Vicious Circle

20

The contents of a first-aid kit vary a lot from place to place but the core is always the same – bandages and sticking plasters in a million different shapes and sizes. There’s usually a bottle of disinfectant and some cotton buds; this one even had a few exotics like Savlon spray and vinegar for stings. None of that mattered a damn. I was looking for items that had either a point or an edge.

I got lucky. There was a tiny pair of scissors, a pair of splinter forceps and a half-dozen safety pins.

The door had a simple mortise deadlock with no lock-maker’s name on the plate. I dropped the forceps back into the box: probably too wide, and certainly not strong enough. I bent back one of the safety pins into a nearly straight line, then, using the scissors as a makeshift pair of pliers, I twisted the sharp end up and back into a hook. After a hairpin it’s my favourite kind of improvised lockpick, and it was easily up to a job as straightforward as this.

Five minutes were all it took to work the lock’s three levers around into the release position, the third one falling into place with a very satisfying click. Before I tried the door, I turned the light out and let my eyes adjust to the dark again. There was no light coming from under the door: if there had been, I’d have noticed it before, when the room had still been in darkness. Under the circumstances, the goal was to see before I was seen. Otherwise I’d be back to square one.

After about a minute, I eased the door open as silently as I could. Peering out, I waited until the wider darkness outside had started to resolve itself into shapes before I stepped out. I was in another part of the massive main exhibition area, as sepulchral and empty as the part where Gwillam had interrogated me. I reckoned there should be any number of ways out onto the street from here, or into other parts of the South Bank complex that were still open to the public. All I had to do was to make sure I didn’t bump into any of Gwillam’s merry little band on the way. In the case of Po, though, that meant not just avoiding being seen but also not letting him get my scent.

The level I was on seemed to be entirely deserted, so from that point of view I was doing fine. I thought about resting up for a few minutes here before I moved on but time was pressing: I didn’t know what I might have said while I was under the drug, or how much Gwillam now knew. There was also the fact that since I was still dressed only in a hospital gown I’d probably get hypothermia if I hung around too long in this frigid air.

After a minute or so of tacking backwards and forwards across the huge space I found a staircase and headed down, taking it slow in the pitch dark to avoid going arse-overtip all the way to the bottom. I was reasoning that at the very least I’d probably hit a door to the car park – which in turn had to connect with the street. Even if there was a security grille and it was locked shut, I was reasonably sure that I’d be able to jemmy it and get out.

But the door at the bottom of the stairwell was a fire door, with a padlock and chain hung over the bar in defiance of law and logic. I retraced my steps to the floor above and tried the door there. It opened when I pushed, so I stopped when the crack was about an inch wide and peered through.

Not quite dark here: there were lights on somewhere ahead – a dull, slightly bluish glow coming around the edge of what looked like a movable partition wall up ahead of me and slightly to my left. I listened: no sound at all, except for the very faint hum of some kind of machinery.

I stepped out and eased the door closed behind me. Sooner or later I had to come out of the stairwell, and the closer to the ground I was the better I’d like it. The South Bank Centre is a spectacular vertical maze even with the lights on: I could waste a quarter of an hour or more just shuffling up and down in the dark.

A few steps brought me to the edge of the partition wall. Moving as slowly and silently as I could, I leaned around it and looked in at the source of the light.

A man was sitting in a cheap plastic bucket chair at a computer terminal. His back was to me, but I recognised the bald spot: it was Sallis. He was scrolling slowly through endless screens of double-columned text, and he seemed absolutely intent. The gun, with the silencer now removed, sat beside him on the desk where the computer had been set up, in between a Republic of Coffee cup and a styrofoam burger box. The Anathemata might be tooled up for war but they were living like cops on a stake-out.

I considered my options. No one else in sight, and no other islands of light in the immense room. Sallis was deep into something that seemed to have completely cut him off from the world around him. I could sneak on past him, and maybe make it to another exit without him clocking me on the way.

On the other hand, there was the gun. And the clothes. And whatever money he might have in his pockets. Needs must when the devil drives.

