Night of the Animals(95)

Ironically, the comet was actually more luminous in southern Britain at that time than almost anywhere else on Earth, but it was blocked, in north London, by a very southern English formation of stratus clouds. The cloud cover was beginning to push off.

Astrid thought about Atwell’s apparently heartfelt conviction that she could do what almost no one else had—withstand second withdrawal. It was touching, but wasn’t it misplaced? Oh, she hoped not. Could she beat Death? She was so close, after all, wasn’t she? Or was she? For if she could drink just one orb of Flōt—and no more—and walk sober thereafter—and never again after that. If, if, if. Just one orb. One and only one and never again on this debased Earth.

“Inspector!” Atwell was scurrying ahead of her. She had her torch trained on a red and black shape. “There’s something wrong up there.” She pointed toward a shadowy misplacement.

“Wait, Jasmine. Wait!” But she kept bustling along, well in front now.

Now she shined her torch over the thing. It was a small, chawed-out head of some kind. Atwell reeled backward.

“Jesus!” she said, her hand over her mouth. “I’m going to be sick.”

Astrid caught up and shined her light down. “My god,” she said.

Her first flare of thought was that she was looking down at the lean, masticated head of Satan. Smudged with dark, bloody fingerprints, to Astrid the ribbed horns appeared to have been curled not by eons of genetic adaptation, but by murderous demons. There was a sense, too, that the appalling object had come to meet her. It was out of the zoo, ready to swallow her with its skinny skull and one wet ear. For a moment, she even thought she heard a faint voice calling her, but she put that down to withdrawal.

“It’s a goat,” Astrid heard herself whisper hoarsely. “I’m fairly certain of that.”

“I don’t want to look,” said Atwell.

“Don’t,” Astrid said. She used her baton to roll the head over. There were no maggots or flies, no fetid smell. “This is part of the whole lights business,” she said. “Whatever did this did it tonight. Nothing to be worried about. It’s not a person that’s done it. People don’t chew goat snouts off.” People did much worse, she thought.

She turned to face Atwell, who seemed to be recovering, standing taller. Atwell finally glanced at it again.

“It’s just my stomach, ma’am—it’s been bothering me. Crikey! It’s horrible.” She turned her face away again. “I can’t look or I’m going to chunder. Don’t—look—at me—yeah, if I lose it, Inspector? It’s humiliating, guv, in front of you, yeah?”

Atwell bent over and vomited. Astrid gently placed her hand on her colleague’s back. It was hot and damp and muscular. “OK, I’m OK,” Atwell said. “OK, it’s passing. Good.” She breathed in thickly, then spat. “Fuck!”

“Easy,” said Astrid.

“This head, guv, it does fright me just a bit. I mean, I don’t want to go like this goat. Who did this?”

“Easy,” she said. She rubbed Atwell’s back. “Easy.” She said, “It’s what did it. This bit, it’s animals on animals. That’s precisely what we’re looking at.” Squinty faced and tilting her head, she held her hand up for quiet.

Then she was sure she heard a voice—a peculiar, persecuted one, quietly whinging from thin air.

Umm, kay-kay, femaleans! You’re flarking me out, kay-kay! It was high-pitched but distinctly male, and it came from above. There was no one in sight.

“Fuck all,” said Atwell.

“Now that is right crooked by half-fives,” said Astrid.

Atwell nodded and said, “Couldn’t be more. Do you think we . . . well, should keep walking, around the ‘perimeter’?”

“Oh—Beauchamp’s bloody perimeter. For f*ck’s sake. No.” Astrid bit her lower lip. There was that anger. A rage before the Death. If she just held on. It was passing, wasn’t it? “Actually, yes. Sorry. Beauchamp’s right. We can walk, of course, we’ll get around, but I want to investigate that person who’s having a lark at our expense. It’s back toward the pandaglider. It may be the joker who tried to give you a scare, earlier.” She looked up at the sky. A cool night-breeze was blowing. She said, “It came from up. Up is a funny place for a person.” She pointed at the field beyond the grove of plane trees that lined the Broad Walk. She said, “Maybe in that direction?”

So they left the goat head and walked back toward the glider.

Had they made it around the southern tip of the zoo, just a few yards beyond the goat head, they would have encountered Cuthbert’s notable handiwork with the fence. They would have been able to raise the section of heavy ironwork fencing Cuthbert had pushed down into the turf, and plug up the only hole in the zoo in its two centuries.





up a tree like zacchaeus


THE JACKALS WERE ALREADY LONG GONE. THE five of them had scurried out of Regent’s Park and managed safely to cross the Marylebone Road. A young group of True Conservative politicos, drinking themselves silly at a local public house over Election Eve polls (LabouraTory was crushing them), had seen the jackals outside the window and mistook them for large bizarre cats (cats that lived, mysteriously, in packs).