‘Gil is a very valued member of our in-house team,’ Jenna-Jane said, gesturing me to a chair as she sat down again herself. ‘Doing your old job, Felix. The job of pontifex and psychopomp. Do you miss it at all? We’d love to have you back.’
The pontifex and psychopomp thing was one of J-J’s favourite lines. They were two of the pope’s official titles: builder of bridges between this world and the next, and chief dispatcher of human souls to their eternal reward. An exorcist wasn’t really either of those things, but pride was always J-J’s besetting sin. If even her servants held the power of life and death, then what did that make her?
‘I don’t have the stomach for that stuff any more,’ I said, knowing as I said it that it was the kind of half-truth that everyone takes to be a lie. But Jenna-Jane nodded as though I’d confirmed a suspicion she already had.
‘Yes,’ she said. ‘It was the moral dimension that made you feel you had to leave us in the first place. Your concerns over our Rosie.’
Our Rosie. She meant Rosie Crucis, the oldest ghost in captivity. But she said it in such an affectionate tone that the horror and cruelty of Rosie’s capture were momentarily occulted by the homely phraseology.
‘You won on that one,’ I reminded her, since I couldn’t say that my feelings on the subject had changed in the years since.
‘Nobody wins when friends quarrel, Felix,’ Jenna-Jane chided me seriously. ‘No, I think it’s true that our work induces a certain . . . narrowness of vision. Inevitably, I’m afraid. Morality reveals itself on the macroscopic scale, but is invisible in the detail work.’
‘I have no idea what that means,’ I said.
‘It means we’re serving the greater good,’ Gil McClennan chipped in, offering his opinion like an apple for the teacher and getting a smile and a nod in return.
‘Yes,’ said J-J. ‘The greatest good. I have something more to say to you on that subject, Felix, but I’d like to let it sit a little while. What was it you wanted to talk to me about?’
The crunch point. Probably better to get it over with quickly, because the longer I sat here the more likely I was to do something irrevocable – possibly involving the EMPIRICAL RESEARCH statuette.
‘Rafi Ditko,’ I said tersely. ‘I think maybe it’s time we collaborated.’
J-J affected surprise, although presumably it was the mention of Rafi’s name that had got me in through the door. She glanced at Gil, who made a non-committal gesture, and then at Gentle, who nodded. ‘I’m familiar with the case, Professor Mulbridge,’ she murmured.
‘Good.’ Jenna-Jane returned her attention to me, looking a little perturbed. ‘If you’ll forgive me for being blunt, Felix,’ she said, ‘Rafael Ditko is the very last subject on which I’d expect us to find common ground.’
J-J sets the bar high, but that was a miracle of understatement even by her standards. We’d been fighting an undeclared war over Rafi for the best part of a year now. I’d only taken him from the Stanger Care Home in the first place to keep him out of her eager, grasping little fingers, and I’d told her more than once that if it came to a choice between shooting Rafi in the head and letting the MOU have him, I’d probably end up having to toss a coin.
It’s funny how your own words come around to drop their pants and moon you sometimes.
‘Yeah,’ I said flatly. ‘Times change. But the common ground was always there, Jenna-Jane. We both want Rafi alive. For different reasons, admittedly, but alive is alive. So I’m prepared to work with you to bring him in, in return for a guarantee that you won’t bow to any outside pressure you might get to pull the plug on him.’
J-J frowned. ‘Outside pressure? You intrigue me, Felix. But tell me, have you ever known me to bow to pressure? From any source?’
I had to admit that I hadn’t. The idea had kind of a whimsical sound to it, like Jack the Ripper holding a door open for a little old lady and saying, ‘No, after you . . .’
Jenna-Jane clasped her hands together under her chin with just the index fingers extended, pressed to her pursed lips. She considered for a few moments in silence while – out of a lack of other viable options – I sat and waited for the wheels to turn.
‘Do you know where Ditko is?’ she asked at last.
‘No,’ I admitted, ‘I don’t. But I bumped into him in Brixton last night and got close enough to touch him.’ I didn’t see any need to explain that it was Asmodeus who’d been doing the touching, and that I was the hunted rather than the hunter in the whole scenario.
‘He’s got nothing to offer us, Professor,’ Gil McClennan said, his voice dripping with contempt. ‘Our teams are close to finding Ditko already. We don’t need Castor to close this net.’
Jenna-Jane closed her eyes momentarily. I sympathised. Just by telling me that she was already looking for Asmodeus, McClennan had weakened her bargaining position. It must be a trial to be surrounded by idiots and yes-men the whole time: it’s a cross that all tyrants have to bear.
‘There might, it’s true, be ways in which we could be helpful to each other,’ Jenna-Jane said, as though Gil hadn’t spoken. ‘But – you’ll forgive me for this, Felix, I’m sure – I remain to be convinced that you’re negotiating in good faith. When we find Mr Ditko, why would you hand him over to me instead of absconding with him yourself – as you absconded once before, when he was confined at the Stanger Care Home.’
‘Nobody knows, Jenna-Jane,’ I said blandly, ‘who was responsible for springing Rafi from the Stanger. It seems to have been a team effort though. Two men and a woman, from what I heard. And as you know, I work alone.’
‘Of course.’ J-J’s smile was cold and tight. ‘Nonetheless, the question stands.’
‘The authorities want Rafi dealt with,’ I said, ‘and they don’t really care how it’s done. They’ve given the Anathemata Curialis total freedom to close the case in any way they like, and that almost certainly means they’ll kill Rafi in the course of destroying or banishing Asmodeus.’
Jenna-Jane considered this for a moment in silence. ‘Go on,’ she said at last.
‘I’ll work with your people. You’ll make the decisions and call the shots. I’ll advise and give you my skills where necessary, and leave you to choose the when and where. You’ll be in control the whole time.’
‘Your skills,’ Gil repeated, with a derisive emphasis.
Jenna-Jane glanced at him momentarily, as though slightly pained by his bluntness. Then she delivered her verdict. ‘I’ll need to think about it,’ she said, opening her palms as though to show how even-handedly she’d do that. ‘Gil, why not give Mr Castor a little tour of our new facilities while I mull his proposal over?’
McClennan looked like he’d swallowed a wasp, but a yes-man has to stick to the script or else retrain as a yes-and-no-man. ‘Very well, Professor,’ he managed. ‘Just the top floors or . . . ?’
‘Everything,’ Jenna-Jane said. ‘We’re publicly audited, Gil. Nothing we do here is a secret.’
Gil crossed to the door and opened it. I lingered for a moment, staring at J-J. ‘I’ll give you my answer when you come back,’ she said.
It was the best I was going to get, obviously. But I had to wonder, as I followed McClennan out through the door, what it was that was preventing her from giving me a straight answer on the spot. As the office door closed, she was deep in murmured consultation with Gentle, who was nodding and scribbling rapidly in her notebook.
Metamorphic ontology, a phrase that’s both resonant and anodyne, hiding itself coyly behind Ancient Greek polysyllables like a coquette peeping out from behind her fan. It means the study of the undead: science’s sheepish and undignified scramble to catch up with recent developments in the afterlife, especially as they impact on this one. Ontology ferrets into the nature of being; metamorphosis is change. Translation: ‘When they’re dead, people change into some bloody scary things. Let’s talk some serious Latin about it.’