Vicious Circle

24

Basquiat was as good as her word. The charges were dropped and I was released back onto the street in the middle of Saturday afternoon. The clothes I’d left at the Whittington hadn’t turned up, though, so I was still stuck in the natty outfit I’d taken from Sallis. By now it was smelling even riper than when I’d inherited it.

The first thing I did was to go out to Walthamstow and check on Nicky, because I didn’t believe Fanke’s bland assurances that his cultists had left my favourite dead man in one piece. But Nicky was none the worse for wear, and was even inclined to be a little smug – even though most of the cinema apart from his inner sanctum up in the projection booth had been comprehensively trashed.

‘See, Castor,’ he said, ‘I got everything here insured eight ways from Sunday, and I already put in the claims – through proxy companies, naturally; got to keep that footprint small. Anyway, I’m gonna build it up again ten times better. I mean, fuck air-conditioning. I’ve got a freezer on order from a place in Germany that fits out hospital morgues. You’re not gonna know this place.’

I looked at the outside of the projection booth’s door. The wood had been split with axes or crowbars – but all that had done was to reveal the metal underneath.

‘It must have been a hell of a siege,’ I said.

Nicky shrugged, some of his good mood evaporating. ‘Yeah, it was fucking scary, all right. I had to watch while they smashed everything up. Then they spotted the cameras and took them out, so I couldn’t even do that. It was. . .I dunno . . . like having scabies, or something: like watching little insects crawling around under your fucking skin.

He frowned. ‘Hey, I’m sorry about your friend. You know that, right? If there’d been anything I could’ve done, then I would’ve done it. They brought fucking blowtorches in, for Christ’s sake. Nothing to stop them, once they had me shut in up here. I tried to call you again when they took her, but by that time they’d rolled one of those phone jammers in, too, so all I got was static.’

He hesitated, as if realising belatedly that he should have covered this part of the conversation first. ‘So is she okay?’

‘Juliet?’

‘Ajulutsikael. Don’t anthropomorphise her. That’ll get you in trouble somewhere down the line.’

‘Doesn’t the use of a female pronoun already anthropomorphise her?’ I asked.

Nicky scowled. ‘Anyone who can give a dead man an erection has earned that pronoun, Castor. Consider it an honorific.’

‘She’s fine, Nicky. Thanks for asking. Back to her old self by this time, I’m sure.’

‘And my payment? You know, the five questions?’ He looked at me hopefully.

I shrugged. ‘All I can do is ask her. The deal was that you’d keep her safe, Nicky. She may take the view that you’re in breach of contract.’

‘Breach of— ?’ He flared up. ‘Hey, I was invaded, Castor. I kept my part of the deal, ten times over.’

He had a point. I said I’d get back to him, and left him choosing thermostatic valves out of a catalogue. They’ve got some really nice ones these days.

At Pen’s, to my far from huge surprise, I found all my worldly goods stacked up out in the driveway. I tried my key in the lock and it didn’t fit. Quick work, under the circumstances.

I rang the bell, and Pen’s sister Antoinette answered. She folded her arms in a no pasaran stance, which she does pretty well despite being only an inch or so taller than Pen. She’s got Pen’s colouring, too, but she went into politics, stood for local councillor, lost three times and got herself a hatchet face that never cracks a smile.

‘Hey, Tony,’ I said. ‘Can I talk to her?’

‘If she wanted to talk to you, Castor, she wouldn’t have changed the locks.’

‘Why don’t you ask her?’

‘Because I don’t want to have to talk her down from another round of hysterics. Why don’t you email her?’

‘No computer.’

‘Heliograph, then.’

I looked up at the heavy overcast. Antoinette did, too.

‘Looks like you’re fucked,’ she observed, and closed the door.

Over at the Stanger, Rafi was under deep sedation after smashing his head against the door of his cell until he’d left half his face on it. He’d recover, of course: Asmodeus was back in residence, so he once again had a strong interest in making sure his home away from home was kept in good order.

But under the circumstances, the follow-up hearing to determine whether or not Rafi’s sectioning should remain in force had been postponed sine die.

‘That means watch this space,’ Doctor Webb translated helpfully. ‘You now have twenty-one days, Castor. If you don’t come up with anything within that time, I’m going to consult with Professor Mulbridge with a view to signing Ditko over into the care of the MOU at Paddington.’

‘Watch your back,’ I suggested.

Missing my point, he swivelled to look behind him. We were standing in the main corridor of the Stanger, just outside Rafi’s cell, and the corridor was clear. Webb turned back to me, slightly annoyed, as if I’d just played a silly practical joke.

‘I meant,’ I explained patiently, ‘watch your back if you throw Rafi to Jenna-Jane. Because if you do that I’m definitely going to break both of your arms and both of your legs.’

Almost in disbelief, Webb looked at the two male nurses who were flanking him to either side – his usual tragic chorus. ‘I have witnesses,’ he said, ‘who heard you make that threat.’

‘I’m sure their testimony will be invaluable,’ I agreed. ‘But you’ll still be quadriplegic.’

Maybe that was a tactless thing to say, but in many ways it was seeming like a long and fairly stressful day. And there was still the question of where I was going to sleep that night.

