For all its healing attributes, the chair itself really isn’t that comfortable. Not enough lumbar support or something. I’d rather sit in a recliner, but no recliner I know is going to knit me back together as quickly. A fella could go mad with all this sitting, Rear Window style. I’m used to being on my feet, out and about: pomping the dead, and stalling Stirrers.
I keep having to remind myself that that is in the past now. The first thing I can do is check on my staff. Make sure I’m not letting them down anymore.
I close my eyes; connect with all my Pomps, the 104 people that I have working around the country. My other Pomps, my Avians—the sparrows, crows and ibis—work as good eyes but they are hard to control and their “process” in stalling a stir involves a considerable amount of pecking. I find directing them gives me a migraine which makes practice somewhat unappealing. Generally they’re left pomping the spirits of animals, those big-brained enough to cage a soul.
The window’s already repaired, and the floor has digested the broken glass. I wonder what else it might just eat. The building is self-healing; the glass had apparently grown back within a few minutes of me blacking out. Looking at it, the glass appears thicker—dark filaments line it, some sort of reinforcement, I guess. Number Four has grown paranoid.
A familiar face pokes around the door wearing a big grin that fails to obscure the concern behind his eyes.
“Don’t people knock anymore?”
“What a mess,” Alex says.
“No, this is what my office usually looks like bar the blood and paper.” I glance around; the glass has already gone. “In fact it looks a little neater than usual.”
Alex is dressed in his uniform. He is a Black Sheep but, unlike Tim, I couldn’t lure him back into the fold. He lost family like the rest of us in the Schism. His father Don saved my life and Alex kept up the tradition. He got me out of town when the worst of the Schism was going down. He saved me later, too, when I came back from Hell, thinking I had failed in my Orpheus Maneuver, and lost Lissa. Without his help, Australia really would have sunk into a Regional Apocalypse. I feel a bit guilty that I haven’t been keeping in touch with him nearly enough. But seeing him always reminds me of Don, and my parents, and Don’s girlfriend Sam. I can’t help wondering what he thinks when he sees me. He’s my link into the Queensland Police Force. I trust him almost as much as I trust Tim.
“So this is the first time this has happened?” he asks.
“Well, not exactly.” I glance at Alex, we’ve been through a few bad times together. He knows that I’ve been shot at before. “Not since October, and the Schism.”
“Two months.” He shakes his head.
“Yeah, no wonder I was getting used to not being shot at.”
“You’re understandably shaky.”
“No, I’m pissed off. It happens whenever people start shooting at me. Bloody hell, Alex, don’t pull this shit on me. I don’t need you telling me I’m all right feeling nervous. I need to know what’s going on.”
Alex sits down. “I’m more worried about this than you could believe. People shooting at you tends to lead to scary places.” Right now, the way Alex grits his jaw brings Don back to me. I miss the old bugger. I miss them all. “You’ve an alarming tendency to draw trouble to you, Steven.”
“I’m trying not to make it a habit.”
“Yeah, I know. I want to help you with this but I’ve been told explicitly that this isn’t my area. They’ve got someone else in mind. The moment Tim called for help—”
“What? Tim called who?” He was only supposed to call Doug. I guess he’s just used to thinking for me.
“Me, but once he did, I had to alert my bosses. Major incidents are flagged, and someone trying to kill the current RM is a major incident, now.” Alex sighed. “I know you like to sort out your disputes inhouse. But after Morrigan … Well, you know, the rules have changed.”
“So who are they sending in?”
“A new group, federal not state. Still police, though. I hadn’t heard about them until about an hour before I came over here.” Alex scowls. “They’re called Closers. Seem to know an awful lot about you.”
So, another government department. I’ll get Tim to do some digging.
There’s always someone poking around here. Unofficially, of course, because the work we do at Mortmax can’t be official. Unofficially we could tell them to piss off, but unofficially they could cause a lot of trouble for us.
“I hate this,” I say. “Bloody governments.”
