Paul Johnston - Maps of Hell

“My line? Well, apart from the fact that no one seems to have a clue what’s going on, I reckon that the occult shit is just a distraction from the real deal.”

“Which is?”

“Come on, Matt. It shouldn’t be too hard for a crime novelist like you to spot.”

Joe stared at me. “Yeah. Jesus, Matt, you hadn’t forgotten you were one of those, had you?”

“Em, no…it just hasn’t seemed very important recently.”

“No, I guess it hasn’t. On the other hand, you’ve been right in the middle of a prime example of what I’m talking about.”

“Of a…shit storm?”

Joe grinned. “Well, yeah, that. But what I’m getting at begins with a c and has four syllables.”

I shrugged, being far from in the mood for word games.

“Come on, man,” Joe said, spreading his arms wide. “This is the world capital of-”

“Conspiracies,” I said, in a flash of enlightenment.

“You got it, Matt. And I know just the man to help us nail the fuckers behind this one.”

That made me feel better, but not a whole lot. I had the feeling that time very much wasn’t on my side, or on Karen’s-if she was even still alive.

After I’d eaten and drunk enough to feel human again, we decided to go back to Joe’s place. The fact that we hadn’t seen a tail earlier suggested there probably wasn’t surveillance on him. To be certain, we went the back way into his apartment, climbing over the fences between small yards. Joe said his neighbors used that route all the time for dope deals.

We made a plan for the next day and Joe went to crash, claiming that he’d overdone the beer. I sat at his desk with great heaps of printouts and files all around me, and logged on to the Internet-one of the things that my unpredictable memory seemed to have retained was how to operate a computer. I checked the reports of the D.C. occult killings in the American Press and brought myself up to speed. Then I checked the U.K. papers. I was glad to see that my own rag, the Daily Independent, had been suitably shocked by the disappearance of its crime columnist, though the story had quickly gone cold. There had been a degree of outrage when I became a murder suspect, though it was hard for my colleagues to argue against the fingerprint evidence. No doubt it would have helped if I got in touch with them, but I wasn’t going to do so-at least not yet. Joe and I had agreed it was better that I kept my head down for the time being.

I looked at references to Karen in the Web pages, too. There was much indignation about the disappearance of a senior Metropolitan Police detective, but even that story had lost the news editors’ interest after a couple of weeks. I leaned back in Joe’s oversize chair and looked at the ceiling. It was so cracked that the people upstairs must have been ardent punk fans, though thankfully they weren’t pogoing right now. I was thinking about Karen-the way her face turned from stern to amused to loving in the space of a few seconds; the way that, in the weeks before her disappearance, she had started to rest her hand on her belly… God, how I missed her…

…and I’m in a luxurious hotel suite, watching CNN on a vast plasma TV attached to the wall.

“Matt,” Karen says from the bedroom, “come and see.”

I tear myself away from a story about Mormon marriages and go through, my legs still numb from the transatlantic flight. Karen is in the bathroom. It’s twice the size of mine back in London, and I reckon I have one of the bigger bathrooms in that city. The fittings probably aren’t real solid gold, though I couldn’t be 100 percent sure. And, miracle of miracles, there’s a normal-height bath in an American hotel.

“Neat, eh?” Karen says, laying her toiletries out on the marble runway behind the taps.

“Neat, yeah,” I reply. “Can you leave room for my toothbrush and razor?”

She hits me with her toilet bag and that leads to a tussle, which leads to one of the beds. I am told to be careful. Strangely, that instruction, as well as the emperor-size bed, add a certain frisson to our lovemaking. If I’m not careful, she’ll be wanting to be pregnant on a permanent basis.

“Is he all right?” I ask, resting a hand on her belly.

“Loving it,” she says, her voice deep. “Apparently fetuses are stimulated by their parents doing it.”

I find that vaguely disturbing, but don’t say so. Shortly afterward Karen, being Karen, starts to talk about her big case. To be fair, she has a meeting at the Justice Department tomorrow and she wants to have all the facts straight.

“…nail that bastard Gavin Burdett,” she says, her eyes flashing. “God, he makes me sick.”

I smile at her. “Aren’t police officers supposed to remain impartial and dispassionate?”

I get an elbow in my stomach for that.

“Take my word for it, he’s a complete scumbag.”

I remember the time I tailed Gavin Burdett to the occult supplies store in the East End. I still haven’t told Karen about that, not least because I don’t know what to read into it. Burdett is the kind of highly focused investment pirate who doesn’t waste his time on anything that doesn’t make him money.

“In fact,” Karen continues, in an unusually forthcoming mood, “when he’s in Washington, which he is at least once a month to meet with the thieving money men over here, he stays at a private house in Georgetown, near the university.” She turns to me, an expression of disgust on her face. “Do you know what he does there?”

I’m tempted to reply that he summons up the devil, but hold myself back. “Do tell,” I say sweetly.

“He has whores sent round. According to the FBI, they all look underage…”

“Why haven’t they arrested him, then?”

She looks at me as if I’m an idiot. “Because he’ll get off in half an hour with the lawyers he can afford. Besides, his hide is mine.”

“You’ve been reading my Western phrase book again.” I can no longer resist the urge to needle her. “And just how are you going to get the Justice Department to sign off on that?”

“Simple,” she replies. “I’ll ask them for everything they have on Burdett, and at the same time insist I have a right to arrest a British citizen back home.”

“And you think they’ll buy that?”

Karen gives me her most seductive smile. “Undoubtedly,” she says, getting off the bed. “I’m going for a bath.”

“Mind you don’t drown under the weight of your own…the weight of my son,” I say. When she’s safely ensconced in two feet of warm water, I go over to the expansive dressing table. Typical Karen. Instead of facial unguents and hairstyling equipment, she’s laid out her case files under the mirror. I cast a practiced eye over them and find the one on Gavin Burdett. The thing is, I’m going to have plenty of free time when Karen’s at meetings. I’ve acquired a taste for tailing Gavin Burdett and it would be a challenge to do so in a foreign city. I find the relevant FBI report and note down the address of a house in Georgetown.

Thirty-Two

Joe Greenbaum was sitting on a bench in Rock Creek Park in northwest D.C. I was watching from behind the tree line through a pair of his binoculars, the midmorning air still chilly enough to make my nose twitch. We were about a hundred yards from the nearest road but, given time, it wouldn’t have been hard for the cops to set up an ambush. So Joe had called Detective Simmons only half an hour ago and insisted on meeting immediately. He hadn’t mentioned me.

When a heavily built black man came into sight, I scanned the area behind him, and to his left and right. It was a weekday, so there weren’t many people in the vicinity. A female jogger passed Joe, but she was wearing skintight gear-no place to hide a weapon. Besides, she disappeared round the corner rapidly.