The God Hunter

by Tim Lees

  If I hadn’t known—­if I’d not been told it was a human being, someone who, a few short hours before, had walked and talked, dreamed and hungered and, let’s face it, lusted—­I don’t think any of it would have bothered me, not half so much. The thing looked like a dummy. An effigy, built out of rotting clothes and last week’s garbage. Not human. Nothing human. Nothing that was left there, anyway.

  Anna and the lieutenant stepped out of the doorway. They were talking, heads together, voices low. I waited till they came across.

  “They’re working relays,” Fantino said. “Ten minutes in, ten minutes out.”

  “That supposed to make me feel better?” I said.

  “It’s not the look of it,” he said. “It’s how it feels.” He rubbed his neck, as if expunging some long-­settled grime. “Meanwhile,” he told me, “you and me, I think we ought to talk.”

  The sky was growing light, a cold blue picking out the far end of the avenue. Someone was putting up the crime scene tape.

  I was tired and lonely and on edge, and the day had hardly started yet.

  This wasn’t promising. It wasn’t promising at all.

  CHAPTER 31

  VICTIMS

  “Lot of ­people tell you floaters are the worst. They stink, for one thing. They go down, bacteria does its work . . . Gas collects under the skin and in the body cavities . . . Hands swell like balloons. Soon they’re up again, floating on the surface, twice the size.” Fantino sipped his coffee, like he was telling us the sports results. “I saw a guy once, cut up in a boat prop. Time we got him out, crabs were living in the wounds. Hundreds and hundreds of these tiny crabs, just more and more and more of ’em. All over the autopsy room, the floor, the table, everywhere. Little crabs had been chewing on him. You’d get home and you’d find ’em in your boots, you’d find ’em in your trouser cuffs, you’d find ’em everywhere.” He sighed. He looked at Anna, looked at me. “But this—­no, I gotta tell you. This one’s different.”

  We were in a diner, two blocks from the crime scene. A radio played ’50s hits: “Peggy Sue” and “The Great Pretender” and “Why Do Fools Fall in Love?”

  “So,” he said. “Three guys. I’m saying guys, but that’s just based on location, huh? Not so easy to tell, is it? And you can’t assume. You can’t assume. Late night, so they’re either local, within a few blocks, or they’re tourists. We’ll find out soon enough. And they feel a need to scratch an itch. They go in. Something happens. They don’t come out.

  “I tell you: one of ’em turns out to be mayor’s office, or a priest, then there is gonna be one pure almighty shitstorm. Yes indeed.”

  “The guy minding the store,” I said. “What happened to him?”

  “Our fourth victim. The way things stand, I’d be inclined to call him collateral damage. It all kicked off inside. He ran out. Hit by a car. Driver didn’t stop. He’s alive, but, far as I know, we’ve yet to get a story out of him. Should be a doozy when we do.”

  “Same at home,” said Anna. “Not so many victims, but same thing. In Budapest, one dead at one time.”

  “Yeah. New York. Bigger and better, that’s us.” Fantino looked at me. “OK, Mr. Englishman. Anna showing up I can understand. Now how about you tell me why you’re here, then?”

  “Chris is advisor on the case,” said Anna. “He advises us in Budapest.”

  “Good advice?”

  It wasn’t a question looking for an answer. Fantino’s eyes stayed fixed on me, and waited.

  I took a breath, still vaguely looking for a plausible alternative, another explanation: plague, loony, terrorist attack. Whatever, I suppose.

  I mumbled something.

  “Again.”

  “It’s . . . hm. It’s. It’s a spirit entity.”

  He put his head back, as if breathing this one in. “Aaaall right.”

