‘Whereas you’re kind of a nocturnal life form, give or take. Plus you just flat-out hate people. You think two’s a crowd.’
‘Thanks, Castor. Believe it or not, these things had not slipped my mind.’
‘Fine. Just checking.’
Nicky laid a bundle of scaffolding legs in a canvas bag, one at a time, where a living man might just have thrown them all in at once and taken a chance on the odd ricochet. You didn’t last long as a zombie if you were cavalier with your mortal remains - and when it came to longevity, Nicky intended to break all known records. ‘I’m buying a lot of stuff,’ he said, ‘and sometimes to get the stuff I want I have to buy a lot of shit I can’t use.’
‘So wouldn’t A Lot of Shit I Can’t Use be a more accurate name for the stall?’
He didn’t rise to the bait. ‘Maybe. We’ll see how it pans out. Anyway, the point is, selling this stuff helps me finance my own hobby. It cost a lot to get the Gaumont up and running again. Defraying the expense seemed like a good idea.’
‘Seriously, Nicky, how are you going to get around the going bad and stinking problem? You keep yourself chilled for a reason.’
He stuffed some canvas in on top of the ironmongery. He’d folded it quickly and expertly to the dimensions of the bag, which zipped shut with military precision. I had the sudden suspicion that he’d practised erecting and dismantling the stall in the auditorium at the Gaumont before bringing it out onto the street. ‘I thought about it,’ he said. ‘A lot. The truth is, Castor, unless I can find someone who can do for me what the Ice-Maker was doing, I’m gonna start falling apart sooner rather than later.’
‘You said there’s a guy in the Midlands somewhere . . .’
‘Yeah. There was, when I said it. Now there’s a pile of ashes in the garden of rest at Walsall Crematorium. He got cancer. Died last month. And he seems to have decided against bodily resurrection as an option for his own future.’
I hefted one of the bags. ‘So?’ I prompted. ‘Doesn’t that mean it’s even more of a bad idea for you to spend any time at room temperature?’
Nicky gave me a stony look. ‘Actually, what it means is that I’m just prolonging the inevitable. Which is probably what I was doing anyway, with or without the Ice-Maker. This just brought it home to me. Yeah, I can stay in the deep freeze the whole time, last another six months, maybe a year. Then take my chances when I hit the wall.
‘Or alternatively I can try coming at the problem from a different angle. Like I said, I’ve been thinking about it. The way I look at it, life is like matter and energy: it can’t be destroyed, it can only be transformed. So my working plan right now is that I’m going to see this body out and then maybe rethink my options.’
That proposition stopped me in my tracks. Nicky hadn’t got to be the longest-lived zombie in the known world by taking unnecessary risks; he’d done it by clinging stubbornly to what he had and what he knew, and advancing into the void one tentative, begrudged step at a time. This sort of thinking was way out of character for him.
‘What options, exactly?’ I demanded.
Nicky fiddled with the zip fastener on one of the bags, his expression turning a little shifty. ‘I’ve been out,’ he said.
‘Out?’ I echoed, but I already knew what he meant.
‘Out of the flesh. I tried it a few times right after I died, and got nowhere. Now . . . it isn’t even hard. I decide to do it, and it’s done. Suddenly I’m looking at the back of my own head or more usually looking down from on top like my body’s an actor in a show and the real me is up in the dress circle, watching. I guess it’s a skill you just pick up as you go along.’
Or else, I thought, this was another piece of evidence that the world’s coefficients were shifting, tumbling us all - whether we liked it or not - out of our comfort zones into the infinite.
‘So yeah,’ Nicky summarised. ‘I know the ejector seat’s working, after all. That makes me feel a little bit more relaxed about letting the bodywork get all messed up. I’m gonna survive, Castor. Whatever the Hell happens to this meat. Knowing that changes the way you look at things.’
I didn’t answer because I couldn’t think of anything to say that wouldn’t sound either banal or apocalyptic. We carried the dismantled stall over to the van. Such was Nicky’s precision that it only took two trips. ‘Thanks,’ he said. ‘Okay, I got some stuff for you. You want it here or back at the movie house?’
Neither alternative seemed all that attractive. The night was a curdled bowl, but the Gaumont would be as frigid as a tomb. I went for the bird-in-the-hand option. ‘I’ll take it now,’ I said, ‘unless you need help unpacking at the other end.’
