But what was the worst-case scenario? That the tough old soul had been cast out but had had the strength to resist utter dissolution. That it knew where it was going and had the strength to get there. Sure, the thing inside John Gittings had needed to be taken to Mount Grace and burned there again – but then, John’s house had more wards and fendings on it than Pentonville had bars. They were designed to keep the dead out, but they cut both ways: that was why the mad, desperate ghost had gone geist. But here at Todd’s offices, as I’d noticed when I first came in, there wasn’t anything to keep the evil dead from coming and going as they pleased.
So I’d had my rehearsal for the big show, and that was good: but it was more than possible I’d just told the bastards I was coming. They’d have all the time in the world to prepare us a really nasty welcome.
‘We’ve got to go now,’ I said.
Moloch gave me a look of ruthless, detached appraisal.
‘You think you can walk?’ he asked.
I nodded again. ‘Yeah,’ I said, from out of a fog of exhaustion and pain. ‘Just getting my second wind.’
‘We can’t go now,’ he reminded me, in the same cold tone. ‘We need the lady,’
I climbed unwillingly to my feet. ‘I know,’ I muttered.
‘Can you find her?’
I didn’t answer, because I didn’t know. There was only one place I’d thought of that was worth looking in, and I knew for a fact I wasn’t going to be welcome there. I trudged down the stairs: I couldn’t hear Moloch’s footfalls, but the prickle on the back of my neck told me that he was following me.
The night loomed ahead of us like a mountain. Only idiots climb mountains in the dark.
23
I hadn’t expected to be back in Royal Oak so soon, and Susan Book wasn’t expecting to see me there. In the four or five seconds between ‘Jerusalem’ sounding again and the door opening, I braced myself for storms.
But Susan wasn’t in the mood to give me a hard time. Her eyes looked swollen with unshed tears, or maybe just with sleep. Everything about her posture suggested misery and a pre-emptive surrender to despair. Juliet’s absence was obviously hitting her very hard. Given that even looking at Juliet felt a little bit like taking a hit of some illicit drug, to be withdrawn from her so suddenly must be a little like going into the instant, unwelcome free fall of cold turkey.
Susan just stared at me. ‘I told you she wasn’t here,’ she mumbled tonelessly.
‘I know,’ I agreed. ‘I’m thinking that maybe I know a way to bring her back. Can I come in and explain?’
I hunched my shoulders against the gathering wind, playing the pity card to give myself an additional argument if my words didn’t work. Beside me, Moloch tilted his head back, sniffed the air and growled. ‘This hovel stinks of the lady,’ he said, in his car-crash-in-slow-motion voice. Susan swivelled her head to stare at him, her eyes widening. She hadn’t noticed him until he spoke.
Maybe after living with Juliet for so long she could tell what he was just by looking: that would explain the fear that crossed her face. But even if you didn’t know, he was an intimidating presence and he was glaring at her with an unreadable emotion in his dark eyes. Susan gripped the edge of the door in both hands, as though preparing to close it in our faces, but she hesitated, caught in a crossfire between her survival instinct and good breeding.
I wasn’t sure how to make the introduction, so I didn’t try. I turned to Moloch instead, as the more immediate problem.
‘Juliet lives here,’ I said to him. ‘But she’s not here now. She hasn’t made any contact with anyone since she got back from the States. Well, apart from Doug Hunter, of course, and that’s no use to us.’ I turned back to Susan. ‘Or has she called you?’ I asked.
Susan’s anxious gaze flicked backwards and forwards between the two of us. ‘No,’ she said. ‘Not a word. I’m just . . . sitting here by the phone.’
‘She’s probably lying,’ Moloch said, his tone detached and thoughtful. ‘You could hurt her and make sure, one way or the other. You clearly have impressive skills in that area.’
Susan gave a yelp, like a dog that’s had its tail trodden on, and tried to slam the door. Moloch held it open with one negligent, unhurried hand. I knocked the hand away and he gave me a look of politely mystified inquiry as the door slammed in our faces.
‘Nobody,’ I said with slow, heavy emphasis, ‘is hurting anyone. In fact, you’re not even coming in here.’
‘No?’ Moloch’s voice was mild now, but there was an edge of amusement to it.
‘No. You’re going to wait on the other side of the street, under that lamp.’ I pointed. ‘And you’re not going to come near this door, or this house, until I come out.’
‘And why am I going to do that?’
‘Because if you don’t, the poor doggy isn’t going to get so much as a bone to gnaw on. If you want to eat tonight, you’ll do this my way.’
He stared at me in silence for the space of two or three heartbeats. It felt like a lot longer.
‘If she offers you tea,’ he said at last with a nasty grin, ‘decline it. Time is short enough as it is.’
Moloch turned his back on me and walked away. I knocked again, and waited. After a minute or so I rang the bell.
Eventually, the door opened a crack and Susan stared out. The tears had been shed in the meantime. Her cheeks were wet and her face as she glowered up at me was full of a terrible pain.
‘You should go away now, Fix,’ she said, her voice surprisingly strong and even now as though crying had bled some poison out of her. ‘It’s not right for you to be talking to me after what you did to Jules. You should have been a better friend to her.’
I opened my mouth to say that it was Juliet who’d broken a table across my back, rather than the other way around, but this wasn’t the time for scoring cheap points.
‘I think I can bring her back,’ I said again. ‘If I can come in for just a minute, I’ll explain what I want to do. Then if you say no, I’ll just leave.’
‘No. I don’t want you to come in here. Not while I’m alone.’
‘Then let me explain out here,’ I suggested.
‘I don’t want to hear what you’ve got to say.’
‘Susan,’ I said, making my last pitch, ‘this is something she needs to know about. She’s done something that might make it . . . hard for her to stay here on Earth. Or at least here in London. Something that puts her way, way over on the wrong side of the law. She’s made a choice, and in my opinion it was the wrong one. It will hurt her.’
‘Nothing can hurt her,’ Susan said, shaking her head again. I wasn’t sure if it was a boast or a lament.
‘Losing you would hurt her, I think. And if she has to do a moonlight flit – if all the exorcists the Met can lay their hands on are sharpening their knives for her, and she makes the city too hot to hold her – she’ll leave you behind.’ I paused for just a moment to let that idea sink in, then went in for the kill. ‘Or do you think you can go and live with her folks for a while?’
A whole cavalcade of emotions crossed Susan’s face. I wanted to look away. Moloch’s words about my having a gift for hurting people were still hanging in the air: this wouldn’t count as torture at Abu Ghraib, but standing on a doorstep in West London at the arse end of winter with the rising wind carving sharper edges on my face, that was exactly what it felt like.
Susan was looking at me, shaking her head: rejecting the picture I’d painted, or maybe rejecting me, seeing through my sullied flesh to my shabby heart and saying no. She stood aside, wordlessly, and let me come in, then closed the door, locked it and bolted it top and bottom. I waited until she was done and let her lead the way into the living room. It was a gesture: a pretence that she was in control of what was happening. I thought about the aborted dinner party and everything that had happened since, and I had to struggle against a feeling of shame. Susan was right, in spite of everything: I should have been a better friend.