Mike Carey - The Devil You Know

“What the fuck were you thinking of, Castor?” he asked me, sounding genuinely mystified. “The ghost didn’t just turn up, did she? You brought her. Cheryl said she’ll split you if she ever sees you again, and Alice—well, you don’t want to know. She’s going to get the police in, she said. The only reason she didn’t do it today was because she didn’t want to spoil what was left of the occasion.”

I let him wind down, and then I told him that I’d cracked the whole thing.

“What thing?” The puzzlement was turning into annoyance. “You were just supposed to get rid of the ghost, weren’t you? What’s to crack?”

“How she got that way,” I said tersely.

Rich digested that for a few seconds.

“All right,” he said at last. “How did she?”

“Not now. Meet me at Euston, okay? On the concourse outside the station, at the Eversholt Street end. Eleven o’clock should be okay. And I’ll tell you all about it.”

“Why me?” The obvious question. I was surprised it had taken him so long to get to it.

“Because there were two crimes committed at the Bonnington,” I told him. “One of them was a theft, and since you were the victim, I thought you might want to hear about it.”

Rich played hard to get for a little while longer, then said he’d be there. I hung up and started to get my shit together.

So here I was, ten minutes early. The concrete piazza outside the station was as quiet as it ever gets, and it was easy to make sure that neither of us had been followed—or at least not by enthusiastic amateurs. Ajulutsikael was a different kettle of fish altogether; she had my scent now, and I had to assume that she could track me without ever coming in close enough for me to see her.

I found a secluded corner and loitered with intent. A phone kiosk and an advertising hoarding gave me a certain amount of cover, but left my line of sight clear both to the main exit from the station and to the stairs that came up from the Underground. There was almost nobody there: a small party of Japanese students with oversized backpacks, clustered just outside one set of automatic doors and taking turns to look anxiously at their watches; a homeless guy clutching a huge grubby sports bag and drinking White Lightning out of a can that he’d just broken from a four-pack; a couple of girls in pink tracksuits, too young to be out that late, sitting on a bench right across from me, back to back, sharing the one pair of headphones. None of them looked like part of an ambush, but I kept an open mind. I was clearly drifting into Nicky territory here: you embrace paranoia when it becomes a survival trait.

Rich came up the steps at a quarter past eleven, looked around, and didn’t see me. He’d changed out of his wedding gear and was dressed in black jeans, a Quiksilver sweatshirt, trainers.

I stepped out of hiding and started walking toward him. He turned, saw me, came to meet me halfway.

“Have you got your keys?” I asked him without any preamble.

“My what?” He was startled.

“Your keys to the archive. Do you have them on you?”

“Yeah,” he said. “I brought them.” He stared straight at me, looking wary and tense—a man who wanted it to be known that he’d need some convincing before he went along with any funny business. “What’s this about?”

“It’s about a lot of things, Rich. But for starters, let’s say it’s about a kleptomaniac who’s not averse to the occasional White Russian.”

Rich’s lips quirked downward, almost comically hangdog.

“Fuck,” he said, nonplussed. “You mean . . . you know, I thought once or twice that—fuck.”

“The Head of Steam’s still open,” I said. “Let me lay it all out for you.”

He followed me docilely across the concrete arena to the bizarre little theme pub they’ve squeezed into a corner there, but we’d missed the towel by five minutes and sat down dry. I took the laptop out of my pocket and pushed it across to him. Rich stared at it, then at me. “You’re one to watch, aren’t you, Castor?” he said a little grimly. “I was shitting bricks over this. Half the entries on here haven’t even been uploaded to the system yet. I was still trying to figure out how to break the news to Alice without catching the edge of her temper myself.”

He pulled the loosely wrapped package over to his own side of the table, as if he felt the need to assert his ownership of it.

“I didn’t have too many options,” I said. “I knew something odd was going on, but I couldn’t prove it. I needed to pass this on to a friend of mine who I thought might have a better chance of nailing it all down for me.”

“And?”

“It’s Jon Tiler,” I said.

Rich just laughed. “No way,” he protested.

“Way,” I insisted, deadpan. “He uses a wireless media pad to get around the fact that he can’t use his own keyboard on your machine.”

“What, a media pad? You’re joking.” Rich was still incredulous. “That’s just a remote for DVDs and stuff. It doesn’t even have full alphanumerics.”

“He’s not adding in any data or amending it. Only deleting.”

He absorbed this in silence, a number of expressions following each other across his face. When he finally spoke, it was terse and to the point.

“The bastard!”

“You get it?”

“Of course I get it. If he deletes my records before I upload, there’s no system entry to cross-check against. Nobody would ever know there was anything missing.”

“And that’s probably what tempted him to swipe so many items in such a short space of time.”

“ How many, exactly?”

“A couple of thousand, give or take.”

Rich winced. “That’s taking the piss,” he muttered. Then another thought visibly occurred to him; two thoughts, as it turned out. “But how’s he getting the stuff out of the archive? And what’s any of this got to do with the ghost?”

“I’m going to duck that second question for now. As to the first one, an ounce of bare-arsed cheek is worth a ton and a half of cunning. He’s just taking it up to the attic and dropping it out of the window onto the flat roof. Then I presume he comes around sometime in the night and collects it. All the strong rooms are on that side of the building, so there are no windows below the attic that overlook that area.”

“Jesus.” Rich’s expression was torn between annoyance and admiration. “I thought you were going to say he had a hollow wooden leg or something. Frank’s going to be sick. When Jeffrey starts looking for someone to blame, he’s going to start right at the front desk.”

“Wait, there’s more. I said the Russian collection tempted him to up his game, but he’s been doing this for three years. Whenever anything new comes into the archive, he skims a little something off the top. When did Tiler start work at the Bonnington, by the way?”

Rich laughed hollowly. “2002,” he said. “Fairly late in the year, I think, because they timed his appointment to start with the school year.” He shook his head. “Son of a bitch.”

I stood up, hands in pockets, and he looked up at me quizzically.

“Feel a burning desire for justice?” I asked.

He blew out his cheeks and thought about it. “Not really,” he said. “You’ll tell Jeffrey, right? And it’ll all get sorted. I mean, I’m pissed off, don’t get me wrong, but it’s not really any of my business. Not especially.”

“I don’t work for Peele anymore. I was sacked, remember? Yeah, I could go straight to the police—but to be honest, there’s another question I want answered first. There’s something I’d like to show you. And I’d like you to see it cold. Okay?”

It took him a while to make up his mind, but in the end he nodded and got up. I led the way out of the bar, back across the concourse, and out onto the street. We crossed the road, Rich still trailing me by about three steps. It was obvious where we were heading for.