Vicious Circle Page 16

  I’d rather have had the dagger, to be honest—but the chalice was made of silver, too, and the base had a sharp rim. I drove it into the guy’s cheekbone hard enough to draw blood, because that was the whole point. Seeing that white metal gleam in my hand, the other were-man took a hasty step back and brought up his hands to protect his face and chest even before he saw what it was he was protecting them from.

  Loup-garous don’t like silver: it’s some kind of an allergic reaction that comes with the package—with being a pirate soul and flying the colors of someone else’s flesh. Po shrieked in agony the instant his spilled blood made contact with the virgin metal, and as he slapped both his hands to his face he let me drop.

  I ducked out from under his outstretched arms, and as I came up I landed an almighty punch on the point of Zucker’s jaw. Not the punch I would have chosen—you can break your wrist on a jawbone very easily, and nine times out of ten a jab to the stomach will give you a better return—but it made the most of the angle and the fact that I was already moving. The knife fell out of his hands as he staggered backward, and I snatched it up on the fly. Luckily enough, I caught it by the hilt: if I’d closed my fist around the blade I’d have left behind a few fingers.

  Then I was off and running, Po’s outraged bellowing fading at my back. I was heading for the open gate I’d come in through, but once I rounded the folly and put it between me and the two loup-garous, I swerved off the path into the undergrowth, uttering a fervent prayer to the God I don’t believe in that I didn’t trip over a root or a pothole in the dark.

  The fence loomed ahead of me. I threw the knife over, planted my hands on top of the fence, in between the decorative flat-metal spearheads, and vaulted up. More by luck than judgment, I was able to get one foot up on the top of the fence, and then the other.

  While I balanced there, indecisive, looking for a way to shinny over without impaling myself on the spikes, something thumped into my left shoulder, hard and cold. That settled the matter: I lost my balance and went sprawling down into the street, my coat catching long enough to jerk me sideways before it tore and dumped me onto the ground on my face.

  Pain was spreading out from my shoulder in hot filaments, but my arm still seemed to work so I had to ignore it for now. I scrambled to my feet, snatching up the knife again, and glanced around. This was the next hurdle: I didn’t have a bloody clue where I was in relation to the car. I took a look behind me and wished I hadn’t. The two dark figures on the other side of the fence were loping through the undergrowth on all fours, covering the distance at twice my speed. One of them—Po, I assumed, since he was about the size of a rhino—tensed for the jump, and I knew damn well he’d clear the fence like a Grand National winner.

  I ran without thinking, got my bearings as I was running and realized that the car was up ahead of me, maybe fifty yards or so, and on this side of the street. There was a sound at my back of something touching down heavily, and nails or claws or something of that general nature scraped on the wet pavement as Po checked his fall and took off after me.

  I fished in my pocket for the car keys, pressed and pressed and pressed the stud on the key ring until a cheerful bingly-beep sound from up ahead told me that the car had unlocked itself. At the same time, the sidelights flashed three times: a feature that I’d never even noticed until my life depended on it.

  I got the door open and crammed myself inside, pulling it closed behind me. Something slammed against the door at the same time as I palmed the other button on the right of the key fob, locking it again: it didn’t give. The knife, which I’d forgotten I was holding, clattered onto the floor of the car. I left it there; trying to fight my way out of this was going to get me killed in very short order.

  Shaking like a bead of sweat in a belly-dancer’s cleavage, I somehow managed to get the key into the ignition, but then I slammed it into gear as I was turning it and stalled dead. Something smashed hard into the driver side window and it starred right across. Involuntarily, I turned my head to look.

  It was Po. At least, that was my best guess. Right now it was something out of nightmare, crawling flesh half-congealed into a shape midway between human and something vaguely feline. I was judging mainly by the teeth, you understand, because for some reason it was to the gaping mouth that my eyes were drawn.

  The car started up just as the thing outside drew back its clawed fist for a second blow that would probably have punched through the glass and ended up embedded in my face. The car leaped away, clipping the back bumper of the BMW in front with a sickening crunch before lurching out across the full width of the road. I plowed into the pavement, but fortunately missed the wall of the Bank of Scotland by the width of a nun’s chuff. Po was bounding across the street behind me, but I floored the gas and left him standing.

  Thank you, nonexistent God. One I owe you.

  Seven

  IN PEN’S BATHROOM MIRROR, GLIMPSED OUT OF THE CORner of my eye because I was having to twist my head around to an angle that would have challenged Linda Blair, the ragged gash in my left shoulder looked really ugly.

  “What in the name of God have you been doing to yourself,” Pen asked, with a certain degree of awe.

  “I had some help,” I muttered, teeth gritted. Pain always makes me irritable: I’m sure as shit not the stuff that martyrs are made out of.

