That was Johnny Dods, maybe? King Oliver, for certain. And Lead Belly, who else?
The band marched out of Ludgate Hill and into St Pauls’ Churchyard. The musicians were close to him now. Close enough to touch if he were to reach out with fingers outstretched. Close enough for him to smell the fug of tobacco and hard liquor that had clung to their bodies through the voidness of Hell.
Dougie’s flesh tingled. The music swelled and rolled. Pain and regret filled the air. But there was pleasure there too. The music of grief was tainted with flecks of pure joy.
Aerial demons cawed and roared and shat pellets of moist guano on to the crowds, though no one flinched.
Dougie counted twenty-seven long-dead musicians and singers in total, all but two of them black. These cool cats marched or ambled or strutted, veering past the statue of Queen Anne with a disdainful kink in their caravan; processing onwards towards the south front of the Cathedral. From there they would walk to Charon Bridge, where the eulogies for Naberius would be read or sung, before the silver-tainted remains of the extirpated demon were scattered into the Pool of St Paul’s.
The Band of the Damned moved away from him, the lamenting trumpet solo carving chunks out of his heart.
Dougie noticed some tourists were taking photographs of the spectacle. Fools! All they would see on their snaps would be an absence of shadows where shadows ought to fall. Demons could be photographed, but the damned could not.
He looked back towards Ludgate, where the remainder of the funeral procession was emerging out of the funnel of this ancient Roman street. It was a carnival of the macabre comprised of hell entities of every shape and genus. Some trotted in untidy ranks. Some flew. Some slithered. Some bounded. There were monsters from every mythology to be found here. Christian and Muslim and Hindu and Japanese and Hawaiian and Native American and African; a melting pot of horror.
There were the Nues who led the cavalcade, like creatures out of the dreams of a child with an acute sugar rush. Dozens of them, tails flapping and hissing, mouths babbling nonsense words, heads rolling as they shouted insults at each other. The Nues were large as elephants with raccoon bodies and tiger hind quarters and tails made of snakes, and each had a monkey’s inanely chattering head.
Almost as bizarre but smaller were the Chimaeras, the original hybrid monsters. Each had the body of a lioness and - like the Nues - a tail made of spitting snakes, together with a goat’s head sprouting like a vast boil from the spinal bumps of their backs.
Behind them a score and more of Cerberuses, near kin to the Chimaeras through only a fraction as smart. Three-headed ugly-as-fuck dogs with slobbering jaws and fur made up of those ubiquitous spitting snakes.
On they marched that day: the beast-like demons and the bird-like demons and the human-like demons and the demons unlike any Earthly creature that has ever lived.
Dougie, as was his wont, scanned the procession for familiar and criminal faces. He could easily distinguish between the various red-skinned horned demons now – the ICH-Ones and ICH-Twos and all the way to ICH-943s - and he knew most the faces and names of the greatest rogues. But there were too many of them here for him to be able to easily differentiate; there were thousands present, perhaps tens of thousands. His vision kept swimming. His mind kept turning to paste. And his feet ached. And still the monsters kept coming.
Dougie’s e-berry rang; it was Gina. He ignored it. He didn’t want to speak to anyone today. He didn’t want to expose his own melancholic mood.
‘You knew the deceased?’ said a female tourist, an American. A gangly sharp-voiced New Yorker in a grey business suit and onyx necklace.
‘I slew the deceased,’ Dougie informed her gravely.
She blinked, and moved away.
Next in the procession were the humaniform red demons, mainly from the Christian traditions. The male reds wore suits or dapper Ascot blazers, the females wore party gowns or were dressed like MTV mock ’hos, or were clad in designer casual gear with matching diamond-studded Reeboks. Most had forehead horns neatly clipped; a few proudly carried magnificent antlers on their humanesque brows.
Then the smiling shikigami, those eerie Japanese death demons. And the oni, squat and ominous, as well as a vast akanbei with its single drooping eye, and a cluster of crab-like Heigigani.
