Mike Carey - Vicious Circle

‘I’ll pass that message on,’ Emma piped.

I hung up, and turned belatedly to acknowledge the little man who was still watching me in silence. ‘Whatever you did to me, it worked,’ I said. ‘Thanks.’

He shrugged – magnanimously, really, considering that I’d just cold-shouldered him after he’d pulled me back from the brink of something. I had to go, but I had to know, too. ‘What was it?’ I asked. ‘What was wrong with me?’

‘ Clostridium tetani , mainly,’ he said.

‘ Clostridium —?’

‘You had a bad tetanus infection. You should have kept your booster shots up. Tell me, have you been playing with werewolves lately?’

I hesitated for a second, then nodded. ‘Why?’ I demanded.

‘Yes, I thought so.’ He scratched his jaw, looking at me like he wanted to examine me some more and maybe write a monograph on me for The Lancet . ‘It’s something I saw before once – and it struck me so much I tried to read up on it. The wound on your shoulder was made by some kind of caltrop or throwing star. Whoever threw it at you was a loup-garou , and he’d licked the blade first: got it nice and wet with his saliva.

‘You know how the bad guys in spy novels will put a bug on the hero’s car, or on the sole of his shoe or somewhere, and then use it to follow him? Well, this is a kind of no-tech version of that: they can smell the pheromones in their own saliva. For miles, according to one study. They could track you across half of London. Of course, they can also infect you with rabies – or HIV. All in all, you probably got off pretty lightly.’

That explained a lot – and my feelings must have shown on my face, because the little man hastened to reassure me. ‘Oh, don’t you be worrying about it. I shot you full of vancomycin. There’s nothing living inside you now that shouldn’t be there. And the povidone-iodine scrubs I used will kill every last trace of pheromone that’s still on you. You won’t need to be looking over your shoulder. Obviously you should have a blood test at some point to rule out any infections that have a slower progression. But as far as I can tell, you’re okay.’

I was more concerned with the harm that had already been done. This was how the two loup-garous , Po and Zucker, had found me at the Thames Collective , and then again in Kensington Church Street. And on the Hammersmith flyover too, come to that. The bastards must have been riding on my tail for two whole days. Fortunately, for most of that time I’d been chasing my tail, so all they’d got for their trouble was vertigo.

‘Thanks,’ I said again, lamely. ‘I appreciate it.’

He waved the thanks away. ‘I was doing a favour for a friend,’ he said.

‘For Doctor Forster?’

‘Aye, that’s right. He would have come himself, if he could. But his time’s not his own.’

The man’s manner changed – became a little tentative and awkward. ‘This little girl – is there anything I can do to help? Professionally, I mean – as a doctor?’

The question caught me off-balance. ‘What little girl?’

‘When I was working on that cut, you were talking about a little girl. And a bloodstain. I couldn’t make out a lot of it, but it sounded bad.’

Yeah, I thought, with a sinking feeling in my stomach. And it would sound even worse in court. ‘No,’ I said brusquely. ‘You can’t help. Whatever the hell she needs now, it isn’t a doctor.’

He’d come around the table and was standing only a few feet away from me, his brow furrowed with sombre thought. I could tell it wasn’t the answer he’d wanted to hear. He was clearly asking himself if he’d just aided and abetted a child-murderer.

‘Look,’ I said, ‘the girl is – kind of – a client. You know what I do for a living, right?’

‘No. Sorry. I can’t say that I do.’

‘I’m an exorcist. The girl is dead, and I was hired – this sounds crazy, but it’s the truth – to find her ghost.’

The man nodded understandingly, as though that made perfect sense. But then he turned it over in his mind and started finding the rough edges. ‘Hired by whom? Who steals a ghost? Who tries to get one back?’

‘Who steals her? Probably her real father. Who tries to get her back, I don’t know because they gave me a truckload of bullshit. Maybe some fucking lunatic Satanists. But I’m still going to find her, because I think she’s in trouble.’

The little man gave a humourless laugh. ‘Worse trouble than being dead, you mean?’

‘Yeah.’ It felt strange saying it, but I knew it was true. I realised I’d known it for a while now – even before Basquiat had shown me how Abbie had died. ‘Worse trouble than being dead.’

The doctor digested this in unhappy silence. ‘Well, I hope it sorts itself out,’ he said at last, with the look of a man trudging resolutely back into his depth. ‘You should take it easy with that left arm for a little while. While the muscle’s all inflamed like that it’s easier to tear.’

‘I’ll do that,’ I said, and took Matt’s car keys out of the fruit bowl where Pen had left them.

‘You may still be a bit shaky,’ the little man said, frowning in concern. ‘If you feel like you’re having trouble controlling the car, you should pull over and take a cab or something.’

As far as solicitude went, he was getting just a little bit in my face now. I owed the man plenty, but I’ve never liked lectures, sermons or public-health notices. ‘Don’t worry about it,’ I muttered as I headed for the door. ‘It’s my brother’s car.’

The sky was darkening fast: too fast for spring. It was like a night that should have drained away a long time ago but had clogged the sinkholes of eternity and now was backing up into the daylight. Either that, or I’d just slept for longer than I thought.

The front doors of Saint Michael’s were still locked and bolted, and so was the lych-gate. That slowed me down for all of twenty seconds: the gate was more of a decorative feature than an actual barrier, and – weak as I still was – it offered me plenty of handholds. My landing on the graveyard side of the wall was a little bumpy, though, and I fell forward onto my hands, skinning them slightly.

I circled round through the graveyard until I could see the back door of the vestry up ahead of me. It was standing ajar. I walked out into the open, heading towards it, but was stopped before I’d gone ten steps by a breathless chuckle. I froze, looking around for the source of it.

There was a man propped up against the cemetery’s further wall, his head lolling forward on his chest. He had long, lanky hair and he was wearing a stained mac. He looked like a drunk searching for an impromptu urinal on his way home from the boozer, but a second, slightly less cursory glance more or less ruled that out. The stains on the mac were dark, irregular spatters: the dim light didn’t allow me to be certain, but they looked like blood. The side of his skull was smashed in, and one of his arms was dangling uselessly, like a pendulum, swinging slightly from left to right as he shifted his balance.

A zombie – and one who’d been taking a lot less care with his mortal remains than Nicky did.

Some suspicion that I couldn’t quite explain to myself made me veer in his direction. Maybe I recognised him from somewhere. Maybe I just didn’t want to have him at my back as I went into the church.

‘You okay there, sport?’ I said conversationally as I approached him. I was rummaging around in my pocket for the myrtle twig, but it wasn’t there. I must have left it on the floor at Imelda’s, where she’d probably have treated it like a dead rat: dustpan and brush, no direct contact, sterilise afterwards.