The Devil Upstairs

by Anthony O'Neill

  ‘The King?’

  ‘Cock Robin, remember him? The grandmaster? Has he checkmated you yet? Exposed his bishop?’

  ‘You really are drunk.’

  ‘Sure I am. In vino veritas, eh? You needn’t worry your gorgeous wee head about me, Catriona Thomas. I’ll be back quicker than you can say shenhamforash. And meanwhile I’ll just bide my time. Paint the walls black, maybe – this purple shite really makes me wanna puke sometimes.’

  Cat got to her feet. ‘Just let me know if you need any help. I’ve always appreciated everything you’ve done for me, you know.’

  ‘Now, now, Cat, sentimentality doesn’t become you. Besides, you’ve got more important things to do, haven’t you? Dinners to cook? Cocks to stroke? Pests to exterminate? And we still wanna cuddle some bairns now, don’t we?’

  Cat shook her head. ‘You really need some rest.’

  ‘And yet the wicked get none,’ Agnes returned puckishly, raising her glass of Howgate Scotch and draining it all in one fiery gulp.

  * * *

  * balzac

  CHAPTER

  ELEVEN

  By friday evening’s dinner date – if indeed it was a date – Cat had good reason to feel flustered. She was increasingly isolated at work. Her only friend – if indeed she was a friend – was gone. Others in the department were sneaking pitying glances at her. Bellamy was circling like a Spitfire. She suspected it was only a matter of time before she was called into his cockpit for the ‘Sadly, I’ve come to a decision’ talk.

  Neither had she found enough time to collate the evidence she felt was necessary for official presentation to the ABC Board or the fraud unit at Police Scotland. In fact, Bellamy had piled extra duties on her precisely in a bid, she suspected, to keep her from doing anything out of order. She needed to speak to Carter Carterius but every time she phoned the branch he was ‘unavailable’. She considered heading out to Musselburgh to confront him in person, but she could scarcely afford to overrun her lunch hour again.

  On top of this, she had begun to feel as though she were being watched – hunted as though by a sparrowhawk. She knew very well the propensity of people under pressure to manufacture perils – and would have been happy to admit she was in such a hyper-neurotic state – except for one salient point. She had experienced the same suspicions in Florida, and they had very much been not a figment of her imagination.

  ‘My radar is finely tuned,’ she said to Boucher. ‘Maybe too finely tuned, but it’s tuned. So when I open up the departmental mail and there’s nothing inside but a blank sheet of paper spattered with blood, I’m prone to think it’s someone sending me a message.’

  ‘My God,’ said Boucher, taking a seat at her kitchen table. ‘Are you saying you actually received a bloodstained page?’

  ‘Well, it’s not entirely unusual. It’s our job to take out fraudsters, remember, so the sender could have been anyone currently under investigation. Or someone whose career we’ve already shot down, excuse the metaphor. For that matter, it could be entirely unrelated to me personally. But my radar is saying the opposite.’ She stirred black pepper into the chopped tomatoes.

  ‘Have you reported it to anyone?’

  ‘I passed it to my boss Nick Bellamy, but of course he said it wasn’t important enough to record officially. And he’s right – it’s not. But when you put it together with some other things, like the dead rat in the mail, it—’

  ‘The dead rat in the mail?’

  ‘That came in the padded envelope. The one I picked up the other night – after you roughed up that guy. He must have delivered it himself.’

  ‘You mean to say he personally shoved it through the slot?’

  ‘I assume so – you didn’t see him do it?’

  ‘Can’t say I did,’ Boucher said, thinking about it. ‘Have you reported that to anyone?’

  ‘Not yet. Maybe never. How much salt do you like?’

  ‘As much as you’re comfortable with,’ Boucher replied, before adding, ‘I must say, Cat, you seem to be taking it all with remarkable indifference.’

  ‘Oh, I’m not taking it well at all, I assure you. I’m about to rile up a real hornets’ nest, if I haven’t already. My boss Bellamy is on my tail. I’m in danger of losing my job. I’ve been told it’s suicidal to go after the Dunns. So I’m taking refuge in routine, just as I did when I went through the same thing in Florida. It’s all I can do. But I’m frustrated, believe me. I shouldn’t even be mentioning this to you. But I think it’s important to put it on the record with as many people as possible. How much parmesan do you prefer?’

