by Mike Carey
“This is somebody’s laptop,” Nicky said.
“Yeah.”
“Not yours?”
“No.”
“Stolen, Castor?”
“Borrowed. It’ll get back to its rightful owners in due course.”
“And you’ve got the brass balls to pass it on to me?”
“Sure, Nicky. They’re already out to get you, remember? And you’re dead. You don’t have a damn thing to lose.”
Nicky wasn’t amused. “The work I do,” he muttered, glaring at me, “I try to keep it as low profile as I can. I try not to disturb the grid. Because the grid”—he gestured with his hands, fingers spread—“is like a great, flowing river. And along the banks of the river, a whole army of guys are sitting on folding chairs with rods and lines all set up. Everything you touch, Castor—everything you touch is a hook. There are people out there who want to know everything there is to know about you. So they can control you. So they can neutralize you. So they can kill you whenever they want to. You think I don’t know that paranoia is a clinical condition? I know better than anyone. But you embrace it when it becomes a survival trait.”
“And the scariest thing is that you’re making sense to me,” I observed sourly. “Listen. I swear to you, your name never gets mentioned. Nothing you do for me goes any further—even to the guy who hired me. I just use it to corroborate what I already know or think I know. And afterward, I’ll owe you a favor. A really big one.”
Nicky nodded slowly, more or less satisfied. “I like people owing me favors,” he said. “Okay, Castor, I’ll shag your laptop.”
“Do you think you’ll be able to tell if someone’s doctored that file?”
He laughed mirthlessly at that. “Are you joking? I’ll be able to tell if anyone farted in the same room as this machine. And what they ate beforehand. I’ve got my methods, Castor—and my resources. Your succubus, by the way, she’s been around for a while.”
The body swerve left me standing. “What?”
“There are descriptions of her in some of the grimoires. The black eyes. The dead white skin. The name.”
“Juliet?”
“Ajulutsikael. She is of Baphomet the sister and the youngest of her line, though puissant still and not easily to be taken with words or symbols of art. But with silver will you bind her and with her name, anagrammatized, appease her.”
“How do you know she’s the one?”
“Because she used a name that’s made up out of some of the letters of her real name. She always does. Don’t ask me why. I guess it’s just a demon thing. Was she wearing silver, by the way?”
“A chain. On her ankle.”
“There you go. You’re lucky to be alive, Castor. She’s fast and she’s mean. Gerald Gardner—Crowley’s old mate—talks about someone he knew who summoned her to impress his friends at a stag party. She played all coy, got him to put one foot over the edge of his magic circle, then she ripped off his cock and balls and ate them. Not quite the hot oral action he was hoping for, I’m guessing.
“Oh, and she doesn’t give up. That’s the other thing the occultist crowd all insist on. Once she’s got your scent, she keeps coming. Watch your back.”
There was no answer to that apart from the involuntary wince I gave. “Thanks, Nicky,” I said. “I was feeling bad about the whole thing, but not nearly bad enough, obviously. You’ve raised my game.”
“Sorry. I thought you should know.”
I got up.
“ASAP for this, Nicky,” I said, pointing down at the laptop. “Call me today, if you can. I need to get that back before anyone notices it’s gone.”
“I’ll be in touch,” he said. Then, as I turned to leave, he stopped me with a raised hand. “You’re aware you’ve got a shadow?” he said.
“What, still? I saw her as I was coming in, but—”
“She’s walked past three times. Checking you out. Waiting for you to leave, maybe.”
I was impressed by the sensitivity of his radar—and happy to have the corroboration. “Yeah, I’m aware.”
“Is she anybody I need to know about?”
“No, she’s strictly personal.”
“You’re kidding.” Nicky looked disgusted. “She’s too young for you, Fix. She’s too young for anybody.”
“Call me,” I said.
I headed back across the concourse and out through one of the many sets of doors that lead through to the bus station. There was a flight of concrete steps ahead of me, going down into an underpass that crossed the Euston Road. I took it. At the bottom, I turned a corner. Then I waited.
