Page 5 of The Lost Future of Pepperharrow

He’d rather hang. That was clean. A scaffold didn’t have the rancid horror of an asylum.

‘Yeah, fine, probably. Dunno, he’s been away.’

‘Listen to me very carefully.’

Thaniel frowned. He was too hot now; all his internal engines were revving, ready to run, even though there was nowhere to run to.

‘It’s “yes” and “I don’t know”, Steepleton. Promotions come to he who enunciates.’

‘Piss off,’ said Thaniel, so relieved he had to lean back against the wall.

Fanshaw laughed. ‘Anyway. Something for the fog?’ He held out a silver hip flask.

A few years ago, Thaniel would have refused, but lately he’d realised that refusing was only polite if you were talking to a poor person. If you refused a rich person, you looked like you were worried you’d catch something. He took a sip and the brandy seared nicely down the back of his throat. ‘Thanks.’

‘Actually there’s something else I need to talk to you about,’ Fanshaw said, and stood aside so that Thaniel could see his own desk. The telegraph had been overactive across the weekend. It was covered with ribbons of transcript paper.

‘It’s all from our legation in Tokyo,’ said Fanshaw.

‘Have the Russians declared war?’ Thaniel said, trying to find the end of the tangle. When he did, he pinned it to the China desk with a Kelly lamp.

‘No,’ Fanshaw said. ‘It seems that the Japanese staff of the legation believe that the building is haunted. They’re all leaving. And now the British staff are getting the raging collywobbles as well. There’s a danger the whole place will shut down.’

Thaniel straightened, still holding a ribbon of transcript. The later messages towards the end of the ribbon had gone into shouty capital letters. APPARENTLY THE KITCHEN IS HAUNTED BY SOMEBODY’S DEAD WIFE STOP PLS ADVISE GOD’S ACTUAL SAKE STOP. ‘Did someone enrol us in the Psychical Society without telling us?’ he asked, nearly laughing.

Fanshaw shook his head. He was smoothing transcripts as Thaniel cut them up, and he didn’t look like he thought it was very funny at all. ‘I seriously doubt they mean figure-in-a-sheet ghosts.’ He sank his head and surveyed an invisible dictionary about three feet off the floor. It took him a while to find the right words. ‘I’m worried it’s something the servants feel is unspeakable, and so they’re telling stories about ghosts so they won’t have to say what’s really going on. They know we’re all stupid. They know that if they make up something supernatural then we’ll write it off as native flightiness and ask no more questions. I’ve seen this sort of behaviour before, in farther-flung countries. It’s usually caused by diplomats … abusing their immunity, and so forth.’

Thaniel nodded. He could believe it.

Fanshaw looked uncomfortable. ‘And if that is the case, it means a local interpreter is no good. They could be interpreting to the person who’s actually the problem. I have to send in someone from outside.’

‘Will you go over there and sort it out, then?’

Fanshaw looked up. ‘No. You will. You’re far more fluent than I am, it’s idiotic that you aren’t already on a Tokyo posting.’

Thaniel was quiet while he let it sink in. ‘How long for?’

‘As long as it takes. I’ll put it down as a full rotation translation posting, though, so you don’t arrive to a building full of people who know you’re investigating them. Year, year and a half, on paper.’ Fanshaw frowned. ‘Are you all right? You don’t look happy.’

It caught Thaniel off guard and he didn’t know what to say.

Mori was still in Russia. Whatever he was doing there, he had been doing it for six months, and before that, he’d been in Berlin for three. Thaniel had no idea why. Almost certainly the only reason they had managed to rub along together for four years was that he never asked too many questions, but he felt hollowed out with missing him. When the time came to expect a letter – every week or so – the walk home was tight with a sort of nervous buoyancy that veered between dread and hope. There hadn’t been anything for three weeks. He had a grey feeling now that there wouldn’t be, since the entire Russian infrastructure was buried under sixteen feet of snow.

He cleared his throat. ‘It’s just the fog,’ he said, and then almost exactly on cue, had to turn his head away and cough into his hands. ‘My lungs aren’t too good. I used to work in an engine factory.’ He tried to thread some sensible thoughts together. They kept rolling off under the furniture. ‘How long do I have to think about it? I’ve got a little girl.’

Six was going to hate the whole idea. She hated it if he took her on a detour on the way to school, never mind to Tokyo.

‘Not long, I’m afraid,’ Fanshaw said. He twisted his nose regretfully. ‘Think it over tonight, but I need an answer tomorrow. The Russians are still parked in the Sea of Japan. They’re not moving at the moment, but if they do move, they’re going to go straight for Nagasaki and then all the passenger ships will be put on hold. Everything goes through Nagasaki.’ He looked as though everybody had arranged it that way specifically to annoy the Foreign Office. ‘So you need to be there sooner rather later.’

Thaniel hesitated, because he didn’t much like the idea of taking Six into a war zone. ‘But they won’t, will they? The Russians. They can’t invade.’

Fanshaw shrugged. ‘They could. They wouldn’t be there if they didn’t know something, and I suspect what they know is that the Japanese fleet is on its last legs. I think they’re going to inch nearer and nearer til someone from the Japanese navy loses his nerve and fires. Then it’ll be the Opium War all over again. The Russians will have the right to do whatever the hell they like once a Russian ship takes a hit.’

‘If it’s just about not firing on them, then why would anyone do that?’

Fanshaw waved his hands at the whole department. ‘Because! Have you seen the heights of gibbering indignation the upper echelons of the Japanese armed forces can achieve? They’re still samurai. They grew up being unofficially allowed to test out new swords on unwanted foreigners. They’re still getting to grips with the idea that there are forces in the world they can’t bully. I almost guarantee someone will fire.’

Thaniel tried to match that idea to Mori, who had never bullied anyone.