  My arm had started to stiffen up as I was driving, with occasional lightning strikes of pain shooting from shoulder to fingertips. After a while, I was driving just with my right hand and only using my left—when I couldn’t avoid it—to change gear. And getting my coat off, when I’d finally managed to park the car, find my door keys in the wrong pocket, and let myself in, had been a whole heap of fun. Luckily Pen had turned out to be home, since Dylan was on another late shift. With her help, I was able to peel the coat away from the wound, yelping in anguish as it opened again. My shirt we just cut away and dumped in the waste bin: even Persil wasn’t going to bring it up white again. Then I sat on the edge of the bath, a large whisky clutched tightly in my hand, occasionally biting back colorful expletives as Pen cleaned out the edges of the cut.

  Now, examining the results in all their reflected glory, I had to admit that the wound was impressive, in a grim and grisly way. It was a broad slash about three inches long on the very top of my shoulder, exactly midway between arm and throat. Small streamers of ribboned flesh hung down on either side of it, testifying to a serrated blade or a shape that had a lot of separate points and edges to it. A throwing star, maybe, although those two loup-garous hadn’t exactly struck me as being the ninja type. That involves stealth, just to go for the obvious point.

  On the whole, though, this didn’t look too bad. The fact that it was a ragged cut meant it would knit together that much quicker, and Pen had done a thorough job of cleaning it out. All it needed now was a dressing strip and the home team was back in the game.

  Pen wasn’t quite so convinced. “You should let Dylan look at it,” she said. “If this festers, Fix, it’ll be bad news.”

  “It wasn’t exactly ‘Your annuity matures’ to start with,” I grumbled back gracelessly. Then, remembering my manners, “Thanks for patching me up. But let’s not bring Dylan into this. He might draw the wrong kind of conclusion about the circles you move in.”

  “Was it this that cut you?” Pen asked, holding up the knife. I’d put it down on the side of the bath earlier, well out of the way. I really didn’t like to see it in her hands: that edge was just too damn perfect, and Pen was too emphatic with her gestures when she got worked up. I took it from her, quickly but gently.

  “No,” I said. “This would have made a clean cut. A really clean cut. Have you seen the edge on it?” I turned the blade edge-on to her so she could see it in all its scary beauty. That meant I was looking at the flat of the blade, and I noticed now that it had a floral motif on it: leaves in pairs, etched directly into the steel, ran from the hilt to within an inch of the point.

  Pen gave the knife an ill-favored look as I put it down again on the sink to
p. Then I had a better idea: I took a used toilet roll tube that looked to be about the right width and slid the knife inside it. The broad tang stretched the cylinder enough to hold the blade rigidly in place. I was a lot less likely to lose a finger on it now.

  “I hate it when this stuff happens,” Pen muttered, dropping blood-encrusted swabs of cotton wool into the waste bin. “Why do you take jobs that get you beaten up and cut open and thrown off roofs and all that macho rubbish? Aren’t there enough of the other kind?”

  “The other kind?”

  “You know what I mean. ‘Get that bogey man out of my closet. Bring Granny back so she can tell us where she put the rent book. Tell my Sidney I’ve remarried and there’s no room in my bed for him anymore.’ ”

  She turned her back on me to wash her hands. It looked unnervingly symbolic.

  “I can’t always tell which kind of job is which,” I said, defensively. “I don’t get any special kind of pleasure out of this stuff.”

  “No,” she agreed glumly. “I suppose not.”

  “How’s Rafi?” I asked, to change the subject.

  “Still asleep.” She turned to face me again, wet arms folded, face set. “I’m serious, Fix. You should just walk out of this one while walking is still an option.”

  This was a disturbing development: normally when I bring up Rafi it derails the conversation at least long enough for me to get to the door. Obviously we were starting to know each other too well.

  “The problem is, Pen, I’m working on a lot of different things right now. I can’t walk out on all of them.” It was the plain truth for once: I really didn’t know which job Puss and Boots had been sent to frighten me away from. The answer could be right there in what they’d said to me, but I was buggered if I could dig it out. “Someone didn’t close the circle, and a little bird flew the nest.” That didn’t sound like Coldwood’s drug barons. It might refer to the thing in the church, but there was nothing birdlike—or little, for that matter—in the presence I’d sensed there. Abigail Torrington? Maybe. But she hadn’t flown anywhere: she’d been flat-out stolen.

  What it came down to was that I didn’t have enough information just then even to guess who wanted shot of me, still less why. But it didn’t matter in any case, because the part of me that’s stubborn and intractable and bloody-minded—which is not a small part, by any means—was determined to stay with this until I knew what it was about. Pen read that conclusion in my face and shrugged, giving it up in disgust.

  “Just remember I told you so,” she said. “So I don’t have to say it later on when something ten times worse happens to you.”

