The Naming of the Beasts Read online

  ‘You’ll be fine as soon as the anaesthetic wears off,’ I promised - a guarantee with nothing to back it except my overdrawn account at the bank of optimism. I only said it to offer her a crumb of comfort, and I could see from her face that she took no comfort from it at all.

  ‘What happened at Super-Self?’ she asked me.

  By way of answer, I took the music box out of my pocket and held it out to her. She took it in her good hand and stared at it for a few seconds, at first without seeming to realise what it was. Then she got the feel of the thing in her death-sense and swore softly.

  ‘You caught it,’ she said, awed even through the drug haze. ‘In a fucking box.’

  ‘Yeah. I did. I was thinking of tossing it in the Thames, but I may not even have to. Being separated from the Super-Self ghosts seems to have made it switch itself off. There hasn’t been a peep out of it.’

  ‘Throw it away anyway,’ Trudie advised me. ‘You don’t want to be around it when it wakes up.’

  I took it back and returned it to my pocket. ‘What I want even less than that is for Jenna-Jane to get wind of it,’ I said. ‘It’s a neat trick, but for the time being I want it to be our little secret. Deal?’

  Trudie shrugged, and then winced because her wrecked shoulder made shrugging a hazardous proposition. ‘If you say so, Castor,’ she grunted. ‘I suppose I’m lucky you confided in me. You seem to see all other exorcists as the enemy.’

  ‘No,’ I said. ‘It’s just that I don’t see the dead as the enemy. If the MOU find out you can trap ghosts in boxes, that’s going to be a bad day for ghosts.’

  ‘But you’re alive, so what do you care?’

  ‘I’m alive,’ I agreed, ‘but I’m planning to be dead one day. You think I want to spend eternity in an afterlife made out of plywood and screws?’

  ‘Castor, you’re a hopeless case!’ Trudie was getting exasperated, and her raised voice brought the nurse at a run to remove the source of the irritation. ‘You know how many dead people there are to every one living person? And how many people die in any given day? If this does come to a fight, we’re going to need all the help we can get.’

  ‘If it comes to a fight, Trudie, we’ve lost.’

  The nurse manhandled me unceremoniously toward the door.

  ‘You can’t believe that, Castor,’ Trudie implored me, her face twisted in almost visceral dismay. ‘You can’t.’

  ‘It’s just a matter of time,’ I said. ‘Living versus dead? Sooner or later, we all defect to the other side.’

  The door slammed in my face.

  I walked home, just as I had on the night of Ginny Parris’s murder, mulling all this stuff over in my mind. Maybe Trudie was right about me. I did seem to be pretty comfortable in the company of the dead, and the undead, and the never born. Was I a traitor to the living? A fifth columnist in an undeclared war? Could I really be the only one who saw how self-defeating that concept was?

  I was still kicking those thoughts around in my head when I turned into Pen’s road and saw a deeply unwelcome sight. Parked in front of her door, a hundred yards away, was the same black limousine I’d seen outside Super-Self.

  Jenna-Jane had decided not to wait for that early-morning conference call.

  With a sinking heart, I trudged toward that mortal rendezvous. But when I was close enough to see the house itself, that dejection was washed away in an instant by a rush of pure panic.

  The ground-floor window was smashed, and the upright piano that had once belonged to Pen’s grandmother was lying at a crazy angle on the lawn, with a gaping rent in its polished wooden frame and its peg-and-string intestines spilled out onto the grass.

  I ran up the path to the door. Dicks was standing in the hall. He made to block me, which could have had unfortunate consequences for both of us, but as I clenched my fists and lowered my head a voice from inside the house called, ‘Let him come, Dicks!’ He stood aside with bad grace, at the last moment, and glared at me as I passed.

  Jenna-Jane was at the head of the stairs that led down into the basement. She gave me a look of profound commiseration.

  ‘Where are they?’ I demanded, my mouth so dry I could hardly get the words out. ‘Where are they?’

