We followed the river through Westminster and Pimlico, and I began to wonder where the hell we were heading. I’d only followed Gabe on a whim, hoping that he might lead me to Rosa—which required a long chain of hopeful assumptions, starting with the one where Damjohn had taken Rosa out of circulation in the first place. If she’d just had it away on her own two heels, then I was wasting my time.
That conclusion looked more and more likely as McClennan’s cab took a right at Oakley Street and drove on up toward the King’s Road. It was stretching credibility past breaking point to believe that Damjohn might have an establishment up here. As far as my understanding goes, the brothels of Kensington and Chelsea are very much a closed shop and, good manners aside, any East End lags trying to get into that particular game would be slit up a treat.
Gabe jumped ship at last just before Sands End, paid off the cab, and continued on foot. I did the same.
“That good enough for you?” my cabbie asked, deservedly smug.
“You could write the book, mate,” I said, tipping him a fiver. Then I was off after Gabe before he could get too much of a lead on me.
He didn’t go far, though. He stopped at the next street corner—Lots Road—under a pub sign that showed a horse leaping a brook, took out his mobile, and had an intense conversation with someone. He glanced up at the sign, said something into the phone, nodded. Then he put the phone away and walked on into the pub—the Runagate.
I debated with myself whether I should give this up as a bad job. It would be useful to see who Gabe was meeting up with—more useful still to be able to eavesdrop, but that was probably asking too much. In any case, having come this far, it seemed a bit ridiculous just to jump into another cab and go back into the City.
Cautiously, I followed Gabe inside. The place was reassuringly crowded, and I was able to pause on the threshold and get my bearings. I couldn’t see Gabe at first, but that was because his highly visible hair was momentarily eclipsed behind a row of tankards hanging up on the far side of the bar. A few seconds later, he turned away from me with a pint in his hand to walk over toward the side door—and out through it. As the door opened and then closed, I had a glimpse of a beer garden beyond, with small wooden picnic tables and bright green parasols.
That made life a bit more problematic. If I followed him through that door, I might be walking right into his line of sight, and there’d be no crowd to hide behind. It would probably be better to go around the outside of the building and at least see the lay of the land before I moved in.
I stepped back out onto the street. Barely ten feet away, Scrub was squeezing his huge bulk out of a minicab, making it rock wildly on its suspension.
I ducked back inside before he could see me and looked around for somewhere to hide. No upstairs. No saloon. The gents. I crossed the bar in three strides, threw the door open, and ducked inside.
The only other occupant, who was waving his hands under a hot-air drier, glanced around at me and then gawped in disbelief. Fortunately, I already knew that the deck of fate was stacked against me, so the fact that the other man was Weasel-Face Arnold didn’t faze me in the slightest. I hauled off and kicked him as hard as I could where a kick was likely to have the most immediate and dramatic effect. Then, as he doubled over, I got a good, solid grip on his neck and rammed his head sideways into the unyielding white ceramic of a sink. He folded without a sound.
Damn! Taken on its own merits, the violence had been quite cathartic, but I had nothing to tie him up with, and as soon as he was found, the whole place would be up in arms. Whatever was going on here, it was probably a bad idea to try getting any closer to it right then.
On an impulse, I went through Arnold’s pockets. Nothing particularly exciting there, but I took his wallet and his mobile phone just in case either of them might prove to be useful later on.
I opened the door a crack, checked out as much of the bar as I could see, and then stepped out. No sign of Scrub, for which I was devoutly grateful. Most likely he was already out in the beer garden with McClennan.
I went back out onto the street again, which immediately made me feel a little bit safer. At least I was away from the epicenter of whatever alarums and excursions would follow on when Arnold was found—so there was probably nothing to lose by taking a look around the side, so long as I kept my head down.
I rounded the building. The approach looked good, because there was a fence around the beer garden that came up almost to head height. Peering around the corner of the building, I caught sight of Scrub’s unmistakable back on a bench in the far corner, his enormous frame almost completely hiding McClennan from view. They were talking earnestly, but I was too far away to hear a word.
By bending over like an old man, I was able to shuffle my way around the outside of the fence without being seen. I knew when I was in the right place, because I could hear McClennan’s voice, raised in complaint.
“. . . never told us what the hell was going on. That’s all I object to. If I’m told up front what the risks are, I’ll take them. But this—this just isn’t what I signed up for, and I—”
Scrub’s basso-profundo rumble cut through McClennan’s feeble-sounding litany of grievances with three terse words.
“You’re on retainer.”
“Yes. Yes, thank you for reminding me of that fact. I’m on retainer. As an exorcist. Nobody mentioned raising hell-kin. Nobody mentioned performing necromantic surgery on a ghost with too much mouth to it. Why didn’t he just let me toast the fucking thing? Then we wouldn’t be having any of these problems.”
“Castor?” Scrub growled. “Castor isn’t a problem. First of all, he couldn’t find his arse with a map. Secondly, there’s no evidence anywhere that he can get his hands on. And thirdly, I’m going to kill him as soon as Mr. D gets tired of using your fuck-pig demon.”
“I half killed myself raising that thing.” Gabe spat the words out, bitterly angry. “Just the effort of bringing it up from Hell—you don’t have any fucking idea! And then I had to do the binding while I was still weak and sick from calling her, and if I hadn’t got every last detail down right, she would’ve torn me apart.”
“Mr. D assumes you’re competent to do your job.”
“Oh, thanks.” Gabe’s laugh sounded like it must have left welts coming out. “Thanks so fucking much. Am I supposed to be flattered?”
“You’re supposed to do what you’re told.”
“Right, right. And if Castor gets his hands on the other little trollop?”
“He won’t.”
“Why doesn’t Damjohn just kill her and be done with it?”
“Why don’t you ask him?”
Gabe didn’t seem to have any answer to that. The silence lengthened and was followed by a change of subject.
“What’s keeping that fucking moron?” Scrub’s voice, rumbling like a train passing under your feet.
“He said he had to piss.”
“Well, go and get him.”
Which was my cue to leave.
Rosa. Rosa was the key. But I didn’t have any idea how to find her or even where to start looking.
Actually, that wasn’t strictly true. It was just that nosing around the only starting point I had—the strip club—felt uncomfortably like sticking my head into the muzzle of a cannon and striking a match to see what was in there.
I was honestly amazed at my own stupidity.
The blonde on the upstairs bar shot me a look that conveyed a lot of dislike and mistrust with great economy. But my opening words were calculated to disarm her suspicions and make her love me like a long-lost brother.
“You know,” I said, smiling cheerfully, “I don’t think I’ve ever stood a round in here.”
The blonde’s lower jaw went through a cataclysmic plunge. She did her best to reel it back in.