‘What do I need this for?’ I demanded, nonplussed. ‘I’ve got my mobile.’
Gentle shrugged. ‘This uses police freaks,’ she said. ‘Some areas you don’t get good coverage from the mobile network. Radios always work - at least top-end kit like this does. You use band one unless there’s local interference, fall back to two, then three, and so on. Soon as the switchboard at the MOU picks you up, you’ll be patched through to Professor Mulbridge wherever she is.’
‘Wonderful,’ I muttered. ‘A hotline to God.’ I took the radio and shoved it into my pocket. I went downstairs with Gentle at my back, still explaining the finer points of the radio’s operation, but I couldn’t make myself listen any more. My mind was seething with questions and doubts. Why had Asmodeus taken Pen and Sue, instead of killing them here?
How
had he taken them, for that matter? In the back of a white van? Rolled up in a carpet? How did kidnapping fit in with the other things he’d done since he got free? Why did he need them alive, when he’d killed Ginny Parris and Jovan Ditko without a second thought?
Out on the lawn, Jenna-Jane was talking animatedly to Dicks. The big man shot me a glare as I approached, then nodded curtly - to Jenna-Jane, not to me.
‘It’s imperative,’ Jenna-Jane said. ‘This is the most important lead we’ve had so far, and we have to be free to pursue it wherever it leads.’ She looked round and seemed to notice me for the first time. ‘Castor. Good. Get into the car.’
‘Can’t I just drive myself?’ I asked. The last thing I wanted was a sulky South African security guard on my case all the way from here to Surrey, when I needed to get my thoughts in order and try to figure out a plan of campaign.
‘The car cost the hospital forty-eight thousand pounds,’ Jenna-Jane pointed out to me in a schoolmarmish tone. ‘And you’re exhausted, Felix. I simply wouldn’t trust you behind a wheel right now. In any case, you’ll need to be in touch with me at all times.’ She pointed to the radio, which I was still holding in my hand. ‘I’m going to leave Gentle here, in case we’ve missed something in our search. Some clue as to what the demon means to do. Assuming that Miss Bruckner and the other woman have been taken alive, he may have demands. You yourself may figure in his plans in some way that we don’t yet understand. Keep the radio on, and keep thinking about what we now know. About the names, and the summonings. If anything occurs to you - anything we can do that we’re not already doing - call me and I’ll do my best to see that it happens. When you return, come back directly to the MOU. I’ll debrief you there, unless we’ve located Asmodeus and we’re already in pursuit of him. If that happens, I’ll radio you and let you know where to find us.’
This entire speech was delivered without a pause. When it was over, Jenna-Jane stared at me in a way that said more loudly than words ‘Why are you still standing there?’ It was a good question. I got into the car, and Dicks slammed the door shut behind me with a muttered obscenity. As soon as he’d done so, Jenna-Jane tapped on the window. No manual wind. I opened the door a crack and she held out her hand.
‘Your phone,’ she demanded.
‘My what?’ I queried, mystified.
‘You’ve got Gentle’s radio,’ Jenna-Jane pointed out impatiently. ‘And the land line has been comprehensively destroyed. I can’t have her completely incommunicado. You’ll have to leave her your phone.’
‘Give her yours,’ I suggested.
Jenna-Jane bristled. ‘Castor, we’re in a situation where every second counts. Please don’t waste time arguing with me.’
I hesitated. I could see the point of the radio. If I found something that could work against Asmodeus without killing Rafi, and if Jenna-Jane’s people caught up with him while I was on the road, I had to get the information back to them immediately. It could be life or death at that point, and anything that could shorten the odds had to be a good idea. Giving up my phone struck me as a really bad idea, but my mind was full of urgency and emotional static. I took it out and tossed it into Jenna-Jane’s hand.
‘Stay in touch,’ she instructed me tersely as I shut the door again.
We headed south, and then west. Dicks drove quickly but with skill and control, taking advantage of the pre-rush-hour quiet to push the pedal wherever there was a clear stretch of road. He didn’t speak, and I had nothing to say to him, so I did as Jenna-Jane had suggested and thought about what Asmodeus had done.
