Mike Carey - Vicious Circle

‘Perhaps you’ll see your dad again,’ I told her, offering her the only crumb of consolation I could think of. ‘If there’s something after this life, and after this death, then I bet he’ll find you there if anybody can. He hasn’t let anything stop him so far.’

Abbie didn’t respond. Turning slightly as though in a wind I couldn’t feel, she cast her gaze around the narrow confines of the cell. It wasn’t the first prison she’d seen in her brief, constricted life: with any luck, though, it would be the last.

I started to whistle again. Not the summoning this time, and not the exorcism, but the unbinding: I whistled the notes that would set her free from the lock of hair to go where she would, unmolested by the Fankes and Gwillams of this sublunary sinkhole.

But Abbie didn’t leave. I guess there wasn’t anywhere she could think of to go: anywhere where she would have felt safe, or wanted. The only man who had ever loved her or tried to make her happy was dead. She could go back to the Oriflamme and wait for him there, but not everyone rises, and when they do you can’t always tell where they’ll go. It was a long shot. All that was left to her now were long shots.

I thought through the options. You don’t get to have a happy ending when you’re dead: this was just damage limitation, nothing more.

‘Goodbye, Abbie,’ I said, standing up and shifting my ground to face east. Not towards Mecca: towards somewhere else entirely, on the other side of the city. ‘Goodbye, and good luck. I hope it all works out for you.’

I whistled again, a tune I hadn’t played for a good long while now: ‘Henry Martin’. An electric prickle played down my arms to the tips of my fingers.

The Charles Stanger clinic was a good few miles away, but ghosts – when they travel at all – aren’t limited to light speed. All the same, I’d got through two complete renditions of the song and was well into the third before I felt their presence stealing up on me, approaching on some vector that had nothing to do with north, south, east or west. I didn’t look around: I felt, in some weird way, as though the dead girls might not take to Abbie if they saw me talking to her – as though the taint of the living might cling to her and make her seem alien to them.

There was a whispering of sound that had no words in it I could make out. Then there was silence, and the silence lengthened. The feeling of their nearness faded from me, leaving behind a more acute awareness of how cold the stone was under my stockinged feet, and how stale the air smelled.

When the last echoes of the tune had died from the air and from my mind, I turned around again.

I was alone in the cell – and more tired than I’d ever been.

Basquiat was as good as her word. The charges were dropped and I was released back onto the street in the middle of Saturday afternoon. The clothes I’d left at the Whittington hadn’t turned up, though, so I was still stuck in the natty outfit I’d taken from Sallis. By now it was smelling even riper than when I’d inherited it.

The first thing I did was to go out to Walthamstow and check on Nicky, because I didn’t believe Fanke’s bland assurances that his cultists had left my favourite dead man in one piece. But Nicky was none the worse for wear, and was even inclined to be a little smug – even though most of the cinema apart from his inner sanctum up in the projection booth had been comprehensively trashed.

‘See, Castor,’ he said, ‘I got everything here insured eight ways from Sunday, and I already put in the claims – through proxy companies, naturally; got to keep that footprint small. Anyway, I’m gonna build it up again ten times better. I mean, fuck air-conditioning. I’ve got a freezer on order from a place in Germany that fits out hospital morgues. You’re not gonna know this place.’

I looked at the outside of the projection booth’s door. The wood had been split with axes or crowbars – but all that had done was to reveal the metal underneath.

‘It must have been a hell of a siege,’ I said.

Nicky shrugged, some of his good mood evaporating. ‘Yeah, it was fucking scary, all right. I had to watch while they smashed everything up. Then they spotted the cameras and took them out, so I couldn’t even do that. It was. . .I dunno . . . like having scabies, or something: like watching little insects crawling around under your fucking skin.

He frowned. ‘Hey, I’m sorry about your friend. You know that, right? If there’d been anything I could’ve done, then I would’ve done it. They brought fucking blowtorches in, for Christ’s sake. Nothing to stop them, once they had me shut in up here. I tried to call you again when they took her, but by that time they’d rolled one of those phone jammers in, too, so all I got was static.’

He hesitated, as if realising belatedly that he should have covered this part of the conversation first. ‘So is she okay?’

‘Juliet?’

‘Ajulutsikael. Don’t anthropomorphise her. That’ll get you in trouble somewhere down the line.’

‘Doesn’t the use of a female pronoun already anthropomorphise her?’ I asked.

Nicky scowled. ‘Anyone who can give a dead man an erection has earned that pronoun, Castor. Consider it an honorific.’

‘She’s fine, Nicky. Thanks for asking. Back to her old self by this time, I’m sure.’

‘And my payment? You know, the five questions?’ He looked at me hopefully.

I shrugged. ‘All I can do is ask her. The deal was that you’d keep her safe, Nicky. She may take the view that you’re in breach of contract.’

‘Breach of— ?’ He flared up. ‘Hey, I was invaded, Castor. I kept my part of the deal, ten times over.’

He had a point. I said I’d get back to him, and left him choosing thermostatic valves out of a catalogue. They’ve got some really nice ones these days.

At Pen’s, to my far from huge surprise, I found all my worldly goods stacked up out in the driveway. I tried my key in the lock and it didn’t fit. Quick work, under the circumstances.

I rang the bell, and Pen’s sister Antoinette answered. She folded her arms in a no pasaran stance, which she does pretty well despite being only an inch or so taller than Pen. She’s got Pen’s colouring, too, but she went into politics, stood for local councillor, lost three times and got herself a hatchet face that never cracks a smile.

‘Hey, Tony,’ I said. ‘Can I talk to her?’

‘If she wanted to talk to you, Castor, she wouldn’t have changed the locks.’

‘Why don’t you ask her?’

‘Because I don’t want to have to talk her down from another round of hysterics. Why don’t you email her?’

‘No computer.’

‘Heliograph, then.’

I looked up at the heavy overcast. Antoinette did, too.

‘Looks like you’re fucked,’ she observed, and closed the door.

Over at the Stanger, Rafi was under deep sedation after smashing his head against the door of his cell until he’d left half his face on it. He’d recover, of course: Asmodeus was back in residence, so he once again had a strong interest in making sure his home away from home was kept in good order.

But under the circumstances, the follow-up hearing to determine whether or not Rafi’s sectioning should remain in force had been postponed sine die .

‘That means watch this space,’ Doctor Webb translated helpfully. ‘You now have twenty-one days, Castor. If you don’t come up with anything within that time, I’m going to consult with Professor Mulbridge with a view to signing Ditko over into the care of the MOU at Paddington.’

‘Watch your back,’ I suggested.

Missing my point, he swivelled to look behind him. We were standing in the main corridor of the Stanger, just outside Rafi’s cell, and the corridor was clear. Webb turned back to me, slightly annoyed, as if I’d just played a silly practical joke.