Mike Carey - Vicious Circle

I ran without thinking, got my bearings as I was running and realised that the car was up ahead of me, maybe fifty yards or so, and on this side of the street. There was a sound at my back of something touching down heavily, and nails or claws or something of that general nature scraped on the wet pavement as Po checked his fall and took off after me.

I fished in my pocket for the car keys, pressed and pressed and pressed the stud on the keyring until a cheerful bingly-beep sound from up ahead told me that the car had unlocked itself. At the same time, the sidelights flashed three times: a feature that I’d never even noticed until my life depended on it.

I got the door open and crammed myself inside, pulling it closed behind me. Something slammed against the door at the same time as I palmed the other button, on the right of the key fob, locking it again: it didn’t give. The knife, which I’d forgotten I was holding, clattered onto the floor of the car. I left it there: trying to fight my way out of this was going to get me killed in very short order.

Shaking like a bead of sweat in a belly dancer’s cleavage, I somehow managed to get the key into the ignition. But then I slammed the engine into gear as I was turning the key and stalled dead. Something smashed hard into the driver-side window and it starred right across. Involuntarily, I turned my head to look.

It was Po. At least, that was my best guess. Right now it was something out of nightmare, crawling flesh half-congealed into a shape midway between human and something vaguely feline. I was judging mainly by the teeth, you understand, because for some reason it was to the gaping mouth that my stare was drawn.

The car started up just as the thing outside drew back its clawed fist for a second blow that would probably have punched through the glass and ended up embedded in my face. The car leaped away, clipping the back bumper of the BMW in front with a sickening crunch before lurching out across the full width of the road. I ploughed into the pavement, but fortunately missed the wall of the Bank of Scotland by the width of a nun’s chuff. Po was bounding across the street behind me, but I floored the gas and left him standing.

Thank you, non-existent God. One I owe you.

In Pen’s bathroom mirror, glimpsed out of the corner of my eye because I was having to twist my head around at an angle that would have challenged Linda Blair, the ragged gash in my left shoulder looked really ugly.

‘What in the name of God have you been doing to yourself?’ Pen asked, with a certain degree of awe.

‘I had some help,’ I muttered, teeth gritted. Pain always makes me irritable: I’m sure as shit not the stuff that martyrs are made of.

My arm had started to stiffen up as I was driving, with occasional lightning strikes of pain shooting from shoulder to fingertips. After a while I was driving just with my right hand and only using my left – when I couldn’t avoid it – to change gear. And getting my coat off, when I’d finally managed to park the car, find my door keys in the wrong pocket and let myself in, had been a whole heap of fun. Luckily Pen had turned out to be home, since Dylan was on another late shift: with her help, I was able to peel the coat away from the wound, yelping in anguish as it opened again. My shirt we just cut away and dumped in the waste bin: even Persil wasn’t going to bring it up white again. Then I sat on the edge of the bath, a large whisky clutched tightly in my hand, occasionally biting back colourful expletives as Pen cleaned out the edges of the cut.

Now, examining the results in all their reflected glory, I had to admit that the wound was impressive, in a grim and grisly way. It was a broad slash about three inches long on the very top of my shoulder, exactly midway between arm and throat. Small streamers of ribboned flesh hung down on either side of it, testifying to a serrated blade or a shape that had a lot of separate points and edges to it. A throwing star, maybe, although those two loup-garous hadn’t exactly struck me as being the ninja type. That involves stealth, just to go for the obvious point.

On the whole, though, this didn’t look too bad. The fact that it was a ragged cut meant that it would knit together that much quicker, and Pen had done a thorough job of cleaning it out. All it needed now was a dressing strip and the home team were back in the game.

Pen wasn’t quite so convinced. ‘You should let Dylan look at it,’ she said. ‘If this festers, Fix, it’ll be bad news.’

‘It wasn’t exactly “Your annuity matures” to start with,’ I grumbled back gracelessly. Then, remembering my manners, ‘Thanks for patching me up. But let’s not bring Dylan into this. He might draw the wrong kind of conclusion about the circles you move in.’

‘Was it this that cut you?’ Pen asked, holding up the knife. I’d put it down on the side of the bath earlier, well out of the way. I really didn’t like to see it in her hands: that edge was just too damn perfect, and Pen was too emphatic with her gestures when she got worked up. I took it from her, quickly but gently.

‘No,’ I said. ‘This would have made a clean cut. A really clean cut. Have you seen the edge on it?’ I turned the blade edge-on to her so she could see it in all its scary beauty. That meant I was looking at the flat of the blade, and I noticed now that it had a floral motif on it: leaves in pairs, etched directly into the steel, ran from the hilt to within an inch of the point.

Pen gave the knife an ill-favoured look as I put it down again, this time on the sink-top. Then I had a better idea: I took a used toilet-roll tube which looked to be about the right width and slid the knife inside it: the broad tang stretched the cylinder enough to hold the blade rigidly in place. I was a lot less likely to lose a finger on it now.

‘I hate it when this stuff happens,’ Pen muttered, dropping blood-encrusted swabs of cotton wool into the waste bin. ‘Why do you take jobs that get you beaten up and cut open and thrown off roofs and all that macho rubbish? Aren’t there enough of the other kind?’

‘The other kind?’

‘You know what I mean. “Get that bogeyman out of my closet. Bring granny back so she can tell us where she put the rent book. Tell my Sidney I’ve remarried and there’s no room in my bed for him any more.”’

She turned her back on me to wash her hands: it looked unnervingly symbolic.

‘I can’t always tell which kind of job is which,’ I said, defensively. ‘I don’t get any special kind of pleasure out of this stuff.’

‘No,’ she agreed glumly. ‘I suppose not.’

‘How’s Rafi?’ I asked, to change the subject.

‘Still asleep.’ She turned to face me again, wet arms folded, face set. ‘I’m serious, Fix. You should just walk out of this one while walking is still an option.’

This was a disturbing development: normally when I bring Rafi up it derails the conversation for at least long enough for me to get to the door. Obviously we were starting to know each other too well.

‘The problem is, Pen, I’m working on a lot of different things right now. I can’t walk out on all of them.’ It was the plain truth for once: I really didn’t know which job Puss and Boots had been sent to frighten me away from. The answer could be right there in what they’d said to me, but I was buggered if I could dig it out. ‘Someone didn’t close the circle, and a little bird flew the nest.’ That didn’t sound like Coldwood’s drug barons. It might refer to the thing in the church, but there was nothing birdlike – or little, for that matter – in the presence I’d sensed there. Abigail Torrington? Maybe. But she hadn’t flown anywhere: she’d been flat-out stolen.