I took a step back, then another; and one sideways. Working from memory, that was the best I could do. I charged the partition shoulder first, taking a flying leap at the last moment so that I hit it high and had all my weight on its upper half as it came down and I came down with it.

Sallis didn’t even yell. He did make some kind of a sound, but not one I could do justice to without specialised equipment. His head slammed forward into the desk with a solid smack as he fell, forced down by the combined weight of the partition and my body. Then the legs of the desk gave way and he just vanished from sight under the general wreckage.

I rolled over twice and came up quickly, spinning to face Sallis in case he was still conscious and going for the gun. But I needn’t have worried. He was sprawled on the ground, absolutely still, his head and upper body under the fallen partition. I snatched the gun up myself, tried to work out which end was which and eventually found the safety catch. With that matter sorted, I levered the near end of the partition wall aside with my foot. Sallis was out cold, a trickle of blood wending its way down his forehead from a shallow cut. He was still breathing, though, and the cut was the only wound I could see. He’d probably get out of this with nothing worse than a headache.

I stripped Sallis quickly and shrugged into his jeans, shirt and jacket. They fitted me pretty well, all things considered, and the slight stink of his stale sweat was a price I was willing to pay. I searched his pockets. Bingo: a small wad of notes, a card wallet, even a set of car keys on a fancy fob that bore the Mitsubishi logo. I took the gun, too, since there was no way of getting back my weapon of choice.

I was done, and I had places to be. But I hesitated because an idea had struck me. Another one came hard on its heels: way above average, and annoying because it meant going back the way I’d come. I wasn’t sure whether the gain in matériel would offset the loss of time, but either way I didn’t have the luxury of standing here agonising about it.

First things first. Rooting amidst the wreckage of the desk, I found a few sheets of paper and a black biro. I rested the paper against Sallis’s back and scribbled a brief note. It probably wouldn’t help, but it couldn’t hurt so what the hell. I folded the note and tucked it into the waistband of his underpants, like a fiver into a Chippendale’s jockstrap.

Then I retraced my steps to the storeroom and collected up about half a dozen of those old film canisters, shaking them first to make sure that they were full. They might be blank stock, useless now because the cameras that would take them had gone to rust and scrap decades ago; or alternatively they could be lost masterpieces from the silent era. I purposely didn’t read the labels in any case, because whatever they’d been before the only attraction they had for me now arose out of the fact that the blast-proof doors over at Nicky’s gaff were still fresh in my mind: film burns like petrol burns.

Time to hit the road, and more than. This time around I wasn’t deterred by the padlock at the bottom of the stairs, because this time around I had Sallis’s gun. I missed with the first shot, severed the chain very effectively with the second and kicked the doors open.

I was back in the car park, and it was empty. In case the indecently loud noise of the gunshots brought werewolves or security guards running to see what was what, I quickened my steps as I climbed the shallow ramp that led towards what I hoped was the exit. Halfway up there was a motorbike, leaning drunkenly against the wall in a way that suggested a broken kickstand. At the top there was a closed security grille. On the far side of the grille were light and sound and life: theatregoers and late-night revellers walked past, happily oblivious of the dark worlds that glided past theirs on sly, crazy tangents. The same night, or the next? How long had I been out after Gwillam slipped me the truth drug? The answer came pat: if I’d been unconscious for twenty-four hours I’d be a Hell of a lot more seriously dehydrated than I was. It was still Thursday, and I was still in with a chance.

For a moment, I almost resented the people filtering past in the unrelenting slipstream of normality – not just for their happy or indifferent faces and their carefree conversations but because their presence right there, right then, meant I couldn’t use the gun again. I tried the grille. It wasn’t locked: it slid up as I hauled on it, with a stuck-pig squeal.

Then I did a double take which in other circumstances might have been comic. I went back down to where the bike was parked and took a closer look at it. The logo above the front headlight was the three-diamonds-makinga-triangle of the Mitsubishi company. The bike also had a pair of panniers at the back like a courier’s bike.

I experienced a momentary qualm of near-panic as I fished Sallis’s keys out of the pocket of Sallis’s jacket. If this worked I had to be using up someone else’s luck, because this sure as hell didn’t feel like mine.