I heard her before I saw her: clip-clapping clumsily down the steps on tall, precarious heels. She turned the corner and almost ran straight into me. Her brown eyes, made pandalike by inexpertly applied makeup, opened wide with shock. It was Rosa. Now that I saw her full-on, there was no mistaking.
“Was there something you wanted to talk to me about?” I asked her.
I’m not sure what I expected, but it wasn’t what I got. Rosa reached into her coat and pulled out a steak knife; it looked alarming and incongruous in this setting.
A moment later, it looked a whole lot worse as she lunged forward and tried to embed it in my chest. I leaped back, and the blade sliced empty air in front of me. Rosa almost overbalanced, but recovered and took another swipe.
“You did it to her!” she shouted in a thick accent that sounded Czech or Russian. “Again! You did it to her again! It was you! He told me it was you!”
On the third pass I tried to grab her wrist, but she twisted free and almost caught me with a backhanded slash that came out of nowhere. She was so thin! My hand had closed for a moment around her forearm, and there was almost nothing there. But the hate she was obviously feeling for me had given her a hectic strength, and she closed in again with a scream of anger.
This time, I didn’t try to hold her. I just knocked the knife out of her hand with a vertical swipe of my arm. I hadn’t meant to hurt her, but she gave a gasping sob and staggered back, clutching her wrist. I kicked the knife away to the other side of the tunnel and then threw my arms out, fingers spread and palms up, to indicate that I didn’t mean her any harm.
“I didn’t do anything to anybody,” I said. “But I’d love to know what it is I’m supposed to have done. And who told you I did it. If you explain that to me, maybe we’ll know where we stand.”
She glared at me, still clutching her wrist. She cast one longing glance at the knife, then sprinted for the stairs. I caught her in two steps, my hands around her waist. I leaned to the side as she flailed and kicked, because I needed to keep my legs out of the way of those deadly heels.
“Please,” I said. “Rosa. Just tell me what you’re so angry about. Tell me what I’m being accused of.”
She froze suddenly and then went limp in my arms. She half turned, her head lolling sideways onto my shoulder. At the same time she gave a trembling sob of exhaled breath. She slumped against me, making me take her weight as her body pressed against mine.
Disconcerted, I relaxed my hold—and she jackknifed at the optimum moment, the back of her head slamming with sickening force into the bridge of my nose. I fell backward against the wall of the tunnel, and she was away. By the time I could see through my watering eyes, there was no sign of her.
With my head throbbing and my pride hurting a damn sight worse, I climbed the steps back up to street level and took a look in both directions. Nothing. Even in six-inch heels, the kid had a good turn of speed on her.
The pain in my head was getting worse, making my stomach churn with nausea. I sat down on a low wall to regroup and re-equip. Being beaten up by women seemed to be one of the hazards of this particular job. At least Cheryl had been gentle with me.
One thing surfaced through the throbbing ache and bobbed around on top of it, cheerful as only an abstract fact can be in a world of intense physical pain. She just kept saying roses, Farhat had told me when I had asked her about the gh
ost, going on and on about roses. And Cheryl had said the same thing, back in that first interview. But they were both wrong. I was willing to bet that what the ghost was talking about was Rosa.
I reviewed my options. There were some ideas I wanted to follow up at the archive now—ideas about plastic bags and flat roofs. And Rosa was suddenly looking like someone I needed to talk to urgently the next time I caught her without a kitchen implement in her hand. But the immediate priority was Nicky’s notes—and if I took them back to the Bonnington, I was risking a run-in with Alice.
So I took them down into the Underground instead. Not as good as Bunhill Fields, but it was a lot closer, and it did the same trick, to some extent. Fast-moving vehicles act as a kind of block or damper on my psychic antennae—so in spite of the engine noise, the vibration and the rocking, the nonexistent air-conditioning, the smell of used food and the proximity of other people’s armpits, for me the place has a haze of contemplative calm hanging over it like an angel’s protective wing. I often ride the Circle Line when I need to think long and deep.
