Vicious Circle

6

There was a broad flight of stone steps up from the street, the stairwell separated off from the pavement by wrought-iron railings with the arms of the borough of Camden worked into them – complete with the pious motto Non sibi sed toti, usually translated as ‘I hope you brought enough for everyone.’ I guess at some time in its recent past the place had been a government building of some kind.

Not any more, though, clearly. The two bruisers who checked me at the top of the steps didn’t have the look or the dress sense of any civil servants I’d ever seen, and they probably didn’t have much of a future in local government unless Camden one day decided to open up a gorilla-wrangling department.

They weren’t checking me for weapons or concealed booze, although there was a perfunctory frisking of my pockets and linings: mainly they were verifying that I was alive, and more or less human by the yardsticks they were using. First they made me clench a silver coin tightly in my hand for a few seconds and looked to see if I showed any reaction to the metal; then they took my pulse in a rough-and-ready way at throat and wrist. There’s something a bit off-putting about having a guy who’s three inches taller than you, with the build of a wrestler, pressing his thumb against your windpipe. It’s one reason why I don’t drink at exorcist hang-outs more often.

Another reason is that I’m an unsociable bastard who hates shop talk worse than dental surgery.

The Oriflamme is the exorcists’ hang-out par excellence, in case you hadn’t guessed that already: or at least it was in its first incarnation. Back then, it stood in the centre of a roundabout on Castlebar Hill – a building that had formerly been a museum and then had gone through various changes of ownership before settling into the hands of the famous Peckham Steiner, a father figure for all London exorcists, so long as you had a drunk, abusive father who was only on nodding terms with sanity.

Steiner then made a gift of the place to his good friend Bill Bryant, better known by the semi-affectionate nickname of ‘Bourbon’. It was a very long way from anywhere, but it had a kind of dank, heavy atmosphere of its own and a reputation as the place to be seen if you were looking to make a name for yourself in the trade, so it limped along from year to year in spite of the lousy location. But then, about three years ago, somebody burned it to the ground. It was a firebomb attack, mercifully when the place was closed, and it did the job nicely. The barman’s cat survived, but apart from that they didn’t save so much as an ashtray.

Nicky has a whole bunch of theories about who did it and why, and every so often he tries to tell me some of them. I usually manage to get clear before he reaches the part where Satanists are taking over the government, but sometimes it’s a close call.

Meanwhile, in one of those ironies that dog our profession, the Oriflamme rose from the dead – or at least the name did. A guy named McPhail, who as far as I know had never had anything to do with the place on Castlebar Hill, had his own vision of a place that would sort of be the exorcists’ version of a gentlemen’s club – with a bar, a lounge, poste restante facilities, a place where you could crash if you were just in the city for a couple of days, baths, the whole works.

McPhail didn’t have any premises – or collateral – but he did have the kind of can-do attitude that you usually associate with serial killers and corrupt politicians. He stole the name from Bourbon Bryant (who threatened to sue but didn’t have the money for a cab to the courthouse, let alone a lawyer) and set up shop in Soho Square. The rumour was that he was squatting rather than paying for a lease, and I could believe it: rents are so high in Soho these days, even the homeless guys sleeping in doorways are paying a grand a month.

I walked on up the steps, having passed muster as a warm body with no passengers, and went in through a door that was as thickly decorated with wards and sigils as a wedding car is with ribbons and old tin cans. That took me straight into a large bar area that had probably had more atmosphere back when it was a rent office or whatever. Lighting was provided by a dozen or so bounce spotlights at floor level around the edges of the room, pointed up at the ceiling: a nice idea, but spoiled by the fact that most of the people in the room were standing or sitting close to the spots and blocking off most of the light: huge shadows came and went on the ceiling, and light levels rose and fell from one second to the next as people shifted in their seats or stood up to get the next round in.

The bar itself was a rough barricade of packing cases with tarpaulins over them, off in one corner of the room. They were serving beer by the bottle, wine and spirits by the unmeasured slug – enough in itself to get the place closed down if anyone from Customs and Excise stopped in for a quick one. Of course, most revenue men have a very faint pulse in the first place, so they probably wouldn’t have got past the bouncers.