Then came Maxox, a great red-hued bestial demon with the body of a bull, three horns on his skull, and balls of actual steel so big they drummed upon the cobbles as the beast trotted. Maxox was a pimp and chief enforcer to the whoremaster Belial, the embodiment of the worst of demonkind. Dougie knew that Maxox had murdered hundreds in the Battle of London; but now he’d been pardoned and lived in luxury in Demon City.
Dougie mentally marked the card of the bull-like beast. One day, he silently said. One fucking day.
Maxox stomped past, glaring with rage at everyone he saw with his blood-shot eyes, clattering the ground with his metal hooves and bouncing genitalia.
Behind him was a villain practised in every evil imaginable, the de facto ruler of Demon City: Mammon. The master of finance and the self proclaimed - for he was nothing if not grandiloquent - Lord of Lucre.
Mammon had a human’s sly and devious face, but in the main he was a bestial demon, about two-elephants in size, with a serpent’s lower half; and was surrounded at all times by an entourage of many-horned lickspittles.
Those minions scurried beside their Master, like soldiers running beside their commanding officer’s tank. Writing memos on to iPads and shouting into mobile phones, their eyes ceaselessly patrolling the crowd for debtors and fresh suckers to be bilked.
Mammon slithered proudly at their epicentre on his huge slimy-scaled snake body, clutching a trident stained with blood, flaunting his power with obscene relish. His red scales were damp and mould-infested. His tongue was like a prehensile tail, darting out of his mouth constantly as if to catch flies, and sometimes actually doing so.
He carried several shrunken human skulls upon his belt; they bobbed along as he slithered. And from time to time, Mammon would flick out the long reach of his serpent tail, and scatter his minions like skittles.
Close behind Mammon were his generals: Duke Berith and Duke Gamory. Berith was an arrogant looking humaniform Red with a beard and bristling eyebrows. He rode a magnificent scarlet steed whose breath stained the air crimson. He was heavily armoured like a knight from the age of King Arthur.
Gamory – his ally and his rival – had a body like a dragon, with grey shiny scales, and a head like a rhinoceros, and bat wings that he paraded like epaulets. He too rode a horse, so that dragon and horse seemed to merge into a single beast. In his hand he carried a huge and bloodied axe which, apparently, he used in the interrogation of suspects. Gamory was the Commissioner of Police in Demon City; he took pride in the fact that all feared him, especially his friends, and his many wives and hundreds of children, who he openly brutalised.
And on they came. The mourners of Naberius; the great and the vile of Demon City.
Lastly came the family of Naberius. His wife Callia, her black body scaled and sleekly naked and shockingly lovely; and Naberius’s three dragonesque children, Dayomi, Karrswu, and Leanala. Callia appeared calm and composed but was clearly holding back deep emotion.
Evil bitch.
Dougie glared hatred at her. He was appalled at her effrontery in grieving for her husband. And disgusted too at the arrogance of all these dark-souled monsters; monsters who had dwelled for so long in the nightmares of mankind. Monsters who now presumed to think they had the right to mourn the death of one of their own.
And yeah, okay, Naberius was innocent; a helpless pawn of the malign Gogarty. So fucking what? Dougie was still glad that the red-hided bastard was dead.
Let them know what it’s like, Dougie thought. Let those evil other-dimensional fuckers experience what it is like to lose the one you love!
The music continued to play, more distant now but still compelling. Still the same song, the same remorsele
ss lament for the lost spirit of Naberius.
‘Let her, let her go, let her go, let her go, god bless her!’
As the words echoed, Dougie remembered, with a pain that never dimmed, the woman he had loved and lost.
Chapter 22
Skip back nineteen years.
It was Wednesday the twenty-third of July, 2003.
PC Dougie Randall, twenty years old, fresh out of Hendon, was on patrol in the area car in Camberwell with police constable Angela Ferris.
Angela was twenty-seven, red-haired, fit as fuck, and sassy. And Dougie was a bold and cocky young man, so tall he was bursting out of his uniform, with hands too large to grip the average teacup.
Angela was driving calmly and slowly along Camberwell High Street, the main thoroughfare in their manor. A busy multi-ethnic traffic jam, lined on either side with hair extension boutiques and suntan parlours and kebab houses, and greengrocer’s shops with colourful pavement displays of yams and okri and ripe watermelons.