Trying to look casual for the benefit of anyone who might glance in from the street, I slid the film canisters into the panniers, three to each side, and climbed on board. There were running footsteps coming up the ramp now, and I heard a shout from behind me. I didn’t turn around: turning around at the sound of a shout just makes you look guilty.

The key fitted, and the engine roared into noisy, over-emphatic life on the first turn. Now I did look back, and was on the whole relieved to find that the pursuit was wearing uniform – and flesh that was entirely human.

They were still fifty feet behind, giving me just about enough time to slip the helmet that was dangling from the handlebars – dark red, like the bike, and emblazoned with a winged-skull motif – over my head. Safety first. Then I burned rubber, leaving the three yelling security guards to share my exhaust between them.

I wasn’t sure how to go in at the Stanger Care Home. Was I a wanted felon now? The ram raid on a North London hospital had to have made the news: the question was whether they’d sorted through the debris yet and ascertained that I wasn’t in it – and if so, whether they’d put out any kind of a public warning alongside the inevitable APB.

If they had, walking into the Stanger like it was all business as usual might mean walking straight back into police custody. On the other hand, there was something inside that I needed, and I couldn’t see any other way of getting it.

But while I was still sitting astride the bike in the darkened car park, irresolute, providence reached out to me in the shape of Paul. He came lumbering out through the main doors, leaned against the side of the ambulance where we’d had our talk a few days before, and lit up. He blew a plume of smoke out through his nostrils, and it hung in faint lines in the still air like a runic inscription carved into the flesh of the night.

As I got off the bike and walked towards him, he glanced in my direction and then took a longer, harder look. Because of the bike he’d had me pegged as a stranger, but I saw the doubt appear in his face and I saw him tense. By that time I was close enough for him to hear me without me having to raise my voice too much. I took the helmet off and kept on walking.

‘Hey, Paul,’ I offered.

He thrust out his lower lip in a look of truculent puzzlement. ‘Hey, Castor. I thought you were meant to be on the run from the police.’

I nodded easily, strolling up beside him and resting one shoulder against the ambulance, the helmet tucked casually under my arm and my free hand thrust into the pocket of Sallis’s leather jacket. ‘That’s right,’ I said, flicking the helmet with the tip of my thumb. ‘Hence the cunning disguise.’

‘Armed and dangerous, is what I heard.’

‘Armed, yes.’ I showed him the handgun and put it away again fast. ‘I’d only be dangerous if I was organised. How’s Rafi?’

Paul took a drag on his cigarette and blew out some more smoke. The gun had brought a pained look to his face, but he wasn’t surprised or intimidated by it. ‘He’s good,’ he said. ‘Rafael is good. Best he’s ever been. You want to know the truth, I can hardly believe he’s the same fucking person.’

‘You want to know the truth, he isn’t. Paul, I need to get in and see him.’

He chuckled softly and shook his head, grinning as if in appreciation of a good joke. ‘Not gonna happen, man,’ he said. ‘They got your face on the TV – everyone inside is talking about it. The ones who reckon you always had shifty eyes are kind of winning right now.’

‘They don’t have to see my face.’ I held up the motorcycle helmet. ‘Just get me inside, Paul. It’s important. And afterwards you can say I had a gun on you.’

‘Have you, Castor?’

‘Have I what?’

Paul looked me in the eye, calm and cold. ‘Got a gun on me?’

I winced. ‘Fuck, no. I didn’t kill anyone, Paul, and I’m not planning to start now. But I need to speak to Rafi, and I thought you could help. If you don’t want to, then I guess all I can ask you to do is to hold off on raising the alarm for a while.’

He dropped the last inch of his cigarette onto the asphalt and trod it out. ‘This is going to upset Doctor Webb,’ he observed. ‘Make him look all kinds of stupid.’

‘Yeah,’ I said. ‘I guess.’ I was working out distances and odds. If I just walked in off the street and headed for the annexe where Rafi’s cell was without going through reception first, the nurse on duty would hit an alarm. I could get to Rafi, but could I get into the cell without a key? And could I get out again afterwards?

