Mike Carey - The Devil You Know

Quite an impressive display of ninja stealth. She was standing in the doorway with her arms folded, and Rich tailed off when he saw her. For a moment I thought of asking her to clarify the mystery: she said she wasn’t there; Rich said she was. But it might come across badly to bring it out in public—like a challenge or a taunt. It was probably better to let that one keep for now. “Well, I look forward to hearing the whole story,” I said blandly. “Go over it in your mind; the more detail you can give me, the better. I’ll see you in a few minutes.”

“Sure, man,” said Rich.

Nodding to the pair of them, I joined Alice and she led the way down the corridor, around another odd bend. The doors here were open, all but one, and some even had windows onto the corridor. At the same time there was a subtle change in the background feel of the place, like the silence when a fridge cuts out, making you aware for the first time that you were hearing a sound. I suspected that we’d just passed into the new annex.

Just beyond the bend in the corridor there were two doors. One was tersely labeled SENIOR ARCHIVIST, and the other had Peele’s name on it, above the emblazoned words CHIEF ADMINISTRATOR.

“He’s very busy,” Alice said, making it sound almost like an accusation. “Please keep this as short as you can.” She knocked on the door, then walked in.

The name plaque on Peele’s door may have been impressive, but his office was barely wide enough to fit his desk into. You’d have thought a man with that big a title could have finagled himself a bit more elbow room.

Peele himself was sitting not exactly behind the desk—because this was a corner room with some odd angles to it, and the desk was against a wall—but in as commanding a position as logistics allowed. He looked up as I came in and closed a window on his computer’s desktop. Probably Minesweeper, judging by how hastily and jerkily he did it.

The man who swiveled his chair toward me was in his late forties; tall and cadaverous in build, with a great ruddy hawk bill of a nose spoiling what would otherwise have been the handsome and ascetic face of a Methodist minister. He had red worry-marks on either side of his nose, but he wasn’t wearing spectacles. His thinning hair was brown grizzled with gray, and his suit, which was dark blue, shimmered with a faint and incongruous two-tone effect.

I say he swiveled his chair toward me. Actually, he only made it through a few degrees of arc, and when he stopped, he was still only three-quarters on to me. His gaze made contact with mine for all of a second, then darted back down to the desk.

“Please sit down, Mr. Castor,” he said. He waved toward the other chair, which had been positioned so far away from his own that it was only just inside the room. I took it. Alice stayed standing.

“Thank you, Alice,” Peele said over my head.

Alice read that right, but she didn’t take the hint. “I think I should probably stay,” she said. “I’ll need to know how we’re going forward with this.”

“I’ll discuss the situation with Mr. Castor and then let you know,” said Peele, sounding almost petulant.

I counted five seconds before the door closed behind my back, not with a bang but with a whimper, or rather a complaining whoof of displaced air. There was something a little off-kilter in that whole exchange, but I didn’t know either of them well enough to tell what it was.

“I’m pleased you reconsidered,” Peele went on, sounding if anything a bit irritated. “But I confess, after our conversation last night, I was expecting to hear from Professor Mulbridge.”

My own fault. I’d talked up option B too much and made myself look like the stand-in instead of the main event.

“Well, that’s still a possible way forward, Mr. Peele,” I allowed. “But I found myself with some free time after all, and I thought time was a factor here. If you’re prepared to wait a little while, I can certainly refer your problem to the professor. I should be seeing her next week. Or the week after, maybe.”

He grimaced. As I’d hoped, he swallowed this suggestion with a definite lack of relish. “No,” he said, shaking his head emphatically. “We couldn’t possibly wait that long. After the attack on Richard, I think the staff are looking to me to act—to resolve this problem. If I can’t, then . . . well, morale will suffer; it will certainly suffer. I really can’t have it said that I didn’t act. And the archive is hosting a public function on Sunday. No, it needs to be settled. The whole business needs to be settled.”

I couldn’t tell what was going on in Peele’s mind, but he’d become quite animated now. He risked another glance at me, no longer than the first one. “This is a crucial time for us in many ways, Mr. Castor,” he said. “I have a meeting in Bilbao tomorrow—at the Guggenheim Museum. A very important meeting for the archive and for me. I need to know that matters here are in train—that I’m not going to come back to chaos and recriminations. If you’re free to start now, today, then I think that’s what we should do.”

The tone of his voice was merely fretful and peevish, but the fear underneath seemed genuine. He was out of his depth, he expected dire consequences if he screwed up, and he wanted an expert to take the whole thing off his hands and make it go away.

Well, here I was. I just wished to Christ he’d look at me or acknowledge me in some way. This relentless cold shoulder reminded me disturbingly of a passive-aggressive girlfriend I’d once had. Was he autistic?

Peele seemed to guess what was going through my mind.

“You’re probably finding my body language a little disturbing,” he said. “Perhaps you’re even wondering if I have a psychological or neurological condition of some kind.”

“No, I wasn’t—”

“The answer is that I do. I’m hyperlexic. It’s a condition similar in some ways to high-functioning autism.”

“I see.”

“Do you? Perhaps not. If you’re mentally classifying me as somebody with a debilitating disease, then you don’t see. Not at all. I could read at the age of two and write just after my third birthday. I can also memorize complex texts after a single reading, even if I’m not familiar with the language they’re written in. Hyperlexia is a gift, Mr. Castor, not a curse. It does, though, make me react in unusual ways to other people’s social signals. Eye contact in particular is very uncomfortable for me. I’m sorry if you’re finding this interview disorienting or unpleasant as a result.”

“It’s fine,” I said. Embarrassed and slightly thrown, I overcompensated and spoke just to fill the silence. “In fact, it fills a hole in the jigsaw. I can understand now why you laid so much emphasis on the way the ghost stares at you. That’s probably more upsetting for you than for the rest of the staff here.”

Peele nodded. “Very perceptive,” he said without warmth. “Another aspect of my condition is that I find most metaphors . . . opaque. Confusing. Such as your reference to me as a jigsaw puzzle, for example. I hear it, but it doesn’t mean anything to me. If you could avoid metaphors when you’re speaking to me, I’d be very grateful.”

“Right.” I decided the best bet was to pull the discussion back onto a strictly business basis. “Let me just check the timetable with you again,” I said. “The sightings started in September, is that right?”

“I believe so, yes. At least, that’s the first time anything was said to me about it, and so that’s the first entry in the incident book. I didn’t see her myself for a few weeks after that.”

“Do you have an exact date? For the first sighting, I mean?”

“Of course.” Peele seemed slightly affronted at the question. He opened his desk drawer and took out a double-width ledger with a marbled hardboard cover, put it down on the blotter in front of him, and started to leaf through it. I’d assumed that “incident book” was a quaint, archaic title for a database file, but no, here was a real book with real writing in it. Maybe working in a place like this gave you an exaggerated respect for tradition.