Thicker Than Water (24 page)

That was a good question. I decided to duck it until I could think of a good answer. ‘Let’s go ahead and get Rafi ready to receive visitors first,’ I said. ‘Then we’ll see if we can cut a deal.’

With an expressive look at me, Imelda swept away. I followed, and Pen remained behind. At this stage of the game, her presence was a wild card that we surely didn’t need.

Down on the first floor, Imelda traced a line around the padlock with a stick of charcoal that she took from the blue-black folds of her gown. Then she spoke to it before she unlocked it and left it hanging on the hasp. There were two further locks on the door itself and they both got the same treatment. Then she stood back and I led the way into the room – the moment of greatest risk, reserved for me because this whole thing had been my stupid idea in the first place.

I’d taken a lot of pains setting the room up in the week or so before we made the raid on the Stanger, so it was a big improvement over Rafi’s cell back there. It had furniture in it, for one thing, and a bookshelf with books on it – including his precious Kerouacs, Corsos and Ginsbergs – and an icebox with a few cans of Fosters floating in cold water that had been ice the evening before. All the comforts of home, give or take: nothing electrical, no TV or fridge, because things of that nature interfere with Imelda’s wards. But back at the care home, Rafi lived in a b ki l noare silver box and was given nothing that Asmodeus might use to raise mischief. Even his clothes had to be free of buttons and zips. By contrast, this was one of the corner suites at Claridges.

Rafi was lying on the bed reading the previous day’s
Guardian
when we entered. He sat up and nodded to us both.

‘Hey, Wonder Woman. Hey, Fix. What’s new? Are we still good?’

‘Still fine, Rafi,’ I assured him. ‘No news is good news. Webb doesn’t seem to be missing you very much.’ I was watching Rafi as I spoke, alert for any trace of the demon Asmodeus in the way he moved or spoke. There was nothing. The Ice-Maker had touched him and he was still chilled.

All the same I played him a binding tune, and Imelda touched him some more on the head and face and shoulders, murmuring to herself in throaty Gabon French as she did so. It was the first time we’d worked in tag-team format like this, but we fell in with each other’s moves without needing to discuss it.

Rafi didn’t talk either, until we’d finished. Then he voiced the question that had been on his mind ever since we’d walked into the room. ‘Is Pen with you?’

‘Nah, she had to do her hair,’ I said, and then, before his face could register either dismay or disbelief, ‘She’s upstairs. She clocks on as soon as we clock off.’

‘Then don’t let me keep you,’ he said, waving us towards the door. ‘Oh, did you bring the whisky, Fix?’

‘I’ll drop it in later,’ I promised. ‘Before I leave, there’s something I want to talk to you about.’

While Pen got her conjugals, securely locked in with Rafi behind the barricade of wards, I explained to Imelda what I’d seen and felt on the Salisbury estate. She was about as impressed as I thought she’d be. ‘You need to drink a little less coffee, Castor,’ she told me stonily. ‘Your nerves are getting jumpy.’

‘I’m serious, Imelda,’ I said, not rising to the bait. ‘This is real, and it’s nasty.’

‘Then go do that thing you do.’ She said this with a contemptuous edge in her voice: like I said, to the Ice-Maker the dead are friends and clients. Consequently she doesn’t have a whole lot of time for exorcists.

‘I intend to,’ I said, flatly. ‘But I’d like to know how the land lies. You don’t defuse a bomb by picking it up and shaking it to see what rattles. You check what kind of trigger it’s got.’

‘What in God’s name do you know about defusing bombs?’

‘About as much as I know about freestyle tap-dance,’ I admitted. ‘But I do know about frying the undead – saving your presence – and I know I’ve got a better chance of coming out of this on my own two feet if I get some decent intel.’

We argued it backwards and forwards a knd divlittle without getting anywhere. And when it was clear that Imelda wasn’t going to concede the point, I shifted my ground.

‘What if Asmodeus gets out anyway?’ I asked her. ‘We’ve got him under control at the moment, but that might not last. Wouldn’t you like to test the strength of those wards on the door while you’ve got me around as back-up?’

By way of answer, Imelda stood up and beckoned me to follow her. We went across the barren space, smelling slightly of decay, that she calls her waiting room to a doorway, on the far side of which Lisa was reading
Hello!
magazine by the light of a stub of candle.