  ‘Felix,’ she said gently, ‘if you’d only listened to me at the outset—’

  Without waiting to hear how that one finished, I ran on down the stairs. Pen’s basement looked as though a pack of hyenas had come through in a steam train, stopped to party a little, and then moved on. Every piece of furniture had been smashed to matchwood. Broken glass crunched underfoot, and the rich, bitter-sweet reek of spilled brandy was everywhere. The computer had been driven into the TV - an ancient behemoth - hard enough to leave the two buckled plastic casings inextricably crushed together, each partially embedded in the other so they looked like lovers in the midst of a French kiss that had got way out of hand.

  Amidst the wreckage of the desk lay something like a shot-silk scarf, its glittering black flecked and crossed with deep red. It was Edgar the raven, twisted and broken and casually thrown aside. There was no sign of Arthur.

  Jenna-Jane’s assistant, Gentle, was rummaging through the debris with an intent frown on her face. ‘The question I’m asking myself,’ she remarked without looking up, ‘is why the wards kept him out for so long.’

  ‘Are you seriously that stupid?’ I spat out, harshly enough to make her look up in surprise. ‘They didn’t. They didn’t keep him out for one blind fucking second.’

  You know why the lion limps?

  So gormless gazelles will think they’re safe, and come on down to the waterhole.

  Then you can pick the luckless little fuckers off whenever you’ve a mind to.

  17

  ‘The names build,’ said Gentle. ‘One syllable at a time.’

  She had rough-and-ready photo printouts of the wards we’d found underground, laid out on the table in front of her. Her hand went from one photo to the next, and she pronounced each name as she pointed to it, slowly, like a primary school teacher mouthing kuh-ah-tuh.

  ‘Ket. Tlallik. Tsukelit. Illaliel. Jetaniul. Aketsulitur. Ajulutsikael.’

  ‘Illaliel and Jetaniul are the same length,’ Jenna-Jane pointed out.

  Gentle shrugged. ‘The same length to us, but if you elide the medial “i” in either word there could be a difference that our ears don’t register.’

  It was an hour and a half later, and we hadn’t moved. Well, that wasn’t strictly true: we’d relocated to the first floor, where there was a room that was still more or less intact. The furniture was under dust covers, the ornaments wrapped in plastic bags hailing from defunct supermarket chains like Gateway and Victor Value. Nobody had set foot in this room since Pen’s mother died.

  My first instinct had been to go back to Asmodeus’ underground lair and storm the place, but Jenna-Jane said her people had it staked out and he hadn’t shown there. There was no way of knowing where he was. We couldn’t even use Trudie’s map. She’d torn it to pieces before she left the MOU, and in any case she was out of action for now, maybe for good.

  So we sat, and we talked, and we went nowhere. Jenna-Jane restated her moult theory, that demons start out as simpler organisms, and change their names as they develop. I didn’t care, and I barely listened. Asmodeus had Pen and Sue, and that was all I could think about. Obviously it would help to understand what the fuck he was up to with Juliet, but I didn’t think insight was going to come from looking at pretty pictures. It was something to do with what Juliet was and what she did - and it had to fit in with all the other shit he’d been doing since he escaped.

  Unless I was wrong. Unless he was just rabid and tearing at the world, and in the end he’d kill us all just for the immediate sense of relief it would bring.

  I got up from the table. ‘I have to make a call,’ I said. Jenna-Jane and Gentle continued to pore over the printouts, and made no answer.

  I crossed to the window, far enough away that I wouldn’t b
e overheard, and dialled Sue Book’s number yet again. Just the same answerphone message, and this time I found I couldn’t muster a reply. How do you say to an answerphone ‘a monster has stolen the woman you love’? I just said ‘Call me, Juliet. Please, for fuck’s sake, just call me.’ Then I hung up.

  I stared down at the lawn. The piano still lay dead in the long grass, and the stolid Mr Dicks still stood by the gatepost, arms folded, glaring at the pre-dawn rubberneckers. He looked up at the window, and when he saw me watching him his eyes narrowed. I had too much on my mind right then even to flash him a wave.

  Behind me, Jenna-Jane was rummaging in her pockets - an incongruously human thing for her to do, making her seem for a moment like a forgetful grandma, looking in vain for her front door keys.

  ‘Is the succubus his ally?’ Gentle was asking. ‘Could summoning all her aspects make her stronger? A sort of ontological layering . . .’

  ‘It was driving her insane,’ I muttered.

