was the distant, inescapable rattle and clatter of the Overground system. There was the creak and groan of the awnings as they were pulled by unseen breezes and changes in air pressure. But the presence of any sound to suggest that anything lived here - even pigeons or rats - was absent.
    And yet, even here, there was another of those cheerful advertisements for the latest restorative drink - Dr Feelgood's Tonic Stout.
    Ulysses suddenly felt very exposed. This was hardly the way to go about creeping up on such a supposedly elusive criminal mastermind.
    "We're nearly there now," Sidney said, pointing through a broken doorway, a network of smashed timbers just about visible in the shadows beyond. "We'll need to be quiet from 'ere on in. We're not exactly goin' in the front door, if you know what I mean - it's not even the tradesmen entrance - but 'e's got eyes and ears everywhere."
    "I can well believe it," Ulysses said. "Can't be too careful in his line of business, I'm sure." He turned to his manservant, still a few steps behind him. "As they said in the Boy Scouts, be prepared, and all that, eh, Nimrod?" and he took out the pistol he kept holstered under his left arm and checked the chamber. On cue, Nimrod produced his own weapon and readied it.
    Sidney acknowledged the presence of the guns with a widening of those puppy dog eyes of his but said nothing. From here on in, silence was key.
    "Sir, if you don't mind me saying so, I don't like this," Nimrod whispered at Ulysses' shoulder.
    "Don't worry, old chap," Ulysses blustered, instinctive bravado covering up the doubt he felt on his part. "This is our only lead."
    "I'm just saying, sir. That's all."
    "Duly noted," Ulysses hissed. "Now, can we be about our business?"
    They followed their urchin guide through the doorway, their progress slowing considerably as they clambered over the web of broken beams whilst trying to keep their weapons aimed ahead of them, just in case. The underdeveloped boy had no such trouble, scurrying through the spaces between the beams at their feet, his monkey, loosed from its string-leash, bounding ahead, as if scouting a way through the tangle of fallen floorboards and roof supports.
    The two men followed as best they could, as quickly and as quietly as possible, which with stealth being of the utmost importance, meant that their progress was not quick at all. And then they were past the hindering obstacles.
    As they progressed, a soft orange glow grew in