“Strong rooms,” said Cheryl.
“Just strong rooms?”
“Yeah, just strong rooms.”
“With no windows?”
“Right. Why d’you want to know? What’s going on?”
“I thought I heard someone up here,” I told her, going for a half truth. “When there shouldn’t have been anyone.”
“That’d be Frank, then,” said Cheryl.
“Sorry?” I said, turning back to face her. “Why would it?”
“He does his meditating up here. Jeffrey said he could.”
“Frank meditates?”
She grinned. “How’d you think he got that laid-back? We’ve got the only Zen security guard in London. Only he’s really a butterfly dreaming he’s a security guard.”
“This was at night. When the archive was closed.”
“Yeah?” She blinked. “Okay, I take it back, then. Frank only comes up in his lunch hours. But—what were you doing up here after the place was shut?”
“Long story,” I said. “Would you mind keeping it a secret for now?”
“You’ll have to buy my silence.”
“With what, exactly?”
She waggled her eyebrows suggestively.
“I’m just a plaything to you, aren’t I?” I complained with mock bitterness.
“Too right, boy. Let’s say six o’clock tonight—give me time to get out of here. I’ll meet you at Costella’s. You’re gonna have to work hard to keep me happy.”
“Will I get time off for bad behavior?”
“We’ll see. Depends how bad you can be, I suppose.”
“Cheryl, is there an alley off to the side of the new annex?”
“Yeah, that’s where the wheely bins are. Why?”
“I’m going to go down there and shinny up on that flat roof.”
“As an aftermath to sex? A lot of people would just smoke a cigarette or something.”
I kissed her on the lips. “Smoking’s bad for you,” I pointed out.
“So am I, boy. I’ll do your back in.”
“I’m looking forward to it. Wait for me—I’ll only be a minute.”
I left her there and descended the stairs. Frank gave me an amiable nod as I went by. For the first time, there was a second guard on duty with him—a younger man with a military crew cut who gave me a fish-eyed stare. I smiled a smile of good-natured idiocy and kept on going.
The alley was a cul-de-sac, lined on both sides as Cheryl had said with the wheely bins of the adjacent buildings—each standing black plastic coffin bearing a number in white paint that had dripped while it was drying.
Everything looked different from ground level. Judging the spot as best I could, I climbed on top of a Dumpster and then used the horizontal bar of a closed steel gate. It was an easy climb, which didn’t surprise me in the least. Someone at the archive was doing it on a regular basis, after all. But I was too far over, and I was looking into a builder’s yard. The flat roof of the Bonnington annex ended ten feet to my left. I tightrope-walked along the wall until I got to the roof. I could see the plastic bag lying close to the sheer wall of the main building—which, apart from the attic skylights at the very top, was an eyeless cliff face.
I went over to the bag and picked it up.
The words looked back at me, but that was a coincidence. More than half the letters and documents in the bag were in English.
A whistle made me look up. Cheryl was leaning out of the attic window. She waved at me, and I waved back. I mimed “stay there,” palm out like a policeman’s stop sign. She nodded.
I went back inside and headed for the attic, but she met me halfway.
“What was in the bag?” she asked.
“A selection of good wholesome produce at reasonable prices,” I said. “Cheryl, will you let me into the Russian room again?”
“I thought you said it was a dead end. What was in the bag?”
“Stuff. I did say that, and I might even be right. But there’s something I want to take a look at.”
Everything in the strong room was just as I’d left it the other night. The boxes were still stacked up on the floor, Rich’s laptop was still on the table, and the place still had the same sour, dispiriting smell as it’d had the first time I’d walked in, four days ago now.
“Six o’clock,” Cheryl reminded me.
“I’ll be there,” I promised.
We kissed and parted.
As soon as she’d left, I turned the computer on. Then, while it warmed up, I went looking for the other thing I needed. It should have been on the table, but since it wasn’t, I must have shoved it into one of the boxes along with an armload of papers.
It took me about ten minutes to find it, but at least it was still there: the ring-bound reporter’s notebook with Rich’s handwritten notes in it. Armed with that, I opened the database program on the computer and tried to figure out which end of it was up. There was a file named RUSSIAN1, which seemed to be a reasonable place to start. The program said it contained about 4,800 records.
I opened a few at random. Like the boxes, there wasn’t a lot to choose between them.
LETTER. 12/12/1903. SENDER MIKHAIL S. RECIPIENT IRINA ALEXOVNA. PERSONAL. RUSSIAN.
LETTER. 14/12/1903. SENDER MIKHAIL S. RECIPIENT PETER MOLINUE. PERSONAL. ENGLISH.
LETTER. 14/12/1903. SENDER MIKHAIL S. RECIPIENT RUSSIAN EMBASSY “TO WHOM IT MAY CONCERN.” BUSINESS/FORMAL. RUSSIAN.
I flipped through the pages of the notebook, looking for something that would be a bit more distinctive. In the end I settled for a Valentine’s Day card and typed in some of the search fields that Rich had jotted down. RECIPIENT CARLA. DESIGN HEART WITH WINGS.
Yeah, there it was: item number 2838. The next document I tried, a birth certificate, was number 1211. The third was a book of wedding photos, and it showed up as number 832.
It was no use. Even if I was right, it could take me days to find what I was looking for. There had to be another way of doing this. I thought about it for a long while. Then I picked up the phone and placed a call to Nicky.
He answered in his usual guarded way—making sure he knew who I was before he owned up to being who he was. Normally I take that in my stride, but not today. “Nicky, enough of the bullshit,” I said testily, cutting him off. “I need another favor. If it comes to anything, I’ll buy you a whole crate of that overpriced French mouthwash. Meet me at Euston Station. At the Burger King on the main concourse, okay? That way, you’ll be able to see me from a hundred yards away, and you’ll know it’s me, rather than some weird branch of the government pulling a sting. It’s goddamn urgent, okay? Someone’s trying to kill me, and I’d like to know why.”
Taking that kind of tone with Nicky was a high-risk strategy. I waited to see if he’d cave in or tell me to go fuck myself. He did neither. “Trying to kill you with what?” he demanded tersely.
“A stairwell. And then a succubus.”
That got a response, at any rate. “Holy shit. A fuck-demon? What did it look like? Did you get pictures?”
“Did I get pictures? Nicky, I was lucky to get out with my wedding tackle still attached. No, I didn’t get pictures.”
“Then what was its name? Was it one of the steganographics?”
“I’m not an expert. She said her name was Juliet. She had black hair and black eyes.”