The clientele were colourfully mixed. I spotted half a dozen people I vaguely knew in the seething mass at the bar, and a few more sitting in quiet corners in intense têteà-têtes with strangers who could have been clients, partners or paid informers. I was looking for someone specific, though, and I saw him at last leaning against a pillar on the far side of the room, alone. Bourbon Bill himself, the owner of the original Oriflamme that had died in the flames and been reborn as this un-phoenix-like shit-hole. He was wearing a leather jacket over a red shirt and black denims that looked as though they might date from the American Civil War; Doc Martens of a similar vintage graced his feet. He was nursing a nearly empty shot glass while taking occasional slugs from a hip flask in his inside pocket. I swung around by way of the bar, picked up two large shots of whiskey, and came up on him from behind.

I pushed one of the glasses into his free hand, clinked the other one against it. ‘Cheers, Bill,’ I said, as he looked around.

‘Felix Castor.’ He sounded surprised. ‘Unexpected privilege. You don’t seem to get out much these days.’ He raised the glass and downed it in one. He drank whiskey like other men drink water, and as far as I know he only used water for brushing his teeth. He could have gone through a half-bottle tonight already, depending on how early he’d started, but there was no indication at all in his voice nor in the way he was standing. His fondness for booze wasn’t a great asset in a bar-owner – former bar-owner, I should say – but his incomparable ability to deal with it definitely was. More than one man who’d tried to drink him under the table had been carried away on top of it.

‘I get out as much as I ever did, Bourbon,’ I said. ‘I just don’t like to get drunk in the company of ghost-hunters. It feels like I’m still on the clock, somehow.’

‘That’s your rep, Fix.’ He grinned, but it didn’t last. His face settled back down into its habitual dour lines: he was someone whom life had kicked in the balls, and he still wore the expression that comes after the initial pain of impact has subsided. He’d always had a basset-hound kind of face: now it was more deeply seamed than ever, and his complexion matched his crest of wood-ash hair. ‘You used to come out to the real Oriflamme, though, time was. Couple of nights a week, if I remember rightly.’

I nodded. ‘Then I got myself an office. Biggest mistake I ever made.’

‘I hear you, brother.’ Bourbon laughed ruefully and shook his head. ‘Biggest mistake for me was going up to Scotland for my brother’s wedding. Came back to a pile of cinders and a bill from the fire brigade. Three years on and I still don’t have a blind clue who did it.’

‘Any progress on that front?’

‘Not recently. Had a lead a couple of months back, might come to something. Most likely not. I’m patient. Got a sort of a Zen mentality, these days. You know, flowing with the water.’

‘That’s not Zen. That’s Tao.’

‘Whatever. I don’t let stuff get to me. But when I find those motherless bastards, I’m going to take their effing teeth out with pliers.’ Bourbon’s expression changed and became suddenly more animated in a slightly unhealthy way. ‘Why are you asking, anyway? Did you hear something? I’m offering a reward for information, you know.’

‘If I hear anything, I’ll pass it on,’ I assured him hastily. ‘Bugger the reward. No, I came down here looking for someone else. Maybe you can point him out to me, if he’s here.’

‘Shoot.’

‘Dennis Peace.’

‘Yeah, I know Peace.’ That was why I’d gone straight over to Bourbon when I’d seen he was here: he knew everybody. ‘Seems like he’s flavour of the month all of a sudden. You want to do some business with him?’

‘Not exactly, no.’

‘Then what?’

‘I need to contact him on behalf of a client. He may have taken something that doesn’t belong to him.’

‘Hah.’ Bourbon didn’t look altogether surprised about this mission statement. ‘Well, maybe so. Wouldn’t be the first time, I’ve got to admit. He was always a bit of a wild boy. I remember him coming into the bar one night and talking about knife fights. I called him on one story because it sounded like he was talking shite. So he rolled up his shirt and showed me his scars. Jesus fucking wept! He looked like Boris Karloff had chopped him up and stitched him back together again.’

‘Did he pick a fight with someone and lose?’ I asked, trying to pin down that echo.

‘He picked a fight with Stig Matthews. They both lost. Both ended up in hospital.’

Yeah, that was what I’d heard. Two men trading punches until they both fell down, with broken noses and half-pulped faces: the sort of thing that gives even machismo a bad name.

‘I thought he was trying to be good just lately, though,’ Bourbon said reflectively. ‘Starting to quiet down a bit. That’s what people tell me, anyway. He come back from America a changed man, they say. But I can’t help you anyway, Fix. He’s not here.’

‘You sound pretty sure.’