  “I’ll sleep on it,” I said. Then I gave her a hug and retreated to my room at the top of the house, which normally gives me a bit more perspective on the world.

  Tonight I was too bone weary to think. But before I surrendered to gravity and sleep, I called Nicky. He didn’t sound very happy to hear from me.

  “Christ, Castor. What is it, three hours? Even Buddy Bolden doesn’t give you the right to ask for fucking miracles.”

  “I’m not looking for a progress report, Nicky. I was just wondering if you happen to know where the Collective is moored right now.”

  “Thamesmead,” he said, without a pause. “Thamesmead West. Pier Seventeen, just down from the Artillery Museum.” Yeah, that would be the sort of information a paranoid zombie would have at his well-preserved fingertips.

  “Who’s on board?”

  “No, Who’s on first.”

  “Ha ha ha.”

  “I’m not the society pages, Castor. Last I heard, Reggie Tang was over there. Couple of guys from South London I don’t know from fucking Adam. It’s nine-tenths empty, like always.”

  “Thanks, Nicky.”

  “Yeah, you’re very welcome. We live to serve. Since you’re here, though, there are a couple of things I can tell you about your man Peace.”

  I pricked up my ears. “Go on.”

  “When I’m trying to get a handle on someone I don’t know, I go on the principle of cherchez le dirt. In Peace’s case, I’m telling you, you could open up a pig farm.”

  “Go on.”

  “Well, just for starters, he’s done time.”

  “Oh yeah?” I was a little disappointed, but it was something. At least it was something if it was recent: ex-cons have got their own networks in the real world, and you can crash them sometimes if you know where to start from. “So how long was he pleasuring Her Majesty for, then?”

  “Uh-uh. Wrong time. Or rather, wrong place. This was in Burkina Faso—French West Africa. He got himself hauled in for drugs possession, pissed off the magistrate, and ended up being sent down for two years. Then he managed to grease the right palms, which he could have done for half the price before the conviction, and walked out on a procedural pardon. He was only inside for a week or so.”

  “And this was—?”

  “Nineteen ninety-two. The year that Unforgiven got the Best Picture Oscar—but that son of a bitch Pacino scooped Best Actor, and for what? Scent of a Woman, for Christ’s sake!”

  “Thanks, Nicky.” I cut him off before he could run through the list of top-grossing movies—which would be bound to lead in to some conspiracy theory he was currently shaping. None of this stuff was any good to me: it was all too long ago. Even if Peace had made some good friends in Ouagadougou State Prison, and they’d all moved to London when they’d gotten out, I couldn’t pick up a trail that was well over a decade cold. It was a dead end. “You got anything else?”

  “I’ve got plenty.” Nicky sounded hurt—as though I was impugning the quality of his intel. “The West Africa thing, that’s just the tip of the iceberg. This guy was a real hell-raiser in his youth—into all kinds of shit, invariably up to his eyeballs. Did a stint in the army—royal artillery—then bought himself out about a day or so ahead of a dishonorable discharge and did the usual street shit for a while. Added a few column inches to his charge sheet along the way—breaking and entering, public affray, felonious assault. Sometimes it stuck, sometimes it didn’t.”

  “No more spells in jail, though?”

  “Nope. He moved around too much. Jet-setting lifestyle, you know? The world was his fucking playground. He was in the States for a while and he got mixed up with Anton Fanke’s crowd.”

  “Anton Fanke? Who’s that?”

  “What, you never heard of the Satanist Church of the Americas?” Nicky sounded incredulous.

  “Obviously not,” I said.

  “Fanke’s one of these religious boot boys, like the Bhagwan or Sun Myung Moon. Only his religion happens to be devil worship. You know the type—gets a million grunts to sell flowers at major airports so he can run a fleet of limos and live in a mansion in upstate New York.”

  “Got it. So Peace is a satanist?”

  “Dunno. Maybe. I’m just saying his name was linked with Fanke’s. There was some court case they were both involved in, way back. I haven’t managed to shag the details yet.”

  It was a disturbing thought. If the Torringtons were right, Peace was mainly concerned with using Abbie’s ghost as leverage to restart a dead relationship. But if he was into necromancy, all bets were off.

  “Thanks, Nicky,” I said. “Keep up the good work.”

  “Yeah, well, you bought a lot of goodwill. Makes a change.”

  He hung up.

  I really didn’t want to think right then about the implications of what he’d told me, or about the weird, circuitous threats and warnings that the werewolves had been doling out. Truth to tell, this had been about as stressful a Monday as I could remember. I tumbled into bed, already half-unconscious, and slept it all away.

  * * *

  I had some really nasty dreams, involving men who mewed like cats and jumped out at me from a variety of unexpected angles, and a little girl who was walking through a maze of gray stone with church bells ringing up ahead of her. Mercifully, the details didn’t stay with me when I woke up.