  “This—­being. It’s a fragment of a larger creature. The larger portion was contained, neutralized. This piece should have been destroyed, and I thought it was. But, well, clearly not. It’s assumed a human form. It’s feeding off its victims. It takes their . . . essence, you might say. Their vital energy. It sucks the life right out of them and the surrounding area. That’s why things feel the way they do. At the murder site. I don’t know why it’s in America now.” I looked away, but his dark eyes pulled me back. “It’s going to kill again,” I said. “And it’ll keep on killing. It’s got to, to survive.”

  Fantino leaned his head on his hand, still watching me.

  “And do you have a description of this—­spirit? Or do I just put out an APB on Count fucking Dracula? Or Casper the Friendly Ghost?”

  Anna said, “We have description. We know what he looks like.”

  She glanced at me.

  Oh Christ, I thought. Here we go again.

  I said, “I don’t know what its natural form would be. They’re genius loci as a rule. Spirits of place. They build up in the ground, or certain buildings. This one, like I say, we contained it, most of it. Some of the original . . . individual got away. It hid. Well. It hid in my reflection.”

  Fantino nodded, slowly. “And that means . . . ?” I didn’t answer. He said, “It looks like . . . ?”

  “Me. It looks like me.”

  “Chris is innocent,” said Anna. “He is not the monster.”

  “Good to know, considering we’re both sitting right here with him, and the last ­people we know got this close wound up dead.”

  “Do you have a better explanation?” I said. “For what happened in there? Is this your New York Vampire story all over again? Some guy with plastic fangs? Is that it?”

  “The fangs were enamel,” he said. “Good dentistry, you know?”

  He waited for a while. He looked at Anna, then at me. At Anna once again.

  “All right. What say I play along? What happens next? Where do we go? You tell me now.”

  “You can check cameras. Check ID. Faces.”

  “In other words, I’m the detective. I should know. Yeah?”

  “This case,” said Anna, “breaks careers.”

  “Not mine, Detective. Soooo not mine.”

  CHAPTER 32

  A PRIVATE ADDRESS

  My phone rang. I went outside to take the call, expecting Seddon’s voice. It wasn’t.

  “Chris? Chris. Derek here. Not too early, is it? I didn’t wake you up or anything?”

  “No point asking now,” I said.

  “Um . . . Well. Good. That’s good then. See, what it is—­you’re down as having some equipment there. But no one’s logged the serial numbers. Bit of an oversight, really. If you could take a look and let me know—­”

  “I haven’t got it with me.”

  My pack was in the diner. I could have gone and checked it, but I really didn’t feel inclined. Not after this morning. And not much for Derek’s sake, either.

  “It’s safe, though, isn’t it? You haven’t lost it like you did the last lot?”

  “I didn’t lose the last lot. It was stolen.”

  “Yes. But you know what I mean.”

  “I’m busy, Derek. I’m going now.”

  “You’ll call me back?” His voice rose. “We need to get the records straight, we’ve got an audit and—­”

  “Bye, Derek.”

  I hit End Call.

  Important, all right. Important because somebody’d fucked up, and Seddon was all hot and bothered because the fuckup had most probably been his. While he was in the process of so merrily dropping me in the shit, he hadn’t done the paperwork. Not for the first time, either, I’d heard.

  I’d strolled a few yards down the block while I’d been talking. I was at the diner again when something struck me, pushing out the irritation that I’d felt at Derek’s call.

  I stopped. I took a few minutes to think it through. Our qua
rry wasn’t here to see the sights. But there was one thing more he might have wanted in the city, important to both him and me.

  What if he’d come for Adam Shailer?

  What then?

  “Lieutenant Fantino,” Anna said, “agrees to keep us in the loop. Do you not, Mike?”

  “I agree,” said Fantino, “not to throw your asses straight in jail. For which the pair of you should give me your undying gratitude. But I’m gonna say . . . this is like nothing I’ve ever seen. Right now, I don’t much care what kinda help I get. Though I admit,” he looked at Anna, “I’m surprised to see you caught up in this crazy story. You always seemed a bit more . . . feet on the ground, y’know?”