  There was a momentary silence from behind me. Then I distinctly heard the dry click of Jenna-Jane’s tongue against her palate, an involuntary but very discreet expression of surprise and enlightenment.

  ‘Not a benign effect at all,’ she mused. ‘A form of torture.’

  ‘Or just an uncontrolled regression,’ Gentle chipped in.

  A sequence of seven tinny and discordant notes sounded suddenly from somewhere nearby. J-J took her phone from her pocket and put it to her ear.

  ‘Mulbridge,’ she said, with a simplicity more arrogant than any degree of ostentation could ever be. Honorifics were for mere mortals.

  She listened intently for a few seconds, then started to interject questions and comments. ‘Where? How far, exactly? Good. Good. What’s the address? Thank you.’

  When she slapped the phone closed, less than a minute had elapsed.

  ‘Your Mr Moulson, Felix,’ she said. ‘The man who was possessed, and allegedly found a way to free himself. We’ve finally run him to ground. Appleton House, Godalming Lane, Eashing, in Surrey. It’s straight down the A3. Only twenty miles, apparently.’

  I headed for the door, but I went from giant strides to dead stop again in the space of three steps.

  ‘Shit!’ I exploded. ‘Pen’s car. He fucking totalled her car!’

  ‘You can take my car,’ Jenna-Jane said without hesitation. ‘Gentle, give Mr Castor your radio. I’ll go and tell Dicks he’s to take you directly there.’

  She hurried out of the room. Gentle took a somewhat bulky walkie-talkie out of her pocket and held it out to me.

  ‘What do I need this for?’ I demanded, nonplussed. ‘I’ve got my mobile.’

  Gentle shrugged. ‘This uses police freaks,’ she said. ‘Some areas you don’t get good coverage from the mobile network. Radios always work - at least top-end kit like this does. You use band one unless there’s local interference, fall back to two, then three, and so on. Soon as the switchboard at the MOU picks you up, you’ll be patched through to Professor Mulbridge wherever she is.’

  ‘Wonderful,’ I muttered. ‘A hotline to God.’ I took the radio and shoved it into my pocket. I went downstairs with Gentle at my back, still explaining the finer points of the radio’s operation, but I couldn’t make myself listen any more. My mind was seething with questions and doubts. Why had Asmodeus taken Pen and Sue, instead of killing them here? How had he taken them, for that matter? In the back of a white van? Rolled up in a carpet? How did kidnapping fit in with the other things he’d done since he got free? Why did he need them alive, when he’d killed Ginny Parris and Jovan Ditko without a second thought?

  Out on the lawn, Jenna-Jane was talking animatedly to Dicks. The big man shot me a glare as I approached, then nodded curtly - to Jenna-Jane, not to me.

  ‘It’s imperative,’ Jenna-Jane said. ‘This is the most important lead we’ve had so far, and we have to be free to pursue it wherever it leads.’ She looked round and seemed to notice me for the first time. ‘Castor. Good. Get into the car.’

  ‘Can’t I just drive myself?’ I asked. The last thing I wanted was a sulky South African security guard on my case all the way from here to Surrey, when I needed to get my thoughts in order and try to figure out a plan of campaign.

  ‘The car cost the hospital forty-eight thousand pounds,’ Jenna-Jane pointed out to me in a schoolmarmish tone. ‘And you’re exhausted, Felix. I simply wouldn’t trust you behind a wheel right now. In any case, you’ll need to be in touch with me at all times.’ She pointed to the radio, which I was still holding in my hand. ‘I’m going to leave Gentle here, in case we’ve missed something in our search. Some clue as to what the demon means to do. Assuming that Miss Bruckner and the other woman have been taken alive, he may have demands. You yourself may figure in his plans in some way that we don’t yet understand. Keep the radio on, and keep thinking about what we now know. About the names, and the summonings. If anything occurs to you - anything we can do that we’re not already doing - call me and I’ll do my best to see that it happens. When you return, come back directly to the MOU. I’ll debrief you there, unless we’ve located Asmodeus and we’re already in pursuit of him. If that happens, I’ll radio you and let you know where to find us.’

