I came out onto Euston Road and tacked left. Traffic was still heavy and fast enough to form a serious blockade, so getting across the road and losing myself in the alleys around Judd Street wasn’t going to be an option. She’d be on me before I found a gap. But up ahead there was a skip truck stopped at a red light, with a loaded skip on board.
I didn’t have time to make a conscious decision. If I had, I might have hesitated—it was chancing everything on one throw of the dice. And if I’d hesitated, she would have punched my heart out through my ribs as I ran.
As it was, I grabbed for a loop of chain that was hanging off the back of the skip and missed it as the light went green and the truck lurched forward. Hearing the rasp of the succubus’s heels behind me, like a knife on a strop, I forced myself into one last spurt of speed and snatched at the chain again. This time, I just managed to snag it as the truck’s gathering momentum made the trailing end of it snake out toward me. Dragged half off my feet, I staggered, righted myself, got one foot back under me, and jumped.
Ajulutsikael jumped, too, and something whipped past my trailing leg before I could pull it in. The sudden chill of its passing was followed instantly by a sudden wash of warmth. She’d drawn blood.
For a moment I was braced by one foot against the back of the truck. Then it slipped, and I was just dangling on the chain like an overlarge air freshener whimsically hung up on the outside of the vehicle instead of in the cab. The chain whipped around on its pivot, unbalanced by my weight, so that I saw the road behind me in quick, dizzying glimpses. Ajulutsikael was still pounding along behind the truck tirelessly, not gaining but keeping pace with it. The next time we hit a light that was against us, I was dead meat.
With a desperate effort, I hauled myself up the chain until I could hook one hand over the rim of the skip. At the same time, my feet got a purchase on the edge of the truck’s bed, so my hands weren’t carrying my full weight by themselves anymore. That was as secure a perch as I could get, but it left me one hand free to grope around inside the skip. After a moment or two, I found and pulled free a jagged piece of white porcelain from a sink or a toilet. It was about the right weight and heft, but unless I chose my moment, Ajulutsikael would see it coming.
We got to an underpass, and we went down. The succubus’s view of me was momentarily eclipsed by the rising edge of the road’s surface. I counted down from three and lobbed the chunk of bathroom debris just as we took a sharp right turn.
It was perfect. The sudden angular momentum as we turned made my arm into a kind of slingshot. The porcelain payload hit the succubus squarely in the chest, and she went down in a skidding tangle of limbs. A human would have been killed outright. But then, a human wouldn’t have been able to hit that speed in the first place.
I kept staring back along the road as we bumped onward in case she reappeared, but there was no sign of her. After that, the ride felt almost luxurious. I’d recommend it to anyone who wants to see split-second, disconnected glimpses of London while freezing half to death and fighting off clinical shock.
Of course, it was a long walk back from Brixton. But you can’t have everything.
It’s a logical inference that I made it home in one piece, because I can remember Pen cleaning the messy wound on my leg with antiseptic while Cheryl stood behind her, fist pressed to her mouth, saying “Shit” often enough for it to have become a meaningless sound.
“You stink,” Pen said severely.
“I’ll shower,” I said groggily. I didn’t know what I meant by it. It was just sounds, but it was still a novelty to be able to make sounds again after my brush with McClennan’s ward of silence. And Pen wasn’t listening anyway, so I was under no obligation to make any sense.
“It’s the same smell that was in your room after that thing ripped the window out,” she said. “You’ve seen her again, haven’t you?”
I winced involuntarily as I thought back to the dark room, the overpowering smell, the mocking voice from the deep shadows. “I didn’t see all that much of her, to be honest.”
“He’s always been attracted to the wrong kind of women,” Pen said acidly, over my head, to Cheryl.
“Yeah, I’m the same with blokes,” Cheryl answered morosely. “You think you know what you’re getting into, but you never do.”
They carried on talking, but my mind slipped onto another frequency, and I wasn’t really hearing them anymore. The ghost couldn’t talk. She’d been silenced—deliberately, sorcerously silenced by Gabe McClennan, presumably acting on orders from—Damjohn? Why? What could she have said that represented a danger to him? If he’d had her killed, if she could incriminate him in any way at all, then why not just exorcise her and have done with it?
And how was Damjohn linked to the archive? What blindingly obvious point was I missing? Did the pimp and sleaze-king have a sideline in stolen artifacts?
ICOE 7405 818. That was the only solid thing I had to go on. Someone at the Bonnington had the number of Damjohn’s club, Kissing the Pink, in his Rolodex, ready to hand in the event of—what? Was it just intended as a last resort? For regular briefings and progress reviews? To cover some unforeseen crisis, like an outsider nosing around in places where he wasn’t meant to?
I probably got a glimpse of it then. Not the who and certainly not the why, but the broad shape of what the answer had to be. I couldn’t articulate it yet, but I think I could have played the tune of it, as though it was a ghost I was going to raise and then render. Right then, that wasn’t much of a consolation.
Seventeen
BACK IN HAMPSTEAD WAY BEFORE I WAS READY TO be. Hauling off on that lion-head knocker again in the bright stillness of a very early Saturday morning. I’d taken Friday off to recover, but I was still stiff and aching and feeling like I might shed limbs if I moved too fast. I asked myself bleakly if I was living right. The answer came when the door opened, letting out a sweet smell of sandalwood and revealing Barbara Dodson in jeans and tight T-shirt.
“He’s in the study,” she said, standing back to let me walk past her. “You can go straight through.”
I stepped inside. “How’s Sebastian?” I asked.
She gave me a long, thoughtful look. “Sebastian’s on great form. Happier than he’s been since we moved in here. Peter’s been feeling a little sorry for himself, though. We can’t get a word out of him.”
“Probably a phase he’s going through,” I suggested.
She nodded slowly. “Probably.”
I walked on down the hall into the study, limping only slightly.
Supercop James was standing just inside the door, steeling himself to tackle me as soon as I came in. He went straight for the jugular, predictably enough. “I’m assuming you came over to apologize,” he snarled. “For your sake, I hope that’s why you’re here.”
I was too tired for games. “No,” I told him, “you’re not assuming that at all. You’re assuming I came here to blackmail you. You’re hoping you can buy me off cheap or scare me into changing my mind.”
His eyes widened by an infinitesimal fraction, and his lips parted to show his clenched teeth. He was wound up very tight indeed—tight enough so that he might even break, without careful handling. But I didn’t know him well enough to tailor my approach to his tender sensibilities, so I gave it to him straight.
“You’re right,” I told him. “This is a shakedown. But contrary to everything you’ve ever been told about blackmailers, if you give me what I want, I’ll go away and leave you alone. And it’s not money, it’s just information. I want you to pull some police records for me. Three, to be precise. Do you think you can do that?”