Mike Carey - Vicious Circle

Suddenly a shrieking discord bit into my mind like a deftly wielded Black & Decker power drill. It came out of nowhere, slicing through my nerves, sundering thought and feeling and music so that their writhing, severed ends leaked chaos and agony. I screamed aloud, my back arcing so that my head slammed back into the headrest of the driver’s seat and my feet jammed down on the pedals as if I was trying to bring the already stationary car to a dead halt.

It only lasted for a second: less than that, maybe. Even while I was screaming, the pain was subsiding from its lunatic peak and I was slumping forward again, a puppet with its strings cut, my forehead thumping against the body of the doll which was still lying on the steering wheel in front of me.

I lay there weak and dazed for a few seconds, static fizzing and stinging through my nervous system, trying to remember where I was and why I was drooling bloody spittle onto a stuffed toy. My tongue throbbed in time to my heart, seeming too big for my mouth: I’d bitten deeply into it, and that bitter tang was my own blood. I wiped it away with the back of my hand and pulled myself together: that was a job that I had to tackle in easy stages.

I fished out my flask of I-can’t-believe-it’s-not-cognac and unscrewed the lid with shaking hands. The first sip was medicinal: I swilled it around my bitten tongue, trying not to wince, rolled down the window and spat out the blood. The second sip was for my jangled nerves. So were the third and fourth.

I suddenly realised that as I stared down between my feet my gaze had met another pair of eyes gazing back up into mine. With a queasy jolt, I picked up the head of Abbie’s doll from the floor of the car: it must have parted company from the body when my head crashed forward into it, and it was pretty amazing that it hadn’t shattered as it fell. I slid it into the pocket of my coat, automatically. The decapitated body I dropped back into the Sainsbury’s bag, like any tidy-minded serial killer.

I think it became official right about then, for me at least. I was in a duel of wits, and I was three-nil down. The man was good, no doubt about it. But there’s more than one way to skin a cat, as you’ll know if cat-skinning is your thing.

I was looking forward to meeting him.

And punching his teeth down his throat.

Still shaky, I got the car moving and threaded through the side alleys back into Du Cane Road. I passed the church, heading east, and almost immediately I saw a familiar figure walking ahead of me. It was Susan Book, now wearing a long fawn-coloured duffel coat but still recognisable because the hood was down and she was still looking around her every so often as if she’d heard someone call her name.

I brought the car to a halt a few yards ahead of her and wound the window down. She began to skirt warily around it, then saw that it was me.

‘Do you need a lift?’ I asked.

She seemed surprised and a little flustered. ‘Well, I only live about a mile or so away,’ she said. ‘In Royal Oak. The bus goes straight there.’

‘So do I,’ I said. ‘Through it, anyway. It’s no trouble to drop you off.’

Susan fought a brief, almost comical struggle with herself. I could see she didn’t like the idea of accepting a lift from a stranger, which was fair enough: also that she didn’t relish the wait at the bus stop with the dark coming on.

‘All right,’ she said at last. ‘Thank you.’

I opened the door and she climbed in. We drove in silence for a while – a sort of charged silence. She was so tense it was like a static hum in the car.

‘Have you known Miss Salazar long?’ she asked at last, in a very quiet voice that I found hard to catch over the noise of the engine.

‘Juliet? No,’ I admitted. ‘She . . . hasn’t been living around these parts very long. But she’s someone who makes a strong first impression.’

She nodded briskly, understandingly. ‘And you’re . . . sort of partners,’ she said, and then added quickly, ‘in the professional sense? You work together?’

‘Not really,’ I said, feeling as though I was falling in Susan’s estimation with every answer. ‘We did, briefly, but only while Juliet was learning the ropes. She worked alongside me for a while so she could see how the job pans out on a day-to-day basis. She’s in business for herself now, so tonight was . . . more in the nature of a consultation.’

‘Yes. I see,’ said Susan, nodding again. ‘That must be very reassuring. Being able to call in favours from one another, I mean. Knowing that someone’s . . .’ she tailed off, as though groping for the right words.

‘Got your back?’ I offered.

‘Yes. Exactly. Got your back.’

We were already at Royal Oak and I’d pulled off the Westway onto the bottom end of the Harrow Road, seemingly without her noticing.

‘Whereabouts do you live?’ I asked.

Susan started, and looked around her in mild surprise.

‘Bourne Terrace,’ she said, pointing. ‘That way. First left, and then first left again.’

I followed her directions, and we stopped in front of a tiny terraced house that was in darkness except for a single light upstairs. A garden the size of a bath mat separated it from the street: the gate was painted hospital green and had a NO HAWKERS notice on it.

‘I’d invite you in for tea,’ Susan said, so stiffly that she sounded almost terrified. ‘Or coffee. But I live with my mother and she’d think it wasn’t proper. She has very old-fashioned ideas about things like that. She wouldn’t even be happy that I’d accepted a lift from you.’

‘Then it’ll be our secret,’ I said, waiting for her to get out. She didn’t. She just sat there, staring straight ahead, her eyes wide. Then, very abruptly, she brought her hands up to her face and gave a ragged wail that held, held, and then shattered into inconsolable sobbing.

It was so completely unexpected that for a second or so all I could do was stare. Then I started in with some vague consoling noises, and even ventured a pat on the back: but she was lost in some private hinterland of misery where I didn’t exist. After a minute or so, I began to make out words, heaved out breathlessly in the midst of the tears.

‘I’m – I’m not – I’m not –’

‘Not what, Susan?’ I asked, as mildly as I could. I didn’t know her well enough even to risk a guess at what was eating at her, but whatever it was it seemed to have bitten deep.

‘Not a – not like that. I’m not, I’m not. I’m not a les – a lesb—’ The words melted again into the formless quagmire of her sobbing, but that brief flash of light had told me all I needed to know.

‘No,’ I said, ‘you’re not.’ I reached past her to hook the glove compartment open, found a pack of tissues in there and handed one to her. ‘It’s not like that. Juliet just . . . does that to people. You can’t help yourself. You just fall in love with her, whether you like it or not.’

Susan buried her face in the tissue, shaking her head violently from side to side. ‘Not love,’ she sobbed. ‘Not love. I’m having c-carnal . . . I’m imagining . . . Oh God, what’s happening? What’s happening to me?’

‘Whatever you want to call it,’ I said matter-of-factly, ‘looking at Juliet makes you catch it like people catch the flu. I feel it too. Most people who ever get close to her feel it. Whatever it is, it’s not a sin.’

I couldn’t think of anything to add to that. Maybe Susan Book was the kind of Christian who thought that gay love was always a sin, in which case she’d just have to work it through for herself. But straight, gay, or agnostic, what Juliet did to you came as a shock to anyone’s system. I could tell Susan what Miss Salazar really was – by way of a prophylactic – but it wasn’t my secret to tell and under the circumstances it might make things worse rather than better. Carnal thoughts about a same-sex demon? Susan probably wasn’t in any state to take the knock.