Mike Carey - Vicious Circle

‘The exorcist bar?’ Nicky sneered. ‘Like I’d be caught dead there.’ It was a weak joke, and I didn’t do anything to encourage it. ‘Over in the West End,’ Nicky said when he saw I wasn’t rising to the bait. ‘Soho Square.’ He scribbled the address for me on a piece of printout paper and put it into my hand. ‘Didn’t you once describe the Oriflamme as a busman’s holiday?’

‘Yeah, I did. And now I’m trying to catch a bus conductor.’

I left him to it. Under the circumstances, I felt I was ahead of the game just coming away without any freshly minted holes in me.

I went back to Pen’s, where I found a note from her on my bed telling me that Coldwood had called again and asking me to feed the animals: she was going to visit Rafi, she said, and then head on out to Dylan’s flat afterwards to help him unwind after another late shift. Well, I thought resignedly, if you’re going to play doctors and nurses you were onto a winner with an orthopaedic surgeon.

Doling out liver to the ravens and Harlan Teklad to the rats took up about half an hour. When I was done, and cleaned up again, I called Coldwood on the mobile number he’d given me – a much better option than going through the station switchboard.

He picked up immediately, and he didn’t bother with small talk. ‘I’ve been trying to reach you all fucking day,’ he said. ‘Brondesbury Auto Parts: there was blood all over the shop, and it was a match with Sheehan’s.’

Brondesbury Auto Parts? Sheehan? It took me a moment or two to work out what he was talking about: then I remembered the bleak, empty warehouse out on the Edgware Road, and the pathetic ghost with half its head missing.

‘Oh,’ I said. ‘Right. Well, congratulations.’

‘Premature. We arrested Pauley, but he made bail. That’s why I called. Your name hasn’t been mentioned anywhere, but your statement was what bought us the warrant: Pauley’s got very big ears, and friends in a lot of fucking unlikely places. So watch your back, okay?’

‘Seriously?’ I was surprised, and not pleasantly. It’s been tried a few times, but evidence from spiritual conversations has never been accepted in a court case. Not in England, anyway. I never dreamed this drug lord might have anything to gain by topping me.

‘Seriously. If he can get the warrant invalidated, he can stop the case coming to court. One way of doing that is to put you out of action and then allege conspiracy.’

‘Conspiracy?’

‘To pervert the course of justice. It’s just a form of words. He says you were in our pocket, a judge looks at the warrant submission, they get a verdict. If it goes their way he’s got a get-out-of-jail-free card, because all our sodding evidence is inadmissible.’

‘This is great. You gonna lend me some bodyguards, then?’

‘Yeah, sure, Castor. Out of the same budget that I use for your company car and your health benefits. Look, I’m not saying it’s going to happen. I’m just saying watch yourself. It’s just about possible he’ll try to put the frighteners on you. Are you around tomorrow?’

‘Depends. What for?’

‘At some point I’m gonna want you back at that warehouse. I want to set up a walk-through of how we think Sheehan died, and see if the ghost reacts in any way.’

‘How time-sensitive is it?’ I asked.

‘Right now? Probably not very. We’re still waiting on some of the forensics results. Why? You thinking of staying in and washing your hair?’

‘I’m on another job.’

Coldwood’s laugh was short and explosive. ‘Then we’re truly living in the last days. What case is this?’

‘I’m looking for a girl.’

‘You’re doing missing persons now?’

‘No, she’s a dead girl. Name of Abigail Torrington. It’s a long story.’

‘Then keep it. I hate long stories. Call me when you’re free, okay?’

He cut me off as abruptly as he’d picked up. I fished out Pen’s old London A to Z from the back of a cupboard and opened it up on the kitchen table. I also found a high-lighter pen, which was exactly what I needed. I flicked through to the page that had Harlesden on it, cracking the book’s spine ruthlessly so it would lie flat on the table. It was about five years out of date in any case: I’d buy her a new one when I picked up Steve Torrington’s friendly envelope full of cash and cheques.

I drew a cross in Craven Park Road, roughly where my office was. That was where I first picked up Abbie’s doll, and I’d been facing the window, which was sort of . . . north. Or so. The trace – the sense of something responding when I played my little tune – had come from behind me, to the left. I drew a broad, ragged line with the high-lighter that took in Park Royal, a long stretch of Western Avenue, Hanger Hill and Ealing . . . I had to stop somewhere, so I decided to make the M4 elevated section my rough-and-ready boundary marker.

Then I found Du Cane Road, and the little cross that marked Saint Michael’s. The car park where I’d made my second attempt, earlier this evening, was about a hundred yards further up the road. I’d been facing into the setting sun, and that was where the response had come from – until I was hit with that little psychic cluster bomb that left me with a hole in my tongue and a ringing in my ears like a peal of bells in Hades.

Due west. I drew in the second line, out through Acton, Ealing and Drayton Green to the rolling hills of the Brent Valley Golf Course. No way Peace would be hiding Abbie there, though: the green fees were astronomical.

The two lines intersected over a huge swathe of West Acton and North Ealing. I’d drawn them wide on purpose, of course, because this wasn’t rocket science or any other damn science worthy of the name: it was just me, extrapolating hopefully from a messy and inadequate data set.

And that metaphor made me think of Nicky again.

Which made me remember the crumpled piece of printout paper in my pocket, with his handwriting on it.

The Oriflamme.

I looked at my watch. Only eleven, so the joint would still be hopping. And maybe Peace would think he’d hurt me worse than he had with his little psychic-overload ambush. There was nothing like stealing a march on the opposition.

There was a broad flight of stone steps up from the street, the stairwell separated off from the pavement by wrought-iron railings with the arms of the borough of Camden worked into them – complete with the pious motto Non sibi sed toti , usually translated as ‘I hope you brought enough for everyone.’ I guess at some time in its recent past the place had been a government building of some kind.

Not any more, though, clearly. The two bruisers who checked me at the top of the steps didn’t have the look or the dress sense of any civil servants I’d ever seen, and they probably didn’t have much of a future in local government unless Camden one day decided to open up a gorilla-wrangling department.

They weren’t checking me for weapons or concealed booze, although there was a perfunctory frisking of my pockets and linings: mainly they were verifying that I was alive, and more or less human by the yardsticks they were using. First they made me clench a silver coin tightly in my hand for a few seconds and looked to see if I showed any reaction to the metal; then they took my pulse in a rough-and-ready way at throat and wrist. There’s something a bit off-putting about having a guy who’s three inches taller than you, with the build of a wrestler, pressing his thumb against your windpipe. It’s one reason why I don’t drink at exorcist hang-outs more often.

Another reason is that I’m an unsociable bastard who hates shop talk worse than dental surgery.