because I knew that there was nothing he could offer me that I’d want. Me and love—even me and sex—is a complicated equation, and you can wear empty pockets with a certain chic, like a badge of integrity. But answers? Oh yeah. I’d gone halfway around the fucking world looking for answers.
Damjohn smiled, and this time he meant it—not as an expression of any warm feelings toward me, but from the pure and simple pleasure of having found my weak point.
“And you’d know?” was all I could find to say. “How’s that, then? I heard that Jesus walked among the prostitutes, but that was a while ago now. You’re not telling me the two of you met?”
The smile curdled slightly, but Damjohn’s tone stayed light and relaxed. “No. I’ve not had that pleasure. But I have spoken to his opposite number, as it were. I have knowledge that comes with a price many would consider too high. Of course,” he glanced across at Gabe again, this time with undisguised contempt, “I’ve usually been able to persuade others to pay it on my behalf.”
He leaned forward, his stare spearing me. “I know where they come from, and I know where you send them to. I imagine that information would pique your curiosity. Am I wrong?”
The look on his face was the overintense benevolence of a man who’s just invited you into the deep woods to look at some puppy dogs. I stared back at him, my feelings for a moment in too great a turmoil to allow me to speak. While that moment lasted, I was a six-year-old boy again, the remains of my birthday cake still in a Tupperware box in the bottom of the fridge, screaming at my kid sister to get out of my bed because she was dead already and she was scaring me. I saw her fade into nothing, her sad face last of all like the fucking Cheshire Cat in
“But you understand,” said Damjohn, sitting back, “the offer hasn’t been made. Not officially. Because the answer comes first.” He looked at me expectantly, really enjoying himself. McClennan was staring at me, too, with so pure and incandescent a hatred that he reminded me of one of those South American frogs that sweat venom. That wasn’t because I’d rifled his filing cabinet; it was because Damjohn was trying to seduce me instead of just getting some heavies in to make my arms and legs bend the wrong way.
And that made it easier, in a way. So did Katie, in another way, but that’s more than I can explain. I stood up.
“The offer hasn’t been made?” I repeated.
Damjohn shook his head reassuringly, imperturbably.
“Then I’m not telling you to shove it up your arse and tamp it in with a polo mallet. I’ll stick with the devils I know. Until next time, eh?”
I left my drink unfinished on the table. Gargling it and spitting it in Damjohn’s face would probably have counted as rude.
As I was walking through the foyer, heading for the street door, the phone rang in the little alcove, and the duty bouncer picked up. At the same time, a burst of louche jazz sounded from behind me and made a synapse connect somewhere in my memory.
It took only a second to try it out. I stepped outside and stood to one side of the door. On my mobile phone, I flicked through the last dozen calls or so until I found the number I was looking for: 7405 818. When I dialed, I got the engaged signal. I waited about thirty seconds; tried again.
From inside the club, I heard the phone ring. On my cell, I heard the gravelly voice of the bouncer. “Hello?”
“Wrong number,” I said. “Sorry.”
ICOE 7405 818. Someone at the Bonnington Archive had the number of a brothel in his Rolodex. Not sinister in itself, maybe—but given Damjohn’s touching interest in me, it was another link in the chain.
Then, when I was heading west toward the Bonnington, I made another connection. I’d been thinking about that missing page in the incident book, and suddenly I saw a way that the book could help me even in its maimed form.
So despite almost being carved up with a steak knife and failing to find hide or hair of Rosa, I was in a pretty good mood when I got back to the archive. I’d resisted temptation, discomfited my enemies, and started to put the pieces of this sad-ass puzzle together in a new order. All in all, I was feeling the smug satisfaction of a job well begun and therefore half done.
Right up until Alice told me I was fired.
Fifteen
I JUST NEED ANOTHER DAY,” I SAID, AMAZED TO HEAR a tone in my voice that sounded like pleading. “Honest to God. One more day will do it. Peele said I could have until the end of the week.”
Alice’s stony face didn’t soften by so much as a muscle. She was holding my trench coat in her hands, and now she thrust it back at me.
“Is this yours?” she demanded in an overemphatic, “this is for the record” voice.
“Yeah. It’s mine. Look, Alice, I’m serious. All I need to do now is nail down a few more bits and pieces. I’m there. Really.”
“Frank stowed your coat on one of the racks,” Alice said, ignoring me completely. “Then he needed to leave the desk, so he decided to put it up in a locker, where it would be safer. When he folded it up, these fell out of the pocket.”
She brandished her keys in my face.
Shit. I’d had a fuzzy half memory of transferring the damn things to my trouser pocket. That probably didn’t count as extenuating circumstances, though.
“You left them behind in the church the other night,” I said. “I was going to give them back to you, but it slipped my mind.” Come to think of it, that didn’t sound a whole lot better.
“Did it?” she inquired with biting sarcasm. “Castor, the first conversation we ever had was about the value of the collection and how seriously we take our security. Since then, you’ve been in and out of here for the best part of a week, having to be swiped through card readers, having to wait while doors were unlocked for you and then locked again behind you. I find it hard to believe that none of that made any impression on you. That it all just . . . slipped your mind.”
“Is all of this aggression intended to cover your embarrassment at losing the things in the first place?” I asked.
If I thought candor would disarm Alice, I was wrong. She unleashed a torrent of profanity that surprised me not so much by its vehemence as by its breadth. Her face flushed first deep pink, then red, and although she wasn’t entirely coherent, a few key points did stand out of the rushing tide of invective. One, I was a thief; two, I’d compromised the archive’s security; three, Peele had agreed I shouldn’t be allowed back inside the building.
“You’re out!” she yelled at me. “You’re out of here, Castor. Now! And we’ll expect our deposit back tomorrow. Otherwise, we’ll get it back through the courts! Get him out of my bloody sight, Frank.”
Frank gestured toward the door—an action that fell a long way short of pitching me out on my ear and probably left Alice feeling a certain sense of coitus interruptus. But there was no getting around it, all the same.
I made one last try. “I think your ghost is a murder victim,” I told her, laying my cards on the table. “I also think you’ve got a thief on the staff. Someone who’s been systematically pilfering stuff from the collection over months, or maybe years. If you’ll just let me—”
Alice turned her back on me and walked away. Frank touched my shoulder very lightly, but his face was set hard. “We don’t want any trouble, do we, Mr. Castor?” he said.
“No,” I answered with glum resignation. “We don’t. But it’s a hell of a thing, Frank. We always seem to get it anyway.”
“You’ve got everyone well pissed off with you, Felix,” Cheryl said cheerfully as she threw herself down on the seat opposite me in the Costella Café. She tossed a lick of hair back from her forehead, stifling her broad grin with some difficulty. “Sorry, I know it’s not funny. I just can’t help laughing when Alice loses it like that. It’s like seeing Nelson get down off his column to have a punch-up with a cabbie.”
“You were watching from the balcony when she chewed me out,” I accused her.
