Evolution Expects Read online

  Spring-Heeled Jack

  and the Limehouse Golem

  January 1998

  In the first hour, Adam’s dust was gathered; in the second, it was kneaded into a shapeless mass. In the third, his limbs were shaped; in the fourth, a soul was infused into him; in the fifth, he arose and stood on his feet.

  The Talmud, Tractate Sanhedrin 38b

  CHAPTER ONE

  Made of Clay

  LONDON FOG, AS thick and as yellow as custard, oozed along the rat-runs and alleyways of Limehouse, like some predatory beast. It probed at doorways and drains with its jaundiced tentacles, leaving a cloying reminder of its greasy touch on everything it came into contact with. The Smog caught in the throat, clogging the lungs of those who inhaled it, taking the young, the old and the infirm, and the asthmatic. It reduced visibility, causing problems for river traffic as well as that on the busy streets of the capital, and it proved to be the perfect accomplice for those who did not want their business becoming public knowledge. It was a trusted ally of London’s criminal fraternity in particular.

  This late January night the Smog had sunk low over the oily river, following the course of the sluggish waterway from the industrial complexes of Battersea, through the beating heart of the capital past the Houses of Parliament, Blackfriars Bridge and the Tower, to the dilapidated docks and overcrowded slums of Limehouse. What little moonlight that penetrated the grubby shroud smothering the city, combined with the yellow glow of gas-lamps and the few electric lights that festooned the streets in this part of town, to give the mist an otherworldly glow. The searching tendrils looked like the ectoplasm certain members of the Spiritualist Church claimed to be able to manifest from their own bodies during a séance.

  The Smog was always bad around this time of year. There had been a time in the past when the Thames would freeze, the ice so thick it could support the wagons, stalls, people and even cook-fires of the Frost Fairs. But now it never got cold enough in the capital. The unsleeping factories saw to that. The pollutants and effluent that made up the Thames by the time it had finishing passing the capital, made it even less likely that the river would ever be able to freeze.

  Of course, the Smog was a problem all year round and every year it only got worse. Ever-increasing industrialisation was the key: and it wasn’t only the dirigible factories on the Isle of Dogs, or the cavorite works across the river at Greenwich, that relied on the burning of fossil fuel on an unprecedented scale. Everything from the sleepless railways to the lunar transport vessels that took off from Heathrow and Gatwick on a weekly basis all took their toll and contributed to the ever-present pollution. It was just that during the winter months the Smog took more lives than it did during the other three seasons put together.

  The Smog smothered everything in its anesthetising shroud, including almost all sound. The only ones abroad in the oily darkness at this time of night, were the occasional robo-Bobbie and those members of London’s criminal fraternity out about their clandestine business.

  Credence Jones was just such a man.

  He crept through the streets, force of habit meaning that he kept close to the walls, skulking in doorways every so often to check that he wasn’t being followed, when the jaundiced fog itself would have been enough to keep him hidden. But you never could be too sure. Since the disappearance of the Oriental criminal mastermind known to all as the Black Mamba and following the fallout from the Wormwood Affair, in the wake of what were supposed to have been Her Majesty’s 160th jubilee celebrations, Limehouse was disputed territory. You couldn’t be certain who had staked a claim, and for a lone operator like Credence – a cat-burglar of the old school – you had no-one to watch your back.

  The burglar stopped at a street corner and peered into the murk clogging the alleyway ahead of him. Brick-built warehouses, turned black by time and pollution, rose up above him like a man-made canyon, the shadowy spider’s web of the Overground network just visible above the corrugated iron roofs of the barn-sized warehouses.

  Credence had a love-hate relationship with the Smog. When it came to his line of work, he wouldn’t be without it. There were many times when a good, honest London pea souper had concealed him from the prying eyes of the Metropolitan Police, or helped him evade an unusually brave have-a-go copper. But it was a fickle mistress; it could just as easily hide those creeping up on a man about his business. And then there was little Maggie. Her condition was worsening by the day as the consumption ate her up from the inside, and the unclean air only served to help the tuberculosis tighten its hold on her.

