Mike Carey - The Naming of the Beasts

I didn’t answer. For a moment or two I’d forgotten why I’d come, lost in the old man’s crazy, sickening narrative. His words jolted me back to the present with deadening finality. He was right. The trick with the coins was balls-out genius, but it wouldn’t work. It wouldn’t help Rafi. I was still looking for salvation in all the wrong places.

‘Seen enough?’ Moulson demanded. ‘Then turn the light out.’ He pulled his shirt closed a little, pathetically trying to reclaim a little of his dignity.

‘Can I . . . ?’ I asked, awkwardly. ‘Is there anything you need? Anything I can get you?’

He stared at me bleakly. ‘You can get the fuck out, ghost-breaker,’ he said. ‘You and all your friends. That’s what you can do for me.’

The two security men were leaning against the bonnet of the sleek black limo, looking like ugly and unlikely tumours that had grown out of its smooth lines. DeJong levered his arse off the metal and opened the door for me with ironic civility. I got in without looking at him, and he slammed it shut.

We did a tight little U-turn on the drive, rejoined the road and threaded our way back through the village. I thought we’d get back up to cruising speed as soon as we were on the open road, but Dicks held the car to a leisurely thirty-five miles an hour. ‘You want to pick up the pace a little?’ I suggested.

Dicks ignored the suggestion. ‘Learn anything?’ he asked over his shoulder as he drove.

I glanced up. He was staring at me via the medium of the rear-view mirror, his piggy eyes narrowed.

‘I learned it’s a good idea to watch the road,’ I said, deadpan. ‘But that was a while back.’

DeJong chuckled softly, and Dicks scowled. ‘Good idea to watch the road,’ DeJong repeated, savouring the joke a second time. ‘Oh, he got you, Linus. He got you there.’

Linus Dicks? What kind of a name was that to saddle a kid with? No wonder he’d become an over-muscled rent-a-cop; he’d started life with so much to prove.

‘I’m serious,’ Dicks pursued, his voice lowering to a growl. ‘Did you get anything worth having from that old fart? I’m supposed to ask you.’

‘Says who?’ I asked.

‘Says the professor.’

‘Well she told me to tell you to face front and shut up. Let’s wait till we see her, and then she can sort out the mix-up herself.’

The big man looked as though he had some further opinions to offer on the subject, but he was forestalled by a high-pitched beep-beep-beep like the sound a microwave oven uses to tell you that your food is ready. It was coming from me. I groped in my pocket and fished out the radio I’d taken from Gentle.

‘How does this thing work again?’ I asked DeJong. He made to take it from me and demonstrate, but I remembered what Gentle had told me and tapped the SEND button. ‘Castor,’ I said, and flicked over to RECEIVE.

The radios were good kit, worth every penny of what Jenna-Jane had spent on them. Without as much as a whisper of static, Gil McClennan’s voice came through loud and clear. Or rather soft and clear, because he seemed to be talking under his breath. ‘Don’t say a word just yet, Castor,’ he said. ‘Think of someone plausible I might be, and pretend that’s who you’re talking to. Do it now, before they get suspicious.’

‘How’d you get this frequency, Nicky?’ I improvised.

‘Good,’ McClennan said. ‘Is it just you and Dicks there, or did he bring some back-up? Say . . . I don’t know, say single if he’s alone.’

‘Double that,’ I said.

‘Shit. Okay, listen to me. They’re not bringing you home.’

‘What?’ I tried to keep my tone neutral, but it wasn’t easy. ‘What are you talking about?’

‘They’re not bringing you home. The professor wants you far away from what she’s doing here. She’s told them to hold you down there until—’

I missed the rest of the sentence because the car pulled off the road into a small lay-by at the same time as DeJong shoved the short, unlovely barrel of a handgun into my face.

‘Tell him you’ll get back to him later,’ he suggested, giving me a playful wink.

‘Sorry, Nicky,’ I said. ‘It’s hard for me to talk right now.’

‘The Mad Bishop and Bear, in Paddington station,’ McClennan said quickly. ‘I’ll wait for you. If you manage to get away from them, meet me here.’

He said something else, but Dicks pulled the radio from my grasp, tapped the OFF switch and stowed it away in the glove compartment. ‘Let’s go for a little walk,’ he suggested.

‘Fuck that,’ I counter-offered.

The pressure of the gun against my cheekbone increased perceptibly. ‘You get no penetrating power at all with nine-millimetre MagSafe,’ DeJong observed conversationally. ‘There’d be a lot of blood to clean up, but the bullet would stay inside your head. Spread out and make itself comfortable. ’

‘You’re going to kill me after you’ve both been seen with me?’ I demanded. ‘No offence, but you boys are something special in the way of stupid.’

‘Let’s go for a little walk,’ Dicks repeated, and DeJong thumbed off the safety on the gun. At least I assume that’s what he did: I’m far from an expert in these things. He moved his thumb, in any case, and the gun made a ratcheting sound that I didn’t like one bit.

I slid slowly over to the near-side door and opened it. DeJong kept me covered while Dicks got out of the driver’s door and came around to join me. He hauled me out of the car and pushed me away from it towards a small stand of trees. I glanced back at the road. We were still in plain sight, and if anything had happened to come rolling by just then I would have chanced my arm and made a break for it. But nothing did. That left total surrender or trying to overpower Dicks. There was a moment or two in which I could have tackled him, but he outweighed me by a good sixty pounds or so and it was all muscle. I was still weighing up my chances and coming up short when DeJong got out and joined us, making the point moot in any case.

I let myself be pushed and poked across the narrow strip of asphalt and in under the trees. The ground sloped away sharply here towards a drainage ditch about eight feet below us. Dicks looked back, decided we were still too visible and gave me another push in the direction of the ditch.

‘Down there,’ he said.

‘Nah,’ I said. ‘This will do for me. Dicks, whatever Jenna-Jane told you, this is a really bad—’

The big man planted his hand against my chest, fingers spread, and pushed. I lost my footing and fell over backwards, rolling a few feet, but I managed to put the brakes on before I slid into the ditch. Dicks and DeJong fanned out slightly, blocking me to right and left in case I decided to run. They wanted me in the ditch, and they weren’t going to take no for an answer.

I stayed down, because another push like that would send me rolling down the slope arse over tip. In any case, I’d met my share of thugs and bully boys and knew this game of old. The ground was the only location from which they couldn’t knock you down again.

Dicks stared down at me with unmistakable satisfaction. ‘A stop-me-and-buy-one deal,’ he rumbled. ‘Very funny line. A bit smug though. I don’t like people getting smug with me. Now what the professor actually said was that I should let you meet the old fart, use up as much time as you wanted to, then drop you off in the middle of nowhere and leave you to find your own way home. But as I understand it, the longer it takes you to do that, the better. How far are we from the village back there, DeJong?’

The other man tapped his chin with the butt of the handgun – way too casually, in my opinion, considering I hadn’t heard him put the safety back on. ‘Maybe three miles,’ he hazarded. ‘Maybe a bit more.’