Uncomfortably ensconced in a seat that had had one of its plastic arms ripped out at the root, and therefore sharing rather too deeply in the personal space of a burly guy in a Scissor Sisters T-shirt who smelled strongly of acetone, I took the notes out of my pocket and looked them over. There was a lot more there than I’d thought at first—about ten sheets of deceptively thin onionskin printout paper, all full of dense, unformatted type with the occasional “your guess is as good as mine” percentage sign. God alone knew where Nicky had dug this stuff up.
They were database entries for suspicious deaths, and they were made slightly impenetrable by the fact that the fields were all run together without headings or even spaces. The first entry began:
MARYPAULINEGLEESON2BROWNBLUE5BLUNTINSTRUMENTTRAUMAIMPACTED12NOTDETERMINED7SKULLCLAVICLELEFTHUMERUSPAVEMENTOUTSIDEOLDBARRELHEADPUBLICHOUSEYESWITNESSACCOUNT2253YES12MINMULTIPLESEEATTACHED1ST2ND3RD4TH5TH6TH7THSEEATTACHED8TH9TH10THSEEATTACHED11TH12THABRADEDCLEARABRADED
It went on for a long while in this grim, deadpan tone. Then there was a second name, KATHERINE LYLE, followed by another cascade of words and numbers. It occurred to me as I scanned it that I should probably make a point of never handling the original document; the black emotions locked up in it would probably clothesline me straight out.
In some ways the printout was completely impenetrable; in others, it told a lot of depressing variations on a bleak and familiar story. Mindful of my limitations, Nicky had included on some of the later sheets material of a different kind—downloads from news-agency summaries or other less telegraphically terse sources. With the help of these crib notes, I was able to work my way through the main list a lot more quickly.
It was mostly a case of weeding out the ones that were impossible, and after that, the ones that were possible but didn’t feel right. Straightforward accidents with lots of witnesses; domestic manslaughters where the victim lived in the area and would have far stronger links to her own home than to the Bonnington, which after all was only a refrigerated warehouse full of moldering paper; heart attacks and strokes and all the banal tragedies of human existence that normally let you slip into the afterlife without raising too much of a splash.
I got it down to a short list of three, but I realized that I’d need a bit more information to tell me which if any of the three was actually the archive ghost. And at that point, an inspiration equivalent in weight and momentum to a half brick neatly aimed hit me smartly at the base of the brain.
I had a contact, one I could bring in on this. He wouldn’t like it a whole lot, but that which doesn’t kill us makes us strong.
I looked up at the electronic display strip on the wall of the carriage: THE NEXT STATION IS MOORGATE, it read. The train had almost finished its circuit of the Circle Line. After Moorgate came the Barbican and then Farringdon, from where it was an easy step to Damjohn’s club. Two stops after that and I’d be back in Euston Square, at the archive. But Alice was gunning for me at the archive—according to Rich, anyway. And I didn’t really have anything I could usefully do there until Nicky finished interrogating the laptop and got back to me.
So Kissing the Pink was where I went first. The idea in my head was that I’d make my peace with Rosa and find out how she was connected to the archive ghost. I was pretty vague on details after that, but I hoped that something would present itself.
As I was walking there, I took out my mobile phone, which for once I’d remembered to recharge, and placed a call to a Hampstead number. I got through on the first try. James Dodson wasn’t happy to hear from me again, and when he heard that I wanted to come over and visit, it pretty near spoiled his day. I had to insist. Things might have got ugly if we’d been talking face to face. But that was a treat I still had to look forward to.
There was no sign of Rosa in the downstairs area of the club, and my courage failed me at the thought of questioning the whores upstairs. I did ask one of the waitresses, though. Yes, Rosa had been around earlier in the day, but her shift was finished now. She might possibly come in again tomorrow; she usually did on a Friday. I bought myself an overpriced gin and tonic and drank it slowly in the club area downstairs, staring glumly at a parade of beautiful, naked, emphatically alive women who somehow seemed a lot less real and tangible to me right then than a single dead one.