  As he thought of his youngest, a smile formed on Credence’s face beneath the kerchief mask he wore, tied tight across his nose and mouth to filter out the worst of the Smog. The contents of the sack slung over his shoulder would fetch a pretty penny, once it had been passed through Arbuckle’s Pawnshop, and would provide him with enough to be able to take her to a proper doctor – like that Dr Cleary he had heard about, down in Canning Town – rather than one of the local quacks or backstreet abortionists they usually had to rely on round these parts. Perhaps it would even leave him with enough to buy some medicine too and save him the trouble of having to nick it, although he wasn’t entirely averse to that idea; it was just that the sort of places where he would have to go to get hold of it had better security than a man like him liked to deal with.

  He was right in the heart of Limehouse now. He only had to make it to the river and from there he could make his way back upriver to Wapping and the slum he and his family called home. And he knew these streets like the back of his hand – better, in fact. He knew of a hundred ways through the warehouses and around the wharfs.

  It was an area the Peelers preferred not to have to enter unless it was en masse, and then they could practically guarantee that they would find the place deserted. No, the Police and the criminal gangs had an undeclared understanding; Limehouse was left to the Irish, and their illegal stills, the Chinese and their opium dens, and the Jews. It might be the case that the disappearance of the Black Mamba and the destruction of the Darwinian Dawn’s operation in the area had left a power vacuum, but it would not last for long. Soon there would be another top dog in charge, who would effectively police the area for them, to a degree, but until that time, the Police preferred to let the rival gangs get on with it, and not get involved in their turf wars themselves, only stepping in when trouble spilled out into the City, beyond the rat-runs of Limehouse itself.

  Credence Jones set off again through the viscous fog. Through the obscuring cloud he could just make out the posters and music-hall bills that plastered the walls of the alleyway and which in some places, he could quite easily have believed, were the only things holding the rotting brickwork of the slums together – posters promoting the latest Chinese Magic Show at the Palace Theatre and yet more advertisements promoting Dr Feelgood’s Tonic Stout as a patent panacea for all ills, capable of treating everything from constipation to rheumatism.

  Senses heightened, his outwardly calm manner giving no clue as to the adrenalin surge flooding his system, through the muffling mist – which filtered out the distant rattle and chuffing of Overground trains and blaring horns within the streets of the capital – his ears picked out another sound, a footstep out of time with his own.

  He barely faltered for a second but kept going. If he was being followed the element of surprise could work as well for him as for his pursuer. To stop now would be to lose that advantage and force whoever it was that was at his heels to play their hand. If he kept moving he might yet lose them in the Smog.

  A figure, dropped onto the cobbles in front of him, as if it had stepped through a portal from another world right before Credence’s eyes. The figure was athletic of build, male, bound from head-to-toe in black, and was possessed of the lithe agility of a cat. He landed in a crouch, with one leg extended and a bamboo pole coming to rest across his shoulders. The black-clad Oriental made barely a sound, his arrival leaving curling eddies in the Smog.
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  Credence froze, knowing that he must be surrounded. He had met their kind before. The Yellow Peril, the popular press called them. Untrustworthy, slanty-eyed gits the lot of them, as far as Credence was concerned. The Chinese infested Limehouse like a plague of rats. Here, at the heart of the capital of the British Empire, this place belonged to the Chinese as much as it belonged to the Irishman or the Jews. It certainly wasn’t British in anything other than name.

  His heart beating faster now, he began to weigh up the few options open to him. A flood of excuses came to mind, the decision to fight or flee uppermost, but both pointless considering his current circumstances. He was a middle-aged crook, with a fondness for pies, pints and baccy, and he was alone. His enemy were trained warriors who could kill with one strike from their bare hands, trained by rigorous near-religious discipline. He turned his head, scanning the street behind and in front of him. And there were at least a dozen of them.