By summoning Juliet’s cast-off aspects, he seemed to have regressed her to an earlier stage of her own history. Either that or he’d just driven her half-mad by reminding her of her past selves - surrounding her with names she thought she’d sloughed off forever. It was one of those two things or maybe a little of both, the names themselves having power over Juliet, power to define and shape her, or the overlaying of the names tormenting and confusing her, so that the restraints she’d built up around her demonic nature had begun to fall away.
Was all of this just a more elaborate form of payback? A quick death for Ginny Parris, torture and mutilation for Jovan Ditko, slow disintegration for Juliet. But in that case, why had he been prepared to kill me twice, in Brixton and then again in the Kingsway tunnel? Surely he had to blame me more than he did her for the half-life he’d endured these last few years.
The rule of names. Something to do with names, and how they worked. Something he knew and I didn’t, and because I hadn’t figured it out in time, he’d taken Pen and Sue.
The sun came up behind us as we drove, and I had to turn my face away from the rear-view mirror to keep from being blinded. I’d been sunk in thought for twenty minutes or more, and so I hadn’t given much thought to the route until we suddenly slowed down and I recognised the lower reaches of the Edgware Road. The traffic was getting heavier now, but we weren’t in a jam and I couldn’t see any reason for Dicks to hit the brakes.
Then he pulled into the kerb and came to a stop. Another burly-looking guy in the same black uniform climbed into the front passenger seat beside him. Of course, I thought. We were only a short walk from the MOU here: base camp for Jenna-Jane’s grunts.
‘Reinforcements,’ Dicks said. ‘In case we have to
insist
on seeing this gent of yours.’ The newcomer - whose sewn-on name badge identified him as DeJong - shot me a look, nodded to Dicks, and then we were moving again.
We picked up speed now, rounding Hyde Park and threading our way through Victoria without hitting any real snarl-ups. Thank you again, Mr Livingstone. We crossed the Thames by Chelsea Bridge and picked up the A3 at Clapham Common. After that, Dicks really put his foot down.
Eashing is the same kind of mundanely schizophrenic market town you’ll find off any A road in south-east England. It consisted of one quaint little main street with a half-timbered pub, a few old cottages that would look great on a postcard, and an ungainly sprawl of red-brick closes and steel-and-glass low-rises built in the last fifty years to the same rigorous structural and aesthetic standards as your average latrine pit.
I was sort of assuming that Moulson might have retired to some dignified rustic seat, with a trellised archway over his garden gate, but Appleton House turned out to be an old folks’ home, a cheerless barn built in washed-out yellow brick with a one-storey flat-roofed annexe. Dicks and his friend waited in the car while I walked to the front door and pressed the buzzer.
‘Yes?’ A female voice, although you could only just tell over the
fuzz
and
blat
and
crackle
of the intercom.
‘I’m here to see Mr Moulson,’ I said.
Crackle. Hiss. Blat
. ‘Are you a relative?’
I might as well be. Anything that would get the job done was fine with me. ‘He’s my great-uncle,’ I said.
The random static was replaced by a sustained metallic chainsaw sound as the receptionist buzzed me in. I stepped through into a reception area that looked like a doctor’s waiting room, except that it was deserted.
The formidable-looking woman at the reception desk took her thumb off the buzzer and instructed me to sign the visitors’ book, which I did. I even used my own name.
‘He’s in his room,’ she said, sounding apologetic. Her accent was Australian. ‘We try to get him to come out from time to time, but he prefers his own company.’
‘He always did,’ I bluffed automatically.
She nodded, looking at me a little curiously. ‘And to be honest,’ she added, ‘it’s a bit of a relief. That’s an awful thing to say, I know, but he scares a lot of the other residents when he does come out. Do you have any ID, Mr Castor?’
I showed her my driving licence, and she added a tick to the visitors’ book. ‘Can’t be too careful,’ she commented. ‘After that journalist tried to get in to see him. I’ll tell him you’re here.’
Shit. That wouldn’t do at all. ‘I’d rather surprise him,’ I said hastily, but the receptionist was already lifting the receiver on her switchboard phone and tapping the keys. She kept the receiver to her ear as she looked up at me. ‘Sorry,’ she said. ‘Trust rules. Won’t take a moment.’
There was a long pause. I could just about hear the phone at the other end of the line ring three, four, five times. I was already thinking out my next avenue of attack: Great-Uncle Martin didn’t know about our branch of the family, because my mother’s pregnancy had been kept secret, but now I needed to see him because Grandma was dead and he was the only heir to her vast fortune. For half a heartbeat or so I considered just cutting loose while the receptionist was busy and trying to find Moulson by myself, but I had no idea what room he was in, or what he looked like besides scary, or what sort of on-site security this place might have.
