“Matthew Le Geyt, from the Society of Sorcerers.”
Caxton takes an unrehearsed step backward and nearly goes flat on her arse. Matthew manages not to smile. He turns. “And you’re Detective Constable Marvell.”
Marvo smiles nervously and lets him shake her hand. She realizes who he is: he’s not just my Master, he’s the Superior General of the English branch of the Society of Sorcerers and a very powerful bunny indeed.
Matthew puts his hand on my shoulder. “Frank and I are old friends so I know he can be difficult—”
“Difficult?” Caxton splutters. “He’s a liability!”
“But he’s also the most brilliant sorcerer I ever taught and if you’re not prepared to listen to him, you’re the liability.”
I get this warm glow and just for a second it’s like the candles have blazed up and all the light in the universe is shining on me. It’s an uncomfortable feeling: too much exposure. I’m pleased to see that Caxton has gone red in the face; but the thing is, I believe Matthew and I don’t believe him, both at the same time. I know he’s right. I was streets ahead of anybody else in my year. I could do stuff that all the other kids struggled with. But it’s like there’s this parrot on my shoulder, nibbling my ear and whispering that Matthew’s winding me up.
Charlie is sitting in one of the choir stalls, reading his newspaper, with Mr. Memory beside him. Beyond the candles, in the darkness of the nave, the scrying crews are packing up their gear. I can see a group of people talking in the gloom of a side chapel. There’s Akinbiyi and a couple of other clerics. And there’s someone else with them—a jack, I guess, judging by the bleached hair.
“Can I ask you something?” Marvo has turned to Matthew. “How many sorcerers are there in this country?”
“There are five hundred and thirty-seven active, licensed members of the Society. Plus one hundred and twenty-one novices at Saint Cyprian’s, several thousand post-peak adepts doing elemental work, and an unknown number of unlicensed practitioners.”
“That’s illegal, though.”
“Punishable by death.”
They burned one poor guy at the stake a few years back. Mind you, he had summoned up Beelzebub to get a two-bedroom flat in Woodstock, so he kind of had it coming.
“Where do you find an unlicensed sorcerer?” she asks.
“On the black market. I believe most of them come in from Scandinavia and the Middle East.”
I pipe up. “I got an offer. Just before I graduated. I don’t know who they were.”
Matthew looks at me for a moment. “You should have told me.”
“I wasn’t tempted.” If I need a few quid extra I can make it myself, back at the studio.
He smiles and turns back to Marvo. “Is he behaving?”
“Up to a point.”
“Thanks a lot,” I mutter.
Matthew smiles. “This is an unfortunate business.” He crosses himself and turns to the unfortunate business on the altar. “He was a close friend . . .”
“Did you read his book?” Caxton asks.
“Is this a formal interview?”
“I just want an informed opinion. Save me having to read it myself.”
Yeah, right. Even if Caxton wanted to read the book, she’d have a struggle.
“It’s a good book,” says Matthew. “It needed saying.” He pulls out a small notebook and a pencil. “Henry sent a short précis of his argument to me, while he was still writing it.” He makes a note. “I’ll have it copied and sent over to you.”
Caxton is staring at him. It’s not the missing finger; it’s the fact that the one thing Matthew hasn’t pulled out is a pair of spectacles.
“It’s easy to dismiss sorcery as cheap effects and superstition, but it offers ordinary men and women a glimpse of the divine.” Matthew puts everything away and turns back to the reliquary. “We had three thousand people in here tonight—”
“As well as the scrying audience.” Akinbiyi steps up behind him.
“So call it three thousand and one,” I say. Large public displays have to be empowered by an elemental, so outside the magic game only the very rich can afford them. Actually I’m being mean: streets club together to fund a receiver. And for gigs like this they’ll set them up in cinemas and churches. And take a collection.
“So.” Caxton glances at Marvo. “Could the bishop’s murder have been, I don’t know . . . political?”
