Mike Carey - Vicious Circle

I froze with my glass half-raised to my mouth. That would certainly explain the misery.

‘And?’ I prompted, both wanting and not wanting to hear the answer.

‘One follow-up visit, records appended to the file. I couldn’t access everything, but I gather Abbie seemed to be a healthy, normal girl. A little solemn and preoccupied, but well fed, well looked after. Room was nice, clothes were neat and tidy, she checked out okay at interview, you know the drill. “Did not display precocious knowledge of or concern with sexual matters.” No smoking pistol – not even any powder burn. Sorry to bother you, sign off, hit the road.’

‘But there was something going on there,’ I mused, grimly. ‘Lots of visitors. Some of them regulars. Turning up often enough for the neighbours to clock them and take notes. What were the Torringtons up to?’

‘Selling drugs?’ Nicky said. ‘Cosmetic surgery? I deal in data, Castor, not reading fucking fortunes. What I got, you’ve now had. As of now, that’s the entirety of what the Met have managed to nail down since Saturday night. Abbie is officially missing, her parents are indisputably dead. I know you see a lot of ghosts in the way of business. You ever been hired by them before?’

For once, Nicky didn’t even laugh at his own joke. He’d caught the edge of my sombre mood, and of course he was still choked with me for souring his arrangement with Imelda.

I took another slug of whisky, didn’t even taste it.

‘What about Peace?’ I asked. ‘You dig up anything else there?’

Nicky turned coy – the way he always does when he’s got something really eye-popping to tell me. ‘Yeah,’ he admitted, ‘a little. I don’t know how much of it is strictly relevant, though.’

‘Meaning—?’

‘Meaning it’s mostly old. Lifestyle stuff. Not the kind of intel you could use to find out where he is now.’

‘Tell me anyway,’ I suggested.

Nicky flared up, coyness giving way to the irritation that was still slow-burning underneath. ‘Castor, I am not exactly in your fan club right now. It hacks me off when you talk to me like I’m some kind of skivvy you can just—’

‘Please,’ I amended. ‘Pretty please. Pretty please with sugar on the top.’

‘Better. Well, it’s a case of the more you dig, the more you find. That charge sheet I mentioned runs to more than one page – wherever Peace lays his hat, he starts some kind of trouble. After that army tour I told you about he found a way to turn his training to good account. He became a merc – signed up with some private security firm in the Middle East that had a very nasty name for itself, but then half the board got locked up for trying to trigger a coup in Libya and he was out on his ear again.’

There was something in Nicky’s eye that told me he was saving the best till last. Under other circumstances, I might have been short enough on patience to yell him out about that: tonight I decided I’d better humour him.

‘Anything else?’ I asked, playing straight-man.

‘Yeah. Since you ask, there is.’

‘Go on.’

‘Peace filed suit back in 1999, under the jurisdiction of the state of New York. Against Anton Fanke – you remember, the Satanist guy I told you about before? – and a woman whose name appears on the affidavit as Melanie Carla Jeffers, a.k.a. Melanie Carla Silver, a.k.a Melanie Carla Torrington.’

I swore aloud, and Nicky nodded his head in agreement. ‘Yeah, it’s a peach, isn’t it? Only that’s not the part that made me prick up my ears. Get this: it’s a suit for custody. Plaintiff alleged that defendant was unfit to be a parent, and asked the court to award him guardianship rights over . . . well, you can see this coming, so there’s no point drawing it out.’

There was a roaring in my ears: I couldn’t tell how much of it was the fever, how much the adrenalin surge as my mind raced ahead to where Nicky was going.

‘A little girl named Abigail?’ I hazarded, my voice sounding hollow and fuzzy in my own ears.

‘Got it in one. Abigail Fanke, she’s called at this particular juncture.’

‘She’s Peace’s daughter.’

‘Well, he thinks she is. And the court records agree, as far as that goes, because surname notwithstanding there’s a birth certificate on record for her in Burkina Faso, thirteenth of March 1993. Mother: Melanie Carla Jeffers. Father: Dennis Peace.’

‘That’s not long after he got out of prison,’ I said.

‘Good to know you’re listening. Yeah, it is. And armed with that little titbit, I went back to the court records. Which was a bastard, because I don’t need to tell you they were all fucking handwritten. I had to call in a favour or three, but I got there in the end. Melanie Whatever-her-name-is bailed Peace out of jail, and presumably spread those bribes around. Makes more sense, I guess. Like I said before, if he’d had the money himself he could have bought off the judge before he was sentenced, for about half the price. But maybe he didn’t have any money. Maybe he needed an angel.’

‘An angel. Right.’

‘Then they have a night of passionate celebration, and nine months later little Abbie is born. Makes sense, kind of. And now he’s on the run with her – alive or dead, we don’t officially know.’

‘I know.’

‘Sure you do. Only what you didn’t know was that he stopped to murder her mother and the mother’s current boyfriend along the way. And that someone wants him badly enough to make up all this bullshit and get you on board.’

I shook my head, which was aching so badly now it felt like it might fall off. Nicky was affronted. ‘What, did I hurt your professional pride?’

‘No. But you said they wanted Peace. It’s not Peace who’s the point of this, Nicky – it’s Abbie.’

‘Well, from his point of view it’s Abbie, obviously. I mean, it looks like he killed two people to get hold of her. But the guys who are looking for him—’

‘If they’re looking for Peace, why not hire a proper detective? Why come to me?’

Nicky opened his mouth to speak, blinked, shut it again.

‘You see? There’s a whole lot of people out there who could do a better job of tracking down a man who doesn’t want to be found. But finding him wouldn’t necessarily mean finding Abbie. No, to find a ghost you need an exorcist. And that’s what they went out to get.’

I stood up, a little unsteadily.

‘Are you drunk?’ Nicky asked, with the scorn of the teetotaller.

‘No. I think I’m coming down with something.’

‘Doesn’t surprise me a bit, the shit you pour into yourself. Your body may not be a temple, Castor, but it isn’t a skip. Take it from me, if you want to live to be old, you’ll—’

‘Save it up and mail it, Nicky. I’m not in the mood. You serious about that cab?’

‘Dead serious.’

‘To coin a phrase.’

‘Funny.’

‘Whatever. Thanks for your help. The fare’s on me.’

I dropped a couple of tenners onto the table and lurched towards the door. I must have looked right then like one of The Level’s zombie customers: I sure as hell felt like one.

Approaching Matt’s car from the wrong direction, I was able to see first-hand what a mess the Catholic werewolves had made of the nearside wing. I felt bad about that: it seemed like a poor exchange for my brother’s trust. He might even have trouble with his insurance, given that I wasn’t a named driver. The only consolation was that – to the religious mind – adversity is good for the soul.

I got in and drove, trying to focus on the road ahead as dark filaments swam across my vision. Whatever was wrong with me, it seemed to be getting worse rather than better. On the other hand, it had been a hell of a night: I didn’t need to look all that far to find reasons why I might be functioning at less than a hundred per cent.