Mike Carey - Vicious Circle

‘Why?’ I demanded. ‘Why did you come here, particularly? What makes this place so special?’

‘The ramparts,’ said Peace, sounding just a little smug even through his pain. ‘Earth and air you saw, right? Outside? But it’s the water that’s really clever. That brickwork is double-skin, and there’s a hollow space in between the two layers that’s lined with lead. It’s meant to be filled with water from the mains supply, with a pump to keep it circulating, but there are all sorts of holes in it now so it keeps draining away again. Whenever I felt you fishing for Abbie, I turned the pumps on and put up a wall of running water between you and her. And one time I gave you a bit of salt on your tail, too, just by the way.’

‘I remember,’ I said, a touch grimly.

Peace managed a weak laugh. ‘“Set a thief to catch a thief,” yeah? Only it doesn’t work unless you get hold of a better thief than the one you’re looking for.’

‘And yet,’ I reminded him, ‘here I am.’

‘Only because someone ratted me out. You didn’t find me by looking.’

I let that pass. If Peace wanted to have a pissing contest, he could play both sides. In any case, I thought I’d heard a car door slam somewhere out on the road – far enough away that it was at the limit of hearing. Peace didn’t seem to have noticed it, though, so maybe I was mistaken.

‘I’m going to wake Abbie up,’ he said. ‘Unless there’s anything else you want to ask me about?’

‘No,’ I said. ‘I’m good. My bedtime-story needs are met.’

I turned my back on him, walked to the door and looked out. Nothing moved in the baleful moonlight. Behind me, there were only the small sounds of Peace dealing out a hand of cards on the bare concrete floor. When I glanced his way again Abbie was back, standing at his side as if she’d never left. I had to admit, grudgingly, that he was as good as he thought he was. They were talking in low murmurs, and I felt a definite reluctance to disturb their privacy.

I stepped out into the dark instead. If I smoked, I’d have lit a cigarette. If I’d had any booze left, I’d have had a drink. As it was there was nothing I could do but wait. I must have been wrong about the car door, because nothing was stirring.

Doctor Feelgood ought to have been here by now. Edgy and irritable, I fished out the phone again to call Pen and ask her to hurry him along. This time I noticed what I hadn’t before: there were four missed-call alerts, all from the same number: Nicky Heath’s number.

The first and second times, he hadn’t left a message. The third time he had. I played it back.

‘There’s something wrong here, Castor.’ Nicky’s voice, stiff with tension; a prolonged scraping sound in the background as he moved something heavy across the floor. ‘There’s a whole bunch of people outside. They turned up in four cars, and now they’re standing around like they’re waiting for someone. I do not fucking like this. If it’s anything to do with the shit you’re involved with, why don’t you come over here and deal with it your fucking self, okay? Call me. Fucking call me, okay? Like, now.’

My throat suddenly dry, I flicked to the last message.

‘This is a siege here, Castor!’ Nicky’s voice was a yell now, which meant he would have had to work hard to inflate his non-functional lungs. ‘They shot the cameras out. The fucking cameras! I’m blind, you understand me? They could be right outside my door, and I wouldn’t— Oh, shit!’

There was an abrupt click, and then the high-pitched single tone that means ‘message ends’. I dialled Nicky’s number with shaking hands. Nothing, for ten or twenty seconds: just silence. With a muttered curse I terminated the call and started to dial again, but before I even finished the area code I heard the sound of footsteps walking down the short path from the road.

I turned in that direction. A figure came into view a second later, stepping out of the shadows and through the narrow opening between the raised earth beds onto the driveway.

‘Over here, Doctor Forster,’ I called. The figure turned and came forward into the light.

When I got a look at his face, I experienced a momentary lurch of dissociation: then my heart jumped in my chest like a test pilot in crash webbing. I’d never met Dylan Forster, but I knew that face well enough. When I’d first met the guy, only three days before in my office, he’d introduced himself as Stephen Torrington. And now, in a sudden flash of elementary logic, it occurred to me that both of those names were as good as each other because his real name had to be something different again. I also knew now why he’d had to send someone else to look after me when I’d collapsed at Pen’s house: at that point, he couldn’t afford for me to see his face.

I thought of Peace’s Glock, which was still inside lying on the floor of the Oriflamme. But it wouldn’t have mattered even if I could have got to it. The bastard had set this up exactly the way he wanted. He already had a gun in his hand and it was pointing at my chest.

‘You want to watch that thing – or it could go off,’ I said, because I had to say something: had to get some kind of interaction going that might buy me some time while I thought of a way to distract, disarm and decapitate him.

He shook his head. ‘It won’t be going off just yet,’ he said, in an almost languid tone. Funny that Pen had never mentioned his soft, half-elided mid-Atlantic accent. The smirk playing across his lips confirmed what I already knew.

‘You’re Anton Fanke.’

He made a mock bow, saluting my way-past-theeleventh-hour leap of intuitive logic. ‘If you’d figured that out three days ago,’ he said, his tone the gentlest of sneers, ‘I might have been impressed. Check him for weapons.’

The last words weren’t addressed to me, but past me into the shadows at the side of the building. Three men who must have been standing absolutely still until then stepped out of the darkness, surrounded me and frisked me with extreme thoroughness. They didn’t look like my mental image of Satanists: they looked a lot more like my mental image of FBI agents. One of them was carrying a snub-nosed handgun, which he pressed to the base of my neck.

The other two, searching my left- and right-hand sides in rough synchrony, came up with my dagger and whistle respectively. They held them up for Fanke’s inspection.

‘Now we’ll go inside,’ Fanke said.

I took a step towards him, but the men on either side of me moved in to block me and the gun at my neck pressed a little harder. I knew I’d never get there.

‘Why Pen?’ I demanded, between my teeth. ‘What did you need her for?’

‘Rafael Ditko was the vessel,’ said Fanke, throwing out his arm towards the door of the Oriflamme in formal invitation. ‘I had to get close to him. We had our plan already in place, but if it failed – it might have been necessary to take Ditko from the Stanger clinic and kill him to release Asmodeus’s spirit from him. Pamela would have been very useful in that eventuality. As things have turned out, though, I think we’ll be just fine as we are. Wilkes, you can lead the way. You’re just marginally more expendable than Mister Castor is at this point.’

Things were coming apart fast. In desperation, I tensed to jump for Fanke as he walked towards me. He favoured me with a glance of amused contempt.

‘That would be a mistake,’ he said in a clipped tone. ‘I’d like you alive at this point, because you’re looking like a pretty good scapegoat, but don’t push me.’

Caught in his sights and those of the guy behind me, I briefly considered tackling him low and seeing if they both let fly and took each other out. But that wouldn’t even work in a Bugs Bunny cartoon.