‘It can stay in the van. Okay, you asked me whether Ditko had any living relatives. The answer is one, and counting.’
He fished in the pocket of his jacket and handed me a folded sheet of paper. I took it and opened it up, but the light from the street lamps wasn’t good enough to read Nicky’s crabbed handwriting.
‘A brother,’ he summarised. ‘Name of Jovan.’
Tell my father . . . and Jovan . . . tell them I’m sorry. Do that for me. Please.
‘So where is he?’ I asked.
‘In FYROM.’
‘In what?’
‘The Former Yugoslav Republic of Macedonia. It’s a place. In Europe. You’ve just got the address there, no phone number or email. That’s all she wrote. Apart from Rafael, this is the last Ditko in the known universe. And if you want to talk to him, I suggest you move fast.’
‘Why’s that, Nicky?’
He flicked a corner of the paper with his thumbnail. ‘Because the address is death row, Irdrizovo Prison. He killed a guy, the cops caught him, and now he’s all out of appeals. Near as I can tell, the execution is going to be the day after tomorrow unless there’s a last-minute pardon.’
I carried on looking at him expectantly. He shrugged, deadpan. ‘What?’
‘It’s just a little barebones for you,’ I said. ‘It’s not that I’m not grateful. It just seems like . . . maybe . . . you left a stone unturned for once in your life.’
‘Yeah? Like what, for instance?’
‘Like “He killed a guy”?’
‘Well there’s more, but it’s ugly and would it help you to know? Irdrizovo is one fucking big oubliette. They’re not gonna let you see him. And they’re not gonna pardon him. That’s not the way the system works. But if you insist on wading in, there’s another name on there, and a telephone number. Jovan’s defence lawyer. Maybe you could get some questions to him somehow. Have to be fast, though.’
I slipped the paper into my pocket. ‘Thanks, Nicky. What else?’
Nicky feigned surprise. ‘That isn’t enough? Too bad. On the magic circle front, things are not going so well. The other one you sent me - you found it close to the first?’
‘Nowhere near,’ I said. ‘The first was at Pen’s place, the second was at Juliet’s.’
Nicky grimaced. ‘Would it surprise you to know that there was a third?’ he asked. Without waiting for an answer, he delved into his pocket, came up with a flat stone very like the two I’d already found. He flicked it into the air and I caught it at the height of its arc.
I opened my fist and examined it. It looked identical to the others, except that once more there was a different set of symbols at the heart of the pentagram. Four again, as with the stone I’d found at Pen’s.
‘Where’d you get it?’ I demanded.
‘Where do you think?’ Nicky countered. It was a fair question: it wasn’t as though he had a jet-setting lifestyle.
‘At your place.’
‘Up on the roof. So what’s the common denominator?’
I didn’t bother to ask him what he was doing up on the roof. Nicky is the kind of paranoiac who other paranoiacs feel should lighten up a little. I didn’t bother to answer his question, either, because it was clearly meant to be rhetorical.
‘They’re all in London,’ I mused.
Nicky rolled his eyes. ‘Yeah, right. Well done. What are you waiting for? Until you find one shoved up your arse? They’re aimed at you, Castor.’
‘Maybe,’ I allowed. ‘Maybe not. But yeah, so far I’m the common denominator.’
‘The first one was in Pen’s drive?’ Nicky demanded.
‘Yeah,’ I confirmed. And what was it that was scratching at the back door of my mind as I said that, begging to be let in? Whatever it was, it was playing games with me, because when I opened the door there was nothing there.
‘Second?’
‘Sue Book’s garden.’
‘And the third was tucked in behind my satellite dish. So whoever it was didn’t come inside any at any point. Suggesting maybe they couldn’t, because they’re dead or undead and don’t like to get tangled up in whatever wards are on the buildings. Anyway, they’re all summonings, and they’re all done in the same style. I was right about that much.’
‘All petitioning the same entity? This Tlallik?’
‘No. As I’m sure you noticed, all three of them carry different names. So now, in addition to Tlallik we’ve got demons named Ket and Jetaniul. And I can’t find word one about any of them.’
‘Nothing?’ I was both amazed and disconcerted.
‘Almost nothing,’ Nicky qualified. ‘There’s a passage in Foivel Grazimir’s
Enaxeteleuton
that includes Tlallik, but the context makes it completely useless. Crazy Foivel is talking about demons that are worth dealing with as opposed to demons that aren’t. I could do it from memory, but here.’