‘Well, I saw him walk out about half an hour back. Looking a bit rough, I have to say – like he hadn’t slept in a while. He bought some FFs from Carla, and popped a couple right there. Then he was off again. Didn’t even stay for a drink.’

Damn. I’d been that close. But a miss is as good as a mile. ‘Is Carla still here?’ I asked. Bourbon looked around the room for a few seconds, then pointed to a formidable-looking redhead sitting close to the bar, in intense conversation with a bare-armed bald guy so heavily tattooed that it was hard to make out his facial expression. In other company, he might have made you feel a little nervous: next to Carla he sort of faded into the background.

‘Thanks, Bourbon. So Peace used to be a regular at the old place. You know anything else about him?’

‘There’s a difference between what I hear and what I know, Fix. Peace is the sort of man that people like to tell stories about – but you know how it is. A lot of those stories used to be told about other people before and they’ll be told about someone else after. All I know – know for sure – is that he used to be a rubber duck a while back. He was part of the collective. Not any more, though: he got fed up with all the arguments. And I think he told me he’s a friend of Rosie Crucis, although as far as I know he wasn’t part of the team that raised her.’

‘You’re right. He wasn’t.’

‘Oh yeah, that was you and Jenna-Jane Mulbridge, wasn’t it? The Sussex Gardens Resurrectionists. That’s all I can think of. Never saw him in anyone’s company except his own. He’s almost as antisocial as you.’

‘Tell me some of the stories, then.’

He grimaced. ‘I’d just as soon not, Fix, if it’s all the same to you. Not my style.’

‘Sorry I asked, then. Thanks, Bourbon. I owe you one.’

‘You bought me one. Just don’t go in half-cocked, okay? Peace is a nasty piece of work, in some respects, but in my experience he plays straight with people who play straight with him. On the other hand, if you piss him off he can be a right bastard.’

‘Shit, he really is like me. Have a good one, Bourbon.’

‘You too, Fix.’

I strolled over towards Carla’s end of the bar, watching her out of the corner of my eye while I ordered another drink. I don’t like hitting people up if I don’t already know them: the law of unintended consequences applies, with big spiky knobs on. I could have asked Bourbon to make an introduction, but why the hell should I drag him into my shit when he’d got shit enough of his own?

Biding my time, I ordered another drink. By the time it came, Carla had finished her conversation with the illustrated man. Money had changed hands, and so had a little brown-paper bag which had been folded many times and taped shut. The guy took off for the street door looking happy and excited – at least, as far as I could tell under all the paintwork.

FFs, Bourbon had said: by which I presumed he meant fast-forwards rather than, say, back issues of the Fantastic Four comic book. So Peace had an amphetamine habit. Well, he wouldn’t be the first exorcist to keep his pencils sharp with chemical assistance – or the last. Interesting that he’d looked so wiped, though: could be that was an after-effect of fielding all my various attempts to raise Abbie’s spirit, as well as hitting that screamer back my way earlier in the day. Maybe if I kept up the pressure there, I’d get through his guard.

Or maybe the next ricochet I caught would mulch my brains until they leaked out of my ears.

I crossed to Carla’s table and sat down in the just-vacated chair. She was just getting up: she looked at me with a certain amount of surprise and not much pleasure. Close up, she was an even more impressive lady than she had been from across the bar. Not tall, but very solid: at a distance you could tell yourself that some of her bulk was fat, but from this range I could see that she was made of something harder and less yielding. She looked to be about forty, and her slab-like face under its layers of foundation make-up looked like a red-brick wall. Her incongruously soft brown eyes were cordoned off like a crime scene with lines of mascara: the rest of her features had disowned them. She was altogether the wrong shape for a belly-shirt, but that was what she was wearing nonetheless: the pixie skirt was another red herring, but I felt that the wrestler’s boots were an honest statement of intent.

‘I’m closed,’ was all she said.

I shrugged as if I was easy either way. ‘I’m not buying,’ I said.

‘Then fuck off.’ No rancour; nothing personal. But no give, either.

‘I’m just looking for someone you know. Dennis—’

‘I said fuck off.’ She put a warning finger in my face. ‘I don’t know you.’

‘Well, that’s true. My name’s Castor. Felix Castor. My friends call me Fix.’ I held out a hand, which she didn’t even look at. Instead she just got up and made to walk around the table, past me towards the bar. Having a good deal more tenacity than sense, I jumped up too and stepped into her way. She really wasn’t tall: her head was only on a level with my fourth rib.

