by Mike Carey
I thought Dodson was going to hit me, but he just let his arms drop to his sides and looked away.
“Tonight,” he said.
“Yeah.”
“And then we never hear from you again.”
“Exactly.”
“I could make life very difficult for you, too, Castor.”
“I don’t doubt it. But let’s make each other happy instead, eh?”
I let myself out. Barbara had very sensibly made herself scarce.
What now? No word from Nicky about the laptop. No way I was going anywhere near the archive again, in case Ajulutsikael the sex demon was still staking the place out. What did that leave?
It left Rosa. I knew the odds were stacked fairly heavily against me finding her, but she could make this so much easier. I was certain she knew the dead woman—reasonably certain that she could fill in the last few gaps for me and give me what I needed to make sense of this mess.
Of course, I had to assume that Damjohn knew that, too. If he was as heavily mixed up in all of this as I thought he was, he’d have put Rosa somewhere where I couldn’t get close to her, so Kissing the Pink was probably a nonstarter. All the same, that was where I had to go.
It was the dead time of midafternoon, when the lunchtime City crowd had evaporated away like a bead of sweat on a pole dancer’s cleavage, and the sex tourists were still sleeping off the debaucheries of the night before. I walked in off the street to find the doorman—not Arnold, fortunately—half asleep in his cubicle and the club itself three-quarters empty. Evidently we were in between dances—the wide-screen TV was showing a soft-core porn movie so old and so labored that it had to count as kitsch rather than titillation.
I was a little afraid of running into Damjohn himself or, even worse, into Scrub, but there was no sign of either of them. A guy I didn’t know from Adam was guarding the inner door that led up to the brothel, and he nodded me through without a look.
“You’ve got a girl named Rosa,” I said to the blonde apparition who was serving behind the upstairs bar. She looked like a centerfold, which is to say that her tan was carotene-poisoned orange, and I was nearly certain she had two staples through her midriff. She flashed me a nonjudgmental smile and nodded vigorously, but the nod didn’t mean anything. “That’s right, darling,” she said. “Only she’s not in today. We’ve got some girls who are just as young, though. We’ve got Jasmine, who’s five foot six and very busty—only just turned eighteen, and you can help her celebrate—”
I cut her off before she could start taking me through Jasmine’s tariff in detail. “I’d really love to see Rosa again,” I said, hoping the implied lie would be taken at face value. “When is she here next?”
“She does Fridays and Saturdays,” the woman said, the smile slipping almost imperceptibly.
“Today is Saturday,” I pointed out helpfully.
She nodded again. “That’s right, sweetheart. Only she’s not in today. She took a day off on flextime.”
Flextime. Right. I kept my face straight because I’m a professional, God damn it. But I knew the next kite wouldn’t fly.
“Do you have her home number?” I asked.
The smile was folded away abruptly and put back into storage for a more fitting occasion.
“I can’t give out personal details, dear, you know that. I’ve got lots of other girls here. You have a look around and see if there’s anyone you like the look of.”
I took the brush-off with moronic good humor, which seemed to be the safest way to go. And then I took my leave as soon as I could without drawing attention to myself.
So Rosa had disappeared. Nothing more I could do there for the time being. Nothing much I could do anywhere until Nicky called. Probably the best thing I could do would be to go back to bed and sleep, because I’d probably need the energy later.
But there was something else nagging at the edges of my mind—something I’d dismissed as coincidence, once and then again. It’s funny how coincidences look less and less coincidental as they pile up against each other. So I called Rich, who was surprised to hear that I was still on the job. “I dunno, Castor,” he said, only half joking. “After that business with Alice’s keys, you’re sort of a leper.”
I rubbed absently at one of the scratches on my arm. “Yeah, I’m feeling like one,” I said. “Keep losing bits and pieces of myself. Rich, remember when you told me about the Russian documents? You said they’d come from somewhere down around Bishopsgate. And you said that you were the one who found them. How did that happen, exactly?”