  Credence opened his mouth to speak and then let out his breath in a defeated sigh. There was no point him saying anything. It was clear from the narrowed eyes behind the slit of the villain’s mask that nothing he said would alter the judgement that had already been passed before the tong had even revealed itself.

  He slipped a calloused hand into a pocket and felt the reassuring shape of the cosh beneath his fingertips. Chances were that he would soon be given no choice but to fight, and, if that were the case, this old-school burglar would give these Chinese a demonstration of British fighting spirit.

  The figure in front of Credence rose from his crouch and took a darting step forward. He never once took his eyes off the small-time crook and, as he stepped closer, the suffused light permeating the Smog reflecting from the glistening surface of his staring eyes, Credence felt another instinct take hold and scuttle up his spine on spidery legs – the unconscious unease felt in the presence of something not altogether natural. There was something not right about the Chinaman’s eyes – even for an Oriental – and, now that he saw it, Credence realised that there was something wrong with the shape of the face behind the black face-cloth.

  Credence registered the sound of colossal footfalls behind him a split second before he saw the change in the Chinaman’s eyes, and felt the juddering impact-tremors a moment before that.

  Then there was no mistaking the cobble-cracking impacts of something immensely heavy on the street behind him, the echoes of the thundering footfalls thrown back from the canyon walls of the street accompanied by a bellowing roar, like the super-heated roar of a furnace, as something came at them out of the night.

  Instinctively Credence threw himself sideways. Where moments before the Chinese had been cool, calm and collected, focused in the face of an unwitting invasion of the streets they now claimed as their own, now they were a disorganized, panicking rabble, fleeing in terror before the monster that was bearing down on them out of the Smog and the night.

  Credence hit the side of the street and stumbled to his knees in the dirty puddles collected in the lee of a rotting warehouse, throwing his arms over his head and screwing his eyes shut tight in fear. But fear of what he might see come roaring out of the fog soon became the lesser of two evils compared to not knowing what it was that had suddenly appeared, as the limp body of a Chinaman dropped to the ground beside him and the scream of another was cut short, the sharp wet crack that came after it, all the more terrible for it.

  Credence Jones opened his eyes.

  His would-be attackers were in disarray. From where he lay, huddled on the numbing ground, Credence could see one of the tongs cowering before the might of whatever it was that was emerging from the Smog behind him. He could not see it, but he could hear it – great thudding footsteps and throaty, furnace-fury bellows – and he could see the effect it was having on the Chinese.

  Some of the bolder members of the gang were shuffling away from whatever it was, a few yards at a time, not ready to flee from it completely yet, nor daring to turn their backs on it. A sense of ancient warrior honour refused to let them run, but common sense and a shared dread prevented them from fighting back.

  Others, less convinced by their shared warrior’s code, turned tail and ran screaming into the night as another body came bowling out of the mist.

  Screaming an incomprehensible, yet obvious, battle-cry, the leader of the Tong found his courage again and bounded back along the alley to challenge the unknown aggressor.

  Credence heard something like the thwack of bamboo making contact with something solid and inflexible, quickly followed by a horrible crunching sound which was joined by a cry of pain so intense as to render its owner insensible.

  The body of the wretch flew out of the mist over Credence’s head. The Chinaman’s limp form hit the wall of the warehouse on the opposite side of the street and fell, headfirst, onto the cobbles in a broken heap.

  Credence started to panic as more of the Chinamen lost their resolve and ran screaming back into the fog. He had to know what it was that had unwittingly saved him from a surely certain and painful death at the hands of the territory-hungry gang.

  Pushing himself up into a crouch, he turned to see what it was that he could already feel stomping towards him, closer and closer every second. The blood instantly drained from his cheeks, his skin became clammy – he was sure his heart even missed a beat – and cold slivers of icy fear surged through his veins.