She stopped. There was a silence, which started with her and then moved on out across the bar. Without turning around, I knew we’d just become a local centre of attention.

‘Sport,’ she said, in the same cold tone, ‘you really don’t want to do that.’

‘Maybe not,’ I conceded. ‘I really do want to meet Dennis Peace, though. Maybe you could tell him I’m looking for him. Felix Castor. He can get my number from Bourbon Bryant, or leave a message for me here.’

‘You’d better move aside now,’ was all Carla said.

I moved aside. She glanced up at me once: a hard, unreadable look. Then she went on past me to the bar, and there was a collective breathing out in a number of different keys.

Okay, so my intended charm offensive had fallen a little flat. Well, in terms of charm, anyway: I’d managed the offensive part well enough. Never mind. Bourbon had given me some food for thought, and some leads to follow: enough to be going on with for now.

The rain was coming down again heavily, and the slick black asphalt of Soho Square reflected the fragmented glitter of a few car headlights like shooting stars in a clear sky. It wasn’t cold, though: in fact it felt good after the canned air of the crypt-like bar. I didn’t even turn my coat collar up as I walked.

It was well after midnight now, and there weren’t many people around. Two heavy-set guys – one of them very, very tall – were talking in murmurs at the edge of the pavement: they stepped to either side to let me pass in between them, one of them flicking a cigarette away over his shoulder.

I’d left the car on the other side of the square, so the quickest way was right through the cramped little park area in the middle. I rounded the Tudor folly that used to be an ice-cream stand and the further gate came into view: it was closed, which wasn’t a good sign. A few more steps brought me level with it, and I gave it a tug. Nothing doing: they’d locked it for the night.

I turned around, to find the two men I’d walked past moments before now heading straight towards me. ‘Gate’s locked,’ I said, mildly. I wasn’t looking for trouble, and I didn’t automatically assume that they were: true, they were still heading towards me even though they knew now that there was no through road. But maybe they were hard of hearing: there’s an innocent explanation for most things if you keep an open mind.

‘Good,’ said the guy on the left, speaking from way back in his throat. He drew a knife from his belt in a smooth, practised motion. The one on the right, the bigger of the two, who had eyebrows so thick they looked like bottle brushes, smacked his fist into his palm. Oh well, I only said most things: I guess this was the exception that proved the rule.

They kept on coming. Over their shoulder I could see the street, which was empty in both directions: no help there. I braced myself to give them as much of a fight as I could – but they were both faster and slicker than I expected. They left the path and peeled off to either side of me, so that I couldn’t keep both of them in view at once. I backed away to avoid being sandwiched, but the locked gate was right behind me and two steps was all the backing room I had. I kept darting my stare back to the taller guy whenever he moved, because he looked like the business end of the partnership even though he hadn’t produced a weapon. That was all the opening the other guy needed: he did a standing jump, slamming into me hard and knocking my feet from under me.

I hit the gate with his shoulder still wedged against my chest, and he put all of his weight into it so that the breath hiccupped agonisingly out of my lungs. I slithered down onto the crazy paving in a dead slump, and they were both on me before I could get up. I twisted wildly, in the hope that the knife would get tangled up in the thick fabric of my coat or go in obliquely and miss all the many vital organs that nature sprinkles so liberally through our body cavities – but for some reason the blow didn’t come. I carried on thrashing, and the knife-man almost fell over his colleague as we bucked and writhed together on the cold, wet stones.

The knife-man cursed, and some stuff that must have fallen out of his pockets or maybe out of mine clanged against the fence, then clattered away across the rain-slick stone. I jabbed an elbow into his throat, but without much force – and there was enough muscle there to stop the blow from being anything more than a minor irritant. He punched me in the mouth a couple of times just to get my attention, then once more for the sheer fun of the thing: after which the one with the eyebrows hauled me to my feet, unresisting, his massive fist clamped on my throat. As I came up, though, my hand closed on a stubby metal cylinder that had fallen between my arm and my body. I brought it with me.

The big guy was even bigger than I’d realised. He lifted me clear of the ground, so that my own weight began to choke me even more effectively than his constricting fingers. His heavy-featured face leered into mine. He had a very wide mouth, with too many teeth in it.