  ‘Whatever you think is best, Cat. But really’ – Boucher shifted in his chair – ‘are you absolutely sure you know what you’re up against? As I’ve mentioned in the past, I know a good deal about organised crime in this country. I know exactly how the system operates. I even know Alistair Dunn.’

  Cat turned. ‘You know Alistair Dunn?’

  ‘Not well – I’ve met him just once or twice; he’s been a client of mine – but I know all about his connections. And I can assure you that he has influence everywhere. In parliament, the press, even in the police. So you can’t rely on anyone if you go after someone like that. Except me, of course – I can make things go away.’

  Glancing at him again, Cat wondered exactly how he might ‘make things go away’. Using his supernatural powers? His own muscle? He was wearing a light tweed jacket and a check shirt – the attire of a county squire – and couldn’t have looked less like an enforcer. Yet she had seen him effortlessly overpower the ogre. She had felt his power – or something – in the Innocent Railway. And she had seen his Herculean body – at least in her imagination.

  ‘I’ll summon you if I need to,’ Cat said, and served up the meal.

  They sat at opposite ends of her Heart Foundation table and he reached for the bottle he’d brought with him. ‘Have some of my Pimento – it’s great with pasta.’

  ‘That’s OK. Look’ – Cat raised her hand in front of her mouth as she chewed – ‘I’ve been meaning to ask you about something, I hope you don’t mind.’

  ‘And I’ve already indicated that I have something to explain to you.’

  ‘Then perhaps we’re talking about the same thing?’

  ‘Let me tell you and we’ll find out.’ He poured himself some Pimento. ‘At Casa del Fuego on Saturday evening I mentioned something about being a chess player, without going into much detail. So I’d be surprised if you didn’t prove curious about that. And even more surprised if you hadn’t checked out my credentials, so to speak, on the Internet.’

  ‘Uh huh.’ Cat tried not to blush.

  ‘No need to be embarrassed – I would certainly have done the same thing. But the truth is that I’m not a traditional chess player. I certainly play it, and I’m rather good at it, though not nearly accomplished enough to go professional. What I’ve done, though, is applied its disciplines – what might be called a certain algorithmic way of thinking – to much more important matters. But it’s all very complex and sensitive, and I invariably reveal only as much as I need to.’

  ‘If you’re trying to tell me you’re still unable to talk about it, then that’s OK.’

  ‘No, that’s not what I mean.’ He put the bottle down. ‘I’m willing to tell you – and you alone – because I think you deserve it.’

  She guessed she was supposed to be flattered.

  ‘The truth is’ – he paused so long she almost heard a drumroll – ‘I’m a fortune teller.’

  ‘A fortune teller.’

  ‘A tea-leaf reader.’

  ‘A tea-leaf reader.’

  ‘A social meteorologist, you might say.’

  ‘A social meteorologist.’

  He smiled. ‘What I do is collate a vast amount of information from across the world’s newsfeeds – I have access to thousands of sites – and lay that over a matrix of recorded history and the psychology of the main players to help identify certain trajectories.’ />
  ‘Trajectories indicating what?’

  ‘Voting results, uprisings, wars, stock market crashes, revolutions. I don’t wish to boast – and in many cases I dearly wish I’d been wrong – but I’ve predicted most of the shocks to the system of the last twenty years.’

  ‘Such as?’

  ‘The Dot.Com collapse, the Sub-Prime Housing Crisis, the Iraq War, and most of the major terrorist attacks in a roundabout sort of way.’

  ‘Interesting,’ said Cat. ‘And what are you predicting now, for the future?’

  ‘A fair question, but do you really want to know?’

  ‘I’m not sure – do I?’

  ‘Let’s just say I see nothing to be optimistic about,’ he said. ‘Failing, of course, the arrival of a black swan – and as it happens I increasingly suspect we’re about to see one.’

  ‘And why would a catastrophic event be a good thing, exactly?’