“Political in what sense?” Matthew checks his watch. “Frank, I need a word with you.”
“Well, the book didn’t make him many friends in the Church.”
“He wasn’t the only member of the hierarchy who took that point of view. You’ll excuse us . . .”
Caxton doesn’t like it, but she can’t stop it. Matthew leads me out of earshot. He glances around at Marvo. “Isn’t she the girl who informed on you?”
“It was my own fault.”
“I’m glad you’re prepared to admit that.”
We both know that every sorcerer lifts a few human body parts from time to time, when there’s no alternative. The trick is not to get caught at it.
“I’ll have a quiet word with the board of discipline.”
OK, that’s a relief. I mean, I thought he would. Well, hoped, anyway. And I’m still thinking about all the times he got me out of trouble at Saint Cyprian’s, when I realize he’s peering over my shoulder. As I turn to look . . .
“Frank?”
I go red and mumble, “Thank you.”
“You’ll be fine so long as you keep your head.” He beckons . . .
And she’s here—Kazia! What I thought was a jack talking to Akinbiyi and the other priests . . . it was the blonde hair that confused me.
So what’s going on? Is she with Matthew? You know what I mean. Because he’s not that old and I know some teenage girls have a thing about old guys. Especially when they’ve got his power and his seriously cool Ghost.
Matthew smiles, like he’s read my thoughts. “You’ve met Henry’s niece, Kazimíera. I’m trying to contact her family in Lithuania.” He turns to her. “Do you need anything?”
She shakes her head.
“All right, I won’t be long.” He turns back to me. “Where’s Caxton going with this?”
“For a while she thought the head had been taken for black magic.”
“Oh, you’re joking!”
“Then she thought it was a jealous husband. But obviously it’s all too . . .” I gesture at Wallace’s head, which isn’t looking any happier than it was when Andrew opened the faceplate.
Matthew nods. “Too baroque for a crime of passion.”
“Marvell thought it was the ASB.”
“I hear the police are rounding them up. But what do you think?”
I shake my head. “There was one of their guys here tonight—he was actually carrying the relic—”
“The young monk?”
“No, the fat priest. But he looked as surprised as anyone when it was opened. So I dunno.”
Matthew peers searchingly into my face for a moment. “Anyway, keep me informed. And behave yourself.”
Kazia is still standing there. And Marvo is just a few yards away, staring at her . . . well, kind of fiercely.
“I meant what I said,” Matthew continues, loud enough for both of them to hear. “About you being a brilliant sorcerer—you might even be a great one.” I can dream. He drops his voice to a whisper. “But you’re not invulnerable.”
He pats my shoulder and he’s off toward the door leading through to the cloister and the palace, with Akinbiyi chasing after him. Kazia has to pass close to me as she follows, but when I try to catch her eye she gives me this blank, closed-up look.
“Sampson!” Caxton is standing at the altar, pointing to the reliquary. “Do you want to wrap that and get it over to the lab?”
I turn back to Kazia, but before I can even open my mouth, Caxton yells, “And don’t start anything. Ferdia can pick up in the morning.” She turns to Mar
vo. “Go with him. Make sure he doesn’t do anything stupid.”
“Too late,” Marvo mutters.
And the last I see of Kazia, she’s disappearing out of the cloister door after Matthew and Akinbiyi.
“Your boss talked you up.” The road is pretty rough and we’re being bounced from side to side in the van. Marvo has to shout over the racket of the wheels.
I yell back, “What’s wrong with that?”
“What happened to his finger?”
“Demon got it, years ago. Anyway, you were right about the reliquary.”
“Tell Caxton that.”
She doesn’t seem to be getting her hopes up, just turns away and stares out of the window. So just to be sociable I say, “What about the priest?”
“The fat bloke? Totally gobsmacked.” At least she turns back to face me. “So it can’t have been the ASB.”
“Doesn’t follow. They could have, you know, separate cells. One lot to kill Wallace. Another crowd chasing round after me.”
