Mike Carey - The Devil You Know

“These things are never offered unless they’ve already been accepted, Mr. Castor. I’m sure you understand. Are you looking for a permanent position?”

Gabe was going a very scary color, fetchingly set off by his snow-white hair. It looked as though the effort of not speaking was going to cost him a major blood vessel.

“You’ve already got an exorcist,” I pointed out with a nod in his direction.

“My table is long and wide. It’s all a question of what good things you bring to it.”

“And that’s where I stick,” I said. “I mean, all I can do are the basics. I can’t raise demons, for example.”

“No.” Damjohn’s eyes flicked over to Gabe for the merest instant. “But for dangerous and marginal activities of that nature, one uses the reckless and the stupid. For you I’d have other tasks.”

I shook my head, not in refusal but in lingering disbelief. This was surreal. Damjohn was between me and the stage; from where I was sitting, a hugely pneumatic redhead was spreading her legs right behind his head, giving him a most unusual—but somehow appropriate—halo. “How much would you be looking to pay?” I asked, just for something to say.

“As a starting salary? Let’s say two thousand pounds a month. With a lump sum to cover moving expenses and any possible friction on the more tender areas of your conscience. And it goes without saying, but I will say it anyway, that any of my girls would be delighted to receive a visit from you at any time. More than delighted—because you’d be coming to them as my personal friend and associate. If you have any unusual needs of a sexual kind, they would be well catered for.”

Damjohn looked at me shrewdly, and I got the feeling that I was being weighed and assessed by a very skilled fisher of men. “I can see,” he said, “that I’ve still failed to find the measure of you, Mr. Castor. But I do have one other inducement to offer you.”

He stopped and waited for a response. I shrugged to indicate that I was still listening. On the stage, the redheaded woman was gone. In her place, a sax player was laying down some very lazy and half-hearted licks to a recorded backing, no doubt making the sex tourists feel like real urban sophisticates.

“You must have wondered—a man who does what you do for a living and who has been gifted by nature as you have would have to wonder—what conceivable scheme of things would allow the dead both to return as they do, in the forms that they do, and then to be sent away again by the likes of yourself and Mr. McClennan here. You must, in other words, have questions about the structure and logic of the invisible world—its geography, for want of a better word. You must have asked yourself what it all means.”

I’m sure that Damjohn saw me tense. Up to now, I’d been feeling pretty much on top of this conversation, because I knew that there was nothing he could offer me that I’d want. Me and love—even me and sex—is a complicated equation, and you can wear empty pockets with a certain chic, like a badge of integrity. But answers? Oh yeah. I’d gone halfway around the fucking world looking for answers.

Damjohn smiled, and this time he meant it—not as an expression of any warm feelings toward me, but from the pure and simple pleasure of having found my weak point.

“And you’d know?” was all I could find to say. “How’s that, then? I heard that Jesus walked among the prostitutes, but that was a while ago now. You’re not telling me the two of you met?”

The smile curdled slightly, but Damjohn’s tone stayed light and relaxed. “No. I’ve not had that pleasure. But I have spoken to his opposite number, as it were. I have knowledge that comes with a price many would consider too high. Of course,” he glanced across at Gabe again, this time with undisguised contempt, “I’ve usually been able to persuade others to pay it on my behalf.”

He leaned forward, his stare spearing me. “I know where they come from, and I know where you send them to. I imagine that information would pique your curiosity. Am I wrong?”

The look on his face was the overintense benevolence of a man who’s just invited you into the deep woods to look at some puppy dogs. I stared back at him, my feelings for a moment in too great a turmoil to allow me to speak. While that moment lasted, I was a six-year-old boy again, the remains of my birthday cake still in a Tupperware box in the bottom of the fridge, screaming at my kid sister to get out of my bed because she was dead already and she was scaring me. I saw her fade into nothing, her sad face last of all like the fucking Cheshire Cat in Alice in Wonderland.

“But you understand,” said Damjohn, sitting back, “the offer hasn’t been made. Not officially. Because the answer comes first.” He looked at me expectantly, really enjoying himself. McClennan was staring at me, too, with so pure and incandescent a hatred that he reminded me of one of those South American frogs that sweat venom. That wasn’t because I’d rifled his filing cabinet; it was because Damjohn was trying to seduce me instead of just getting some heavies in to make my arms and legs bend the wrong way.

And that made it easier, in a way. So did Katie, in another way, but that’s more than I can explain. I stood up.

“The offer hasn’t been made?” I repeated.

Damjohn shook his head reassuringly, imperturbably.

“Then I’m not telling you to shove it up your arse and tamp it in with a polo mallet. I’ll stick with the devils I know. Until next time, eh?”

I left my drink unfinished on the table. Gargling it and spitting it in Damjohn’s face would probably have counted as rude.

As I was walking through the foyer, heading for the street door, the phone rang in the little alcove, and the duty bouncer picked up. At the same time, a burst of louche jazz sounded from behind me and made a synapse connect somewhere in my memory.

It took only a second to try it out. I stepped outside and stood to one side of the door. On my mobile phone, I flicked through the last dozen calls or so until I found the number I was looking for: 7405 818. When I dialed, I got the engaged signal. I waited about thirty seconds; tried again.

From inside the club, I heard the phone ring. On my cell, I heard the gravelly voice of the bouncer. “Hello?”

“Wrong number,” I said. “Sorry.”

ICOE 7405 818. Someone at the Bonnington Archive had the number of a brothel in his Rolodex. Not sinister in itself, maybe—but given Damjohn’s touching interest in me, it was another link in the chain.

Then, when I was heading west toward the Bonnington, I made another connection. I’d been thinking about that missing page in the incident book, and suddenly I saw a way that the book could help me even in its maimed form.

So despite almost being carved up with a steak knife and failing to find hide or hair of Rosa, I was in a pretty good mood when I got back to the archive. I’d resisted temptation, discomfited my enemies, and started to put the pieces of this sad-ass puzzle together in a new order. All in all, I was feeling the smug satisfaction of a job well begun and therefore half done.

Right up until Alice told me I was fired.

I JUST NEED ANOTHER DAY,” I SAID, AMAZED TO HEAR a tone in my voice that sounded like pleading. “Honest to God. One more day will do it. Peele said I could have until the end of the week.”

Alice’s stony face didn’t soften by so much as a muscle. She was holding my trench coat in her hands, and now she thrust it back at me.

“Is this yours?” she demanded in an overemphatic, “this is for the record” voice.

“Yeah. It’s mine. Look, Alice, I’m serious. All I need to do now is nail down a few more bits and pieces. I’m there. Really.”