  ‘Well, black swans aren’t always unwelcome. And they’re not always events, for that matter. They can be people as well. Which is exactly the sort of black swan I’m predicting right now.’

  ‘A messiah?’

  ‘Let’s just say certain confluences are currently in motion. And powerful confluences in themselves often invoke a flesh-and-blood personification. Sometimes a messiah, sometimes a monster. Sometimes a monster who’s greeted as a messiah, sometimes a messiah who’s treated as a monster – both paradigms are depressingly common. As to which one we’ll see in the next few years, that’s what my clients are counting on me to identify.’

  ‘I see.’ Cat wondered if he was spinning a tale. ‘And this, you say, is the way you make your living?’

  ‘My reputation as a fortune teller means that many unpleasant people – disaster capitalists, hedge fund managers and weapons manufacturers among them – are prepared to pay highly for my wisdom. Ah.’ Something amusing seemed to have occurred to him. ‘You’re still suspicious of me, aren’t you, Cat?’

  ‘I’d be happier if you offered some evidence.’

  ‘But of course.’ He looked around. ‘Do you have a laptop here, by any chance?’

  ‘In the next room.’

  ‘Your own laptop – not something belonging to work?’

  ‘Uh-huh.’ She wondered why that was important.

  ‘Well, let’s finish this splendid meal and then I’ll show you my website.’ He tapped the bottle. ‘Are you sure you won’t try this Pimento?’

  ‘I’m OK.’

  When the dinner was fully eaten – barring a couple of lemon sorbets Cat had whipped up – she slipped into the living area and returned with her laptop. ‘What am I looking for?’ she asked, opening a search engine.

  ‘The Augur’s Well,’ he said, and when she looked up: ‘It’s just a name.’

  After a few minutes of frustration – the laptop was busy updating itself – she brought up a stylised homepage showing crows erupting from a well. ‘Got it.’

  ‘You’ll need to log in,’ he said, and provided the password: ‘Morgenstern.’

  ‘Two words?’

  ‘One word,’ he said. ‘Again, just a name.’

  The login opened a new page of PDF documents of what looked like pie-charts, projections and profiles of various world leaders. Titles included: SOUTH AMERICA: RHYMING WITH ASSONANCE, THE POPULATION ULTIMATUM, MONITORING PROPAGANDA AS A HARBINGER OF WAR, and TRENDS IN POPULAR CULTURE AS INDICATORS OF IMMINENT TRAUMA.

  ‘Choose one,’ he said.

  She selected a document entitled THE MOST DANGEROUS MAN ON THE PLANET – fascinated, as always, by hazardous men – and found herself looking at a wretchedly familiar face above a page of text. ‘OK,’ she said. ‘What now?’

  Boucher, leaning back in his chair and staring upwards, recited the opening paragraph as though reading the words off the ceiling.

  ‘In a crowded field of sociopathic, mendacious, Machiavellian and Strangelovian officials who currently populate our corridors of power, there is one man whose resistance to shame and self-reflection, brazen pursuit of his cult-like ideology, and total disregard for the consequences of his actions, marks him at the very top of the list of the most dangerous people on the planet. Since he currently occupies a post integrally connected to the fate of nations, since his hunger for wars of conquest is without equal, and especially because he has an unerring habit of “failing upwards” despite his disastrous misjudgements, it is incumbent upon me to study his education, career trajectory, personality traits and moral conditioning in order to identify likely timeframes and locations of future conflict.’

  He dropped his head and broke into a semi-apologetic grin. ‘From that little diatribe you’d be forgiven for thinking that I like the fellow.’

  Cat wasn’t sure what to make of it. He had recited the paragraph verbatim, true, but that didn’t necessarily mean he had written it. He could have memorised a few opening paragraphs for later usage. The proper thing to do now would be to open another document, find a random page, and ask him to quote something from that as well. But that might cross a barrier – it might officially offend him.

  And there was something else. Something unexpected. The passage he’d recited, though a trifle earnest, had turned her on. It might have been his senatorial voice; it might have been the dreamy look on his face; or it might have been the sheer novelty of having someone in her kitchen use words like ‘mendacious’ and ‘Machiavellian’. Whatever. She saw in Boucher something of a kindred spirit, and that ripped a rug from under her.

