Mike Carey: Vicious Circle

Coldwood pointed to the ligature around Sheehan’s bare forearm. ‘He was shooting up,’ he said, sounding disgruntled. ‘Stupid bastard’s gone and jolted himself over. Why didn’t he do it on his own fucking time?’

‘That was what I thought, too,’ I agreed. ‘But if you take a look at the back view you’ll probably want to amend that diagnosis.’

Coldwood favoured me with another expressive look. But he got up and strolled around the pathetic figure, where he stared with some surprise at the back of Sheehan’s head – or, to be more accurate, at the place where it had been. It mostly wasn’t there any more. The shade of Leslie Sheehan lost interest in the sergeant as soon as he passed out of sight: he lifted his hands and stared at them for a moment, then frowned and looked around as if he was trying to remember where his car keys were.

‘You’re the expert,’ I said, ‘but I’m guessing a bullet wound from a gun pressed against his temple just in front of the ear, angled a little backwards. If he was shot from behind, presumably most of his face would be an exit wound.’

‘It wasn’t a gun,’ muttered Coldwood. ‘It was one of those captive-bolt efforts they use to kill cows.’ He pointed. ‘The whole of the left side of the head has caved in, and most of the bone has stayed in the wound. You don’t get that pattern of damage with a high-velocity— hey, if you chuck up in here I’m having you on an effing charge!’

The last words weren’t addressed to me but to the uniformed copper who’d been looking a little peaky earlier. From where he was standing, the poor sod had an intimate perspective on some of Sheehan’s most private parts – the ones that had formerly been inside his skull. It didn’t seem to be agreeing with him much at all. At a curt nod from Coldwood he ran for the door.

Coldwood turned his attention back to me. ‘Where’s the body?’ he asked. ‘The real, physical body? Where can we find him?’

‘I don’t have a bastard clue,’ I answered truthfully. ‘I can ask him, if you like. But you might as well ask him yourself. He can see you. He could see you even when you couldn’t see him.’

‘But you’re the expert,’ he echoed me, with deft sarcasm.

‘Being an exorcist isn’t quite the same as being a detective,’ I shot back, deadpan. ‘I don’t have a badge I can wave at him – and it’s really difficult to kick the shit out of a man who’s already dead. But I’ll give it a go, if you leave me alone with him. I’m not doing it in front of your mob.’

Coldwood chewed that one over for a long moment. ‘Okay,’ he said, but he thrust a warning finger under my nose. ‘Touch the evidence and I’ll gut you, Castor. Understand me?’

‘I don’t need drugs,’ I said. ‘I can get high on death.’

With a muttered profanity, Coldwood signalled to his team to withdraw. It was nice and quiet after they’d gone, and I decided to let the new mood settle in for a minute or two before I tackled Mister Sheehan. I slipped my whistle into the purpose-built pocket I’d sewn into the lining of my coat – I go for a Russian army greatcoat because it hides a multitude of sins – and in another pocket nearby found a silver hip flask which was full of extremely rough Greek brandy. I took a swig and it expanded inside me like a fire inside a derelict building. It’s not good. Really not good at all. But at moments like this it bridges a gap and keeps me moving.

With a second mouthful swilling around my gums, I took another look at the calendars. Just the usual lad-mag soft porn: Abbie what’s-her-name, Suzie something else. But Sheehan’s tastes ran to material that was less vanilla, Coldwood had said. Well, he’d given up the pleasures of the flesh now, that was for damn sure. After doing this job for a decade or so, I still don’t know much about the afterlife – but I’m willing to lay long odds that the dead don’t get their end away very much.

There was no point in putting it off any more: Sheehan’s memory was probably as truncated as what was left of his head, so he must have forgotten Coldwood’s merry marching band by now. I pocketed the flask again and walked over to where the ghost was standing – his feet a few inches above the brown-paper bags, roughly where the floor had been. Like therapy, death reveals your deepest instincts: he was guarding his stash.

‘So,’ I said to him, conversationally. ‘You’re dead, then. How’s that working out?’

His eyes flicked over me, lingered, wandered off again. He was having a hard time staying focused, which perhaps wasn’t all that surprising.

‘Must have been a shock,’ I offered. ‘One moment you’re walking along, not a care in the world. The next some guy gets a headlock on you, drags you into an alley and ker-chunk : you’ve got daylight hitting your eyes from the back.’

Sheehan frowned and made a formless gesture with his right hand. His lips moved.

‘Takes a while even to realise what’s happened to you,’ I went on, commiserating. ‘You think, well, that was bad but here I am, thank God. And then the hours go by, and the doubts start to set in. Why am I still just standing here? How did I get here in the first place? What do I do next?

‘And the truth is, mate, you don’t get to do anything. Not now. Doing things is a luxury that the living have. The dead – well, mostly they just get to watch.’

Sheehan’s eyes widened. I didn’t know if that was my words getting past his guard or just the dim stirrings of memory in whatever he was using now for a mind. His hands twitched again, and this time when he spoke I could hear a dry whisper, like wind through grass.

‘Poor – poor –’

Self-pity is something you often get from the dead, and it’s not like you can really blame them for it. It doesn’t look like any of the options are all that attractive: even Heaven, if you take the majority view, is a state of oneness with God and perpetual praise of His goodness which must wear pretty thin after the first few hours, let alone the rest of eternity. On the other hand, this guy was a pusher and a porn merchant and fuck alone knew what else: I wasn’t wasting any sympathy, because you never know when you’re going to run out.

‘Yeah,’ I said. ‘It’s very much a crock of shit. Some bastard really stiffed you, Sheehan. It’s almost worth believing in Hell so you can have the comfort of imagining him roasting in it.’

‘Poor – poor – poor –’

‘You said that. I agreed.’

‘Pauley!’ The name was barely audible, but I’ve got good ears and I was listening on all frequencies.

‘Pauley.’ I turned my back on him: best to distract him as little as possible now, because his attention deficit was probably only going to get worse. ‘Pauley topped you, did he? Well, that’s friends for you. Did it hurt, or was it all over too quick for you to notice?’

A long silence; then a hoarse, almost voiceless whisper. ‘H–h–hurt. Hurt me.’

‘Was this over at your place, then?’ I asked, my tone so relentlessly neutral that I must have sounded bored to death with the whole subject. ‘Knock on the door, bang, you’re dead, kind of thing? Or were you out on the town?’

There was a very long silence. I let it stretch. It sounded like the kind of silence that might have a pay-off at the end of it. ‘Bronze,’ Sheehan whispered. ‘Bronze.’ He made a sound like a moan stretched thin and hung up to cure – a moan with no bass to it, because the dead tend to have trouble hitting the low notes. ‘Buried.’

The silence after that final exhalation was different. When I turned around, I knew what I’d see: Sheehan was gone. Exhausted by the effort of speech, his physical manifestation had faded into random motes in the air: not matter, nor energy, nor anything that anyone had managed to trap or measure. He’d be back, given that he had nowhere else to go. But it wouldn’t be soon.