Mike Carey - The Devil You Know

“And I was more or less done. I mean, I’d found all the bits and pieces I’d set out to find, and all I had to do with the map was put a patch in it. It sounds dodgy, but that’s how we deal with splits and tears, unless the original is too precious to mess with. We paste in new material—unbleached Japanese paper and pH-neutral paste—and stain it the right color so it doesn’t look like a pig’s breakfast. I was cutting my patch to size. We’re meant to tear rather than cut, but I usually cut and then fray the edges with the edge of a scissor blade. Anyway, that’s where I’d got to.”

Rich took a long swig on the Lucozade bottle, wiped his mouth.

“And then the lights flickered. Just for a second. Alice said something about brownouts, and Jon turned that into a joke—I can’t remember what, just something crude. But then it happened again, and suddenly it was like we were at a disco and they’d turned on the strobes. I stood up—I was going to walk over and turn the lights on and off a few times, see if that did the trick.

“But I never got there. Something pushed me back down into the chair. There was a bang—like something heavy landing on the table in front of me—and the floor shook. The map, the stain pots, all the stuff I was using, it just went flying into the air. The lights went out altogether, then a second later they came back on again. And the scissors”—he lifted a hand to touch the bandage on his cheek—“they sort of twisted around in my hand. I could see it happening, but I couldn’t stop it. It hurt like a bastard, too. I managed to slip my finger out of the grip, but my thumb was still trapped, all twisted around.

“I was shit-scared, mate, I don’t mind saying. I shouted out something. ‘Fuck,’ or something like that. ‘Look what’s fucking happening.’ Cheryl came running over to help me, but the scissor blades were pulling me around by my own thumb—up and down and all over the place. I must have looked like Peter Sellers in that movie where he’s trying not to do a Nazi salute.

“The scissors were hacking at my body and my face, and the only way I could protect myself was to turn with them and keep ducking out of the way. I barged into Cheryl, and she went over on the floor. Christ knows where Jon and Alice were. Farhat just kept screaming and screaming, which was a sod of a lot of use. Then I got the idea of banging my hand against the edge of the desk. It took about five or six goes, but in the end I got my thumb free, and the scissors just fell to the floor. Cheryl was thinking more clearly than I was—she trapped them with her foot in case they got up again.

“I looked across at Cheryl. I was going to say something like, ‘Bloody hell, that was intense.’ But then I saw she was looking at my face, so I put my hand up and touched my cheek. And it was wet. There was blood pouring down out of this cut. Spattering all over the worksheet and the desk, all over everything.

“I think I fainted for a few seconds. The next thing I remember, I was sitting down again and Peele—Jeffrey—was in the room. Bit of a rarity in itself, that—like a visit from royalty. Everyone was shouting, arguing about what to do. Alice said she was going to call for an ambulance, but I said I was okay and I was going home. I’d deal with the cut myself. Jeffrey wasn’t happy about that because he thought there might be some sort of insurance angle to all this shit, but I more or less said bollocks to that and got out of there. I was shaking like a leaf and I felt sick—like I might really throw up. I just had to get out.

“I almost didn’t come back in on the Monday. The whole thing really shook me up. But this is my job, for fuck’s sake. What am I going to do, pull a sickie because I’m scared of ghosts?”

Rich took another belt of Lucozade, grimaced.

“Warm,” he explained, without much conviction, putting the bottle down on the table and shoving it away from him.

I didn’t say anything for a moment or two. What he’d said made some things easier to get a handle on, but it made others even murkier than they’d been before.

“You’re right-handed?” I asked him at last. It wasn’t a question, really. He’d been holding the phone in his right hand when I’d walked past the workroom earlier.

“Yeah. So?”

“But you were holding the scissors in your left hand, because it was your left cheek that got slashed.”

He looked at me, obviously impressed.

“You’re good at this, aren’t you? Yeah, that was what pissed me off more than anything, to be honest. I was using my left hand because my right one already had a big thick dressing on it from where I’d trapped it in the desk drawer a few weeks earlier. It was just starting to get better, and then I got my face opened up. Someone’s really got it in for me.”

“The desk drawer. Was that the ghost, again, or—”

Rich laughed sardonically.

“No, that was just me. It’s not like I need any help to mutilate myself. I’ve got a name for accidental self-immolation. It’s a good job I’m the bloody first-aid man.” He hesitated, nonplussed. “Mind you—it would have been around about the right time. Maybe it was her. I thought it was just me being cack-handed.”

I turned my attention back to the boxes on the table.

“Have you been working on these ever since August?” I asked.

He followed my gaze and blew out his cheeks. “On and off, yeah,” he answered, sounding a little defensive. “I’ve got other stuff going on as well, obviously. There’s a huge amount of material there, and it’s never been sorted. It was in a private collection somewhere over in Bishopsgate. Well, that’s what Jeffrey likes to say, anyway. But I was in on the whole deal, so I can translate that into English for you—he means it was stuck under someone’s bed next to the pisspot.”

“You were in on the deal?”

“Yeah, I found the stuff, and I acted as broker. I wasn’t allowed to claim a finder’s fee because I’m on salary here—you can only pay a fee when someone from outside has brought something to you. But I acted as a go-between and a translator, anyway. It made a change from routine. And as a reward I get to catalog the whole damn collection myself because I’m the only one here who can speak Russian.”

“Was that why the Bonnington hired you?” I asked him. “As a language expert?”

“I suppose it made a difference—but it was the classical education that was my unique selling point, not the Russian and Czech. The archive has got a load of old deeds and certificates written in medieval Latin.” Rich picked up one of the birthday cards, opened it, and read the message inside. “To be honest, I don’t mind doing this stuff, because I like to give myself a linguistic booster shot every now and then to make sure I don’t get too rusty. Normally I do it with a foreign holiday, but this is cheaper.”

“Is there a story attached to this collection?” I hazarded. “Or to how you got your hands on it?”

He looked blank and shrugged. “No, we just put in a bid for it and got it. But there’s no scandal or murder or anything, if that’s what you mean. Not that I heard about.”

“And you haven’t come across anything sensational or unusual in the documents themselves?”

By way of answer, Rich read aloud from the card he was still holding. “‘To Auntie Khaicha, from Peter and Sonia. With all our love and thanks. We hope to see you again before the baby arrives, God willing, and to hear news from our dear cousin.’”

He let it fall back into the box.

“That’s one of the racier ones,” he said resignedly.

Time flies when you’re enjoying yourself. It was after midday when Rich and I got back up to the workroom. The archivists had all clocked off for lunch, leaving a note for Rich that they’d be at the Costella Café on Euston Road. He invited me along, but I wasn’t going to lose this opportunity to have the place to myself.