Dougie was scanning the world.
He saw a car take an illegal left turn and let it go: not worth their time. A convertible drove past with its sound system turned up high, making his head shake: annoying but par for the course.
‘Cheeky,’ said Angela.
‘I’d say,’ said Dougie.
Dougie took careful note as they drove past two Rastas from the Harkmead Estate, with their tri-colour bobble hats, snapping their fingers in time to the music from their bulky Walkmans. They’d both had cautions for possession of ganja but they were good lads.
He checked out the three mothers pushing prams, the nappy trays stuffed full of shopping, babies blissfully sleep. Chatting non stop as they drove their chariots along the crowded pavement. He eyed up, appreciatively, a posse of five young black women, swaggering with their legs and arms and upper breasts provocatively bared, on their way to doing nothing very much.
‘Oi.’
‘Sorry, Ange.’
He spotted two dealers entering the Queen’s Head where, Dougie had been told, the toilets were like Alaska, though the Drugs Squad had never made a bust there.
Dougie was watching it all, recognising or memorising as many faces as he could, for that was one of his gifts. He saw a grey haired dosser squatting on the pavement, clad in a big Army greatcoat on this bright April day. His name was Raymond. A few years ago Raymond had been knifed in the throat, in a turf war with some Irish alkies; as a consequence, he spoke in a husky rasp. At one time, Dougie knew, he’d played football for Crystal Palace. But that was a long time ago.
And over there, the black jogger in bovver boots, that was Jim Yandel. Shoulders like a boxer, face carved with wrinkles. He was a poet, in the Linton Kwesi Johnston tradition. Patois meets street slang; da bway from da hood. Dougie had seen him do his act in the Old George pub one night; the word ‘raasclat’ had featured frequently. Dougie had understood not one word of it but had thoroughly enjoyed the night. And he’d spotted eighteen major villains in the audience, and even bought a pint for one of them.
‘I thought I might do the course,’ Dougie suggested to Angela as she drove. Never letting up in his scrutiny of the world outside.
She slowed down; looked at something; picked up speed again.
‘Area car?’ she said. Meaning, Which course?
‘Yeah. I fancy it. I like driving.’
‘I can give you some pointers.’
‘Yeah?’
‘Yeah.’
‘I bet you can. Cheers, Ange.’
In fact, Dougie seriously doubted there was anything she could teach him. His copper dad had drilled him in fast driving when he was fourteen and Dougie knew all the tricks and techniques, and he was a natural at the wheel. But he had the sense to let her play the old pro, in the hope it might offer a swifter route into her knickers.
The radio chattered. Dougie ignored it. It was just a plod reporting a warehouse break-in from the night before. Uniform could deal; theirs was the urgent response vehicle.
‘You’re Irish, aren’t you?’ Dougie asked, out of the blue.
‘I’m from Oxford,’ she said. ‘The rough part.’
‘But your family. They’re Irish?’ It had been niggling him.
‘Why, do I look Irish?’ she said, as if it were an accusation.
‘Red hair, big nose. Yes.’
Angela laughed.
‘My mam’s Irish,’ she admitted. ‘Married a bookie from Cheltenham. You?’
‘South London born and bred. Beckenham.’
‘I’ve been to Beckenham.’
‘It’s on the way to Bromley.’
‘That’s the one.’
Dougie was silent. He was out of material.
The silence spread.
Dougie was alarmed at himself. Normally girls didn’t scare him. He always knew the right thing to say, and said it without thinking. He could talk for England, that’s what his dad always said. But now –
Dougie’s throat was dry. He wondered what was wrong with him.
He remembered the first time he’d seen Angela Ferris. Telling a joke in the canteen; laughing like a drain. One of the boys. And she’d spotted him staring, and she’d pretended not to notice.
He remembered dreaming about her, before they’d even spoken properly. Not a sex dream; a dream in which they were attending a murder scene together. Stupid. Spooky. But – well. She had something.