Juliet and I met up in the evening at a pavement café close to the refuge where she lives. She arrived late, without apology. One of the other residents had a problem with an abusive husband, she told me: and this guy had turned up out of the blue and tried to make his wife leave with him. ‘So I had to step in and help.’

‘What, you mean you ate him?’ I asked.

‘In front of everybody? No, of course not. I have to go on living there, Felix.’

‘What, then?’

She drank her espresso in a single swallow, wiped her lips with her hand. ‘I showed the other women how to do it.’

‘How to—?’

‘Impose their will on a man.’

‘Ah.’ I fished for more, starting with what Juliet was best at. ‘By employing their feminine wiles?’

‘By employing their boots, mostly. And I think an empty bottle was used at one point.’

‘Right, right.’ Violence, of course. The other thing that Juliet was best at.

There was something on her mind, I could see: something she found hard to say. I tried to make it easier for her.

‘Thanks for getting that werewolf off my back,’ I said. ‘It always puts a crimp in my day if someone rips my spine out through my throat.’

‘It was my pleasure,’ said Juliet, meaning it. ‘I . . .’ She hesitated, feeling her way around social niceties that had no meaning for her. ‘I should thank you too. The thought that I rendered myself helpless – that I placed myself so entirely within Asmodeus’s power – is very hard to bear. But you kept me safe, as far as you could. And you brought me back.’

‘Brilliant improvisation,’ I said modestly. ‘Include me in your memoirs. And in your will.’

‘And in my vagina?’

A large mouthful of café latte went the wrong way in best Hollywood comedy fashion: refusing to endorse the cliché by coughing and spluttering, I went red in the face and waited for the scalding stuff to go down.

‘Would I still have my soul afterwards?’ I asked her wheezily once the attack had subsided.

Juliet looked thoughtful. ‘Probably,’ she said slowly. ‘That depends, really, on how much self-control I could muster. At the very least it would have bite-marks on it.’

What’s life about if it’s not about taking risks? I opened my mouth to say yes, but Juliet was still speaking.

‘We’ll need to wait a while, though,’ she said. ‘Tonight I’m trying something new.’

‘Something new?’ I repeated, struggling to keep the chagrin and frustration out of my voice. ‘You’re way past your seventeen thousandth birthday, Juliet. Is there anything new?’

She grinned. ‘For most of that time,’ she reminded me, ‘I came to Earth only at the hest of magicians powerful enough or stupid enough to summon me. They used me either to satiate their own desires – in which case they died, whatever protections they tried to deploy – or to destroy their enemies, in which case other men died. But if the intention was to destroy a woman, then it was my cousins, the incubi, who were called upon. In all that time I was never sent against a woman. Or raised by one.’

I suddenly saw where this was going.

‘Well, it’s mostly the same hormones in different concentrations,’ I said off-handedly. The bored tone took a supreme effort, though: I was getting a sinking feeling that started in my stomach, gathered momentum in my crotch and kept on heading due south.

‘For me,’ Juliet said, ‘it’s different. Or at least, I think it might be different. To enjoy lust – pure lust – without the impulse to hunt and kill and eat intervening . . .’

‘How do you know it won’t intervene?’ I asked, looking at my fingernails as if I was worried about how dirty they were.

‘I don’t. But I think I’d like to try.’

‘All right, so try,’ I said desperately. ‘But does it have to be right this very—’

‘What a lovely place,’ said a voice from behind me. As I turned, biting my tongue, Susan Book took a chair from one of the other tables and set it down in between the two of us. ‘It’s so nice to be able to eat right out on the street. So Continental. Is there anything you like better, Mister Castor?’

I told her, insincerely, that there was nothing I liked better than eating on the street. I didn’t add that I was probably going to be sleeping there too.

Susan looked very much her old self again: shy and diffident and apologetic about a whole bunch of things that weren’t her fault. She told us about how her case was going, and how her solicitor thought he could get her sentence very substantially commuted on a plea of temporary insanity. It had been a riot, after all. Most of the people there were solid citizens who had no previous history.

‘No previous history,’ she repeated dreamily. ‘When he said that – about me – I suddenly realised that he was right. I had no history of anything at all. No past, because I’d never had the courage to go out and have a present.’

‘And your religious beliefs?’ I asked. I know how that sounds: you’ll just have to believe me when I say the tone wasn’t quite as snide as the words.

‘I still believe in God,’ she assured me earnestly. ‘But – I don’t think that I have a vocation for the Church. I’m going to go back to my old job, and try to live a little more in the world.’

‘What was your old job?’ I asked.

‘I was a librarian in Stepney.’

Ordinarily I wouldn’t have touched a straight line like that for a free weekend in Las Vegas. But tonight didn’t have an ordinary feel to it. ‘Yeah,’ I agreed. ‘That’s really going to—’

‘We should be moving,’ Juliet said.

She stood, and Susan followed suit, giving her a smile of radiant admiration.

‘I’ll see you, Felix,’ Juliet said.

‘Sure.’

‘Goodnight, Mister Castor.’

This time I just nodded. Mine’s not going to be half as good as yours, I thought gloomily.

They left, arm in arm. All along the pavement as far as I was able to keep them in sight, men walked into walls and into each other and almost under cars as they turned to watch.

They say that if you suffer in this life you’ll come back as something better in the next.

I’m coming back as God.