Gwillam smiled bleakly. I got the impression that he was remembering specific conversations; specific clashes of wills and words. ‘They forgot their duty of stewardship,’ he said gently. ‘They became too ensconced in the comforts of the world, and forgot that the world must always and ever be a forge. You do not sit comfortably by God’s fire: you are plunged into it, and are shaped and made by it.
‘You seem to think, Castor, that there’s some contradiction between the battle we wage and the tools we use. There isn’t. We fight against the demons who are Satan’s generals in the field – and we avail ourselves of whatever weapons God places in our hands. If faithful Catholics return from the dead not because they conspired with the Adversary but because the rules of engagement have changed, then we will not turn our backs on them. Po and Zucker have suffered much, and they have turned their suffering to good account. I number them among my most trusted officers.’
He counted off the items on the table, pointing at each with his index finger, as if to satisfy himself that he had everything he needed. Then he nodded, satisfied, and stared at me again.
‘Where is Abbie Torrington?’ he asked me.
‘In a police morgue in Hendon.’
Gwillam blinked, once, twice. ‘I don’t mean her shell,’ he said, with the closest thing to heat I’d ever seen from him. ‘I mean her true self. Her spirit. As you of all people must appreciate.’
Me of all people? I let that one pass.
‘Her soul is in a locket,’ I said. ‘Made of gold. Shaped like a heart. Her father took it from her neck just after she died. I think it has a lock of her hair inside it, and I think that that’s what she’s clinging to. And Fanke has it now: he took it from Peace’s body after he killed him at the Oriflamme on Castlebar Hill.’
‘And where is Fanke?’
‘I don’t know. Gwillam, if you can see that Abbie’s ghost is the same thing as her soul, then how in fuck’s name can you talk about destroying it?’
He raised his eyebrows. ‘Isn’t that what we do?’ he asked. ‘Isn’t that exactly the power that was given to us?’
‘We?’ I don’t know why that came as a shock: it was pretty much on the cards, given that he was the one the Anathemata had chosen to head up this mission. ‘You’re an exorcist?’
He nodded curtly. ‘That was how I knew that God had chosen me to fight in His cause.’
‘Funny,’ I said. ‘That was how I knew I’d never have to work on a building site. What do you use? A fragment of the True Cross?’
Gwillam looked at me reflectively. His hand slid into his breast pocket, and it came out holding a small book bound in black leather.
‘The Bible,’ he said. ‘This Bible. I read aloud – words and phrases taken at random from different verses. The words of God make a cage for the souls of sinners – as you would expect.’ He put the book away. ‘I told you, Castor. I’m a soldier. If I could save the child, then I would save her: but I can’t and won’t allow her soul to become the mechanism through which Hell’s mightiest general is unleashed upon the world. The ritual that was used here requires the sacrifice of body and souclass="underline" therefore without the girl’s soul, it can’t be completed. Now, I ask you again, for the second time: where is Fanke?’
‘I don’t have the faintest idea,’ I said. It was true, as far as it went: I didn’t know where Fanke was right then. I was pretty sure I knew where he was going to turn up at some point in the very near future, but I was keeping that little nugget to myself. Maybe Gwillam was the best chance I had of dropping a spanner into Fanke’s good works: but at the expense of Abbie’s soul? It couldn’t be done that way. Not if I was going to be able to look in the mirror afterwards.
Gwillam nodded to Sallis, who stepped up beside me. He tucked his gun into a holster strapped across his chest under his jacket and took a double handful of my hair, pulling my head back as far as he could. I tensed against him, but standing over me like that he could exert a lot more leverage than I could. Unhurriedly, Gwillam uncorked the large bottle and poured some of its contents onto one of the surgical swabs. The pungent smell of some strong disinfectant filled the air. Gwillam carefully swabbed the area where my shoulder and throat met, then threw the used swab down on the table.
‘I’m telling you all I know,’ I snarled, finding it hard to talk with my head tilted back so sharply.
‘We’ll see,’ said Gwillam tersely. He tore the bubble-wrap open, loaded the syringe with the snap-in ampoule and pumped it lightly, sending a thin jet of fluid spraying from its tip. ‘Hold him steady,’ he warned Sallis, bending back over the doctor bag for a moment so that I lost sight of him. ‘If this goes into his carotid artery it will probably kill him.’
That was bad news, whichever way you looked at it. But even if I survived this, it was obvious that Gwillam was about to shoot me full of some thiopental derivative to ensure a fuller and franker discussion. Was there anything I could do to stop him? I couldn’t think of a damn thing.
What did I know about truth serums? Only what I’d picked up from reading cheap spy thrillers, but that was enough to know that they didn’t work. They were just disinhibitors, cutting the brake cables of your subconscious so that you freewheeled endlessly, gabbling on about whatever came into your head. People injected with propofol or pentathol couldn’t consciously lie, but they could and did talk a load of free-associative shite. That was why truth drugs didn’t turn up much any more even in cheap spy thrillers.
On the other hand, did I want to free-associate in front of Gwillam about Asmodeus and Abbie and Juliet and Saint Michael’s church? No, I didn’t. This was definitely a good time to be keeping my thoughts to myself.
And just then, another bit of trivia that I didn’t even know I knew popped up out of nowhere. I suddenly remembered what class of drugs the truth serums belonged to – and it gave me the bare bones of an idea: thin and pathetic but marginally better than nothing. No harm in trying, anyway: the only downside was that if it didn’t work, I might never wake up. I started to breathe fast and deep, forcing air into my lungs.
‘Would it be better if he was unconscious?’ Sallis asked, with what from my point of view sounded like an indecent amount of enthusiasm.
‘Hardly,’ Gwillam snapped. ‘How will he be able to answer any questions if you’ve put your fist through his skull?’
He loomed back into my field of vision, the needle raised in his hand.
‘Gwillam!’ I growled, still breathing in fast, forced gasps. I must have looked like I was starting a full-fledged panic attack.
Gwillam hesitated. ‘What?’ he asked.
‘I’m allergic.’
‘Allergic to what, exactly?’ Gwillam asked, his tone dangerously mild.
There could be any of twenty different drugs in the syringe. All I could do was guess.
‘Propofol,’ I said.
Gwillam shrugged. ‘Then you can relax,’ he said. ‘This is something different.’
The needle came down towards my neck. I twisted suddenly in Sallis’s hands, and Gwillam stopped: he didn’t want to kill me – or at least, not until he’d asked the rest of his questions. ‘Hold him steady,’ he rasped. Sallis threw one arm around my neck and leaned in hard against me to restrict my movement as much as he could.
All of this was just playing for time while I drew as many breaths as I could, working my lungs like bellows until the actual moment when the tip of the needle slid into my skin and Gwillam’s thumb pushed home the plunger.
A red curtain fell across my mind. A black one followed, half a second later. But they weren’t curtains at all, they were solid walls, and I crashed into unconsciousness so fast and hard that I actually felt the impact.
I woke up slowly and painfully, bleeding fragments of thought running together like mercury and pooling like ultra-cold lakes in the fractal wastelands of my cerebellum.
The ‘I’ came first, but there was nothing to join it to. Just I. What I? Where I? Who the fuck cared? It couldn’t matter. Whoever he was, let the bastard wait. There was pain going on somewhere nearby and I wanted to lie low so that it didn’t find me.