The Devil's Detective

by Simon Kurt Unsworth

“Yes,” said Morgan simply. “Or at least, he believed his murderer to be a client. Next question.”

  “Was it a regular client?”

  This time, the flesh tore away from the hook as soon as Morgan let it go. “No,” he said. “Next question.”

  Fool thought again, trying to ignore the headache that was building under his bandage like water gathering in a balloon. The dead man was killed by a new client, likely a demon given his usual client group. He tried to work out what the flesh could tell him. No names, certainly. Yes-or-no answers, essentially, but what was the most useful thing to know? Think, little confused Fool, think!

  “Did you meet him in the Houska?”

  The third quarter of flesh, and again, it tore from the hook as soon as Morgan let it go. “No.”

  One more, one more, but how to make it count? Fool was still considering when Morgan spoke. “If you’re struggling with a question, might I be permitted to ask the last one?” Fool nodded; he had nothing else useful to ask anyway.

  “Do you think that separating your soul and your flesh was deliberate?” Morgan asked the body, and this time when he attached the flesh to the hook, it stayed, the chain clinking quietly as the muscle and skin pulled down against it. Morgan nodded, as though the answer confirmed something that he already knew, and said to Fool, “I think that’s all we’ll get. I’ll get him ready for the Garden and then we’ll talk.”

  “His soul is missing,” said Morgan, handing Fool a hot drink. Coffee, good and strong, not like the brew at the station. “It’s entirely gone. There aren’t even remnants of it left, nothing in the corners of him or clinging on deep inside. Gone. If there was anything there, he would have reacted to the water or wafer.”

  “Water or wafer?” repeated Fool, feeling far from home, lost on unexpected streets.

  “The water I put on his forehead was holy, and the thing I inserted into his rectum was wafer befouled with shit; the extremes of Heaven and Hell. He didn’t react to either of them, and anything with a soul would. Especially in this place.” Morgan gestured with a sweep of his arm, taking in not just the Questioning House but everything beyond it, Hell and the Limbo that surrounded it.

  “It’s not just the violence that will have split soul and flesh,” he continued. “Violence alone can’t achieve it. It was deliberate—it would have to be. There was intent there, Fool; the likelihood is that a demon fed on the soul after it released it. I know that they all do to some degree or another, eating whatever fear and pain they can generate, but this poor bastard’s soul seems to have been consumed completely. The blue flash that your witness saw was the actual splitting, the separation of soul from body. It takes some great energy, some great desire, to achieve it, Fool, and violence is only the tool used to break the soul’s moorings so it can be torn free. Very few demons can do it, which might help narrow your search. The minor thing by the lake wouldn’t have the strength or the desire; it would probably have just fed on any scraps it could get its teeth into, the bad dreams and worse memories. Something that can devour a whole soul, no matter how shriveled that soul is, is unusual, almost unheard of, Fool.”

  “Is that why the demon by the lake was so horrified? Because there was nothing left for it?”

  “I’d think so. All that dead flesh, empty and tasteless. Plus, it means that there’s something moving around capable of eating whole souls, and I’d imagine it was frightened. Even demons have souls, Fool, and can become prey to those things further up the hierarchy.”

  Fool thought about the thing that had come from Solomon Water those months back, about the dark and slurring voice he had heard out by the wall, and nodded. He thought about the place Hell had been, about the flames and the burning, about the vast things that had stalked its terrible plains, and groaned to himself.

  “So we’re looking for something old and powerful, powerful enough to eat entire souls?”

  “No,” said Morgan, looking at Fool over the top of his mug. “I’m pleased to say that we’re not. You are.”

  4

  “Who are they?”

  Fool did not speak. The ballroom of Assemblies House, the administrative heart of the Bureaucracy, was huge, and Balthazar’s voice echoed into its arched heights. The angel’s tone was one of polite, amused incomprehension, as though he were asking an insect he was sure couldn’t reply to a question whose answer he wasn’t bothered about. It was something to fill the anticipatory silence before the discussions began, and Fool’s presence here was one merely of tradition, not because he had any real part to play in the trading or decision-making. Little pointless Fool, he said to himself, thinking about demons so powerful they could eat souls.