Like Cheryl, Rich seemed surprised that I was still harping on about the Russian collection. “It was a friend-of-a-friend-of-a-friend sort of deal,” he said. “One of my old lecturers at the Royal Holloway knew a guy whose grandad came here just before the Revolution. He had suitcases full of this stuff, and he didn’t even speak enough Russian himself to make sense of them. But I thought you said you drew a blank on all that stuff in the boxes. How can it be relevant now?”
“It probably can’t,” I admitted. “But the coincidence worries me. The ghost turning up so hot on the heels of the collection, and speaking in Russian.” And the weeping woman I saw when I was touch-sifting the stuff but I didn’t mention that. “Have you still got the address?”
“I might have. I don’t even know if the bloke is still there, though.”
“Doesn’t matter. I thought I might go over and take a look around. If there’s nobody there, I don’t lose anything except time.”
“Hang on a minute, then. I’ll go take a look.”
It took a lot longer than a minute; I was close to hanging up and dialing again when Rich finally got back to the phone.
“Found it,” he said cheerfully. “I knew it was around here somewhere. Most of the correspondence went through Peele, but I found the guy’s first letter to me. Number 14 Oak Court, Folgate Street. That’s right off Bishopsgate, up the Shoreditch end.”
“Thanks, Rich.”
“Let me know how it comes out. You’ve got me interested now.”
“I will.”
I hung up and headed east.
Nobody remembers the name of the medieval bishop who built the bishop’s gate and gave it its name. But then again, he was a lazy bugger and deserved to be forgotten. All he was doing was building himself a back door through the city wall so he could commute from his gaff in sunny Southwark to St. Helen’s Church without having to walk around to Aldgate or Moorgate—and maybe so he could have a pint at the Catherine Wheel on Petticoat Lane on the way.
There’s precious little of either sanctity or idleness about Bishopsgate these days. It’s all banks and offices and finance houses most of the way up from Cheapside, having been homogenized and beaten flat by the slow historical tidal wave of monopoly capitalism. But if you’re lucky or persistent, you can step off that old main drag into a maze of courts and alleys that date from when London’s wall still stood and her gates were locked at night in case unwelcome guests should come calling. Hand Alley. Catherine Wheel Alley. Sandys Row. Petticoat Lane itself. Old names for old places. That weight of time hangs over you when you walk them.
But Oak Court was postwar and carried no weight except for a few gallons of ink and paint squandered in uninspired graffiti. Three stories of yellow brick, with external walkways on each level and a blind eye here and there where a window had been covered over with rain-swollen hardboard. Three staircases, too, one at each end and one in the middle, separated by two squares of dead-and-alive lawn with a wrought-iron bench in the center of each. It was a dispiriting place. You wouldn’t want to be one of the people who had to call it home.
I climbed the central stairwell. The sharp stink of piss cut the duller but more pervasive scent of mildew, and the brickwork was stained brown-black close to the ground—stained and still wet, as if the building bore wounds that had only half healed.
Number 14 was on the top floor. I rang the bell and, when I heard no sound, knocked on the door as
well, but the place looked deserted. At the bottom of the full-length glass panel, there was a sill of dust, and through it I could see an untidy avalanche of old circulars from Pizza Hut and campaign fliers from the local Conservative Party. Counting back to the general election, I decided it had been a while since anyone was in residence here.
I turned away and headed for the stairs. When I got to them, the force of very old habit made me glance back over my shoulder one last time to make sure that nobody had come to the door just as I left. Nobody had, but as I turned, I felt a familiar prickling of the hairs at the base of my neck—the familiar pressure of eyes against my skin and my psyche.
I was being watched—by something that was already dead.
I couldn’t tell whether my watcher was close by or far away. Out on the walkway like this, thirty feet above the street, I could be seen from a fair distance. But forewarned is forearmed. I kept on going down the stairs, and as I went, I unshipped my whistle and transferred it into my sleeve.
