Dead Men's s Boots

The new face, wearing Rafi’s features like a savagely ironic quote, stared at me with a sour grimace twisting one corner of its mouth.

‘Can’t hear the cavalry,’ Asmodeus said, sounding like he was crunching down on a mouthful of ground glass.

‘They’re coming,’ I answered, with more confidence than I felt. ‘In the meantime I was going to ask a favour.’

‘I love doing you favours, Castor. Come in a little closer. Kiss me on the lips.’

‘I want you to burrow down, as deep as you can. Go all the way to sleep, if you can. I’ll play for you: listen to the music instead of trying to avoid it. Let it work through you, and use it to get as much distance from Rafi as you can.’

Asmodeus smiled politely. ‘And why should I do this thing?’

‘Because someone who looks like one of my species but acts like one of yours is coming to get you. And she’ll pick you to pieces with tweezers and she’ll mount you on slides and she’ll label all the pieces of you. You know this is true.’

There was silence for a moment except for the puncturedtyre hissing of Asmodeus’s breath. ‘The bitch,’ he said at last, without heat. ‘The bitch with the fishing rod and the big ambitions. When she hits the wall, it will make a very sweet sound.’

‘Maybe,’ I allowed. ‘Maybe not. She’s a crafty player, Asmodeus, and too fucking big for you right now.’

‘And for you, Castor.’

‘Goes without saying.’ Knowing what Asmodeus was, I felt seriously uncomfortable with all of this: almost, as though the phrase has any meaning at all, like a species-traitor. I was discussing tactics with a demon, trying to keep him out of the hands of the closest thing the human race had to a predator of demons. This was what Jenna- Jane Mulbridge had brought me to, and at that moment I hated her for it.

‘The people outside need to see Rafi,’ I said, taking my whistle – it was the first alternate, and I hadn’t properly worn it in yet – out of my pocket. ‘They don’t need to see you. If they see you, they’ll think she’s right. You understand?’

‘Humans can’t think, Castor. They can only think that they think.’

‘Point stands. Maybe I’ll see you later, but I sure as fuck don’t want to see you now. And I’ve said all I’m going to say.’

I stopped talking and played. It started out as a recognisable tune but then became a crazy medley, fast at first but decelerando, working down through the scale with a certain doleful urgency. Asmodeus bobbed his head in time with the beat, ironically showing me that he was keeping up. He sang improvised words in a guttural language that the human voice box was never shaped for, and I hoped I’d never meet anyone who could provide me with a translation.

But his eyes were closing, and his voice was faltering. The movements of his head dropped out of sync with the music, then slowed and stopped.

When the door finally swung open behind me, he was still.

‘Got to move the patient,’ Paul said brusquely.

I turned around, tucking the whistle back in my coat. Paul wasn’t alone; a Welsh guy named Kenneth and a third Stanger staffer I didn’t recognise stood shoulder-to-shoulder with him on either side, while further back I could see Doctor Webb, the Stanger’s director, directing proceedings along with a bald, austere stick-figure of a man in a dark grey suit. Paul’s face was impassive: he barely even looked at me. Webb, on the other hand, was dismayed and outraged to see me there ahead of him.

‘Castor!’ he exclaimed, spitting up my name in much the same way that a cat spits up a hairball. ‘Who let Castor in here? He’s trespassing! Move him aside!’

‘Sorry,’ I said, stepping determinedly into the path of the little party as they came forward. ‘Got to move the patient where, exactly? Who says? What are you talking about? I’m the patient’s next of kin so why don’t I know about this?’

‘You’re not his next of kin!’ Webb snarled. He snapped his fingers under Kenneth’s nose and pointed at me imperiously. Kenneth put a hand on my chest and pushed me firmly to one side, allowing Paul and the other male nurse to walk past me and take either end of the metal frame. They manoeuvred it round so that they could wheel it end-on through the door, but I wasn’t done yet. I ducked under Kenneth’s hand, crossed to the door and slammed it shut. The mortise lock clicked home, which meant that Paul would have to leave off what he was doing, get his keys out and open it again. And that meant he had to come through me.