‘So say we test the wards, and they fail,’ Imelda said. ‘That’s my sweet girl there, Castor. The only thing I’ll leave behind me when I’m gone to show I was ever here. I stretched a point already, letting you bring an
âme raché
into my house. I stretched it as far as it’s going to go. Do I want to test the wards? Hell, if that thing gets out of him, all the wards in the goddamn world aren’t going to slow it down for the time it takes you to fart, Castor. I’m relying on the strength of my hands. They’ve never failed me yet.’

I threw up my hands in a gesture of surrender. I could see I wasn’t going to carry the point. By this time Pen’s hour was up and we were getting into overtime. We went downstairs, letting our feet fall heavily to announce us. When Imelda was finally done with the locks and bolts, Pen and Rafi were sitting demurely on the bed together, just holding hands.

I held out the whisky and Rafi let go of Pen’s hand to take it.

‘Jameson’s,’ he said without much enthusiasm. ‘I asked for single malt.’

‘You get single malt when I get a paying gig,’ I told him, and he grunted in disapproval. ‘Okay,’ I said. ‘I guess we’d better hit the road.’

‘I thought you had something you wanted to say to me.’

I shrugged. There was nothing else I could do. ‘It’ll keep,’ I said. ‘Pen, whenever you’re ready.’

They embraced, long and lingering: in the end I made a throat-clearing noise and they peeled apart reluctantly. Don’t think I was just being an arsehole here, by the way: we’d learned by trial and error that the heightened arousal Rafi gets from being around Pen tends to undo the effect of Imelda’s benediction and my playing. An hour is safe. An hour and a half is usually okay. Two hours or more is asking for trouble.

‘You’re working on the Tune, right?’ Rafi asked me. When he says it that way, with the capital letter, it only ever means one thing: the music of unbinding, the tune that will sunder him from Asmodeus and leave him once again as sole tenant in his own skin.

‘Always,’ I told him, which was as good as saying ‘No news since the last time you asked.’

He nodded slowly, staring me in the eyes the whole time. He knows the only leverage he has on me is my gui kn m”>

The whisky bottle hit the wall right next to my head and shattered spectacularly.

I turned with my mouth open on an oath, but the look on Rafi’s face silenced me. He was staring in shock and horror at his own left hand, which was rotating on his wrist as though he was flexing before some strenuous exercise. I saw the truth in his eyes. Then the hand and arm lifted, against Rafi’s straining efforts, and beckoned me to return.

I didn’t: not straight away. First I went upstairs to get pen and paper.

‘So let’s be absolutely clear,’ I said, looking not into Rafi’s eyes but at his twitching left hand. A black biro was loosely propped between his thumb and forefinger, and a page from the newspaper was spread across the table between us. ‘Asmodeus?’

The moving biro wrote, and having writ moved on. A single word.
Yes
.

‘Son of a bitch,’ Imelda murmured in her throat. Pen just gave a forlorn moan.

‘How?’ I demanded.

Rafi wrote:
The usual way.

‘So you’re building up an immunity to Imelda’s treatment. Very kind of you to let us know. We’ll try harder next time.’

The hand twitched and scribbled, the pen held at a crazy angle, the letters produced gradually by what seemed at first to be random strokes and slashes.
You’ll be civil. If you want answers.

I tried to keep a poker face: Asmodeus had the left hand, and clearly he could hear me, too. Safest to assume he was also looking out through Rafi’s eyes. ‘You’ve got some answers for me?’

Ask me a question.

Might as well go for broke. ‘What’s happening on the Salisbury estate?’

A door opening
, Rafi wrote.
An eggshell breaking across. Call it metamorphosis
.
Call it transformation.

Great. Who’s up for a game of twenty questions? ‘So what’s changing into what?’ I demanded. ‘Or are you getting writer’s cramp?’

Rafi’s hand laid down the pen, flexed and unflexed, then picked it up again.
You’ll laugh when I tell you. It’s a huge joke, mostly on you. But there are two sides to every deal, Castor. You haven’t asked me what my consultation fee is.

And here we were, at the top of t kt tdivhe slippery slope. ‘Okay,’ I said. ‘How about this? You tell me what I need to know, and I’ll keep doing whatever’s necessary to make sure Jenna-Jane doesn’t get to add you to her zoo.’