There was no sign of anyone down on the street. I headed back toward Liverpool Street, using windows where I could to glance behind me without turning my head. There was no sign that I was being followed.
As soon as I got around the corner, I broke into a sprint, made it to the next turning, and sprinted again, heading for a sign fifty yards away that said MATTHEW’S SANDWICH BAR. It was a narrow place, only just wide enough to take the counter and the queue, which was surprisingly long, given that this was the middle of a Saturday afternoon. I got through the door at a dead run and joined the end of the line, turning my back to the street. A window behind the counter allowed me to look back toward the corner without seeming to.
About a minute later, a man turned the corner, then hesitated and looked to left and right, at a loss. He was followed a second or two after that by a second man, who loomed over the first like a bulldozer over a kid’s bike. The first man was Gabe McClennan. The second was Scrub.
They looked around a little more, then conferred briefly. It was clear even from this distance that Scrub was angry, and McClennan was defensive. The big man prodded the chest of the smaller one with a thick, stubby finger, and his face worked as he presumably chewed Gabe out for losing me. Gabe threw out his arms, pleaded his case, and was prodded again. Then there was a little more subdued pantomime of pointing fingers and anxious, searching glances, including several back the way they’d come. Finally they parted, McClennan going on down Bishopsgate, while Scrub retraced his steps.
I gave them thirty seconds or so to get clear, then set off after McClennan. It wasn’t a hard choice. He wouldn’t be able to squeeze my skull into a pile of loose chippings if he turned around and saw me.
I caught sight of him almost immediately because he was still looking restlessly left and right as he walked along, hoping to pick up my trail again. In case he decided to look behind him, too, I hung back and made sure there were always at least a couple of people between us. His white hair made a handy beacon, so I was unlikely to lose him.
He walked the length of Bishopsgate. Every so often he turned off along one of the side streets, but when he saw no sign of me there, he doubled back onto the thoroughfare itself, heading south toward Houndsditch. When he got there, he hailed a cab and shot off toward the river.
I swore an oath and legged it after him, since there was no other cab in sight. At Cornhill I got lucky, as one pulled out onto Gracechurch Street right in front of me and stopped in response to my frantic hail. “Follow the guy in front,” I panted.
“Lovely,” the cabbie enthused. He was a tubby Asian guy with the broadest cockney accent I’d ever heard. “I’ve always wanted to do a number like that. You leave it to me, squire, and I’ll see you right.”
He was as good as his word. As we turned right onto Upper Thames Street and fed into the dense stream of traffic along the Embankment, he faked and wove his way from lane to lane to keep McClennan’s cab in sight. In the process he earned himself a few blasts of the horn and at least one “Drive in a straight line, you fucking arsehole!” but I could see the back of Gabe’s head framed in the window, and he didn’t turn around.
We followed the river through Westminster and Pimlico, and I began to wonder where the hell we were heading. I’d only followed Gabe on a whim, hoping that he might lead me to Rosa—which required a long chain of hopeful assumptions, starting with the one where Damjohn had taken Rosa out of circulation in the first place. If she’d just had it away on her own two heels, then I was wasting my time.
That conclusion looked more and more likely as McClennan’s cab took a right at Oakley Street and drove on up toward the King’s Road. It was stretching credibility past breaking point to believe that Damjohn might have an establishment up here. As far as my understanding goes, the brothels of Kensington and Chelsea are very much a closed shop and, good manners aside, any East End lags trying to get into that particular game would be slit up a treat.
Gabe jumped ship at last just before Sands End, paid off the cab, and continued on foot. I did the same.
“That good enough for you?” my cabbie asked, deservedly smug.
“You could write the book, mate,” I said, tipping him a fiver. Then I was off after Gabe before he could get too much of a lead on me.
He didn’t go far, though. He stopped at the next street corner—Lots Road—under a pub sign that showed a horse leaping a brook, took out his mobile, and had an intense conversation with someone. He glanced up at the sign, said something into the phone, nodded. Then he put the phone away and walked on into the pub—the Runagate.