There was a small, decorous commotion over to my right as two men were settled at one of the tables by a very deferential waitress. I squinted into the half dark and without any surprise at all identified the pair of them by their build: the squat, hairy-browed Damjohn and the tall, patrician Gabe McClennan.
They were oblivious to the room, continuing some intense conversation that had already been under way when they sat down. Intense on Gabe’s part, anyway—he was talking with his hands as much as with his mouth, and his face was working with anger and frustration. Damjohn responded with imperturbable calm, or perhaps with the very mildest irritation.
I’d already made up my mind that I’d bail out if Damjohn showed up; there wasn’t anything to be gained by letting him know that I was looking for Rosa, and it might even get her into trouble. But somehow retreat seemed like a very unpalatable option right then—and sometimes whacking the nest with a stick is the best way of finding out what kind of insect you’re dealing with—the downside being that sometimes you get stung.
So without consciously thinking about it or making anything that would count as a decision, I found myself crossing the room, putting my half-finished drink down on their table, and pulling out a chair in between the two of them.
“Afternoon, gents,” I said. “Mind if I join you?”
Gabe stared at me as if he’d just bitten into an apple and found me squirming around inside it. Damjohn’s expression was impassive for the space of about two seconds and then broke into a smile that you couldn’t have told from the real thing with aqua regia.
“Mr. Castor,” he said. “Of course not. Please, sit.” He gestured expansively, and I dumped myself down with an exaggerated sigh of satisfaction. McClennan looked like he was going to choke.
“How’s business, Gabe?” I asked, flashing him a smile.
“You stole from me, you little fuck!” His voice was a low, venomous snarl. “You came into my office with your bullshit story and then you—” Damjohn stopped him dead with a raised hand—a neat trick that I almost felt like applauding.
“We were just talking about you,” he clarified blandly, turning to me.
I bowed my head coquettishly. “Only good things, I hope.”
“A mixture of good and bad. But then, I wouldn’t expect a man in your profession to be an angel. I have, I must tell you, been surprised by your—resilience. Your unimpressive frame and build belie you, Mr. Castor. They give a false impression of vulnerability.”
“I’m a weed,” I said amiably. “The more poison you put down, the more I spring up again.”
“Yeah? Well, I’ll fucking poi
son—”
“McClennan,” Damjohn said, “if you speak again, I’ll become aggravated with you. Do you really want that to happen?”
Gabe left that question hanging, and Damjohn went on as if he hadn’t been interrupted by either of us. “In point of fact,” he mused, giving me a thoughtful stare, “I believe you may have the right skills and the right temperament to fit in well in one of my little enterprises.”
“You’re offering me a job?” I had to ask, because I didn’t believe what I was hearing. Bribery was the last thing I’d been expecting.
“These things are never offered unless they’ve already been accepted, Mr. Castor. I’m sure you understand. Are you looking for a permanent position?”
Gabe was going a very scary color, fetchingly set off by his snow-white hair. It looked as though the effort of not speaking was going to cost him a major blood vessel.
“You’ve already got an exorcist,” I pointed out with a nod in his direction.
“My table is long and wide. It’s all a question of what good things you bring to it.”
“And that’s where I stick,” I said. “I mean, all I can do are the basics. I can’t raise demons, for example.”
“No.” Damjohn’s eyes flicked over to Gabe for the merest instant. “But for dangerous and marginal activities of that nature, one uses the reckless and the stupid. For you I’d have other tasks.”
I shook my head, not in refusal but in lingering disbelief. This was surreal. Damjohn was between me and the stage; from where I was sitting, a hugely pneumatic redhead was spreading her legs right behind his head, giving him a most unusual—but somehow appropriate—halo. “How much would you be looking to pay?” I asked, just for something to say.
“As a starting salary? Let’s say two thousand pounds a month. With a lump sum to cover moving expenses and any possible friction on the more tender areas of your conscience. And it goes without saying, but I will say it anyway, that any of my girls would be delighted to receive a visit from you at any time. More than delighted—because you’d be coming to them as my personal friend and associate. If you have any unusual needs of a sexual kind, they would be well catered for.”