by Aidan Truhen
AIDAN TRUHEN
Aidan Truhen lives in London. He worked in commodities of one sort or another until he was thirty, which is an age when a man wants his positive achievements to outnumber his acquittals. He’s trying to reinvent himself as a writer. We’ll see how it goes.
Also by Aidan Truhen
The Price You Pay
FIRST VINTAGE CRIME / BLACK LIZARD EDITION, MAY 2021
Copyright © 2021 by Aidan Truhen
All rights reserved. Published in the United States by Vintage Books, a division of Penguin Random House LLC, New York, and distributed in Canada by Penguin Random House Canada Limited, Toronto.
Vintage is a registered trademark and Vintage Crime / Black Lizard and colophon are trademarks of Penguin Random House LLC.
This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents either are the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, events, or locales is entirely coincidental.
Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
Names: Truhen, Aidan, author.
Title: Seven demons / Aidan Truhen.
Description: First Vintage Crime / Black Lizard edition. | New York : Vintage Crime / Black Lizard, 2021.
Identifiers: LCCN 2020045429 (print) | LCCN 2020045430 (ebook) | ISBN 9780593311622 (paperback) | ISBN 9780593311639 (ebook)
Subjects: LCSH: Criminals—Fiction. | Bank robberies—Fiction. | GSAFD: Suspense fiction.
Classification: LCC PR6120.R84 S48 2021 (print) | LCC PR6120.R84 (ebook) | DDC 823/.92—dc23
LC record available at https://lccn.loc.gov/2020045429
LC ebook record available at https://lccn.loc.gov/2020045430
Vintage Crime / Black Lizard Trade Paperback ISBN 9780593311622
Ebook ISBN 9780593311639
Cover design and illustrations by Madeline Partner
Cover photograph (explosion) © Jose A. Bernat Bacete/Moment/Getty
www.vintagebooks.com
ep_prh_5.7.0_c0_r0
Contents
Cover
About the Author
Also by Aidan Truhen
Title Page
Copyright
Epigraph
[The first I…]
Chapter One
Chapter Two
Chapter Three
Chapter Four
Chapter Five
Chapter Six
Chapter Seven
Chapter Eight
Chapter Nine
Chapter Ten
Chapter Eleven
Chapter Twelve
Epilogue
When I was young, I believed in three things: Marxism, the redemptive power of cinema, and dynamite. Now I just believe in dynamite.
—Sergio Leone
This book is dedicated to everyone who still believes in more than that. You people are idiots, and if we didn’t have you, we’d all be even more screwed than we are.
THE FIRST I KNEW IT WAS ALL GOING WRONG was when Evil Hansel came running out of a pastry shop and stabbed me in the leg, and that was really just the best thing that happened that day. If you do not get stabbed in the leg by a nine-year-old once every so often, then that is nice for you. Hi I’m Jack hi and this story is about me and I am the kind of person who has enemies who know nine-year-olds who will run out of a pastry shop and stab you in the leg, not because they think it is a game but because they are commercially minded fucking psychopaths and that is the world.
Hi.
I did not know that Evil Hansel was called Evil Hansel at that point and indeed it is not his actual name. Evil Hansel was a little Sound of Music–looking motherfucker in actual lederhosen and a white frilly shirt and he came out of the pastry shop like he was about to break into song and then he stuck an oyster knife into my thigh so close to the femoral artery that I can still feel it in my sphincter. If someone cuts your wrists, you have quite a long time before the problem is irretrievable. The femoral is like if you are a balloon animal.
Sploosh.
And that’s it.
Happily, Evil Hansel is left-handed and I carry my billfold in my right-hand pocket so what the little fuckhead actually stabbed was about a thousand Swiss francs in twenties and fifties, which is totally appropriate because money is your sword and shield here, although I guess in that case Evil Hansel should have stabbed me with a hundred and he did not. He used an oyster knife. I did not have quite enough money in quite the right denominations so the knife did absolutely pierce me in a tender region and I was very unhappy.
Doc said: “Do not touch the knife.”
I did not touch the knife because I am not a fucking idiot.
I said: “What the fuck ow you little what the fuck?”
Evil Hansel did not respond to this question. Instead he tried to twist the knife and Volodya the sniper threw him under a car, and I do mean under because Evil Hansel just hunkered down and the chassis went right above him and he ran away.
I said: “What the fuck is wrong with you man, you couldn’t aim for the fucking wheels?”
Volodya said Evil Hansel was lighter than he thought he would be.
I said I did not care about if Evil Hansel was lighter than Volodya thought he would be because right now I had about a thousand Swiss francs nailed to my leg with an oyster knife.
Like he just realized he’d left the oven on, Volodya said: “Ah shit, Price.”
“What, man?”
“I told you we should not come.”
Then I fell over because that is what happens when you leak a bunch of red stuff out of your body onto foreign currency.
I fucking hate Switzerland.