I debated with myself whether I should give this up as a bad job. It would be useful to see who Gabe was meeting up with—more useful still to be able to eavesdrop, but that was probably asking too much. In any case, having come this far, it seemed a bit ridiculous just to jump into another cab and go back into the City.
Cautiously, I followed Gabe inside. The place was reassuringly crowded, and I was able to pause on the threshold and get my bearings. I couldn’t see Gabe at first, but that was because his highly visible hair was momentarily eclipsed behind a row of tankards hanging up on the far side of the bar. A few seconds later, he turned away from me with a pint in his hand to walk over toward the side door—and out through it. As the door opened and then closed, I had a glimpse of a beer garden beyond, with small wooden picnic tables and bright green parasols.
That made life a bit more problematic. If I followed him through that door, I might be walking right into his line of sight, and there’d be no crowd to hide behind. It would probably be better to go around the outside of the building and at least see the lay of the land before I moved in.
I stepped back out onto the street. Barely ten feet away, Scrub was squeezing his huge bulk out of a minicab, making it rock wildly on its suspension.
I ducked back inside before he could see me and looked around for somewhere to hide. No upstairs. No saloon. The gents. I crossed the bar in three strides, threw the door open, and ducked inside.
The only other occupant, who was waving his hands under a hot-air drier, glanced around at me and then gawped in disbelief. Fortunately, I already knew that the deck of fate was stacked against me, so the fact that the other man was Weasel-Face Arnold didn’t faze me in the slightest. I hauled off and kicked him as hard as I could where a kick was likely to have the most immediate and dramatic effect. Then, as he doubled over, I got a good, solid grip on his neck and rammed his head sideways into the unyielding white ceramic of a sink. He folded without a sound.
Damn! Taken on its own merits, the violence had been quite cathartic, but I had nothing to tie him up with, and as soon as he was found, the whole place would be up in arms. Whatever was going on here, it was probably a bad idea to try getting any closer to it right then.
On an impulse, I went through Arnold’s pockets. Nothing particularly exciting there, but I took his wallet and his mobile phone just in case either of them might prove to be useful later on.
I opened the door a crack, checked out as much of the bar as I could see, and then stepped out. No sign of Scrub, for which I was devoutly grateful. Most likely he was already out in the beer garden with McClennan.
I went back out onto the street again, which immediately made me feel a little bit safer. At least I was away from the epicenter of whatever alarums and excursions would follow on when Arnold was found—so there was probably nothing to lose by taking a look around the side, so long as I kept my head down.
I rounded the building. The approach looked good, because there was a fence around the beer garden that came up almost to head height. Peering around the corner of the building, I caught sight of Scrub’s unmistakable back on a bench in the far corner, his enormous frame almost completely hiding McClennan from view. They were talking earnestly, but I was too far away to hear a word.
By bending over like an old man, I was able to shuffle my way around the outside of the fence without being seen. I knew when I was in the right place, because I could hear McClennan’s voice, raised in complaint.
“. . . never told us what the hell was going on. That’s all I object to. If I’m told up front what the risks are, I’ll take them. But this—this just isn’t what I signed up for, and I—”
Scrub’s basso-profundo rumble cut through McClennan’s feeble-sounding litany of grievances with three terse words.
“You’re on retainer.”
“Yes. Yes, thank you for reminding me of that fact. I’m on retainer. As an exorcist. Nobody mentioned raising hell-kin. Nobody mentioned performing necromantic surgery on a ghost with too much mouth to it. Why didn’t he just let me toast the fucking thing? Then we wouldn’t be having any of these problems.”
“Castor?” Scrub growled. “Castor isn’t a problem. First of all, he couldn’t find his arse with a map. Secondly, there’s no evidence anywhere that he can get his hands on. And thirdly, I’m going to kill him as soon as Mr. D gets tired of using your fuck-pig demon.”