‘Knock it off, Po. You’re killing him,’ the knife-man snapped. His voice was so deep and harsh, it sounded like he was spitting up razor blades.

‘I thought that was the idea,’ the big guy rumbled. With my throat clamped shut, I couldn’t inhale: as the tall man’s breath passed over me in a hot, fetid wave, I was able to appreciate the upside of that position.

‘Bring him down here. I’ll tell you when to fucking kill him.’

With a snarl, the taller man dropped his forearm an inch or so, letting my toes touch the ground.

Frowning in concentration, the knife-man judiciously adjusted the height of his colleague’s extended arm – a millimetre this way, a touch that – so that I’d be able to avoid choking myself so long as I didn’t actually try to move. It reminded me of a dentist adjusting his chair: I wished it hadn’t.

I’m not one to judge a book by its cover, but he was an ugly son of a bitch. He didn’t exude the sheer physical menace his heavily-eyebrowed friend did, but there was something wrong with his face; with the proportions of it. The jaw was subtly too long, the eyes set too low. It was like a face that someone had got tired of halfway, screwed up and thrown away. And then this guy had fished it out of the basket and reused it.

‘So now we talk,’ he said at last, his voice the same broken-edged growl.

‘You . . . first . . .’ I mumbled thickly. The bastard had split my lip.

‘Yeah,’ he agreed. ‘Me first. My name’s Zucker. My friend here is Po. And I’ve got sad news for you, Castor. My friend is not your friend. My friend wants to bite your throat out.’

‘Sorry . . . to hear it,’ I managed.

‘I’ll bet,’ he hissed, his mouth up close to my ear. His breath had a sour stink to it too. Why couldn’t I be intimidated by people with good personal hygiene?

‘You know why Po wants to hurt you?’ Zucker asked me.

‘No idea . . .’ I wheezed.

‘No,’ he agreed. ‘You have no idea. Which is why I’m going to tell you. You’ve been hanging around with the wrong people. Whoring yourself out to any fucker that asks. Storing up trouble for yourself.’

Ironically enough, it was around about then that I came to the conclusion that I had a chance. For some reason this fruitcake didn’t want to kill me – or at least, not until after he’d given me a stern lecture and maybe a spanking: if that reluctance made him hesitate at some point when he and his burly friend had the drop on me, then there was an outside chance that I might one day be in a position to look back on this and laugh.

Either way, though, I couldn’t answer the charge in any detail while the hand of the taller man – Po? – was still crimping my windpipe. Zucker seemed to realise this: he tapped imperiously on Po’s wrist, and Po slackened his grip a little.

‘Well,’ I said, swallowing with a wince of discomfort, ‘you tell me who the wrong people are, and maybe I can avoid them in future.’ I slurred the words more than my already-thickening lip required, and I let some bloody drool come out with them: it was probably good if they thought I was more damaged than I was.

‘There’s something in your tone that sounds like sarcasm.’ Zucker brandished the knife in front of my eyes: the edge of the blade had a two-tone sheen to it, suggesting hours of loving work with a strop and a wad of Scotch-Brite. I probably wouldn’t even feel it going in. ‘You can’t imagine how unhealthy sarcasm could be for you right now. You should be thinking in terms of humility, contrition and open cooperation. We’re looking for nothing less.’

I threw up my hands, palms out. ‘I’m just doing a job – like you,’ I said. ‘Okay? No need for heavy threats.’

‘Like me?’ The comparison seemed to sit badly with Zucker. ‘Like me? Say that again, and I’ll cut your tongue out.’ I thought the anger might be a sadist’s window dressing, but the glint in his eyes was real enough: I’d touched a nerve, and he was ready to touch back. Good. That was another point in my favour: if he was angry, he was likely to be stupid and hasty and misread my move when I made it. Unfortunately, he was also likely to make good on his promise and cut my tongue out. I was treading a fine line.

‘Sorry,’ I said, making my voice a servile mumble. ‘Sorry, mate. No offence.’

By now, that additional sensory channel I’ve got which is more like hearing than anything else was jammed with deafening discords. These guys looked human enough, the eyebrows aside, but they were loup-garous: dead human souls that had invaded, possessed and shaped animal bodies to the point where you couldn’t tell any longer what they’d originally been. Not until the dark of the moon, anyway – then all bets were off. When I realised that that was what I was dealing with, I dropped my gaze to the ground: some were-men respond to direct eye contact in the same way male silverback gorillas do. Come to think of it, Po could have been a gorilla at some point in his post-mortem history. Maybe that was a touch exotic for central London, though: the risen dead tend to do their shopping locally.