“They’re not too fond of Mortmax, either. Look, the paint hasn’t even dried on this department yet. None of them will have much experience in dealing with the things that are dumped on their desks.”
“So why aren’t people like you involved?”
“Why do you think?”
“You’re regarded as compromised? Guilt by association.” I frown. “Don’t they trust you at work anymore, Alex?”
Alex scowls. “If you were doing your—”
“What? If we were doing our jobs properly? Is that what you’re saying?” I look at my ruined office, the blood, the paper blown everywhere. He kind of has a point. “I’m not here to bend over for every government department.”
Alex grins. “Not every department, mate. Just one from now on.” His face grows more serious. “Steven, be careful. People aren’t over the moon with what’s happening here. I’ve been hearing things.”
“You can’t be serious. Morrigan was responsible for all of it.” I fix him with as severe a stare as I can manage. “What sort of things?”
“Nothing specific. Just that no one was happy to have a Regional Apocalypse at their doorstep. They’re blaming you.”
“I had nothing to do with it.” I straighten in my throne, slam my foot down on the floor and remember why I’m sitting here in the first place. Fuck, that hurts.
“Doesn’t matter, Mortmax did, and you’re running the Australian branch. You’re responsible as far as people are concerned. And they don’t think you’re doing such a great job.”
“If they want to have a go at running death, let them.” My bluster is just that, though, and Alex knows it.
“Perhaps you shouldn’t be so bloody glib, mate.”
“Yeah, well, I’ve got eight stitches in my foot, and a bit of my ear is missing. Inappropriate glibness is all I have.” We glare at each other.
There’s a knock on the door.
A man peers through at Alex and me. An Akubra hat obscures his features. Most people can’t pull that look off, but he manages it, somehow. It’s the broad shoulders, the skin just on the flesh side of leather. He doffs the wide-brimmed hat, scratches his head. The hair beneath is clipped to within a breath of shaved; a band of sweat rings it. Dark eyes peer at me through thickish metal-rimmed glasses. I can’t tell what he’s thinking, but his heart beats slow and steady.
“Can I join the party?” he asks, and smiles warmly.
Alex glances at me, gives me a we’ll-talk-later kind of face.
“Yeah, absolutely,” I say. “There’s room for everyone. Once I know just who they are.”
“Of course, of course. I thought you knew I was coming. Detective Magritte Solstice,” he says. “I’ll be running this investigation.” He shakes my hand. It’s one of those firm but slightly threatening grips that suggests a lot more strength could be applied—if needed.
“Can’t say I’m pleased to meet you.”
Solstice’s laugh is warm and deep. “No one ever is under these situations.” He looks over at Alex. “That’s all for now, Sergeant.”
“Yes, Sergeant,” I say. “It’s time for the grown-ups to talk.”
Alex nods, gives me a little (and very ironic) salute and gets out of there.
Solstice shuts the door behind him. The smile slips a little. “Now, to get the shit out of the way before it stinks up the room, if you have any problems you call me. I know he’s your friend, but this isn’t Alex’s specialty.” Solstice han
ds me a card with his name and number on it, and a symbol of three dots making an equilateral triangle. It reminds me of the brace symbol we use to block Stirrers. “My group runs these investigations.”
“You’re the Closers?”
Solstice blinks at that. I’m happy to wrong-foot him a little. “Yeah, it’s our job to close doors that shouldn’t have been opened in the first place.”
“A bit poetic, isn’t it?”
Solstice grimaces. “I didn’t come up with the name. Our job is to work with organizations like yours, off the public record, of course.”
“Well, off the record, what do you really think you’re doing?”
“Fixing your fuck-ups.”
“That’s good to know,” I say. “Puts everything into context.”
“All right. So where did it happen? Scene of the crime and all that.”
“You’re looking at it,” I say, waving at the room. Solstice lifts an eyebrow.
“I’m sorry, but the window’s self-healing. The body’s missing, too. It went back to wherever it came from. It was a professional hit, but it didn’t work out too well for the professionals.”