ONE
DOC WHO IS MY NOT-GIRLFRIEND and a global science felon has a dog. The dog is called Tycho and looking at Tycho you would not think he was named for the guy who lost the middle part of his nose in a duel with swords. Tycho is a saluki and that is a tall skinny expensive dog like if Gaultier styled a greyhound for Miley Cyrus. Looking at Tycho you would assume he was gentle and shy and that is true insofar as it is mostly true and things that are mostly true are not true at all. Tycho is gentle and shy but he is also a dog and he will therefore attempt fornication with anything at all. The animal has no discretion and no sense of boundaries. Beneath the elegant exterior of a dog bred for generations by emirs and sheikhs there lurks the heart of a dissolute sex pest, and despite what is undeniable—that Tycho is a sight hound and can see the hairs on a gnat’s ass at a hundred paces—it is clear that love or at least savage and inappropriate lust is blind. If he thinks an object is even moderately suited to receiving his organ he will absolutely positively fuck it until one or the other of them is incapable. I have seen Tycho initiate coitus with a salt-baked sea bass and that will be in my head forever.
For. Ever.
It is therefore something of a surprise that Tycho recently refused his affections to the lady dog belonging to a rich old Dutch party called Mrs. Van der Zee but that is what he did and there is no accounting for taste. Looking at Mrs. Van der Zee’s dog I would have said there was nothing to object to. Certainly Marta—this being the name of the lady dog—is a more obvious friend with benefits than two kilos of Michelin-starred fish on a bed of shaved black radish but I am not judgy. Tycho and Marta did not make it and that is that but it is not that for Mrs. Van der Zee. Mrs. Van der Zee takes a dim view. She sees the absence of dog fornication as a slight upon Marta, and any slight
upon Marta is a slight upon Mrs. Van der Zee, and one does not slight Mrs. Van der Zee. As a result of the nonfucking by Tycho of Marta there had to be an owner-to-owner meeting in a truth and reconciliation mode at which I was present purely as mediator and it was not a good meeting at all. Mrs. Van der Zee lives in a big place by the sea, and it has gardens and tennis courts and two heated pools and thousands and thousands of deluxe ultra-premium rare tulips.
In fact the whole place smells of sickly tulip stink because Mrs. Van Der Zee chooses to wear a customized perfume made by a guy named Jort. Jort is present at this exciting gathering in a sort of Roman short shorts playsuit. He is from Den Haag and has no body hair whatsoever and I am fairly sure Mrs. Van der Zee keeps him as some sort of quasi-sexual pet. I do not want to know what she does with him and I do not think Jort wishes to talk about it. He works with both ancient wisdom and sophisticated modern techniques to create a unique signature scent experience using whatever you give him, which in this case of course is ultra-premium deluxe rare tulips. I am not a perfume guy but when I was the cardinal of coffee I developed a sensitive nose because if you cannot tell when someone is trying to sell you basic sawdust arabica for Hacienda La Esmeralda, you will get fucked in the civet hole, and this perfume smelled like someone had done that with violet to a perfectly innocent vetiver and then shaken the whole thing with turpentine. It is dis-fucking-gusting and it is all over everything in the house, and when she shakes your hand it goes on you like she’s a plague vector and it will not come off your clothes, so I may not have been entirely at the top of my game during this encounter and it did not go ideally well.
Over the salad course, by way of peacemaking, Doc ventured the opinion that the absence of sex between the canine companions may be owed to the fact that their antibodies were not sufficiently complementary, which seemed like a good no-fault explanation to me, but Mrs. Van der Zee recorded around a mouthful of lollo rosso the alternative view that Tycho is a hate-filled canine Communist. Doc said he was not hate filled nor indeed did he, being a dog, possess the necessary cognitive architecture to form political opinions of this kind, and Mrs. Van der Zee audibly concluded that Doc was One Of Those. When Doc requested clarification of what sort of Those this might be, I was unable to prevent Mrs. Van der Zee from explaining that Doc—as evidenced by her lack of belief in dog politics—was a DOINO, or dog owner in name only, or she would know that our furry friends understand more than we think. Doc noted that she might could arrange for Mrs. Van der Zee and her damn dog both to get a virulent and fast-progressing hemorrhagic fever, and I said shush because that is a thing that Doc has done in her life, and ixnay on the lowingbay ouryay overcay, and Doc said I should ticksay tiay puay ymay sasay, and it was at this tense moment that Tycho chose to initiate vigorous and vocal sex with a Semper Augustus. A Semper Augustus is a kind of tulip whose petals look like marbled steak and which costs ten thousand dollars a bulb.
Also, when a saluki fucks one, it makes a noise like cleaning a window with a squeegee.
* * *
—
It was to distract Doc from some kind of precipitate overreaction vis à vis Mrs. Van der Zee that I went to Sharkey and said to find us a project.
“Hi Sharkey it’s me Jack!”
“Holy FUCK—”
“Sharkey! Wash your mouth out with your bad language.”
“Fuck, Jack, you scared the shit out of me no one is supposed to be in here right now.”