‘Bound to,’ Paul pursued, meditatively. ‘Bound to ruin his day. A wanted man walks in off the street, gets through all his security and then walks out again. That kind of thing is real hard to explain to the board of trustees.’

He squared his shoulders, like a man walking back into the fray after a short, well-needed rest.

‘So let’s do it,’ he said.

Paul went first, hands swinging at his sides, looking bored and indifferent. I followed, helmet on and visor down, holding one of the film canisters because it was the only prop I had to hand.

The nurse on reception looked up and saw that it was Paul. Then, as she was about to return to her novel, she saw the other, unfamiliar figure looming behind him. She stared at me, and at what I was holding, with a quickening of interest.

‘Where’s Doctor Webb, Lizzie?’ Paul asked her. ‘This guy – ’hooking a thumb over his shoulder ‘—needs a signature for something, and it’s got to be the boss man’s.’

‘I think he’s in his office,’ the nurse said, glancing back to Paul again. ‘Shall I page him?’

‘Nah, I’ll take him through. You sign in first, though,’ he said to me severely. ‘This is a stupid time to be making a delivery in any case. Come on, move it up. Some of us have got work to do.’

The nurse held out a biro and I signed the day book as Frederick Cheney LaRue, a name that had stuck with me after I’d read that Woodward and Bernstein book about Watergate.

‘It’s this way,’ Paul said, ambling away along the corridor. I waved to the nurse, the helmet making the gesture look more paramilitary than civil, and followed him. I wanted to look back but made myself keep right on going: I hoped for my sake that whatever chapter Lizzie was on in her book was more interesting than a weird stranger walking in out of the night to take a movie reel to her boss.

Webb’s office was off to the right when you reached the annexe. We went left, towards the secure cells. Paul used the Judas window to check exactly where Rafi was – a touch of caution born of long experience – and then unlocked the door for me. I stepped inside, and he followed close on my heels, swinging the door to. When I looked a question at him, he shrugged. ‘How’m I going to say you had a gun on me if I’m out there keeping lookout, Castor?’

‘Fair point,’ I admitted.

Rafi was lying on a tubular steel bunk – a new addition to the cell that was in itself a vivid testimony to how much he’d changed in the last few days. When Asmodeus was in the ascendant, the cell was kept absolutely bare because you could never tell when the demon’s mood would toggle from quiescent to murderously playful. Too many staff had taken hits in the early days: Webb had made Pen sign a waiver as Rafi’s legal executor, and the cell had been reduced, as far as possible, to a featureless metal cube.

By contrast with those bad old days, right now it was looking almost cosy. In addition to the bed there was a poster on the wall – a reproduction of Van Gogh’s sunflowers – and a chest of drawers with a pencil and paper resting on top of it. Enough right there for Asmodeus to have caused some serious mayhem back in the day.

Rafi was asleep: very deeply asleep. I looked from him to Paul, who gave a grin that was almost a snarl. ‘Doctor Webb says that until we get the results of the new assessment back, Mister Ditko stays on his meds. Same times, same dosages. Of course, when he was sharing the premises, so to speak, it didn’t matter so much. He could shrug off the drugs whenever he needed to, seemed like. Now those two Temazepam he gets at nine p.m. knock him out stone-cold until morning.’

It didn’t surprise me, because that was the kind of bastard Webb was: the play-it-by-the-book and my-hands-are-tied kind. Since there was nobody to explain myself to, I did what I’d come to do without preamble. Taking out the scissors that I’d taken from the first-aid box back at the South Bank Centre, I carefully cut a lock of Rafi’s hair without waking him.

‘What d’you need his hair for?’ Paul asked me, his face registering something like disgust.

‘Sucker bait,’ I said grimly. Paul’s distaste couldn’t be anything like as great as mine: I knew the truth. It would be the last resort, I told myself. I wouldn’t use it unless everything else failed. Anyway, I probably wouldn’t even get in close enough to use it in the first place. And the timing would have to be perfect, so the chances were that I’d made this detour for nothing.

I ran through that litany three times over: it didn’t make me feel the slightest bit better.