‘Well, maybe you’d like to show us exactly how sorry you are,’ Zucker suggested sardonically. ‘Maybe you’d be interested in switching sides. How does that sound?’

‘Love to. Love to. Whose side am I on now, then? I mean, whose side was I on before I switched to yours? Because I jumped across as soon as you suggested it. Straight up. You tell me whose back you want me to stab, and I’m there. Just give it a name, okay?’

Zucker hesitated. I knew why, too: when you’re the one with the other guy’s balls in your hand, so to speak, it goes against the grain to answer a direct question. It’s almost as though you’re giving away the advantage. He couldn’t quite bring himself to do it. ‘Examine your conscience,’ he suggested, baring his teeth. ‘Who’s been asking you for favours lately?’

Who indeed? Juliet. The Torringtons. The London Met. If this was what an embarrassment of riches felt like, I decided I could live without it: it was too sharp and pointy by half. But it would really help to know who I had to thank for this special attention, so I decided to push the issue just an inch or so further.

‘I’m hugely in demand,’ I said. Po had unconsciously relaxed his grip by a fraction, so I was getting some of my breath back now. ‘You’ll have to give me a clue. You’re not working for a drug pusher, are you? Gent by the name of Pauley? No? Because my mate in Serious Crimes reckons I might be in line for what he called “the frighteners”. Do you gents qualify as frighteners, or are you more in the line of softeners-up for the frighteners still to come? Sort of a John the Baptist deal, if you take my meaning?’

They were looking at me in bewilderment. But then they gave it up and got down to business again. The edge of the knife touched my cheek in a way that was unpleasantly suggestive. While this was going on, though, I was turning over in my hand the object I’d palmed when they dragged me to my feet. Metallic, certainly: rounded, basically cylindrical but hollow at one end and with a tapering extension at the other. The goblet. I’d picked up the goblet I carry around with me for the very rare occasions when I’m tempted to try my hand at black magic.

‘We need information,’ said Zucker. ‘And you need to convince us that we shouldn’t cut all sorts of pieces off you. So listen to me, okay? Just listen. We know how far they got, and we know why they stopped. Someone didn’t close the circle, right? A little bird flew the nest? But if there was even a partial breach, we could be knee-deep in each other’s entrails before the fucking day is out. Did they promise you immunity? If they did, they didn’t mean it. You’re not stupid enough to fall for that line, are you?’

All of which made about as much sense to me as the Dead Sea Scrolls.

‘Maybe I’m more naive than you think,’ I said. It seemed safely non-committal.

It was at this point that Po re-entered the conversation. ‘Let me eat one of his eyes,’ he suggested.

Zucker ignored this suggestion. ‘You think it might be possible to squeeze some advantage out of the situation,’ he said. ‘Your sort always do. I can promise you, Castor, there’s no profit here for anyone. Just death, and then after that the things that are worse than death.’

‘You’re going to kill me and then rape me?’

Po lifted his free hand over my head and balled it into a fist, but Zucker shook his head just once and the move stopped dead.

‘They’ll close the circle,’ he growled, bringing his face up very close to mine, ‘and do the whole thing again from scratch. Things will get bad then. Very bad, very quickly. And they won’t need you any more. Do you think any assurances they’ve given you will still hold after that? Do you think they’ll keep you as a pet?’

Zucker put out a hand and pressed his index finger against my temple. His nail was as sharp and tapered as a claw, but he didn’t break the skin. With Po still gripping my throat I couldn’t pull away as the nail traced a path across my face until it rested on my left cheek, a millimetre away from my eye.

‘If you’ll work for us,’ he said, with an absolute calm that was a lot more chilling than Po’s slightly crazed anger, ‘then there’s a point in keeping you alive. If you won’t, we’re wasting our time.’

I put on a pensive expression. And underneath it I really was thinking hard. What I was thinking was this: since I didn’t have the slightest idea what these two escaped lunatics were talking about, the likelihood that I could talk them into not ripping my head off and sucking out the juices with a straw was small. So the time had come to play my ace in the hole.

