Mike Carey - Vicious Circle

What it came down to was that I didn’t have enough information just then even to guess who wanted shot of me, still less why. But it didn’t matter in any case: because the part of me that’s stubborn and intractable and bloody-minded – which is not a small part, by any means – was determined to stay with this until I knew what it was about. Pen read that conclusion in my face and shrugged, giving up in disgust.

‘Just remember I told you so,’ she said. ‘So I don’t have to say it later on when something ten times worse happens to you.’

‘I’ll sleep on it,’ I said. Then I gave her a hug and retreated to my room at the top of the house, which normally gives me a bit more perspective on the world.

Tonight I was too bone-weary to think. But before I surrendered to gravity and sleep, I called Nicky. He didn’t sound very happy to hear from me.

‘Christ, Castor. What is it, three hours? Even Buddy Bolden doesn’t give you the right to ask for fucking miracles.’

‘I’m not looking for a progress report, Nicky. I was just wondering if you happen to know where the Collective is moored right now.’

‘Thamesmead,’ he said, without a pause. ‘Thamesmead West. Pier 17, just down from the Artillery Museum.’ Yeah, that would be the sort of information a paranoid zombie would have at his well-preserved fingertips.

‘Who’s on board?’

‘No, Who’s on first.’

‘Ha ha ha.’

‘I’m not the society pages, Castor. Last I heard, Reggie Tang was over there. Couple of guys from South London I don’t know from fucking Adam. It’s nine-tenths empty, like always.’

‘Thanks, Nicky.’

‘Yeah, you’re very welcome. We live to serve. Since you’re here, though, there are a couple of things I can tell you about your man Peace.’

I pricked up my ears. ‘Go on.’

‘When I’m trying to get a handle on someone I don’t know, I go on the principle of cherchez le dirt . In Peace’s case, I’m telling you, you could open up a pig farm.’

‘Go on.’

‘Well, just for starters, he’s done time.’

‘Oh yeah?’ I was a little disappointed, but it was something. At least it was something if it was recent: ex-cons have got their own networks in the real world, and you can crash them sometimes if you know where to start from. ‘So how long was he pleasuring Her Majesty for, then?’

‘Uh-uh. Wrong time. Or rather, wrong place. This was in Burkina Faso – French West Africa. He got himself hauled in for drugs possession, pissed off the magistrate and ended up being sent down for two years. Then he managed to grease the right palms, which he could have done for half the price before the conviction, and walked out on a procedural pardon. He was only inside for a week or so.’

‘And this was—?’

‘1992. The year that Unforgiven got the Best Picture Oscar – but that son of a bitch Pacino scooped Best Actor, and for what? Scent of a Woman , for Christ’s sake!’

‘Thanks, Nicky.’ I cut him off before he could run through the list of top-grossing movies – which would be bound to lead in to some conspiracy theory that he was currently shaping. None of this stuff was any good to me: it was all too long ago. Even if Peace had made some good friends in Ouagadougou State Prison, and they’d all moved to London when they’d got out, I couldn’t pick up a trail that was well over a decade cold. It was a dead end. ‘You got anything else?’

‘I’ve got plenty.’ Nicky sounded hurt – as though I was impugning the quality of his intel. ‘The West Africa thing, that’s just the tip of the iceberg. This guy was a real hellraiser in his youth – into all kinds of shit, invariably up to his eyeballs. Did a stint in the army – Royal Artillery – then bought himself out about a day or so ahead of a dishonourable discharge and did the usual street shit for a while. Added a few column inches to his charge sheet along the way – breaking and entering, public affray, felonious assault. Sometimes it stuck, sometimes it didn’t.’

‘No more spells in jail, though?’

‘Nope. He moved around too much. Jet-setting lifestyle, you know? The world was his fucking playground. He was in the States for a while and he got mixed up with Anton Fanke’s crowd.’

‘Anton Fanke? Who’s that?’

‘What, you never heard of the Satanist Church of the Americas?’ Nicky sounded incredulous.

‘Obviously not,’ I said.

‘Fanke’s one of these religious bootboys, like the Bhagwan or Sun Myung Moon. Only his religion happens to be devil-worship. You know the type – gets a million grunts to sell flowers at major airports so he can run a fleet of limos and live in a mansion in upstate New York.’

‘Got it. So Peace is a Satanist?’

‘Dunno. Maybe. I’m just saying his name was linked with Fanke’s. There was some court case they were both involved in, way back. I haven’t managed to shag the details yet.’

It was a disturbing thought. If the Torringtons were right, Peace was mainly concerned with using Abbie’s ghost as leverage to restart a dead relationship. But if he was into necromancy, all bets were off.

‘Thanks, Nicky,’ I said. ‘Keep up the good work.’

‘Yeah, well, you bought a lot of goodwill. Makes a change.’

He hung up.

I really didn’t want to think right then about the implications of what he’d told me, or about the weird, circuitous threats and warnings that the werewolves had been doling out. Truth to tell, this had been about as stressful a Monday as I could remember. I tumbled into bed, already half-unconscious, and slept it all away.

I had some really nasty dreams, involving men who mewed like cats and jumped out at me from a variety of unexpected angles, and a little girl who was walking through a maze of grey stone with church bells ringing up ahead of her. Mercifully, the details didn’t stay with me when I woke up.

The headache did, though. It felt like a really bad hangover, but casting my mind back over the night before it didn’t seem to me like I’d over-indulged: I could only remember the whisky I’d swallowed to dull the edge of the pain while Pen scrubbed out my wound with TCP and lavender soap.

The wound. It felt uncomfortably hot, but not particularly painful. I prodded it gingerly, and flexed my arm in various directions to see how much traverse it had. There was a little bit of stiffness, but all things considered it didn’t feel nearly as bad as it had the night before. If I were a concert pianist, I’d probably have been worried: being the human wreck I am, I figured it would all come out in the wash.

It was about six in the morning, and Pen was still asleep: at least, there was no sound from the basement except for the occasional creaking and rattling as Edgar or Arthur stirred on his perch and shrugged his bony shoulders. Like rust, ravens never sleep. I went through into the kitchen and made some coffee, then drank three cups of it while I flicked through Pen’s A to Z and worked out a route to Thamesmead. There was no sense in driving – I’d have to go through the Blackwall Tunnel or take the Woolwich Ferry, both hassles that I can do without at the best of times. The smart option was to go to Waterloo and then take an overground train to Woolwich Dockyard. From there I could walk it.

A brisk wind had come up in the night and swept the thunderheads away to someplace else, so it was sunny but fresh as I walked to Turnpike Lane Tube station, and my head started to feel a little clearer. I was glad of the change in the weather for another reason, too: shredded at seam and shoulder, and crusted brown with blood on the left-hand side of the collar, my paletot was hors de combat for the time being. I was wearing the only other coat I owned that had enough pockets for all my paraphernalia: a fawn trenchcoat with a button-down yoke which makes me feel like an exhibit in some museum installation about the evolution of the private detective.