with that little psychic cluster bomb that left me with a hole in my tongue and a ringing in my ears like a peal of bells in Hades.
Due west. I drew in the second line, out through Acton, Ealing, and Drayton Green to the rolling hills of the Brent Valley Golf Course. No way Peace would be hiding Abbie there, though: the green fees were astronomical.
The two lines intersected over a huge swathe of West Acton and North Ealing. I?d drawn them wide on purpose, of course, because this wasn?t rocket science or any other damn science worthy of the name: it was just me, extrapolating hopefully from a messy and inadequate data set.
And that metaphor made me think of Nicky again.
Which made me remember the crumpled piece of printout paper in my pocket, with his handwriting on it.
The Oriflamme.
I looked at my watch. Only eleven, so the joint would still be hopping. And maybe Peace would think he?d hurt me worse than he had with his little psychic overload ambush. There was nothing like stealing a march on the opposition.
Six
THERE WAS A BROAD FLIGHT OF STONE STEPS UP FROM THE street, the stairwell separated off from the pavement by wrought-iron railings with the arms of the borough of Camden worked into them?complete with the pious motto
Not anymore, though, clearly. The two bruisers who checked me at the top of the steps didn?t have the look or the dress sense of any civil servants I?d ever seen, and probably didn?t have much of a future in local government unless Camden one day decided to open up a gorilla-wrangling department.
They weren?t checking me for weapons or concealed booze, although there was a perfunctory frisking of my pockets and linings: mainly they were verifying that I was alive, and more or less human by the yardsticks they were using. First they made me clench a silver coin tightly in my hand for a few seconds and looked to see if I showed any reaction to the metal, then they took my pulse in a rough-and-ready way at throat and wrist. There?s something a bit off-putting about having a guy who?s three inches taller than you, with the build of a wrestler, pressing his thumb against your windpipe. It?s one reason why I don?t drink at exorcist hangouts more often.
Another reason is that I?m an unsociable bastard who hates shoptalk worse than dental surgery.
The Oriflamme is the exorcists? hangout par excellence, in case you hadn?t guessed that already: or at least it was in its first incarnation. Back then, it stood in the center of a roundabout on Castlebar Hill, in a building that was formerly a museum and then went through various changes of ownership before settling into the hands of the famous Peckham Steiner?a father figure for all London exorcists, so long as you had a drunk, abusive father who was only on nodding terms with sanity.
Steiner then made a gift of the place to his good friend Bill Bryant, better known by the semi-affectionate nickname of Bourbon. It was a very long way from anywhere, but it had a kind of dank, heavy atmosphere of its own and a reputation as the place to be seen if you were looking to make a name for yourself in the trade, so it limped along from year to year in spite of the lousy location. But then about three years ago, somebody burned it to the ground. It was a firebomb attack, mercifully when the place was closed, and it did the job nicely. The barman?s cat survived, but apart from that they didn?t save so much as an ashtray.
Nicky has a whole bunch of theories about who did it and why, and every so often he tries to tell me some of them. I usually manage to get clear before he reaches the part where Satanists are taking over the government, but sometimes it?s a close call.
Meanwhile, in one of those ironies that dog our profession, the Oriflamme rose from the dead?or at least the name did. A guy named McPhail, who as far as I know had never had anything to do with the place on Castlebar Hill, had his own vision of a place that would sort of be the exorcists? version of a gentlemen?s club?with a bar, a lounge, poste restante facilities, a place where you could crash if you were just in the city for a couple of days, baths, the whole works.
He didn?t have any premises?or collateral?but he did have the kind of can-do attitude that you usually associate with serial killers and corrupt politicians. He stole the name from Bourbon Bryant (who threatened to sue but didn?t have the money for a cab to the courthouse, let alone a lawyer) and set up shop in Soho Square. The rumor was that he was squatting rather than paying for a lease, and I could believe it: rents are so high in Soho these days, even the homeless guys sleeping in doorways are paying a grand a month.
I walked on up the steps, having passed muster as a warm body with no passengers, and went in through a door that was as thickly decorated with wards and sigils as a wedding car is with ribbons and old tin cans. That took me straight into a large bar area that had probably had more atmosphere back when it was a rent office or whatever. Lighting was provided by a dozen or so bounce spotlights at floor level around the edges of the room, pointed up at the ceiling: a nice idea, but spoiled by the fact that most of the people in the room were standing or sitting close to the spots and blocking off most of the light. Huge shadows came and went on the ceiling, and light levels rose and fell from one second to the next as people shifted in their seats or stood up to get the next round in.
The bar itself was a rough barricade of packing cases with tarpaulins over them, off in one corner of the room. They were serving beer by the bottle, wine and spirits by the unmeasured slug?enough in itself to get the place closed down if anyone from Customs and Excise stopped in for a quick one. Of course, most revenue men have a very faint pulse in the first place, so they probably wouldn?t get past the bouncers.
The clientele were colorfully mixed. I spotted half a dozen people I vaguely knew in the seething mass at the bar, and a few more sitting in quiet corners in intense tete-r-tetes with strangers who could have been clients, partners, or paid informers. I was looking for someone specific, though, and I saw him at last, leaning against a pillar on the far side of the room, all on his lonesome. Bourbon Bill himself, the owner of the original Oriflamme that had died in the flames and been reborn as this un-phoenixlike shithole. He was wearing a leather jacket over a red shirt and black denims that looked as though they might date from the American Civil War; Doc Martens of a similar vintage graced his feet. He was nursing a nearly empty shot glass while taking occasional slugs from a hip flask in his inside pocket. I swung around by way of the bar, picked up two large shots of whisky, and came up on him from behind.
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 whisky 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 started, but there was no indication at all in his voice or 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
I nodded. ?Then I got myself an office. Biggest mistake I ever made.?
?I hear you, brother.? He laughed ruefully, 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.? His expression changed, 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 saw he was here: he knew everybody. ?Seems like he?s flavor of the month all of a sudden. You want to do some business with him??
?Not
