“Because she used a name that’s made up out of some of the letters of her real name. She always does. Don’t ask me why. I guess it’s just a demon thing. Was she wearing silver, by the way?”
“A chain. On her ankle.”
“There you go. You’re lucky to be alive, Castor. She’s fast and she’s mean. Gerald Gardner—Crowley’s old mate—talks about someone he knew who summoned her to impress his friends at a stag party. She played all coy, got him to put one foot over the edge of his magic circle, then she ripped off his cock and balls and ate them. Not quite the hot oral action he was hoping for, I’m guessing.
“Oh, and she doesn’t give up. That’s the other thing the occultist crowd all insist on. Once she’s got your scent, she keeps coming. Watch your back.”
There was no answer to that apart from the involuntary wince I gave. “Thanks, Nicky,” I said. “I was feeling bad about the whole thing, but not nearly bad enough, obviously. You’ve raised my game.”
“Sorry. I thought you should know.”
I got up.
“ASAP for this, Nicky,” I said, pointing down at the laptop. “Call me today, if you can. I need to get that back before anyone notices it’s gone.”
“I’ll be in touch,” he said. Then, as I turned to leave, he stopped me with a raised hand. “You’re aware you’ve got a shadow?” he said.
“What, still? I saw her as I was coming in, but—”
“She’s walked past three times. Checking you out. Waiting for you to leave, maybe.”
I was impressed by the sensitivity of his radar—and happy to have the corroboration. “Yeah, I’m aware.”
“Is she anybody I need to know about?”
“No, she’s strictly personal.”
“You’re kidding.” Nicky looked disgusted. “She’s too young for you, Fix. She’s too young for anybody.”
“Call me,” I said.
I headed back across the concourse and out through one of the many sets of doors that lead through to the bus station. There was a flight of concrete steps ahead of me, going down into an underpass that crossed the Euston Road. I took it. At the bottom, I turned a corner. Then I waited.
I heard her before I saw her: clip-clapping clumsily down the steps on tall, precarious heels. She turned the corner and almost ran straight into me. Her brown eyes, made pandalike by inexpertly applied makeup, opened wide with shock. It was Rosa. Now that I saw her full-on, there was no mistaking.
“Was there something you wanted to talk to me about?” I asked her.
I’m not sure what I expected, but it wasn’t what I got. Rosa reached into her coat and pulled out a steak knife; it looked alarming and incongruous in this setting.
A moment later, it looked a whole lot worse as she lunged forward and tried to embed it in my chest. I leaped back, and the blade sliced empty air in front of me. Rosa almost overbalanced, but recovered and took another swipe.
“You did it to her!” she shouted in a thick accent that sounded Czech or Russian. “Again! You did it to her again! It was you! He told me it was you!”
On the third pass I tried to grab her wrist, but she twisted free and almost caught me with a backhanded slash that came out of nowhere. She was so thin! My hand had closed for a moment around her forearm, and there was almost nothing there. But the hate she was obviously feeling for me had given her a hectic strength, and she closed in again with a scream of anger.
This time, I didn’t try to hold her. I just knocked the knife out of her hand with a vertical swipe of my arm. I hadn’t meant to hurt her, but she gave a gasping sob and staggered back, clutching her wrist. I kicked the knife away to the other side of the tunnel and then threw my arms out, fingers spread and palms up, to indicate that I didn’t mean her any harm.
“I didn’t do anything to anybody,” I said. “But I’d love to know what it is I’m supposed to have done. And who told you I did it. If you explain that to me, maybe we’ll know where we stand.”
She glared at me, still clutching her wrist. She cast one longing glance at the knife, then sprinted for the stairs. I caught her in two steps, my hands around her waist. I leaned to the side as she flailed and kicked, because I needed to keep my legs out of the way of those deadly heels.
“Please,” I said. “Rosa. Just tell me what you’re so angry about. Tell me what I’m being accused of.”
She froze suddenly and then went limp in my arms. She half turned, her head lolling sideways onto my shoulder. At the same time she gave a trembling sob of exhaled breath. She slumped against me, making me take her weight as her body pressed against mine.
Disconcerted, I relaxed my hold—and she jackknifed at the optimum moment, the back of her head slamming with sickening force into the bridge of my nose. I fell backward against the wall of the tunnel, and she was away. By the time I could see through my watering eyes, there was no sign of her.
With my head throbbing and my pride hurting a damn sight worse, I climbed the steps back up to street level and took a look in both directions. Nothing. Even in six-inch heels, the kid had a good turn of speed on her.
The pain in my head was getting worse, making my stomach churn with nausea. I sat down on a low wall to regroup and re-equip. Being beaten up by women seemed to be one of the hazards of this particular job. At least Cheryl had been gentle with me.
One thing surfaced through the throbbing ache and bobbed around on top of it, cheerful as only an abstract fact can be in a world of intense physical pain.
I reviewed my options. There were some ideas I wanted to follow up at the archive now—ideas about plastic bags and flat roofs. And Rosa was suddenly looking like someone I needed to talk to urgently the next time I caught her without a kitchen implement in her hand. But the immediate priority was Nicky’s notes—and if I took them back to the Bonnington, I was risking a run-in with Alice.
So I took them down into the Underground instead. Not as good as Bunhill Fields, but it was a lot closer, and it did the same trick, to some extent. Fast-moving vehicles act as a kind of block or damper on my psychic antennae—so in spite of the engine noise, the vibration and the rocking, the nonexistent air-conditioning, the smell of used food and the proximity of other people’s armpits, for me the place has a haze of contemplative calm hanging over it like an angel’s protective wing. I often ride the Circle Line when I need to think long and deep.
Uncomfortably ensconced in a seat that had had one of its plastic arms ripped out at the root, and therefore sharing rather too deeply in the personal space of a burly guy in a Scissor Sisters T-shirt who smelled strongly of acetone, I took the notes out of my pocket and looked them over. There was a lot more there than I’d thought at first—about ten sheets of deceptively thin onionskin printout paper, all full of dense, unformatted type with the occasional “your guess is as good as mine” percentage sign. God alone knew where Nicky had dug this stuff up.
They were database entries for suspicious deaths, and they were made slightly impenetrable by the fact that the fields were all run together without headings or even spaces. The first entry began:
MARYPAULINEGLEESON2BROWNBLUE5BLUNTINSTRUMENTTRAUMAIMPACTED12NOTDETERMINED7SKULLCL AVICLELEFTHUMERUSPAVEMENTOUTSIDEOLDBARRELHEADPUBLICHOUSEYESWITNESSACCOUNT2253YES12MIN MULTIPLESEEATTACHED1ST2ND3RD4TH5TH6TH7THSEEATTACHED8TH9TH10THSEEATTACHED11TH12THABRAD EDCLEARABRADED
It went on for a long while in this grim, deadpan tone. Then there was a second name, KATHERINE LYLE, followed by another cascade of words and numbers. It occurred to me as I scanned it that I should probably make a point of never handling the original document; the black emotions locked up in it would probably clothesline me straight out.
In some ways the printout was completely impenetrable; in others, it told a lot of depressing variations on a bleak and familiar story. Mindful of my limitations, Nicky had included on some of the later sheets material of a