  “Ha. I am stuck with crazy case. Needs crazy answers. So maybe I am crazy, too.”

  “Yeah. Shit does that to you, sometimes. You be careful, Anna, hey?”

  He cast a sidelong glance at me. It wasn’t all that friendly.

  I said, “Lieutenant Fantino, I’d like to thank you for your time, and for including us in this. Even if I did look like I was going to puke.”

  “Yeah. Well.”

  “One last thing. I don’t give a damn about this, but my employers would be grateful if you’d use some discretion with the things we’ve told you. Just so I can tell them that I mentioned it, you know?”

  “I’ll be discreet. Yeah.”

  “Thank you.”

  “And I don’t give a damn about it, either. I’ll use discretion ’cause I don’t wanna look like a fuckin’ crazy person, OK? We clear on that? And you,” his finger jutted, two inches from my face, “you will let yourself be photographed and fingerprinted. You will call a number, which I will give you, every hour on the hour to say exactly where you’ve been and what you did. This is in case, as you say, the perp’s your spitting image or your twin brother or what the hell else, so we do not get the pair of you mixed up, all right? You will also stay away from airports, bus stations, and trains. So you do not show up on CCTV and throw everyone into a blue fit. Clear?”

  “You can check the records. I was booked on a flight, I entered the country. Someone like me did. And, Anna can tell you—­I was still in jail in Hungary back then.”

  “Sounds like the perfect alibi.”

  “If this were England,” I said, “you’d have miles of footage. They’ve got cameras everywhere. It’s like Orwell there.”

  “Yeah, well. Just have to do our best, I guess.” He pushed his coffee cup aside, got to his feet. “You give me any shit—­you even lie to me, just once, and I find out—­you will need a damn good lawyer.” He peeled a handful of notes and dropped them on the tabletop. “Give Anna shit—­you’ll need an undertaker.”

  “Is he allowed to threaten me?”

  “He is NYPD. He can do what he wants.”

  “He’s going back there. Christ.”

  “That is his job. And mine, when I am at work.”

  “That thing—­body—­”

  “Cadaver. I have seen others like it. Not so many, though. He is feeding himself up, I think.”

  “Or else it’s opportunist. Three guys with their dicks out, minds on other things . . .”

  “ ‘Ambient emotion.’ ”

  “So?”

  “Church, you say. Church, adult store. ­People concentrate. They have much feeling there, I think.”

  “People focus their emotions . . .”

  “Yes. And the city has many of both—­church and adult place. Both for worship, of a kind.”

  She smiled. I excused myself and went outside.

  I pressed Call Back.

  “Chris. Oh, good. You’ve got the numbers for me?”

  “I need something,” I said.

  “Right, right. Let’s get those numbers down, shall we?”

  “This is more important.”

  “If you just tell me the numbers. Do you know where they are? On the reader, they’re—­let’s see—­on the underside, there’s a sort of ridge, and then—­”

  “Derek, I told you. I haven’t got it with me now. Listen. There’s a guy called Adam Shailer. He’s on a European tour, or he was. Meet, greet, talk us up, that kind of thing. I want to know where he is right now. And when he gets back to the States. OK?”

  “Shailer . . .”

  I spelled it for him. There was a moment’s pause, then he said, “He’s U.S. You should really call the U.S. office, if you want to know.”

  “Yes, yes. But I’m not going to. I’m calling you.”

  “I’m not sure I—­”

  “Put Seddon on.”

  “Seddon’s in a meeting.”

  “And he’s left you to cover up his cock-­ups for him, hasn’t he? So you’ll just have to do it. All right?”

  “You really ought to deal direct, U.S. is different, they get touchy over things like that . . .”

  “Get it on screen. I know you can.”

  “I really need those numbers.”

  “Bargain, then? Give me what I want, I give you what you want. OK?”

  “Well . . .”

