So we went to the Salisbury, and as we passed into the shadow of the first two concrete monoliths Pen gave an involuntary shudder.
I stared at her curiously. ‘You feel it?’ I demanded.
‘I’m just cold,’ Pen muttered.
‘Billy’s awake,’ Jean Daniels said, almost before we’d got inside the door, ‘but he’s not himself, Mister Castor. He’s wandering in his mind. Tom was sitting with him up until an hour ago, but he had to go and sign on down at the job centre.’
She pointed me through to the living room. Bic still lay on the sofa where I’d deposited him the night before, but in his pyjamas now rather than his street clothes, and with an old overcoat, by way of a blanket, covering him up to the waist. The pyjamas were red and blue: Spiderman fought Doctor Octopus across the front of them.
Bic’s eyes were open, but he didn’t seem to see me. He was restless, his fingers moving with small fluttering motions as though he was a guitarist trying to remember a chord sequence with no instrument ready to hand. His lips were moving too, although no sound was coming out.
‘What did they say at the hospital?’ I asked.
Jean flicked a doubtful glance at Pen, seeming reluctant to drag out family business under the eyes of a stranger.
‘It’s okay,’ I said. ‘This is Pen Bruckner. She’s my landlady. She’s also sort of a shareholder in the business, on account of I owe her more than I’m worth.’
Jean accepted the explanation with a hapless shrug: needs must when the devil drives, she seemed to say. ‘They told me he might have a concussion. Then he woke up and they said he didn’t. Then he started to talk all funny, and he didn’t seem to know who I was, so they decided they weren’t sure. They gave him some tests but they wouldn’t tell us what any of the results were. It was obvious they didn’t have the faintest idea what was wrong with him. We were there for five hours, waiting on some consultant or other, and when he came he only said again that it wasn’t a concussion and Billy would probably be all right inside of a few hours.’
She rubbed furiously at her eye, more as though she wanted to force a tear back inside than to wipe it away. ‘They were going to keep him in,’ she said, her mouth setting tight at the memory, ‘but when I asked them what they were going to do they couldn’t give me a straight answer. Keep him under observation, they said. As if that’s going to make him better all by itself. So we brought him home. But he’s getting worse, Mister Castor. It’s like he’s got a fever, only he isn’t hot. So I told Tom we should call you, and we had a big row about it and he said I could only do it when he wasn’t in the house because he doesn’t believe in any of the things you were talking about. I suppose I didn’t either, until all this happened. But there’s no point sticking your head in the sand. This isn’t a medical thing, is it? It’s not a medical thing at all. Not with the bleeding and the dreams and all that. It’s . . .’ She shrugged helplessly. ‘Well, I think it has to be something more in your line, doesn’t it?’
I nodded, but for a moment I didn’t speak. The miasma — the migraine buzz in the air, the prickling sense at the back of my skull — confused my death-senses to the point where they were almost useless. I honestly couldn’t tell right then if Bic was one of the loci it was coming from or not. On the other hand, I’d seen him the night before about to sleepwalk off the edge of a balcony sixty feet above the ground. And I’d seen his hands running with blood despite the absence of a wound. If it wasn’t possession, then what was it?
‘Yeah,’ I said at last. ‘In my line, certainly. But I’d be lying if I said I knew exactly what it was, Jean.’
‘I don’t need to know,’ Jean said, her voice thickening. ‘Just bring him back. That’s all I want. If you can do that, I’ll pay you anything you want.’
It was an empty boast. How much could she afford, if Tom was on job-seeker’s allowance? Even a tenner would probably stretch the budget. But why had I come here if it wasn’t to do the job? And how could I smack this woman in the face with charity after everything else she’d been hit with? It was a knotty problem whichever way you looked at it.
And then there was the matter of my own professional competence, which I reckoned we’d better get sorted right now before we went any further.
‘I don’t know if I can do it or not,’ I told her. ‘Because like I said, I don’t know what I’m dealing with. If I do bring him back, it’s not likely to be on the first pass. It could take a few days, and a few visits, with nothing promised at the end of it. I’m prepared to try. That’s the best I can offer.
‘As far as money goes — I’m sort of already working this case for another client,’ I said, shading the truth without blushing. ‘So I can offer you a discount. In fact, under these circumstances I’ll work COD. I won’t charge you anything up front, but I’ll send in a bill if Billy gets better and doesn’t get sick again.’
‘A bill for how much?’ Jean persisted, no doubt being far too used to the foibles of debt collectors and money-lenders to fall for vague expressions of goodwill.
‘A hundred,’ I said, plucking a figure out of the air. ‘A hundred quid.’
Jean did some quick mental arithmetic, her eyes moving from side to side as she shunted invisible beads on an invisible abacus.
‘All right, Mister Castor,’ she said at last. ‘A hundred it is.’
I took out my whistle. Jean stared at it a little blankly. ‘I’m on my way to another appointment,’ I said, which was also true. ‘But I’m going to do a preliminary examination now and see what I can find out. Then I’ll come back later — or more likely tomorrow — and spend some more time with him.’
Jean looked at me forlornly. ‘Tomorrow?’ she repeated.
‘I don’t know what I’m dealing with,’ I reminded her. ‘So it’s the best I can do. If it’s a ghost, or –’ I skirted around the word demon ‘something like a ghost, then I need to get a fix on it. Kind of a psychic mugshot. I can’t do anything else until I’ve got that. I still think getting Billy out of here would be the best medicine for him, but if he has to stay on the estate then I’m going to have to do what I always do, which is to work the thing out in stages. Or you can tell me to bugger off, if you want. But either way, I don’t want to give you any false hopes.’
Jean looked at the whistle again, and shook her head. She wasn’t turning down the offer: I think she was just struck with wonder at how slim a reed she was clinging to.
‘All right,’ she said. ‘No false hopes.’ She tried to laugh, but it just loosed the tears at last and she broke down in front of us, which was what she’d been struggling so hard not to do all this time.
Pen scooped her into an embrace, saying the usual consoling nothings. We exchanged a glance over Jean’s bowed head, and I pointed towards the kitchen.
‘Let’s get ourselves a cup of tea,’ Pen suggested, taking Jean in hand and steering her in that direction with the magic of artificial good cheer. ‘I can talk you through what Castor does while he’s doing it, and then we won’t be getting in his way.’
They went through into the hall and I pushed the door to. Pen hadn’t needed to ask why I wanted to be alone for this. She knows from past experience that when I’m putting a tune together for the first time — using the music as sonar to zero in on a dead or undead presence that I haven’t got a proper fix on yet — the two things that are most likely to screw me up are strong emotions and external sounds.
I turned to look at Bic. He had carried on twitching and muttering all through our conversation, his eyes wide and unseeing. Lost in his own little world, Jean had said, describing what her son was like when he was reading superhero comics. Well, he was now, that was for damned sure. And wherever that world was, it was a long way from South London.