“You know your trouble? You think the world revolves around you.”
“Yeah, but it kind of does, doesn’t it? Sorcerer, and that.” I feel the scrape of the bristles as I run my hand over my head, which I shave completely clean most mornings. “Isn’t that what bugs you?”
And after that she doesn’t open her mouth again till we bounce over the cobbles into the mortuary courtyard.
“Your boss,” she says. “He’s not what I expected.”
“What do you want? Silk robes and a tiara? The Society doesn’t do fancy dress anymore.”
“What about the haircuts?”
“The tonsure? You can’t afford to give demons anything to grab hold of.”
“But he’s too old to summon demons, right, so why bother?”
“It’s still customary.”
“So what about you?”
I run my hand across my skull again. “Style counts.”
It’s pitch-dark and I can’t see her face properly. I just hear her laugh.
“Caxton doesn’t like me,” I say.
“You spook her, Frank.” She’s first out of the van and turns to watch me dismount with my case. “Damn it, you spook us all!”
“Just trying to do my job.”
“Well p’raps part of your job is realizing you’re working with people who aren’t sorcerers and find it all . . .” She follows me around to watch the dieners unload the silk-wrapped reliquary. “I mean, s’pose it’s true?”
I’m too far gone for this. Two nights ago I was up late, wrestling with a dead cat. I’d just about pinned it to the canvas when I got dragged off to admire the lifestyle of the rich and holy, and determine when he went to meet his maker. I didn’t get much sleep the next night; then there was another busy day and now it’s two o’clock in the morning and I’m still running around juggling heads. My world is doing backflips.
“Suppose what’s true?” I groan.
“My uncle: he’s a priest.”
“Good for him.”
“But I never really thought about it before.” She’s looking almost as exhausted as I feel. “Spirits, demons . . .”
“Don’t be stupid. It’s just a metaphor—a way of talking about natural forces.”
“It don’t look like natural forces.”
“If you don’t like it, ask to be reassigned.”
I turn and walk off, into the building. By the time she catches up with me, I’m at reception, shuffling forms.
“That what you want?” she says.
I push the paperwork back across the desk. “What I want is someone to keep Caxton off my back and not screw up the contiguity. Doesn’t seem like much to ask, but what do I know?”
“You don’t seem to know very much, Frank. You’re certainly crap with people.”
“I don’t like people.”
“Make you feel better, does it, sayin’ that?”
The security elemental outside the lab looks up. The doors open. The delivery is here ahead of us.
“Don’t unwrap anything,” Marvell tells the dieners. “Ferdia’s starting fresh in the morning.”
They give me their disappointed look, then shuffle off.
“An’ it’s true what Caxton says . . .”
Will she never shut up?
“Your job is just to look at the evidence an’ interpret it for us. It’s not up to you to solve the case. Just tell us what you know an’ let us get on with it.”
“That’s what I’m trying to do.”
We stand there, glaring at each other. Over her shoulder I can see the dieners hesitating in the doorway, hoping for a fight.
“But I was right, wasn’t I?” she says, and turns and follows the dieners out. Their footsteps fade, there’s the final bang of a door, and I’ve got the place to myself.
Yeah, I know what she said. But I grab a pair of gloves, untie the silk cords around the reliquary, and pull the cloth away. I release the catch and flip the faceplate open. The bishop’s eyes stare blearily back at me.
Funnily enough, I remember Henry Wallace. Matthew used to bring him around Saint Cyprian’s now and then. I think he patted me on the head when I was seven or eight. And he gave a lecture on the nature of demons—eternal, cunning, smelly, vindictive—and the fundamental paradox of sorcery: that we summon them from hell in the name of God.
As I recall, he didn’t have an answer to that. Just rambled on about faith until it was time for lunch.
So where is Wallace now? With the angels or the demons? Maybe he’s nowhere. Maybe he just isn’t.