  “Who are they?” Balthazar asked again, his voice harder. Fool looked out of the window at the crowd that had gathered in the square in front of the building. They were packed tightly, humans and some demons, simply standing and staring. Fool wondered whether they could see him looking out at them, but he doubted it. The windows of Assemblies House were filthy; to look out through their smeared panes was to look out at a Hell made distant and indistinct by the layers of grime.

  “They’re the Sorrowful,” he said eventually. “They know what’s being discussed here.”

  “And they come here why?”

  How could he answer? Fool wondered. That they came in the hope that they could somehow influence the outcome of the discussions, that it was easier to come and wait where they could at least see the building, that it was impossible to work or wait elsewhere when the hope of being picked, of being Elevated, hung in the air? And even if it was a vain hope, it didn’t matter because all the inhabitants of Hell had was hope, tiny and shriveled and stunted. “They come to wait,” he said finally. “They come because there is a chance of Elevation, that this time it will be theirs.”

  “Of course,” said Balthazar, clapping his hands and sounding delighted, “and they hope for Heaven’s glory and graciousness to be bestowed upon them.”

  “I suppose so,” replied Fool, but doubted it. It wasn’t Heaven’s grace they were hoping for—that, Elevation offered them—but the far more appealing prospect of simply escaping Hell itself, of escaping the fear and drudgery and the hunger and the violence.

  “And you,” said Balthazar, “would you rather be out there with them? Be one of the Sorrowful, hoping that we choose you?”

  “No,” said Fool. “Elevation is random, I know that. Standing there and hoping will achieve nothing. They’ll all go home cold and tired later. Colder and more tired. But do I hope that I’m picked? Yes.” There. It was out, and he was irritated, not by his admission, because it was almost certainly true of every human and most of the demons in Hell, but because he had made it to Balthazar.

  “Really? And why are you here in Hell? Do you deserve Elevation? Have you atoned, do you think?”

  Fool couldn’t answer. He had no idea why he was resident in Hell, none of them did, and he had no idea how to atone for sins he had no memory of. Besides, he knew atonement had little or nothing to do with Elevation; what was decided in this room between the Bureaucracy of Heaven and the Bureaucracy of Hell was decided not because of the goodness of action or thought by the inhabitants of Hell, but according to rules that the two Bureaucracies alone understood.

  “Well?” said Balthazar, and his voice was quiet and dangerous. He stepped close to Fool, forcing him to lower his eyes against the painful gleam of the angel’s naked flesh. “I expect an answer, Fool. Do you not know, Information Man? Have you no information on this subject? Perhaps we should put you out there with them, until you find your tongue and your answers?”

  “You have no right to do that, Balthazar, and I’d thank you to step away from Thomas.”

  It was Elderflower. The bureaucrat was tiny, only slightly over four feet tall, and he was thin, his skinniness emphasized by the black coat he habitually wore, its hem brushing the floor as he walked. He bustled across the room, his tangled hair bobbing as he moved, and inserted himself
between Fool and Balthazar.

  “It might be good for you to remember your place, Balthazar,” he continued, and somehow, despite being so small, he managed to loom over the angel, to block Fool’s view of that glorious flesh for a moment. Fool had never quite known whether Elderflower was human or demon or something else entirely; most of the time he appeared to be a man, tiny and delicate, but at other times he was something more, something alien and unknowable. “You are new here, but I know you and I know of you. You are one of Michael’s creatures, yes? Equipped with savage weapons and a will to use them? But there is no war for you to fight, not now, and I’ll thank you to keep your furies at bay and retain a civil tongue in that beautiful head of yours.

  “Ah, but I see you are disappointed in the home of the Great Enemy, yes? You expected, perhaps, the lakes of fire, the bodies torn asunder on racks, the flesh of sinners consumed by tooth and maw as they repent their sins? Where are the burning sinners, you wonder? Where are the serried ranks of abused flesh, row and row as far as the eye can see? That is no longer Hell, little angel, and hasn’t been for an age or more, for several ages. Hell evolves, Balthazar, mirroring the worlds about it; the sanctity and terrors of the flesh replaced by something far, far worse.”