‘All right,’ I muttered, dropping my gaze again. ‘All right. I admit it, they made me a good offer. Fuck, what would you have done?’ As I said it, I threw out my hands in a mute appeal – and brought my right hand around on the rebound, jamming what was in it directly into Po’s face.

I’d rather have had the dagger, to be honest – but the chalice was made of silver too, and the base had a sharp rim. I drove it into the guy’s cheekbone hard enough to draw blood, because that was the whole point. Seeing that white metal gleam in my hand, the other were-man took a hasty step back and brought up his hands to protect his face and chest even before he saw what it was he was protecting them from.

Loup-garous don’t like silver: it’s some kind of an allergic reaction that comes with the package – with being a pirate soul and flying the colours of someone else’s flesh. Po shrieked in agony the instant his spilled blood made contact with the virgin metal, and as he slapped both his hands to his face he let me drop.

I ducked out from under his outstretched arms, and as I came up I landed an almighty punch on the point of Zucker’s jaw. Not the punch I would have chosen – you can break your wrist on a jawbone very easily, and nine times out of ten a jab to the stomach will give you a better return – but it made the most of the angle and the fact that I was already moving. The knife fell out of his hands as he staggered backwards, and I snatched it up on the fly. Luckily enough, I caught it by the hilt: if I’d closed my fist around the blade I’d have left behind a few fingers.

Then I was off and running, Po’s outraged bellowing fading at my back. I was heading for the open gate I’d come in through, but once I rounded the folly and put it between me and the two loup-garous, I swerved off the path into the undergrowth, uttering a fervent prayer to the God I don’t believe in that I didn’t trip over a root or a pothole in the dark.

The fence loomed ahead of me. I threw the knife over, planted my hands in between the decorative flat-metal spearheads on the fence’s top and vaulted up. More by luck than judgement, I was able to get one foot up on the spaces between the spikes, and then the other.

While I balanced there, indecisive, looking for a way to shinny over without impaling myself, something thumped into my left shoulder, hard and cold. That settled the matter: I lost my balance and went sprawling down into the street, my coat catching long enough to jerk me sideways before it tore and dumped me onto the ground on my face.

Pain was spreading out from my shoulder in hot filaments, but my arm still seemed to work so I had to ignore it for now. I scrambled to my feet, snatching up the knife again, and glanced around. This was the next hurdle: I didn’t have a bloody clue where I was in relation to the car. I took a look behind me and wished I hadn’t. The two dark figures on the other side of the fence were loping through the undergrowth on all fours, covering the distance at twice my speed. One of them – Po, I assumed, since he was about the size of a rhino – tensed for the jump, and I knew damn well he’d clear the fence like a Grand National winner.

I ran without thinking, got my bearings as I was running and realised that the car was up ahead of me, maybe fifty yards or so, and on this side of the street. There was a sound at my back of something touching down heavily, and nails or claws or something of that general nature scraped on the wet pavement as Po checked his fall and took off after me.

I fished in my pocket for the car keys, pressed and pressed and pressed the stud on the keyring until a cheerful bingly-beep sound from up ahead told me that the car had unlocked itself. At the same time, the sidelights flashed three times: a feature that I’d never even noticed until my life depended on it.

I got the door open and crammed myself inside, pulling it closed behind me. Something slammed against the door at the same time as I palmed the other button, on the right of the key fob, locking it again: it didn’t give. The knife, which I’d forgotten I was holding, clattered onto the floor of the car. I left it there: trying to fight my way out of this was going to get me killed in very short order.

Shaking like a bead of sweat in a belly dancer’s cleavage, I somehow managed to get the key into the ignition. But then I slammed the engine into gear as I was turning the key and stalled dead. Something smashed hard into the driver-side window and it starred right across. Involuntarily, I turned my head to look.

It was Po. At least, that was my best guess. Right now it was something out of nightmare, crawling flesh half-congealed into a shape midway between human and something vaguely feline. I was judging mainly by the teeth, you understand, because for some reason it was to the gaping mouth that my stare was drawn.

The car started up just as the thing outside drew back its clawed fist for a second blow that would probably have punched through the glass and ended up embedded in my face. The car leaped away, clipping the back bumper of the BMW in front with a sickening crunch before lurching out across the full width of the road. I ploughed into the pavement, but fortunately missed the wall of the Bank of Scotland by the width of a nun’s chuff. Po was bounding across the street behind me, but I floored the gas and left him standing.

Thank you, non-existent God. One I owe you.