  I heard a distant clicking of keys. Then Derek, talking through his teeth, said, “Athens, Bucharest, Munich . . . No, you’re too late. He’s flying back today. You’ve missed the tour.”

  “Flying back where?”

  “To you, actually. Your neck of the woods. He’s booked on a Lufthansa flight to JFK, departing 11:15, getting in 3:05. OK now?”

  “Very. One more thing. When he gets here, where’s he plan to stay?”

  “I can’t tell you that. If you want to talk to him, contact his home office! That’s personal, I can’t—­”

  “Get Seddon out of his meeting, or wherever he is. He’s the one who fucked up the numbers, isn’t he?”

  “Mr. Seddon’s not to be disturbed.”

  “Then you’ll have to do it for me, won’t you?”

  There was muttering and grumbling and a long, long silence, and for a moment I thought I’d lost him. Then he said, “He’s got a flat. I don’t know if he’s going there, but . . .”

  “Address.”

  “It’s a private address. There’s policy, I can’t just—­”

  “Is it up on screen?”

  “Yes.”

  “Well then. You can just, can’t you? Imagine that I’m in the office and just happen to catch sight of it over your shoulder. Right?”

  He read it out. Hushed tones. I wrote it down.

  “That thing with the serial numbers,” he said. “That’s really urgent now.”

  “I’m on it.”

  I hit End Call.

  Sometimes Derek could be funny; a real wit, a joker. Other times . . . I don’t know what it was. The big tease. I’ve got the information, just me, only me. I’ve got it, you’ve not. I knew some ­people—­secretaries, minor officials and what have you—­if I’d asked them for that kind of stuff, they’d have just quoted policy and told me no. With Derek, it was more like blood from a stone: you could get it, but it took a ­couple of miracles and an inversion of the laws of physics first.

  I suppose, like any tease, he had to put out now and then. Or everyone would just lose interest.

  Weirdest of all, I think he actually liked me. It was hard to tell. But there were moments when I thought he really did.

  CHAPTER 33

  ASSAULT

  Shailer had a ground-­floor place in Brooklyn, near the Heights. Nice neighborhood. Nice-­looking apartment. I bet he’d had somebody in to clean while he was gone. Someone to make it all look nice for him. I bet he didn’t have his ex-­wife wash his clothes or anything like that.

  I’d spent the morning being fingerprinted, photographed, and generally entered in the annals of the NYPD. I had a number to call every time I went anywhere.

  A life of law-­abiding peace
and quiet, and in just a few days I’d found myself treated as a suspect in not one but two countries—­and yes, I was a suspect, regardless of the assurances Fantino gave me. Suspect for wasting police time, at the very best. Suspect for a lot worse, otherwise. A fact that fuelled my eagerness to have another little meet with Shailer, as soon as possible.

  There was a café on the corner. New York’s blessed with them. We settled in to wait. “He’ll get a taxi,” I told Anna. “Keep a look out.”

  I said to her, “You’re coming in with me?”

  She nodded.

  “Do me a favor, then. Forget you’re a cop. Just for a while, OK?”

  I said, “He knows what’s going on. Or he knows something, anyway. More than we do.”

  But we didn’t talk much. She kept going out for cigarettes. I drank all the coffee I’d the stomach for, then kept buying more to keep our seats. A pastry lay there on the tabletop in front of me. I’d taken one bite. I daresay it was good, but I couldn’t face the rest.

  I ordered milk, I ordered sandwiches.

  He didn’t take a cab.

  He took a limousine.

  It looked ridiculous, nosing around the corner, edging down a street it almost filled. Ridiculous, but wonderfully smooth, pulling up so gently that it hardly seemed to stop; more like a freeze-­frame in an ongoing journey. A uniformed chauffeur pulled the bags out of the trunk, piled them on the sidewalk, then ferried them to Shailer’s front door. Shailer, meanwhile, slid out of the backseat like he’d just come back from Hollywood rather than a lecture tour: dark glasses and a suit of pastel blue.