  Balthazar, his skin beginning to glow, gestured toward the crowd and said, “Where is the punishment? Where is atonement? They stand as though waiting for news or instruction, as though this were an everyday occurrence, and this one tells me he has no knowledge of the sin that brings him here!” The angel’s light was fiery now, its ripples filling the room, causing the shadows at its edge to dance. “How is this Hell? How is this just?”

  “Balthazar, where do they live?” Adam, his voice cool. “What life do they have?”

  “Hell is a place of fire,” said Balthazar obstinately, sounding like the petulant drunks Fool sometimes encountered. “They should be burning, screaming in the torment.”

  “Adam, your companions have grown naive since your last visit,” said Elderflower. “You should educate them better before bringing them here.”

  Fool wondered whether Balthazar would produce his flame again, coax it from nowhere, and for a moment it seemed he might; his hand danced downward, his fingers twitching, and Fool’s own hand started toward his gun. The air thickened, tensions curling like mists around them.

  “They have no safety,” said Elderflower quietly, almost thoughtfully, “none. Look at them. Their lives are short, brutal, and brutish, mostly ending in violence and starvation. They arrive as flesh from the seas outside, shriven not of their sin but only of their knowledge of it, knowing they are being punished for something without knowing why. They try to do good in the hope that it helps, living each day in the expectation of death or worse, watching as it happens to those around them. They see demons acting without consequence, see Elevations happen without apparent reason, and they suffer. Not the burning agonies of bodies chained to rocks or flesh afire or torn to pieces, no; something worse.

  “They suffer the terrors of the approaching unknown, of ending without redemption or logic, and know that they are powerless. But this is Hell, and there has to be worse than mere violence; the Sorrowful have something worse than no hope—they have some hope. Only a sliver, to be sure; only enough to make the terrors so much worse. Perhaps today is the day that the demon leaves them alone, perhaps this is the day that Fool or one of his officers prevents the crime, brings something to justice. Perhaps today is the day of Elevation for them rather than for some other apparently undeserving ones. Surely this is my time, they say inside themselves where only they can hear, and then when it is not, they are left to carry on and their only hope is that tomorrow it might change, that tomorrow might be different. This is Hell, Balthazar, a place of savageries so vast and shifting that you cannot even conceive of their beginnings or endings, and only some of those are of the flesh. Souls burn here, little angel, but the flames are rarely seen.

  “Now, can we start?”

  Elderflower slipped out from between Fool and Balthazar and walked away. Fool watched as a look of confusion writhed across Balthazar’s face, his skin darkening further, and even at a distance, Fool felt the heat coming off him. The angel stared after Elderflower and then shot a look at Fool, saw that he was still being observed, and made a visible effort to calm himself. The color drained from his cheeks, his skin returning to the smooth pink of clean marble. On the other side of the large room, Adam made a noise somewhere between a cough and a summoning, and Balthazar and Fool followed.

  Adam and Elderflower sat facing each other, a low table between them. Balthazar positioned himself behind Adam, and although he kept his wings folded in, he flexed his broad chest and shoulders so that they shuffled, the feathers rattling and punctuating the start of the meeting. The scribe and the archive took places on either side of Adam but at a distance, bookends around a space waiting to be filled. Adam smiled at Elderflower and said, “We find ourselves here again, old friend.”

  “Yes,” said Elderflower. Fool didn’t recognize Adam from previous delegations, and assumed that his last visit had been before Fool’s emergence from Limbo.

  “We shall take five this time,” said Adam.

  “Ten,” replied Elderflower immediately. “The spaces beyond the wall grow full.”

  “As you wish,” said Adam. “Ten. Do you have candidates?”