“Sharkey. We are professional men. Let us profess as men do.”
“…Jesus fuck okay sit the fuck down.”
I sit.
Sharkey says: “(Fuck.)”
Sharkey is a middleman. Globally speaking, Sharkey is The Middleman. He is an unprepossessing sort of asshole with a girlfriend called Crystal, which is pronounced like the champagne, although I know for a fact that her real name is Isabel and she comes from a town on the riviera with only one cow. I like Crystal. She is just trying to get along is what. I do not like Sharkey he is a dick. I would much prefer to deal with Crystal but that is business for you, quite often you have to deal with the dick rather than the Crystal.
Sharkey is not a small guy and in the heat he smells strongly of folded male groin. Heat is all you get in southern Europe in the summertime anymore because: have you heard? There is a climate crisis. Right now this means not only is the world dying but also too there’s a lot of ambient groin up in my olfactory. So fuck you very much to the petrochemical industry once for the planet and once for that.
I say: “The Demons are open for business give us business.”
Sharkey says: “Jack no one is looking for your kind of trouble right now.”
“That is why they pay you the big bucks Sharkey you got instincts you got what they say you got a nose—”
(He cannot possibly have an actual nose, he would die of himself.)
“Jack I got a nose I don’t got like Vulcan telepathy force powers I cannot—”
“O shit Charlie would kill you right here Sharkey.”
“What?”
“Vulcan force powers?”
“What?”
“Never mind I will not explain it to you Sharkey the only possible way for you to learn is if someone kills you with a cruet. Proceed.”
“You got weird people Jack. Dangerous and weird.”
“They are individuals Sharkey and exemplary professionals in their own fields.”
“That’s your problem. Fred was dull and people like that in contractors Jack. It makes them happy.”
“You are saying no one wants international assassins to be fun at parties.”
“They do not want them to come to their parties in the first place. Not even their families really want that, in case they get in a disagreement and someone has to be buried under a patio.”
“…I would not do that it is fucking suburban.”
“But they don’t know that! Like if you were Fred I would know the cruet thing was a gag man but with you with your Demons I am not sure.”
* * *
—
Actually I am sympathetic to this position because I also am just a person who is trying to get along in the world, but regrettably last year there was a kind of a what you would call a misunderstanding, except that there was no actual misunderstanding per se, more like assumptions of questionable value were made by certain parties, and the consequences of those assumptions were really surprising to actually just about everyone involved, and several of those people did not come by their surprise in positive or sustainable ways. We shall call those people the bad guys and they are not alive anymore.
The way it happened was I was conducting my business and getting on with being a citizen, and then Sean Harper—hereinafter known as item 22 for reasons which will become clear—but anyway Sean got all up in my face about a murder that he went and committed in my building. He thereby kicked off this whole convoluted shebang we already know about, and I’m not going to go through the details except to say that it became ultimately a perceptual issue, which flat out had to be addressed for everyone’s sake, because that kind of thing just hangs around forever if you don’t get in there and deal.
In consequence of the measured and necessary steps I had to take to secure my ongoing well-being during that difficult time, I am no longer the owner-operator of a bespoke commodity concern distributing and selling the branded and locally sourced cocaine which was once known as the Pale Peruvian Stallion. That is a tragedy for everyone’s leisure time but there you go. I have a new role as CEO of a global criminal enterprise with deep roots in the community and a justified reputation for unparalleled savagery. I manage five deeply alarming people who are my team, including the Doc, who basically is walking science with whom I am in a Nietzschean and highly charged sexual relationship; Volodya, who is himself a former boss of this same outfit but who had retired and
was living off the fat of the land or possibly the fat of his neighbors, we do not ask, in a romantic little shack somewhere up above the Arctic Circle; Rex, whose brother I accidentally got killed and who is largely focused on exploding things and believes we are a deep-cover spy team operating to save democracy from someone I have never identified but Rex probably assumes is either an alien or a lizard or French; Charlie, who is a digital artist and has only ever murdered one person but really seems down with the whole lifestyle; and Lucille, who is a large guy wearing a suit made of sharp edges whose ability to process the world in a rational fashion I irretrievably compromised with a psychotropic drug overdose in order to turn him into a human booby trap for a barbecue-obsessed illegal fight champion. Presently I also hold the voting proxy of my predecessor, Fred the Head, although Fred is exploring a new career as an actual head on a stick or more properly a bleached skull and therefore does not talk much or have opinions except insofar as sometimes when you look at him you can see that he really does not think much of his present situation and I am fine with that.
Fred was an asshole.
* * *
—
So I am sympathetic and above all I am a professional so I say:
“Well okay that is legit I guess Sharkey but that is my point is that our next job will go off in total silence.” Which I absolutely intend that it will. And Sharkey says:
“Silence?”
“Total silence. No one will ever know we were there.”
“How silent are we talking?”
“Silent silent.”
“Yeah but there is silent like a silencer, which is kind of a whoop whoop noise, and there is silent like silent, like—”