I put the scissors in my pocket and tied the hair around the ring finger of my left hand where I couldn’t lose it. Then, self-conscious because Paul was still standing right behind me, staring at my back, I lowered myself to the floor and crossed my legs. With my head bowed and my eyes closed, I began to whistle softly.

It’s harder without an instrument, but far from impossible: back when Juliet was still mad, bad and fucking lethal to know, and was about to devour me body and soul, I’d dragged myself out of the jaws of death (actually it was a different part of death’s anatomy, but let’s not get bogged down in the technicalities) by tapping out a rhythm with my hand. Everything we ghost-breakers do is just a metaphor – visible or audible or what the hell else – for something else that’s going on inside our minds. The limits are the ones we impose on ourselves.

I whistled an old tune that has a lot of different names – one of them is ‘The Flash Lad’. It’s a highwayman ballad, meant to date all the way back to the eighteenth century, and if you listen to the lyrics it ends badly. Sweet tune, though, and it seemed to be an appropriate one for what I was trying to do.

Back when Asmodeus had first invaded Rafi’s body, I’d spectacularly failed to get a proper sense of him: that was why I’d screwed up so badly, and tied Rafi’s soul indissolubly to the demon’s essence. But I’d played my tin whistle for Rafi a hundred times since then, playing the demon down to sleep so that my friend could have a few hours’ respite from the Hell I’d bestowed on him. So I knew Asmodeus quite well by this time: knew how he felt in my fingers, how he sounded in my mind; knew the tune of him.

I teased the very edges of a summons, and I felt the demon respond. Faintly – ever so faintly – but unmistakably. Quickly I changed the rhythm and the pitch. I couldn’t just break off, but I could ease away, like a fisherman easing the tension on a line to let the fish pull free and escape. I didn’t want to face Asmodeus again in this narrow cell: very much indeed I didn’t want it. But I did want to be sure that he was there. That although the bulk of this monster’s being was embedded in the cold stones of Saint Michael’s, there was a corner of him still here in the soul of Rafael Ditko.

I had what I needed; and Rafi hadn’t even stirred. I let the tune fade down into silence and stood, wincing at a sharp pain in my left leg. It felt like I was bruised there – probably from when Gwillam and his werewolves had thrown me into the storeroom while I was unconscious.

That was when Rafi opened his eyes. For a moment or two, they didn’t focus – or maybe they focused past me, on something from his dreams that he was still seeing. Then he blinked, and something registered.

‘Fix,’ he muttered thickly.

‘Hello, Rafi,’ I said.

‘That was fucking weird. I was just talking to you.’

‘You were?’

‘Must’ve dreamed it. Everything okay?’

‘Everything’s fine, Rafi.’

He closed his eyes again, and in a second a change in the quality of his breathing made it clear that he was asleep again.

‘Thanks, Paul,’ I said, turning back to the burly nurse, who’d been watching me with a sort of glum fascination.

‘That was it? You got what you wanted?’

‘More or less. Do you carry a mobile?’

‘Sure.’

‘Can I borrow it?’

‘Okay. But it’s a piece of shit.’

He reached a big hand into his pocket and brought out a cute little silver device that he could have worn as an earring. I took it, and checked the battery charge before pocketing it.

‘And your lighter,’ I said.

Paul breathed out heavily enough for it to count as a sigh. But he handed the lighter over too.

I gave him an appraising look. ‘You want me to lock you in here or something so you look more like a victim and less like you were in on it?’ I asked him.

He made a dismissive gesture. ‘Yeah, go for it,’ he said. ‘Tell you the truth, though, I’ve been thinking of looking for another job. One where I won’t have to swallow so much bullshit. Mind how you go, Castor.’

‘Thanks, Paul. I owe you one.’

‘You owe me somewhere between six and ten. Tell me where you drink, I’ll come over some night and collect.’

‘The Jerusalem in Britton Street would be a good bet.’

‘Okay. I’ll see you there.’

I let myself out, remembering to ditch the film canister under Rafi’s bunk so it would look like I’d made my delivery. The thing about lying is that it gets to be a habit, like anything else.

And then you have to remind yourself to stop.