  It came out of the Smog like some nightmare of fire and fury made horribly real. With blazing eyes it scoured the narrow street, catching first the crumbling brickwork of the warehouse, then the heels of the fleeing Chinese and the beaming face of Dr Feelgood, as he promoted his patent panacea, until finally its baleful gaze fell on Credence Jones. Twice as tall as a man, and as broad as it was tall, the steaming colossus lumbered out of the Smog. It opened its fiery maw and the same incandescent light of its eyes shone from deep within its throat, the smiling face of Dr Feelgood caught in the shimmering heat-haze.

  The alleyway was almost too narrow to contain it.

  For a moment, the monster turned to study the cowering thief. Its face was an impassive, stony mask, and yet its eyes blazed with unadulterated rage while its gaping maw revealed the fiery rage at its heart. For a split second, Credence began to believe, with self-deceiving hope, that perhaps the creature had come to his rescue, that it had witnessed his predicament and seen fit to intervene on his behalf.

  And then the behemoth reached for him with one massive hand, its heavy, clay-like fingers still trailing greasy strands of persistent Smog. As Credence feebly tried to kick himself clear of the hulking demon, its hand closed around his head, cracking his skull like an egg.

  The demon opened its crushing hand again, heedless of the brain matter dripping from its massive fingers, and stomped off along the alleyway, shoulders scraping the walls on both sides of the narrow street as the juggernaut continued on its way, after the Chinamen.

  An instant later it was swallowed by the fickle Smog, leaving nothing behind it but the carcasses of the fallen, including the headless corpse of Credence Jones.

  CHAPTER TWO

  A Pest Problem

  THE WAITING ROOM smelt strongly of jasmine, artificially so, Ulysses Quicksilver thought. Nonetheless, the fragrant scent of flowers helped put him at his ease. However much he might not like to admit it, he did feel nervous. Despite all that he had faced in his life, and overcome – from the snowbeast of Shangri-la to the Kraken and, most recently, the Umbridge-Chimera – the thought of this visit to the Daedalus Clinic, and his consultation with a certain Doctor Pandora Doppelganger, did not fill him with confidence.

  But then Ulysses had quickly developed a not altogether irrational fear of doctors, since the last time he had gone under the knife, the knife in question had been in the hands of the deranged surgeon Seziermesser. The trauma he had suffered at the hands of the German vivisectionist was one of the reasons why he had left it until now, the end of January – a good two months after all that had transpired,
following his investigation into the theft of the Whitby Mermaid from the Holbrook Museum, here in London.

  But he was here now.

  He suddenly realised that he was rubbing at the shoulder joint of his left arm and stopped just as abruptly.

  He looked around the waiting room, black gloved fingers drumming uneasily on his knees. It had the air of a hotel, or an exclusive set of offices, or a gentlemen’s club. Everything was just so, from the spray of flowers in the crystal vase over a mantelpiece to the brilliant white stucco plasterwork of the ceiling. It was certainly a million miles away from the struggling charitable hospices that the poor had to rely on, and certainly nothing like the sinister sanatorium of the Royal Bethlehem Hospital, better known to those incarcerated within and to the world at large as Bedlam. But that didn’t stop him from feeling uneasy as he sat there waiting to be seen.

  The receptionist was appropriately – in descending order of priority – pretty, young and efficient, her long blonde hair coiled in a tight bun on top of her head and her bright red lipstick, along with her tailored cream suit and low cut blouse turning her into every hot-blooded male’s archetypal fantasy secretary figure; demure and subservient whilst having the appearance and poise of a dominatrix.

  She looked up from the ghostly glow of her green-lit Babbage engine’s cathode ray display unit and smiled coyly at Ulysses. The smile appeared genuine, but there was something just too well-practised about it at the same time.

  He smiled back nervously, the tense grimace he had been unwittingly maintaining softening for a moment, having temporarily mislaid the old Quicksilver charm for the time being, and glanced from the girl to the white-painted door bearing the name plaque ‘Dr P. Doppelganger’ once more.