‘Hello, Mr Moulson,’ the receptionist said. ‘I’ve got a visitor for you here. Mr Felix Castor. Your great-nephew. Can I send him up?’
A brief silence.
‘Your great-nephew. Yes.’
Another pause. I tensed, opening my mouth to get my explanation in as soon as she hit the panic button.
She put the phone down and gave me a polite smile.
‘I’ll show you the way,’ she said.
With a slight feeling of unreality, I followed her as she left her post and led the way down a short corridor to a flight of stairs. ‘Room 17,’ she said, pointing. ‘First floor. It’s not locked. Can I bring you up a cup of tea, Mr Castor?’
‘No,’ I said. ‘No thanks. I’ll be fine.’
I went on up, passing a very old woman who was also climbing the stairs, at a more deliberate pace. She did it by assembling both feet on each step before launching an attempt on the next one. I was going to offer her a hand, but she was muttering under her breath, and when I got close enough to hear the words, I realised she was swearing to herself. ‘Fuck. Shit. Bastard. Cunt. Fuck . . .’ I didn’t want to break her concentration, which was scarily intense, so I squeezed round her and kept going. When I got to the top, she was still swearing and still climbing.
I knocked on the door of room 17, then opened it and went on in. The door opened onto a hall the size of a toilet cubicle, with a mirrored wall on the left and a row of three coat hooks on the right. The only door was facing me. It was half-open, but I couldn’t see anything beyond it because the room was completely dark. The institutional smell of boiled cabbage and floral disinfectant was strong, but something that was sharper, nastier and not so easy to identify lay under it, half-submerged like an alligator in a mud wallow.
‘Mr Moulson?’ I said in a conversational tone. The space was so confined, there didn’t seem to be any need to raise my voice.
‘Tell me why you’re here, you snot-nosed little fuck,’ someone said in the darkened room. The voice was slow and quavering, with a brittle click behind the words, a harmless-little-old-man voice that conjured up an image of the ageing, amiably bumbling Albert Einstein. The dislocation between the voice and the words - or for that matter between the voice and the grim, deadpan threat of the tone - was absolute. ‘And you’d better not bullshit me. I’ve got my hand on the emergency cord, but that’s the least of your worries. The first time you lie to me, you’ll be crying blood, you understand?’
‘My name is Castor,’ I said. ‘I’m—’
‘I already know your fucking name. Think I’m senile? She told me your name on the phone, didn’t she? London boy. Did some good work six or seven years back, but from what I heard you were never as good as you thought you were. Why can’t you people leave me alone? What, you get yourself in over your head or something? Figure you’ll pick my brains? Fuck off back to Babylon, baby boy.’
My brain wasn’t firing on all cylinders right then, but at that point the starter motor caught and the engine at least turned over. ‘You’re an exorcist,’ I said.
‘You’re telling me you didn’t know that?’ Moulson snarled. ‘So what, you’re just out here on a frigging day trip or something? Talk sense. I mean, right now. Talk some fucking sense, or else close the door behind you.’
I drew a deep breath. ‘I heard about what happened to you,’ I said slowly. The truth seemed to be the only option, because I didn’t know what Moulson’s agenda was, what would tickle his fancy, and what would be like a flicked towel to his wrinkled arse. ‘The same thing happened to my friend Rafael Ditko. He picked up a passenger. I want to know how you got yourself clean, because I’m hoping maybe the same trick will work with him.’
There was a long, pregnant silence from the darkness beyond the door.
‘Tell me its name,’ Moulson said at last, his voice barely a whisper. ‘Who’s he got?’
‘Asmodeus,’ I said.
Moulson laughed - a harsh, unlovely sound. ‘He doesn’t have a chance,’ he said. ‘Go on home, ghost-breaker. You came here on a fool’s errand.’
‘So what you did,’ I persisted, ‘it can’t be applied to a major demon? It only works with small fry?’ I put a mocking edge in my voice. If I couldn’t reason with the old bastard, maybe I could at least goad him into giving something away. ‘Here I thought you’d done something unique, and it turns out you just swatted a fly. Okay. Maybe I am wasting my time at that.’