He thought about all the girls he’d fucked in the years since he was fourteen. Nice looking girls all of them, and good fucks too by and large. But not one of them had made his pulse race or his mind freeze up. Yet both these things were happening to him now, as the area car cruised through Walworth and Camberwell.
Dougie had a flair for logical inference, and he used it now. Surmise: he was bloody well falling for this big-hearted big-breasted red-haired plonk.
The words were still not flowing. Dougie was closer to panic than he’d ever been.
‘Chat up lines,’ Angela suggested.
Dougie swallowed, trying to get his mouth ready for speech once more.
‘Not with you,’ he croaked.
‘It’s the game we play,’ Angela said, shooting him a sly smile. ‘In the area car. Passes the time. Best and worst chat up lines.’
Dougie pondered. ‘I only know the crap ones. I’ve never been one for the girls, me.’ He grinned, shyly. ‘Too shy.’
That was better; he was getting his mojo back.
‘Nice one.’ She grinned.
‘That wasn’t one,’ he denied. ‘That was –’
‘Fuck off. You are in fact totally useless with women, aren’t you? Once you’ve shagged them I mean.’
For a moment he was offended; then he wasn’t.
‘Yup, that’s me.’
Dougie grinned, broadly. It didn’t feel entirely natural, so he tried a second and slightly different grin.
That didn’t work either.
‘My favourite is: “Hey, you work out don’t you?” ’ Angela said. She clearly did; he could see her shoulder bulges. He wondered what she would look like -
‘Yeah, I can see why blokes would like that,’ Dougie acknowledged. ‘Panders to their vanity. Indicates an interest in their physique. And cunningly evokes images of imminent and interactive mutual nudity - very nice strategy, sweetheart.’
Silver tongue; thank you for returning!
She smiled at his elaborate turn of phrase. ‘Imminent what, did you say?’
‘Phwoah!’ he summarised.
She laughed. He laughed with her; it felt good.
‘Hey, you work out don’t you, Dougie?’ Angela said, turning her head from the road again and smiling right at him.
‘Yeah it works on me too.’ He grinned; a much better grin this time.
‘Your turn,’ she said.
‘I know your sister, don’t I?’ Dougie retorted. ‘Shame she got the looks. Ba-boom!’
Fast, like a jab; he was enjoying this.
Angela nodded a
pprovingly.
‘Is that meant to be a “worst chat up line”, or is it one of yours?’ she asked. ‘I mean, do you actually use that with real girls?’
‘No. Of course not.’
‘Hmm.’
Dougie glowered. Then he decided she was kidding.
‘You know, I really love internet porn; haven’t I seen you before somewhere, sweetheart?’ he said.
And she laughed at that. Still in the game.
The car speeded up a little. Then braked rapidly - Pelican Crossing. An army of black children crossed in front of them, like sheep in need of a sheepdog. One of them, a five year old, pointed at the cop car and shouted: ‘Feds!’ Dougie was tempted to wave, but he took his cue from Angela; she blanked the whole lot of them. Mum and dad followed behind, smiling apologetically. Angela gave them her impassive face. Authority. It mattered.
They drove on.
Angela proffered: ‘Can I shit in your handbag, darling?’
Dougie countered with: ‘What’s a nice girl like you doing with tits like that?’
Angela rejoindered with: ‘I suppose cunnilingus is of the question?’
Dougie: ‘My place or yours?’
Angela: ‘Look, it’s the twentieth century, why don’t we cut the crap? I think you’re fucking hot.’
Dougie: ‘I have a rare illness that will kill me in thirty minutes; only sex can save my life.’
‘That’s not real, you made it up.’
‘I had a mate once who used it. Mind you he was drunk. So was she.’
‘Did he get his end away?’
‘Allegedly. They’re married now.’
‘Sad. Did you just fart, ’cause you blew me away?’
‘Surreal.’
‘Has been used.
‘Are you Jamaican?’
‘No. Why?’
‘Because jer-making-me-crazy.’
Angela laughed, loud and long. She stopped at lights. Four youths in hoodies walked slowly past, giving them the finger. Two of them were white but they all acted black. Clicking of tongues, babbled patois, the works.
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