Webb bought me another few seconds, obligingly. Turning three shades south of purple he stalked towards me, then stood in front of me with his clenched fists hovering an inch from my face, paralysed by an approach- avoidance conflict so painfully visible that I couldn’t look away. He wanted to hit me: he knew there were witnesses. But he wanted to hit me: but then there were those darn witnesses . . .

‘I’m sorry,’ I said to the room at large, ‘but I’m performing a citizen’s arrest.’

Kenneth looked pained as he advanced on me again, having to step around the good doctor. ‘You’re performing a what, my lovely?’ he demanded.

‘A citizen’s arrest. I’m arresting all five of you for the attempted abduction of a mentally ill person against his-’ Kenneth clamped a massive hand on my lapels. I swatted it vigorously away. He came back again with both hands, and although I parried again he managed to get a better grip this time and keep his purchase.

He outweighed me by a good fifty pounds: I could have taken him, but only by playing dirty, and getting myself banged up for assault at this stage of the game wasn’t a risk I could take. I let him pull me aside and pin me into a corner of the cell while Paul got the door open again and he and his colleague manhandled the massive steel frame through it, hindered rather than helped by Webb’s unnecessary instructions and ubiquitous presence. ‘To the right, Paul. No, to the left . . .’

‘Mind your feet, Doctor Webb,’ Paul rumbled, and then there was an agonised yelp from Webb that did my heart good. But they were out in the corridor now and picking up speed: my delaying tactics had foundered.

‘Okay, boyo, you just stay put,’ Kenneth growled, wagging his finger sternly in my face. But as he turned to follow the others I shouldered past him and got to the door first.

We trotted along the corridor in a strange and unwieldy procession: Paul and the other nurse pushing the frame along after Doctor Webb, the ugliest drum majorette in history, flanked on one side by Jenna-Jane’s tame lawyer and on the other by me, with Kenneth bringing up the rear.

When we got to the reception area they faltered to a stop, staring out through the double doors onto the small apron of the Stanger’s front drive. In theory, I knew, there should have been a van waiting there, its back doors open and a ramp in place, with a happy crew of psychiatric interns and burly removal men all ready to take Rafi aboard and whisk him away to his new life in Paddington.

The van wasn’t there, though. Presumably it was still out on the road, or stranded at the Stanger’s gates: meanwhile the drive had been colonised by three or four hundred young men and women who were singing ‘You can’t kill the spirit’ with as much wild energy as if they knew what they were talking about. They were mostly in casual dress, but black T-shirts predominated and on a lot of them I could pick out the slogan DEATH IS NOT THE END.

‘Holy fuck,’ Paul muttered, under his breath.

‘What . . . ?’ Webb demanded, words seeming to fail him for a moment. ‘Who are all these people?’

‘Mostly the local chapter of the Breath of Life movement,’ I told him helpfully, relieved that they’d all made it on time. ‘I met some of them a couple of days ago. Really nice guys, once we’d got past the small talk and the mutual fear and loathing. They were fascinated when I told them what you and J-J were up to.’ I didn’t mention the frightener I’d had to put on Stephen Bass – threatening to tell his tutors and the police about his hobbies of vandalism, stalking and criminal damage – before I could get him to agree to this. That seemed to fall under the heading of a trade secret. ‘Oh, and I think those guys over there,’ I went on, ‘are from a national TV network. You see the letters on the side of the camera? They stand for Beaten, Buttfucked and Clueless, and they’re talking to you.’

Webb shot me a look of horrified disbelief and opened his mouth to speak. But his words were lost to posterity, because at that moment the double doors of the Stanger swished open and Pen strode across the threshold, bang on cue.

‘Where’s my husband?’ she demanded, projecting beautifully for the cameras and standing dead centre