“At least no one was hurt.”
“Much,” I say.
He looks at me.
“No one was hurt much,” I say.
“What’s wrong with you?” Solstice asks. “You look fine to me.”
“Yeah, now I do.”
“Stop your complaining.”
I frown at him.
“Oh, sorry. Stop your complaining, sir.” Solstice walks around my desk and stares at “The Triumph of Death.” It was Mr. D’s particular obsession: death at war with life, a vast wave of skeletons breaking over the world. Mr. D said he found it soothing. I don’t know about that, but it is something. “Isn’t this a bit much?”
“Look, I didn’t buy it.” (Actually, I don’t think Mr. D bought it, either.) “But you have to admit it’s funny in this context.”
Solstice peers at all the mayhem on the panel. “If you say so.” He walks to the window and pushes his face against the glass. “So the body fell…? Where am I looking?”
“That’s Hell,” I say, pouring myself a glass of rum. “You’re looking into Hell.”
Solstice blinks. “Remarkable. It’s not exactly what I was expecting.”
“It never is.” I offer him a drink.
He shakes his head. “On duty, and all that.” He goes back to peering out the window.
He jabs a thumb down. “So the body struck the ground and it disappeared?”
“Yeah, someone cut the rope a few moments after I’d knocked him out.”
Solstice looks at me. “You knocked him out?”
“I got lucky.”
“Very lucky.” He scrawls something in his notebook. “So someone cut the rope. Are you sure you weren’t that someone?”
“Very sure. I wanted to know what he was doing. Why he was there, and how.”
“Couldn’t you have just asked his ghost? Maybe killing him was an easier, safer way of getting the information you required.”
I shook my head. “It doesn’t work like that, not as neatly anyway. I pomped the soul, and the body returned to wherever it was when it entered Hell.”
“You didn’t think to ask the spirit any questions?”
“Oh, I tried, but with a death that violent, the soul just usually blazes through. I didn’t get much more than rage and anger at being betrayed, I guess, and then I was losing consciousness myself.”
I hobble over to the window beside Solstice. Stare down. “What I want to know is how a living person ended up out there.”
“Is it really that odd? I mean, I’m here right now, aren’t I?”
“It’s remarkable, all right,” I say. “In here you’re not really in Hell, just a point that juts into Hell, and even that involves quite a bit of power. Two worlds are mixing here, and it’s not a very good mix. A lot of people have trouble with this room; they get all sorts of migraines, dizzy spells. It’s why we do our job interviews here. If you can’t cope with the energies in this room, you really shouldn’t become a Pomp. You’re handling it very well, Detective.”
Solstice rubs the bridge of his nose. “Hm. I do have a bit of a headache, but that could be just the condition I suffer from.”
“What’s that?”
“Hypochondria.”
Yeah, funny guy. I point down at the footpath. “Down there. To get down there with the possibility of returning involves serious pain. The Underworld doesn’t like life, just afterlife. Its barriers are permeable, but not without incredible effort, arcane knowledge, and a lot of blood.”
“Blood?”
“Yeah, you need to die and not die. It’s about as easy as it sounds, believe me.”
Solstice’s pen gets to work again in his notebook. He has a swift, neat writing style—a dot-the-“i”s-cross-the-“t”s sort of thing. “Well, he didn’t stay living for long.” Solstice scratches the bridge of his nose. “But then that seems to be something that happens to people who spend any time with you, doesn’t it?”
“What are you implying?”
Solstice grins. “Nothing at all.”
“I honestly don’t know how you’re going to uncover anything,” I say. “There’s no body that we could find. Who knows where it is? Number Four is healing itself, and we’ve never used closed circuit TV here.”
“You leave that to me,” Solstice says. “There’s a body somewhere. And there will be a gun.”
“I don’t know about that—oh, sorry, Detective, just a condition I suffer from.”
“Yeah, and that is?” he asks.
“Pessimism.”