  ‘Okey-dokey, then – I’m pleased we’ve got that established.’ She launched to her feet to fetch the sorbets (wondering if she had ever in her life said ‘okey-dokey’).

  ‘You don’t look convinced,’ Boucher said, sounding remarkably unoffended.

  ‘No, it’s not that at all.’

  ‘You can choose another passage, if you like.’

  ‘No, really.’ She transferred the sorbets to the table. ‘I rarely sound convinced. It’s my nature, I guess. I’m hopelessly sceptical and cynical. I think perhaps I was born that way.’ She settled back into her chair and started scooping into the dessert with a spoon. ‘I remember when I was five years old being taken to see the Thanksgiving parade in New York. And I was freezing cold and I had sticky soda on my hands and I was watching it all – all the floats and marching bands – saying to myself, “Is this supposed to be fun? We came all this way to see this?” At five years old. I remember, even earlier, there was a magician at a friend’s birthday party and I told my parents not to waste any money hiring him for my own birthday because he was such a lemon. I hated magicians. In fact, I hated birthday parties in general. I hated Disney movies. I hated family vacations. I hated getting hugged. I hated dolls and teddy bears. I hated everything except cats. So it’s hardly as though any “traumatic experience” later made me cynical. More cynical, maybe. But I don’t know.’

  She was babbling – she knew it – but couldn’t stop.

  ‘There are huge advantages, of course, to being cynical. You’re rarely disappointed, for one. But great disadvantages as well. It’s easy to become alienated. It’s hard to maintain relationships – serious relationships – because you’re always expecting them to unravel.’ She was carving into the icy sides of the sorbet now. ‘People often ask me, in fact, why I’m not married – why I’ve never been married. And I have to assure them it’s not because I don’t like the idea, the institution of marriage – not at all. But I’m too cynical to trust romantic love. I don’t trust it because it’s based on things that are hopelessly ephemeral. The foundations are shaky. Worse than shaky, they’re pinned together with bestial instincts. And, as powerful as bestial instincts are, they should always be treated with caution. I mean, I’ve been with men and I’ve seen the lies in their eyes. They don’t even have to speak, they don’t even have to lie to me, because I can sense it, I can read people’s subtitles. And while that gives me some advantage as a fraud investigator, it makes me a terrible life partner. I me
an, I’m even ambivalent about sex. I mean, if you stand back from it, survey it critically – the act of physical coupling, I mean – it’s bizarre, it’s demeaning, and it’s like a mass delusion, this whole idea that it’s desirable, it’s essential, it’s the source of all happiness. To not need it is liberating. Really, when you consider the sheer volume of time and money and mental energy that is squandered just preparing for sex, pursuing it, talking your way into it, performing it, and dealing with all the frustration and disappointments that come with it – not to mention the diseases – well, what’s wrong with some healthy prudishness? Alienation? Why persist with the madness? Are people really frightened of what might happen if they snap out of the trance? People need to get real. Some deep soul searching, reviewing what’s really important, scraping away all the baked-in grime with cynicism – that’s a cleansing process. And it makes life a thousand times better. You have to overturn everything you know, rip up the underpinnings, rewire all the cables, and then reconstruct everything from the ground up, but you’re stronger, you’re more efficient, you’re not straitjacketed by tradition or societal pressures or your own unreasonable expectations. What’s that, if not freedom? What’s that, if not a superior, liberated, rational existence? And total mastery of the self? I ask you. I ask you. I ask you.’

  Cat almost slammed the dessert bowl on the table and was surprised – astonished – to see that it was scraped clean. She’d been stuffing her mouth with sorbet even as she spoke. Boucher, as usual, looked tremendously amused and approving, with delightful crinkles at the corners of his eyes. He waited until he was sure that she was finished speaking – that she was inviting him to contribute – and then he chuckled appreciatively.

  ‘Cat,’ he said quietly, ‘I couldn’t agree more.’

  ‘I’m glad,’ said Cat, meaning it. ‘I’m glad. No, really – I’m glad.’

  She nodded, and nodded again, then looked him dead in the eyes.

  ‘Would you like to fuck me, by the way?’