A couple of years ago, some American sorcerer claimed that when someone dies, there’s this sort of psychic trace left on the retina of the last thing they saw. And he said he had composed a spell to develop the image—sort of like a photograph—and display it.
The whole thing was a con, of course. The only thing that was magical was how quickly he pocketed several large development grants and vanished.
But examining the head I wonder, what was the last thing Wallace saw? The stab wound probably didn’t kill him instantly. So what went through his mind in those final seconds? Was he aware of what was happening? Was he still conscious of the world spinning as his head rolled away from his shoulders, across the floor? And is he maybe still in there, peering desperately back at me through lenses that have almost completely clouded over?
Why is it such a struggle for me just to congratulate Marvell for spotting the trick with the reliquary?
And it’s true, what I said to Matthew: there’s something about this case that we’re all missing.
We can do this the Ferdia way, and mess it up. Or we can do it the Frank way.
Chapter Twelve
The Frank Way
The faceplate hinges off a ring of metal, secured to the main body of the reliquary. I undo a few screws and lift the assembly away.
Confession: this is my first solo beheading. I observed that demonstration I told you about at Saint Cyprian’s, but since I started at the mortuary all I’ve done is shootings, stabbings, drownings, and bludgeonings. I’ve played marbles with eyeballs and skidded across a room on a loose kidney, but I’ve never actually had to wrestle with a detached human head.
Still, I’m on a roll—and I’m wearing gloves, so it’s not like I’ve really got to touch this thing. I tip the reliquary so that the head falls out onto a silk square. I take a deep breath, grab it, and turn it face up.
It looks . . . well, totally not right.
I wheel the body in from the ice room, fold a silk square, and drape it over the neck, covering the wound. I put the head down carefully, just half an inch from the body: the silk prevents any new contiguity from being created. I drape another large silk square over the neck and torso, covering the autopsy damage. I stand back and squint.
They look happy together. But when I pull the silk away and take a closer look I see a problem.
I spend an hour playing around with the head and getting stuff ready. I make a final
trip across to the small basin in the corner to wash my hands and face in exorcised water and I turn around to find Marvell standing beside the trolley.
“What are you playin’ at?” she says.
“Contiguity. I want to know if Exhibit A, one head, was ever happy to be seen out and about with Exhibit B—”
“I told you, Ferdia found contiguity.”
“With a hairbrush.”
“Obvious though, isn’t it? Hair color, for a start. And you can match the wounds.”
“Not if the neck’s been hacked about.” Marvell looks away as I poke at the back of the neck with a scalpel. “He’s missing a vertebra. There should be twenty-four. There’s nineteen on the body—that’s in Ferdia’s report. Four here. Making only twenty-three. They hacked out one vertebra. Here—”
I turn to point at a crust of blood and a few shreds of tissue, clinging to the lower rim of the reliquary’s faceplate.
“They had to do it to squeeze him into the reliquary.”
She points at the head. “We know that’s Wallace, yeah?” Can’t argue with that. She turns to the body. “And that’s gotta be him—”
“It was found behind his desk. Didn’t have a label on it, though.”
“Who else could it be, apart from Wallace?”
I grab a scalpel and stoop over the body to cut fragments of flesh and dried blood away from the stump of the neck. I drop them into a blue porcelain dish.
Marvo stands there watching me, tapping her teeth with her fingernails.
I put the blue dish aside. I find another scalpel and scrape samples from the head into a yellow dish.
“Please, Frank. Why can’t you just leave everything for Ferdia like Caxton told you?”
“Because he’ll skip this and it’s bugging me. Don’t worry, I can do it with my fingers up my nose.”
Her voice goes hard. “I’ll leave you to it then.”
“You know your problem, you let Caxton scare you. It’s just contiguity—no Presence. Stay and learn.”
The door slams.
“I exorcise thee, O creature of fire, in the name of he by whom all things are made, that forthwith thou castest away every phantasm from thee, that it shall not be able to do any hurt in anything.”
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