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I pushed one of the glasses into his free hand, clinked the other one against it. ‘Cheers, Bill,’ I said, as he looked around.

‘Felix Castor.’ He sounded surprised. ‘Unexpected privilege. You don’t seem to get out much these days.’ He raised the glass and downed it in one. He drank whiskey like other men drink water, and as far as I know he only used water for brushing his teeth. He could have gone through a half-bottle tonight already, depending on how early he’d started, but there was no indication at all in his voice nor in the way he was standing. His fondness for booze wasn’t a great asset in a bar-owner – former bar-owner, I should say – but his incomparable ability to deal with it definitely was. More than one man who’d tried to drink him under the table had been carried away on top of it.

‘I get out as much as I ever did, Bourbon,’ I said. ‘I just don’t like to get drunk in the company of ghost-hunters. It feels like I’m still on the clock, somehow.’

‘That’s your rep, Fix.’ He grinned, but it didn’t last. His face settled back down into its habitual dour lines: he was someone whom life had kicked in the balls, and he still wore the expression that comes after the initial pain of impact has subsided. He’d always had a basset-hound kind of face: now it was more deeply seamed than ever, and his complexion matched his crest of wood-ash hair. ‘You used to come out to the real Oriflamme, though, time was. Couple of nights a week, if I remember rightly.’

I nodded. ‘Then I got myself an office. Biggest mistake I ever made.’

‘I hear you, brother.’ Bourbon laughed ruefully and shook his head. ‘Biggest mistake for me was going up to Scotland for my brother’s wedding. Came back to a pile of cinders and a bill from the fire brigade. Three years on and I still don’t have a blind clue who did it.’

‘Any progress on that front?’

‘Not recently. Had a lead a couple of months back, might come to something. Most likely not. I’m patient. Got a sort of a Zen mentality, these days. You know, flowing with the water.’

‘That’s not Zen. That’s Tao.’

‘Whatever. I don’t let stuff get to me. But when I find those motherless bastards, I’m going to take their effing teeth out with pliers.’ Bourbon’s expression changed and became suddenly more animated in a slightly unhealthy way. ‘Why are you asking, anyway? Did you hear something? I’m offering a reward for information, you know.’

‘If I hear anything, I’ll pass it on,’ I assured him hastily. ‘Bugger the reward. No, I came down here looking for someone else. Maybe you can point him out to me, if he’s here.’

‘Shoot.’

‘Dennis Peace.’

‘Yeah, I know Peace.’ That was why I’d gone straight over to Bourbon when I’d seen he was here: he knew everybody. ‘Seems like he’s flavour of the month all of a sudden. You want to do some business with him?’

‘Not exactly, no.’

‘Then what?’

‘I need to contact him on behalf of a client. He may have taken something that doesn’t belong to him.’

‘Hah.’ Bourbon didn’t look altogether surprised about this mission statement. ‘Well, maybe so. Wouldn’t be the first time, I’ve got to admit. He was always a bit of a wild boy. I remember him coming into the bar one night and talking about knife fights. I called him on one story because it sounded like he was talking shite. So he rolled up his shirt and showed me his scars. Jesus fucking wept! He looked like Boris Karloff had chopped him up and stitched him back together again.’

‘Did he pick a fight with someone and lose?’ I asked, trying to pin down that echo.

‘He picked a fight with Stig Matthews. They both lost. Both ended up in hospital.’

Yeah, that was what I’d heard. Two men trading punches until they both fell down, with broken noses and half-pulped faces: the sort of thing that gives even machismo a bad name.

‘I thought he was trying to be good just lately, though,’ Bourbon said reflectively. ‘Starting to quiet down a bit. That’s what people tell me, anyway. He come back from America a changed man, they say. But I can’t help you anyway, Fix. He’s not here.’

‘You sound pretty sure.’

‘Well, I saw him walk out about half an hour back. Looking a bit rough, I have to say – like he hadn’t slept in a while. He bought some FFs from Carla, and popped a couple right there. Then he was off again. Didn’t even stay for a drink.’

Damn. I’d been that close. But a miss is as good as a mile. ‘Is Carla still here?’ I asked. Bourbon looked around the room for a few seconds, then pointed to a formidable-looking redhead sitting close to the bar, in intense conversation with a bare-armed bald guy so heavily tattooed that it was hard to make out his facial expression. In other company, he might have made you feel a little nervous: next to Carla he sort of faded into the background.

‘Thanks, Bourbon. So Peace used to be a regular at the old place. You know anything else about him?’

‘There’s a difference between what I hear and what I know, Fix. Peace is the sort of man that people like to tell stories about – but you know how it is. A lot of those stories used to be told about other people before and they’ll be told about someone else after. All I know – know for sure – is that he used to be a rubber duck a while back. He was part of the collective. Not any more, though: he got fed up with all the arguments. And I think he told me he’s a friend of Rosie Crucis, although as far as I know he wasn’t part of the team that raised her.’

‘You’re right. He wasn’t.’

‘Oh yeah, that was you and Jenna-Jane Mulbridge, wasn’t it? The Sussex Gardens Resurrectionists. That’s all I can think of. Never saw him in anyone’s company except his own. He’s almost as antisocial as you.’

‘Tell me some of the stories, then.’

He grimaced. ‘I’d just as soon not, Fix, if it’s all the same to you. Not my style.’

‘Sorry I asked, then. Thanks, Bourbon. I owe you one.’

‘You bought me one. Just don’t go in half-cocked, okay? Peace is a nasty piece of work, in some respects, but in my experience he plays straight with people who play straight with him. On the other hand, if you piss him off he can be a right bastard.’

‘Shit, he really is like me. Have a good one, Bourbon.’

‘You too, Fix.’

I strolled over towards Carla’s end of the bar, watching her out of the corner of my eye while I ordered another drink. I don’t like hitting people up if I don’t already know them: the law of unintended consequences applies, with big spiky knobs on. I could have asked Bourbon to make an introduction, but why the hell should I drag him into my shit when he’d got shit enough of his own?

Biding my time, I ordered another drink. By the time it came, Carla had finished her conversation with the illustrated man. Money had changed hands, and so had a little brown-paper bag which had been folded many times and taped shut. The guy took off for the street door looking happy and excited – at least, as far as I could tell under all the paintwork.

FFs, Bourbon had said: by which I presumed he meant fast-forwards rather than, say, back issues of the Fantastic Four comic book. So Peace had an amphetamine habit. Well, he wouldn’t be the first exorcist to keep his pencils sharp with chemical assistance – or the last. Interesting that he’d looked so wiped, though: could be that was an after-effect of fielding all my various attempts to raise Abbie’s spirit, as well as hitting that screamer back my way earlier in the day. Maybe if I kept up the pressure there, I’d get through his guard.

Or maybe the next ricochet I caught would mulch my brains until they leaked out of my ears.

I crossed to Carla’s table and sat down in the just-vacated chair. She was just getting up: she looked at me with a certain amount of surprise and not much pleasure. Close up, she was an even more impressive lady than she had been from across the bar. Not tall, but very solid: at a distance you could tell yourself that some of her bulk was fat, but from this range I could see that she was made of something harder and less yielding. She looked to be about forty, and her slab-like face under its layers of foundation make-up looked like a red-brick wall. Her incongruously soft brown eyes were cordoned off like a crime scene with lines of mascara: the rest of her features had disowned them. She was altogether the wrong shape for a belly-shirt, but that was what she was wearing nonetheless: the pixie skirt was another red herring, but I felt that the wrestler’s boots were an honest statement of intent.