But you do that for your friend, not for me. I need

The sheet of paper was now completely filled with angular scrawl. I flipped it over – Rafi’s hand twitching all the while as though the flow of nerve impulses couldn’t be stopped or slowed – and Asmodeus went on as though there’d been no interruption.
something else.

‘Like what?’

Entertainment. Delectation. Tasty morsels to gladden my jaded heart.

Despite the situation, I almost laughed. The images conjured up by the words were too grotesque to take seriously. ‘How about an Indian takeaway and a belly dance?’ I suggested.

My tastes run otherwise.

‘Be specific. I’m no way signing you a blank cheque.’

You feed me. And I’ll feed you.

‘Meaning?’

Bring me to it. This thing you want to kill. Set me free, so I can carve off a little piece of it for myself, and enjoy it at my leisure. When I’ve eaten my fill, I’ll tell you how to deal with whatever’s left.

I sat irresolute. I looked into Rafi’s eyes but Rafi only shrugged brusquely, his shoulders hunched and his mouth set in a grimace. This was nothing to do with him, and he obviously wasn’t enjoying the experience.

Imelda saw my hesitation. ‘No deal,’ she said, a warning note in her voice. And I knew damn well she was right.

‘Tell me a way to do this that doesn’t leave you loose in the world when it’s over,’ I said to the invisible presence. ‘Meet me halfway, Asmodeus. If this is something you really want, make it possible for me to say yes.’

The hand stopped its restless movement and lay still for a few moments on the paper. Then Rafi, with a wince, lifted it to head height and massaged the wrist with his other hand.

‘That fucking hurt,’ he said.

Pen was at his side in a moment, embracing him fiercely. Imelda turned to me, her face hard. ‘What did we miss?’ she demanded. ‘What trick did we miss?’

I shrugged. ‘We didn’t miss a thing. I think he’s been building up to that. Keeping a piece of Rafi under his control so he could pull a little coup when the right time came.’ And why would that be now? I wondered but didn’t say. Why had he shown his hand?

Because he felt pretty d k fe

Rafi disentangled himself from Pen’s consoling arms and stood.

‘You’ve got some more work to do,’ he said to me and Imelda, a tremor in his voice.

‘Yeah,’ I admitted. ‘You’re right.’ I took out my whistle and blew a low, sustained note while Imelda clamped her strong hands to either side of Rafi’s skull. We got busy.

Again.

I made the tail after I’d seen Pen onto the train at Peckham, and my feelings passed quickly from terrified alarm through consternation to a sort of dogged puzzlement. This guy was at best an enthusiastic amateur, making himself obvious by keeping his movements broadly in synch with mine, keeping his shoulders hunched and his head lowered as if he was afraid of looking anyone in the face, and once stopping dead when I turned and looked back the way I’d come.

That first clear glimpse gave me a prickly feeling of recognition, although I couldn’t remember where I might have seen the guy before. He had the etiolated skin and painfully slender build of a smack addict, and black hair that hung to his shoulder: a look distinctive enough that I ought not to have had to grope too long for the newsflash from my long-term memory, but nothing was forthcoming. His dark eyes flicked to left and right as though they were following a metronome, effectively solving the problem of not looking fixedly at me by not looking for more than a fraction of a second at anything. He wore a dark grey flak jacket and a silver-grey scarf only marginally thicker than a necktie – maybe trying to signal that he was tough but in touch with his feminine side.

The memory nagged at me but at first it wouldn’t come clear. Then I got another blink-and-you-miss-it glimpse of him reflected in the glass of a swinging shop door as it closed. The tiny dark dot over his right eye was the trigger that loosened my mental logjam. The guy on the stairs at the Salisbury, with the BO that was probably grave stench. The dead man walking, who’d said he thought he knew me.

In a way, it was good news: if he was a zombie – and particularly, if he was following me
away
from Imelda’s place – then he wasn’t one of Jenna-Jane’s people. He must have hooked onto my coat-tails at the Salisbury, which was why all my ducking and diving on the way there from Pen’s house hadn’t shaken him off: whoever he was, he didn’t seem to be part of the professional two-man tag-team Gary Coldwood had spotted. So maybe – just maybe – I hadn’t just blown the secret of Rafi’s current location to the last person in the world I wanted to have it.

I needed answers, though, and in the aftermath of that nasty shock I yielded to an evil temptation. Why not turn the tables on this born-again little scuzzball and see if he had anything to say for himself?