  This entire speech was delivered without a pause. When it was over, Jenna-Jane stared at me in a way that said more loudly than words ‘Why are you still standing there?’ It was a good question. I got into the car, and Dicks slammed the door shut behind me with a muttered obscenity. As soon as he’d done so, Jenna-Jane tapped on the window. No manual wind. I opened the door a crack and she held out her hand.

  ‘Your phone,’ she demanded.

  ‘My what?’ I queried, mystified.

  ‘You’ve got Gentle’s radio,’ Jenna-Jane pointed out impatiently. ‘And the land line has been comprehensively destroyed. I can’t have her completely incommunicado. You’ll have to leave her your phone.’

  ‘Give her yours,’ I suggested.

  Jenna-Jane bristled. ‘Castor, we’re in a situation where every second counts. Please don’t waste time arguing with me.’

  I hesitated. I could see the point of the radio. If I found something that could work against Asmodeus without killing Rafi, and if Jenna-Jane’s people caught up with him while I was on the road, I had to get the information back to them immediately. It could be life or death at that point, and anything that could shorten the odds had to be a good idea. Giving up my phone struck me as a really bad idea, but my mind was full of urgency and emotional static. I took it out and tossed it into Jenna-Jane’s hand.

  ‘Stay in touch,’ she instructed me tersely as I shut the door again.

  We headed south, and then west. Dicks drove quickly but with skill and control, taking advantage of the pre-rush-hour quiet to push the pedal wherever there was a clear stretch of road. He didn’t speak, and I had nothing to say to him, so I did as Jenna-Jane had suggested and thought about what Asmodeus had done.

  By summoning Juliet’s cast-off aspects, he seemed to have regressed her to an earlier stage of her own history. Either that or he’d just driven her half-mad by reminding her of her past selves - surrounding her with names she thought she’d sloughed off forever. It was one of those two things or maybe a little of both, the names themselves having power over Juliet, power to define and shape her, or the overlaying of the names tormenting and confusing her, so that the restraints she’d built up around her demonic nature had begun to fall away.

  Was all of this just a more elaborate form of payback? A quick death for Ginny Parris, torture and mutilation for Jovan Ditko, slow disintegration for Juliet. But in that case, why had he been prepared to kill me twice, in Brixton and then again in the Kingsway tunnel? Surely he had to blame me more than he did her for the half-life he’d endured these last few years.

  The rule of names. Something to do with names, and how they worked. Something he knew and I didn’t, and because I hadn’t figured it out in time, he’d taken Pen and Sue.

  The sun cam
e up behind us as we drove, and I had to turn my face away from the rear-view mirror to keep from being blinded. I’d been sunk in thought for twenty minutes or more, and so I hadn’t given much thought to the route until we suddenly slowed down and I recognised the lower reaches of the Edgware Road. The traffic was getting heavier now, but we weren’t in a jam and I couldn’t see any reason for Dicks to hit the brakes.

  Then he pulled into the kerb and came to a stop. Another burly-looking guy in the same black uniform climbed into the front passenger seat beside him. Of course, I thought. We were only a short walk from the MOU here: base camp for Jenna-Jane’s grunts.

  ‘Reinforcements,’ Dicks said. ‘In case we have to insist on seeing this gent of yours.’ The newcomer - whose sewn-on name badge identified him as DeJong - shot me a look, nodded to Dicks, and then we were moving again.

  We picked up speed now, rounding Hyde Park and threading our way through Victoria without hitting any real snarl-ups. Thank you again, Mr Livingstone. We crossed the Thames by Chelsea Bridge and picked up the A3 at Clapham Common. After that, Dicks really put his foot down.

  Eashing is the same kind of mundanely schizophrenic market town you’ll find off any A road in south-east England. It consisted of one quaint little main street with a half-timbered pub, a few old cottages that would look great on a postcard, and an ungainly sprawl of red-brick closes and steel-and-glass low-rises built in the last fifty years to the same rigorous structural and aesthetic standards as your average latrine pit.

  I was sort of assuming that Moulson might have retired to some dignified rustic seat, with a trellised archway over his garden gate, but Appleton House turned out to be an old folks’ home, a cheerless barn built in washed-out yellow brick with a one-storey flat-roofed annexe. Dicks and his friend waited in the car while I walked to the front door and pressed the buzzer.