  Elderflower did not speak. Instead, he waved a scurrying thing out of the shadows at the edge of the room, which darted forward and handed him a single sheet of paper. Elderflower handed the paper to Adam, who passed it without appearing to read it to one of his silent companions. The angel began to read the names aloud as the other, the scribe, held out a large book; it appeared in its hands as though it had been removed from between two flaps of air. None of the names meant anything to Fool, just as they hadn’t during previous Elevations. They were the anonymous of Hell, farm or factory workers, Genevieves, barmen. No one special.

  On the seventh name, Adam spoke. “No,” he said quietly.

  Elderflower raised his eyebrows, but Adam merely smiled. Elderflower nodded, and then gestured at the shadows again. The scurrying thing darted out once more, carrying another piece of paper. Elderflower took it and passed it to Adam, who again handed it on to the archive, who in return gave Adam the first piece of paper. Adam handed it to the scurrying thing, which scuttled back to the shadows, its clawed hands already crumpling the sheet. After a short moment, the archive started reading again, its voice dusty.

  After the ten names had been read out without comment from Adam and recorded, Adam spoke again. “We will take another five of your choice if you agree to receiving one of ours.”

  “No,” said Elderflower. “We have to take from outside. The flesh clamors at our walls.”

  “Ten,” said Adam, still smiling.

  “Perhaps,” said Elderflower. “We might require further concessions in addition to the extra Elevations.”

  “Such as?”

  Elderflower started to talk about some of the other trades currently being discussed between Heaven and Hell, outlining changes to various treaties and deals. Adam replied in the negative to almost all of them, and soon he and Elderflower were deep in discussion, speaking something close to another language as they discussed how the deals could be made to work. Fool tuned them out, looking instead at the Sorrowful beyond the windows. They were gray under the layers of dirt on the glass, reduced to shapes rather than people. He knew that Elderflower and the representatives of Heaven could trade for hours now, coming to agreements on the numbers taken and received, on the individuals Elevated or Lowered (never Fallen, though, he thought briefly, never Fallen), on the grease that would move the wheels of the give-and-take. They would repeat it every day for the next six days, until after seven days of trade and countertrade the delegation would return, those chosen would be Elevated, and Hell would welcome new inhabitants from Outside or Above. Sometimes, Fool would be asked to contribute to the discu
ssions, to say whether he knew or had opinions on individuals, numbers, types of person, but mostly his presence there was, he suspected, to even up the numbers. He was Elderflower’s Balthazar.

  In the square, the Sorrowful watched, silent and still.

  The train stank of unwashed flesh and sweat and dirt but they used it anyway, not having time to walk. They found a space in the second carriage, managing to get one seat so that Summer could sit. It was touching, really, thought Fool, watching Gordie offer the seat to Summer and trying to pretend that it was merely a thing that he did as a colleague and not as a lover. Summer knew that Fool had guessed about their relationship, but it was clear that Gordie still thought Fool was in the dark about it. It was typical of the man’s naïveté, thinking that Fool wouldn’t see; they lived in tiny rooms in the building that also served as their offices. Fool heard them sometimes, in the night, heard the creak of the bed or the patter of their feet as they crept to each other’s rooms. There were only the three of them, three Information Men for the whole of Hell, so working out who the creeping feet belonged to hadn’t taxed his skills of deduction too much. Having a relationship with a fellow officer wasn’t forbidden, but Summer and Gordie didn’t want to reveal it for the same reason that Fool wouldn’t talk about the fact that he liked his job; it paid to keep even the tiniest of happinesses secret.

  “Have you got it with you?” Gordie asked suddenly. Fool didn’t need to ask what he meant: the feather.

  “Yes,” he said. It was in his inside pocket, safe. He carried it with him everywhere now, unwilling to let it go far from him. He liked the way it felt when his fingers trailed over it or when it brushed against his skin through the thin material, and he tried to ignore the joy in case it marked him out in the eyes of the Bureaucracy.

  “Can—” Gordie began, and Fool interrupted.

  “No. Not here, not among people.” Can I see it again? Can Summer see it? Can I hold it again? Fool could hear the queries as clearly as if Gordie had spoken them aloud.