“I like you already,” Solstice says, patting me on the back. His rolled-up shirt sleeve slips back to reveal a rather large tattoo.
I get a good look at it before Solstice pulls down his sleeve in what must be an automatic gesture. I’m not sure how they regard tatts in the force.
“You’d make a good Pomp,” I say, nodding at his arm.
“What? Oh, yeah.” Seeing no point in hiding it, he grins a little crookedly and pulls up his sleeve to reveal more. A dragon extends all the way along his forearm, the tail disappearing under the fabric. Its scales are a luminous green, narrow red eyes stare at me, and a tiny puff of smoke curls from its nostrils.
“Nice work isn’t it?” Solstice says. “Guy who did it won a lot of awards.”
“Yeah. Your own design?”
Solstice dips his head. “A little bit Tolkien, a little bit Chinese. I call it Smauget.”
I’m not about to compare tatts. Wal isn’t quite as fierce, and his creation was less considered, more alcohol-fueled.
Solstice peers at his phone. “No bloody signal.”
Closers certainly don’t have access to a phone network as good as ours.
Solstice reaches over to the black phone in the middle of my messy desk. “Mind if I make a call?”
“Not with that, you won’t.” I lift up the tattered end of the phone cord, bits of rusty wire jutting out.
“What is it then, a paperweight?”
“Internal line,” I say with a lame grin. I’m not about to tell him it’s a direct line to my old boss, Mr. D. The fewer people who know, or even suspect, that he’s still about, the better.
Solstice nods his head and glances at his watch. “I’m going to have to leave. Believe it or not we have more than one case.”
“You Closers,” I say, “you’re a big department?”
“Big enough.”
“Why haven’t I heard of you until today?”
“You’ve never needed to.” He glances at his card on my desk. “You call me if anything happens.”
“I will.”
He slips on his Akubra. “And try not to give us any more work.”
10
Tim and I meet at a park in the leafy suburb of Paddington, near enough to some decent pubs if we feel so inclined. It’s a meeting place that we use
if we want a little privacy. And I’m not sure whom I can trust in the office right now; most of my staff are brand new. But last time we met here I was on the run for my life and Lissa was dead, so things could be much worse. Silver lining, right?
After two months of me being ignored, the afternoon had seen a flood of RM visitors. I’m not sure if it was because I’ve finally peformed the Convergence Ceremony, or that I was shot at by an unknown assassin, but they certainly didn’t talk much about the latter.
China’s RM, Li An, was the first to visit. He surprised me; just sat down across from me and didn’t say a word. His eyes fixed on me.
I didn’t know what to say, I just stared right back. Finally, after twenty minutes, his lips just hinting at a smile, Li An nodded his head and stood. I shook his hand. It was dry, and just a little cold.
“I think she made the right choice. It was a pleasure getting to know you, Mr. de Selby,” he said. Then he shifted out before I could ask him what he was talking about.
East Europe’s RM, Madeleine Danning, came and gave me a pot of daisies. “They’ll look good in the corner, over there. But you mustn’t forget to water them. I always thought they’d cheer this place up.”
England’s RM, Anna Kranski, wanted to talk early Hitchcock films, and was mortified that I hadn’t watched The 39 Steps.
No one suggested any deals. Not Kiri Baker from New Zealand. Not Devesh Singh from India. No one made any offers. I didn’t know how to take it. This was the Orcus. These were the Deaths of the world, and I was treated with nothing but the utmost politeness.
Those who did talk were anxious about the Death Moot. Had the Caterers hinted at what they were doing this time? Was the bridge prepared? Which bridge was it exactly?
The fact that it was a footbridge seemed to impress Japan’s RM, Tae Sato. “A good omen,” he said. “You’ll find it to be a good omen.”
Charlie Top, Middle Africa’s RM, was also pleased.
All this RM happiness. And there I was with that image in my head of them at the Negotiation: the hungry gleam, bordering on naked bloodlust, in their eyes.
The Business Of Death, Death Works Trilogy Page 33