I’d have to be content with cleaning out the Augean shithole over at the Salisbury. That at least I could do now. And Bic was stirring in his sleep towards normal wakefulness, his face calm, his chest rising and falling evenly. Everything had worked out fine, really — except that Asmodeus had found a way to stick a poker up my arse even when I was facing him full-on.
Gradually, step by step, we heaped up chains around him and sent him back down into the oubliette of Rafi’s soul. He went smiling, enjoying his joke, but he went. I took the whistle from my lips, flexed my stiff fingers, and listened to the silence that was descending on the room.
‘Where am I?’ Bic demanded groggily, sitting up. ‘Where’s Mum?’
‘You’re with friends,’ I assured him, surprised by my own cracked voice. ‘Imelda, thanks for everything. I owe you, and I’ll find a way to pay you back.’
She didn’t move, but her head came up slowly and she stared at me.
‘You let yourselves out,’ she said stonily, not acknowledging the thanks. ‘I’m staying here until I’m sure.’
‘He’s asleep,’ Rafi said, sounding even more wrecked than I felt. ‘I’d feel him if he was still awake.’
‘He fooled us once,’ Imelda reminded him. ‘When he kept a little piece of himself inside your hand. There’s nothing to stop him doing the same thing again, so I’m not taking anything on trust here.’
She walked with us to the door. Trudie made to take Bic’s hand but I got there first and handed her the helmet instead. ‘Sorry,’ I said. ‘Rules are rules.’
She took it, giving me a slightly hurt frown, and slid it over her head again without a word.
Imelda confronted me squarely. ‘When you’re done tonight,’ she said, ‘you come back and take your friend out of here. I’ve got nothing against Rafael, and Pamela is as sweet a child as ever I saw, but I got my own child to think about, too. Enough is enough, Castor. This is your notice to quit.’
‘Could you give me a week?’ I asked her. I just didn’t feel like I could deal with this right now, on top of everything else. ‘A week or a fortnight, to scout out another place? Seriously, Imelda, I don’t know if I can find anywhere at this kind of notice. And you know what will happen if–’
She cut me off coldly and bluntly, swiping her hand horizontally between us in a no pasaran gesture. ‘It’s your problem,’ she said. ‘It’s not mine. Not after tonight.’
I nodded, giving up the point. She went down to tell Cheadle we were through while I trussed Trudie up like a BDSM turkey again and Bic watched me with big, bemused eyes.
‘It’ll all make sense when we get you home,’ I promised him. And then, as he opened his mouth to ask a question, I silenced him with a cowardly ‘Your mum will explain.’
Cheadle appeared at my elbow. ‘All done?’ he asked cheerfully. ‘Right, let’s get off, then. I’ve got another job on.’
I almost asked him what it was, and whether he took everything as completely in his stride as he had this scary, weird circus; but I knew I wouldn’t get any kind of an answer I could actually use.
We led Trudie down the stairs between us, Imelda following with Bic. He got to sit up front this time, a blanket of Imelda’s draped over his shoulders, but Trudie was once again locked in the back of the van after Cheadle had checked the adequacy of her restraints.
‘Soon be done,’ he said, slamming the doors on her. This seemed to be addressed to Bic, who nodded silently. He’d barely spoken a dozen words since he’d woken up, but it wasn’t because he was groggy or disoriented. On the contrary, he seemed entirely alert and even thoughtfuclass="underline" but whatever was in his thoughts he didn’t seem to want to share.
When we got to Walworth Road and saw the orange glow colouring the night sky ahead of us, I realised that the night was far from over. It was many hours past sunset, and many months before Bonfire Night, so there was no good explanation for that redecoration of the heavens.
‘Someone’s having a fry-up,’ Cheadle remarked dryly.
Someone was. A few blocks further on we came to a gap between buildings where some old shops had been levelled, and we could see the Salisbury a scant mile away. One of the towers was burning, flame pouring out of the windows on the top three storeys.
‘It’s not Weston,’ I said to Bic. ‘It’s too far over.’
‘And anyway, it’s not . . .’ The boy faltered, but he ran out of words. He showed me his hand instead, and I nodded. No wounds involved. The demon loved wounds: it had no interest in fire. So the fire was just a by-product of something else.
At the Salisbury there were police cars and fire engines parked three-deep on the road and a crowd of uniformed constables hid the front steps like a flock of crows that had all descended at once on some particularly tasty bit of roadkill. Cheadle swore when he saw them. Carefully and slowly, giving a copper in the road a smile and a respectful nod, he wove his way through the thicket of paddy wagons and kept on going.
‘Let us out here,’ I said.
Cheadle scowled and shook his head. ‘We’re parking around the corner,’ he muttered. ‘In Balfour Street. Use your loaf, eh? If they see what we’ve got in the back of the van, we’re none of us going anywhere besides a holding cell tonight.’
He was right, of course: the combination of Trudie in her bondage rig and Bic in his pyjamas would be enough to make even the most laissez-faire of plods reach for his handcuffs.
We took the next left and pulled in to the kerb. Then I followed Cheadle around to the back of the van and — as soon as he’d unlocked the doors — untied Trudie for the last time that night.
‘I’m sorry you had to go through this,’ I said.
‘I didn’t have to go through it,’ she said, rubbing her wrists. ‘Not if you’d taken my word in the first place.’ Our eyes met for a moment, and there was something in hers that looked like reproach. ‘What is it you’ve got against us, Castor? Our intel on you says you were raised Catholic yourself. ’
‘It’s not Catholics I’ve got a problem with,’ I said. ‘It’s paramilitaries.’
‘You can drop the para. This is a real war. And you know what’s at stake better than anyone.’
‘Nothing is at stake.’ My voice sounded harsh even to me, but then it had been a long night. ‘Not in the way you mean it. Loup-garous, ghosts, zombies . . . Most of what I deal with as an exorcist is just human souls in different flavours. The demons are different, but they’re not an army. So you’re not at war. Unless every farmer who picks up a shotgun and stomps off towards the henhouse because he’s heard squawks and flutters in the middle of the night is at war.’
Trudie looked past me, out through the open doors of the van towards the burning tower. The taste of smoke was in the air and it hurt a little to breathe. She didn’t need to speak to make her point. Somehow, I felt like I did.
‘Yeah,’ I said. ‘I’ll give you the demons. Like I said, they’re different. But that’s the point, isn’t it? You people treat the dead — all the dead — as the enemy. I may be an exorcist but at least I’ve got a bit more discrimination than a hand grenade lobbed into a crowded room.’
Trudie seemed disposed to carry on the argument, and maybe ramp it up a few notches, but Cheadle was tapping his feet and the night was on fire.
‘Skip it,’ I suggested. ‘We can have the big political debate some time when London isn’t burning.’
‘Castor–’
But I was already stepping down out of the van. ‘Come on,’ I said to Bic, ‘let’s get you home. Mister Cheadle, it’s been a pleasure to watch you work.’
‘Thanks.’ Cheadle gave me a nod that conveyed the thinnest possible sliver of civility as he climbed back into the driver’s seat. ‘You know where to find me if you need me. Prices as per scale. Unsociable hours a bloody speciality.’
Trudie barely had time to jump clear: Cheadle drove away with a squeal of tyres, braking sharply after ten yards so that momentum would slam the tailgate closed for him. Then he put the van into gear again and disappeared into the night at a speed you seldom see clocked in the centre of London.