He’d taken a second, much larger sheet of paper from the same pocket, which he unfolded now before handing it to me with a ceremonial flourish.
‘Nicky,’ I said, ‘if this is from one of the Russian hermetics it’s in fucking old Cyrillic.’
‘You can transliterate though, right? Look.’ He ran his finger down the right-hand side of the page. ‘Agathonou. Dyspex. Idionel. Tlallik.’
‘Yeah, but what is that? Grazimir’s Christmas card list?’
‘Probably not, Castor. He was Jewish. I can give you the rough sense of it. He’s been saying “bespeak this name for wealth” and “this demon can set you up with some female company for the weekend”. Then he goes “but you must know from lore, or else learn it by hard experiment, that some names thought to be potent don’t do Jack shit” - I’m paraphrasing, you understand - “so call not on these, for though they be of great renown and great power, they don’t pick up when you call”.’
I pondered this, looking down the list for some other names I recognised. There weren’t any.
‘Grazimir is writing when?’ I asked.
‘Thirteenth century. About the same time as Honorius and Ghayat al-Hakim.’
‘So, way early?’
‘Yeah.’
‘And he’s got Tlallik pegged as a has-been.’
‘Exactly. And as far as I can tell, none of the high medievals mention him at all. Whoever drew those circles, Castor, they’re either dipping into some very old magic or else they’re so far behind the curve they’re staring up their own arseholes.’
I breathed out heavily - almost a sigh - and tucked the list into my pocket along with Jovan Ditko’s contact details. ‘Thanks again,’ I said. ‘Feel like adding another chore to the list?’
‘Not so much.’
‘It’s an easy one.’
‘Then try me. But don’t be surprised if I tell you to go fuck yourself. I’ve got a new line of business now; I don’t have to worry so much about pissing you off.’
‘Like you ever did. I need some information about a place. An area of London.’ I told him about Super-Self, and what I’d seen there. He listened in silence until I got to the part with the ghosts in the swimming pool.
‘No fucking way,’ he said then.
‘I’m telling you what I saw, Nicky.’
‘Then you were stoned. Roman ghosts? In togas? Please! Were there any ghost-cavemen there, throwing spears at ghost-mammoths?’
‘The Aldwych end of the Strand,’ I repeated doggedly. ‘Close to what used to be Wych Street. Apparently there was some work done there around the turn of the century. The twentieth century, I mean.’
‘Some work done?’ Nicky snorted. ‘They levelled the whole area to build Aldwych. Which is Anglo-Saxon, by the way - it means “old settlement”. From a logistical point of view, you could take that as a hint that there might have been buildings of some sort there when the Romans came through. But it’s still ridiculous.’
‘Why?’
‘Why what?’
‘Why is it ridiculous? Give me the reasons.’
He didn’t even have to pause for thought. ‘First off, ghosts don’t last that long. You know that as well as I do. Second, ghosts don’t interact with other ghosts. I know you’ve got that weird little dead-girl posse, but I never heard of anything like that anywhere else. Ghosts interact with the living, or else they’re locked in on themselves and they just replay their death. What they don’t do is have kaffee-klatches with other ghosts. And third, the ground level would have been a good thirty feet lower back then. I know you were in the basement, so that’s a few feet below the street, but it still wouldn’t have been low enough.’
‘Suppose their anchor isn’t a physical place. It could be something that was used in the building. Some of the stonework behind the tiles of the swimming pool, say. Maybe they moved because their anchor was moved.’
‘And they end up twenty feet closer to God, still playing out whole conversations like scenes from a silent movie? Why doesn’t that explanation convince me? Face it, Castor, the behaviour you’re describing doesn’t fit with anything you’ve ever seen before.’
‘That’s precisely the point,’ I said. ‘It doesn’t. So whatever the explanation turns out to be, it’s going to be new. I don’t want to rule anything out just because it sounds weird.’
‘Or insane,’ Nicky added. ‘Yeah, I hear you. But even Sherlock Holmes liked to eliminate the impossible before he got moving. Otherwise he would’ve fingered a lot more leprechauns and unicorns than he did.’
I was too tired to argue. ‘Just check the site out,’ I asked him. ‘Tell me if anything weird has happened there before now.’