Mike Carey - Vicious Circle

I stopped because a heavy hand clamped down on my shoulder, and I was twisted around about ninety degrees to the left. I found myself staring into a hostile face dominated by a massive barricade of eyebrow.

‘Show respect,’ said the loup-garou sternly, showing me his teeth.

‘Po.’ Gwillam’s tone was mild, but very efficacious. The huge loup-garou let go of my shoulder and stood back, almost like a soldier called to attention. I could see Zucker now, standing over by the Civic as if they thought I might cut and run and they were ready for the possibility. Their own car – another off-roader, even bigger than the jeep – was pulled up onto the kerb about a hundred yards or so further down: they’d walked the rest of the way under the cover of my playing.

Gwillam didn’t look concerned, either for my well-being or about the possibility that I might abscond. I guess he just wanted to have his say more than he wanted to see me get my throat ripped out.

He nodded to the loup-garou at my side, acknowledging the swift obedience with silent approval, then turned his attention back to me.

‘Pythagoras is meant to have made a clever comment about levers,’ he murmured. ‘Levers, and moving the world. I was never entirely convinced – it sounds a little too post-Enlightenment to me. But I’m sure you know the one I mean.’ He stared at me expectantly for a moment. Being in no mood to play straight-man, I stared right back. ‘Well,’ Gwillam went on, ‘that’s what the little dead girl is. A lever large enough to move the world. Which is a troubling thought, to me at least. Because, insofar as I have a preference, I’d like the world to stay where it is.’

This was still about as clear as Mississippi mud. Time for another grenade, I thought.

‘Are you just speaking for yourself?’ I asked him. ‘Or for the Catholic Church as a whole? Which, incidentally, has to be a fucking sight more catholic than I thought it was, given who it’s employing.’

There was a moment’s silence, during which Gwillam just stared at me, nonplussed. Then he nodded, not at me but at Po. And then an explosion of pain in my left side made me crumple and fall, thudding against the crash barrier on the way down. A kidney punch, administered with finely measured force, designed to cause spectacular agony but stop short of actual rupture.

It was a long time before I tuned into my surroundings again – half a minute, maybe, but I’m not the best judge. Given that for a lot of that time I was struggling to suck in a breath without moving a single muscle on my left-hand side, it felt a fair bit longer to me.

‘You were warned once,’ said Gwillam, his voice sounding hollow and distant. ‘But from what Zucker and Po said, I was afraid that you might not have taken the warning seriously enough.’

I still couldn’t get enough breath to answer – which might have been for the best, since the words uppermost in my mind right then were ‘Fuck you’. As I knelt there, folded up around my pain, something cold and hard was pressed against the back of my neck.

‘We are serious,’ Gwillam said, quietly but with very precise, almost stilted emphasis. ‘We don’t take life lightly, but we’re empowered to do so, if the need arises. Right now, killing you seems to me to be very definitely the lesser of two evils.’

‘And yet . . .’ I grunted, wincing as the effort of speech tugged at muscles that weren’t quite ready to move again ‘. . . I can’t help noticing . . . I’m still alive.’

‘Yes.’

The pressure on my neck disappeared, and a moment later there was the unmistakable sound of a safety being thumbed back, with a slight catch along the way, into the ‘on’ position. The son of a bitch had had the gun cocked. If he’d sneezed at the wrong moment he could have blown my head off. I looked up, moving my head as little as possible, to find Gwillam sliding the gun back into a shoulder holster. Meeting my gaze, he shook his head.

‘We were watching you at the mall,’ he said. ‘At that point, killing you was very definitely part of my night’s work. But then I saw you and the woman – is she a woman? – dealing with the possessed and saving the hostages. I’ll admit that wasn’t what I was expecting – and it made me a little uneasy. You see, if I’m going to turn Zucker and Po loose on you, I’d rather do it with a clear conscience.’

‘They didn’t seem to be on the leash last night,’ I wheezed.

‘At that time, they were under orders not to kill you. Hurting you wasn’t particularly discouraged. Castor, I’m going to ask you again, and probably for the last time: whose side are you on in this?’

If I’d had more notice of that question, I might have given it some thought and come up with a cute, ambivalent answer. As it was, I didn’t hesitate.

‘Abbie Torrington’s side.’

Gwillam made a sound that was halfway between a snort and a chuckle. ‘That’s even possible,’ he said. ‘If so, those stories about you not being a fool may just about be true. Although it’s still more likely that someone is playing you the way you play that whistle.’

He went quiet for long enough that I thought he’d finished.

‘If I stand up,’ I asked, risking a very slow and very gradual glance over my shoulder, ‘will this arsehole knock me down again?’

Gwillam went on as if I hadn’t spoken. ‘You were ahead of us at the Collective ,’ he said. ‘That was . . . impressive. Do you have any other leads on where Peace is hiding the girl?’

Well, I had about a half of one, and I was keeping it to myself. I got a hand up on the crash barrier and began to lever myself back up onto my feet. My teeth were clenched shut with the effort, so of course I couldn’t answer Gwillam’s question.

He sighed again, sounding like a man with the weight of the world on his shoulders.

‘If I tell you to find your reverse gear and back out of this – say until you hit China – is there any chance that you’ll do it?’

It’s probably a sin to lie to a priest, and I had enough sins on my conscience already without going out looking for new ones. I just shook my head once: more than once would have been pushing it, given that I’d only just got myself back on the vertical.

‘I didn’t think so,’ said Gwillam sadly. ‘But I’m telling you anyway. It’s by way of being an acknowledgement of what you did tonight. A professional courtesy, let’s say. It’s the last you’re going to get. Goodnight, Castor – and goodbye.’

He made the sign of the cross over me – not threateningly, or ironically, but deadpan serious. Then he signed to the two werewolves and they fell in at either side of him as he walked back to the car.

As they drove away Zucker misjudged the angle – or maybe got it exactly right – and scraped along the passenger side of Matt’s Civic with a sound like the shriek of a neutered elephant. Then he accelerated into the eastbound traffic and within a few seconds their tail lights had merged with the rest of the river.

Imelda Probert, better known as the Ice-Maker, lives in a squalid little third-floor flat in Peckham, in a block whose brickwork has been painted black in some sort of abortive experiment with stealth technology. The door off the street is boarded up, so you go in around the side through a yard that’s like an urban elephants’ graveyard, strewn with the rusting, wheelless hulks of expired cars. It’s something of a conundrum, given how much hard cash the Ice-Maker must pull down, week in and week out: after all, she offers a specialised and much sought-after service. But then again, I guess by the same token she doesn’t have to worry about bringing in the passing trade: people who need her, find her.