Mike Carey - Vicious Circle

The deckhouse was about the only space on board the Collective that was still the same size and shape as it had started out. It was on two levels, connected by a spiral staircase in carefully matched dark woods, and it still had a sort of faded elegance about it. Very faded: the original leather and built-in tables and couches were sort of overwhelmed now by boot-lockers and cupboard units from the provisional wing of MFI – and there was a smell of stale grease in the air from the galley in the corner, which had an arc of smoke-blackened ceiling above it like the hovering spirit of fried meals long since past. The only other door out of the room was there, and it was half off its hinges. The balcony rails edging the deckhouse’s upper level, about eight feet above us, were missing in places, so that a casual promenade could become a life-or-death affair if you didn’t look where you were going.

There was a kind of breakfast bar in the galley area, with a counter bolted to the wall and a few high stools scattered along its length. The same tastefully blended cherry and walnut panelling decorated the area around the bar, showing up the rest of the room for the tip it now was. The guy sitting there, tucking into a sausage-andegg breakfast, was Reggie Tang. Actually, he wasn’t so much tucking into it as playing with it. He looked up as I came in, and he gave me a cold nod as he shoved the plate away from him decisively. He did cold very well, being the spitting image of Bruce Lee circa Enter the Dragon . He was ten years my junior. Since he was wearing only a vest and a pair of boxers, I could see that he was in taut, wiry good shape.

‘Sorry,’ he said, standing up. ‘I know the face, so I’m assuming we’ve met somewhere. But I can’t remember your name.’ I’d forgotten his voice until I heard it again now: it was deep and vibrant, with an almost musical lilt to it.

‘No reason why you should,’ I said. ‘We only met the once. I’m Felix Castor. I’m sorry if I disturbed your breakfast.’

Reggie shrugged easily. ‘Place is meant to be open to our kind all the time. Part of the deal. Castor, yeah, it’s starting to come back to me now. You’re a Scouser, aren’t you? Part of the North-South brain drain. Good to see you again.’

He took the hand I offered and gave it a firm, brief shake. Nothing readable there, but I hadn’t expected there to be: he looked like the sort of guy who kept his emotions pretty tightly locked down. He nodded me towards a couch that was stacked with old newspapers, magazines and unopened mail. ‘Grab a seat. You looking to sign in?’

I sat down, shoving some of the old letters aside. Behind me, Lockyear crossed to the galley. I watched him out of the corner of my eye as he picked up a still-smoking cigarette from an ashtray there, half-raised it to his lips, but then seemed to change his mind and stubbed it out without taking a drag. ‘Not right now,’ I said. ‘Actually, I was hoping to get a little free advice.’

‘Advice?’

‘Yeah. You know, tap the whisper line.’

Reggie smiled at my coy phrasing. ‘Well, go for it. We’re happy to help if we can, aren’t we, Greg?’

‘Sure. Happy to,’ Lockyear echoed. He sat down at the breakfast bar, a long way from Reggie’s unfinished breakfast.

‘Thanks. The fact is, I’m looking for someone.’

‘Someone I know?’

I nodded. ‘Could be, yeah. Someone who used to live here, anyway, but maybe not during your time. Guy name of Dennis Peace.’

Reggie frowned in thought, as if he was running that name through his memory banks. ‘Peace. No, doesn’t ring any bells. You know a Dennis Peace, Greg?’

Lockyear looked round at the sound of his name, his expression the same mildly astonished double take I’d seen him use outside. I was reminded of Stan Laurel, although maybe that was just the hair. He stubbed the cigarette out again, absently, in spite of the fact that it was already dead. ‘Yeah,’ he said. ‘I know Peace. Well, I used to know him. He lived here for about six months of last year. Bastard never cooked once. Why? What’s he done?’

This was addressed to Reggie, but Reggie turned to me because obviously that was my question to answer if it was anybody’s.

I decided to tell the truth, as far as I could. It’s not like exorcism as a profession generates a whole huge heap of fellow feeling, but I didn’t want to try to extort any information out of these guys by selling them some tired line about Peace owing me money or whatever. That sort of thing will inevitably turn around and bite you in the arse sooner or later. ‘Someone hired me to find him,’ I said. ‘He’s meant to have a kid with him. A little girl, who – well, who isn’t his. She was abducted from her parents’ house: Peace was there the day it happened, or at least that’s what I’ve been told. So her parents think maybe he took her. I want to see if that’s what happened. And if it is, I’m being paid to get the kid back.’

Reggie said nothing, just kept looking at me with a gambler’s deadpan.

‘Well, I never met the man,’ I conceded, responding to the scepticism in that look. ‘This is just a job, and it could all be bullshit as far as I know. Sooner I find him, sooner I find out.’

‘Sounds like a job for the police,’ Reggie observed. He was standing over me, watching me more closely than the occasion seemed to call for: having offered me a seat, he made no move to sit down himself.

‘Yeah, I guess it would be, if the girl was alive. But she’s dead.’

‘All the more reason—’

‘I mean, she was already dead when he took her.’

Reggie gave the kind of slanted nod that means ‘hell of a story’. ‘There are some very nasty people out there,’ he observed. ‘A lady takes a terrible risk.’

I recognised the quote and let it pass. ‘Does anyone make a note of forwarding addresses when someone leaves here?’ I asked, giving a tottering pile of envelopes a meditative tap.

‘The Trust does. But we’re not the Trust.’

There was definitely an edge in Reggie’s voice now. I could see that we were heading for a point at which he was going to give up the unequal struggle between mood and manners and tell me to sod off. But I was feeling a little bloody-minded myself now – maybe because of the headache, which was back worse than ever – and I wasn’t quite ready to back off. I looked across at Greg Lockyear, who was now leaning forward with his elbows on the counter and looking out across the Thames towards the Gallions Point marina as if it was the most riveting thing he’d ever seen. A conviction started to grow in me.

‘Greg,’ I said, leaning out past Reggie to get a better line of sight. ‘You keep in touch with Peace at all, after he left here?’

Reggie didn’t like the fact that I’d just done an end-play around him, and Greg – when he turned his dazed-rabbit eyes my way – didn’t look all that happy to be back in the conversation. This was making friends and influencing people the Felix Castor way. ‘No,’ Greg said, shaking his head emphatically. ‘No, I never really got on with him all that well. Glad to see the back of him, to be honest.’

‘Any clues as to where he was going? Or did anyone ever visit him while he was here? Anyone who might have put him up afterwards, I mean?’

Greg looked out of the window again, as if checking an autocue, then back at me. ‘No.’

I turned my attention back to Tang. ‘Who else is staying here, Reggie?’ I asked. ‘I mean, besides you two?’

Reggie folded his arms. ‘Nobody.’

‘And you’ve been staying here since—?’

‘Castor, you said you came here looking for advice. You really think acting like a cop is going to get you any?’