wasn’t taking me seriously.
‘A woman?’ he kept on repeating, every time I let him get a word in edgeways.
‘No,’ I repeated, with the brittle, strained patience you keep in reserve until you need it to deal with morons and Jehovah’s Witnesses. ‘She looks like a woman. But she’s actually a demon. A succubus.’
‘A demon. Right.’ I was getting the same strained patience bouncing right back at me, and I wasn’t enjoying it much. ‘And who’s she coming to visit, again?’
‘Doug Hunter. Only if she comes, it won’t be to visit him. It’ll be to break him out.’
‘Well, thanks for that little tip-off, sir. I’m sure we’ll keep a lookout for her.’
‘You’ll need to put up some wards,’ I said, persisting without much hope. ‘On the tops of the walls, as well as on the doors, because she doesn’t have to use a door. And it’s probably a good idea to have a priest handy, if you’ve got one on-staff. He can draw a line in holy water around the cell block, or bless the—’
‘We’ll keep a lookout for her,’ the duty officer repeated, and hung up.
I swore bitterly at the innocent phone receiver in my hand.
‘Have a good trip, Castor?’
I turned in time to have a heavy briefcase shoved brusquely into my arms – and into my stomach. Winded, I stared into the cold, hard glare of Nicky Heath: I took hold of the briefcase as he let go of it. Nicky examined my swollen, discoloured face with something like satisfaction. He had a rolled-up newspaper in his hand, and he used it to point at my bruised cheek.
‘No,’ he said. ‘I can see you had a bad one. Great! I’m really happy the suffering is being spread around. Where’s the lap-dancer from Hell?’
‘Flying under her own steam. Why? You got something for us, Nicky?’
The glare shot up the emotional register towards the hysterical.
‘Yeah, Castor, and what I got is a fucking newsflash. You did it to me again, you bastard. Pulled me into your stupid grandstanding shit so people are knocking on
I stared at him in numb perplexity. I was running on empty, and I didn’t want to have to work out the translation for myself.
‘Someone tried to lean on you?’ I asked.
‘Someone tried to torch me. That someone is now dog meat. But they know where I live, so presumably someone is gonna send someone else to finish the fucking job.’
There was something surreal about the scene. Nicky was keeping his voice level and conversational so that people wouldn’t look around and try to tune in to the conversation, but his teeth were bared in a snarl and his pale, waxen face looked like the mask of an angry ghost in a Noh play.
‘Okay,’ I said. ‘It’s starting to look as though the opposition is a bit better organised than I was expecting. I’m sorry. I’m really sorry.’
‘Yeah?’ Nicky smiled grimly. ‘Well, save some of that sorry for when you hear the rest of the story, Castor. Get us a cab. I’ll ride back into town with you and tell you what I got. After that you’re on your lonesome fucking own.’
I raided a cashpoint machine, scraping the bottom of the hollow barrel that was my bank account. It was getting on for midnight, but there were a few taxis in the rank and one of them crawled towards us as we came out from the terminal onto the pick-up bay. Nicky looked at the driver, eyes narrowed, and his hand thumped into my chest as I stepped forward.
‘Not that one.’
‘What? Why?’
The taxi driver, a burly guy with way too much hair on his arms, was looking at us expectantly.
‘Roll on, motherfucker,’ Nicky told him.
The cabbie’s face went blank with surprise and then livid.
‘Why, you fucking piece of—’
He started to open his door, but a middle-aged couple came out of the terminal behind us, walked right past us and got into the cab: the door closed again, and the cab rolled away, the driver shooting us a look of frustrated venom.
‘Nicky,’ I said, ‘if you’re going to pick fights with guys who are bigger than me, could you give me at least a couple of seconds’ warning?’
‘First cab could be a plant,’ he said. ‘Second, too.’ He was already walking past the next cab in line as he spoke, and now he pulled open the door of the third.
‘You’ve got to go from the front of the-’ the driver began.
‘Just drive,’ Nicky snapped. ‘I’m not paying you to fucking talk at me.’
Nicky skootched over and I climbed in beside him, putting the briefcase at my feet. This driver was – fortunately – older and less solidly built than the first. His balding head, wispy hair clinging in loose tufts around his ears, and his bulbous nose made him look like a moonlighting circus clown. He turned a solemn gaze on Nicky, then on me, weighed dignity against discretion and went for the easy option. We pulled away while the cabbie in front of us in the rank leaned on his horn in futile protest.
‘Where to?’ our driver demanded.
‘Walthamstow,’ Nicky said. ‘Top end of Hoe Street. And turn your radio on.’
The driver leaned forward. Tinny country and western music filled the cab.
‘Louder,’ Nicky said. ‘All the way up.’
I’ve got to know Nicky’s moods pretty well over the years, so the paranoia came as no surprise. His coming out here to meet me, in spite of the fact that he saw me as the source of his troubles, was more revealing: something heavy would have been needed to counterbalance his spectacularly overdeveloped survival instincts. The only thing I knew that was heavy enough was his spectacularly overdeveloped ego. He wanted – really wanted – to tell me what he’d found.
‘So go ahead,’ I invited him, as plunky guitar noises echoed around our ears.
‘Make your day?’
‘If you think you can, Nicky, yeah. Make my day. It’s going to be a pretty tall order, though.’
‘Well, how’s this for starters?’ He threw the newspaper in my lap:
TWO DIE IN M1 INFERNO.
And a photo – an old photo, too flattering by about thirty pounds – of Gary Coldwood.
‘Oh Jesus!’ I muttered.
‘Guy was a friend of yours, wasn’t he, Castor? And it seemed like only yesterday he was promising you “something juicy”. I’m assuming that was work-related rather than some freaky outcrop of your love life. Then he jumps the barrier on the M1 northbound at one in the morning and hits a car coming the other way. Hundred-and- forty-mile-an-hour collision. Boom. Smoking spark plugs come down half a mile away. Two people in the other car, mother and ten-year-old daughter, both dead. Coldwood hauled out of the wreckage with both legs broken, stinking of booze. Funny how things work out.’
I couldn’t answer. I was still staring at the photo. Coldwood was wearing an expression I’d seen on his face at least a hundred times: a tough-guy cockiness that he copied from John Woo movies and never managed to get more than half right. He really wanted to be the scourge of evildoers. If he could have got away with wearing a cape and mask to work, he would have done it.
Nicky was still talking. ‘I checked this stuff out afterwards, you understand. After I got broken into in the middle of the fucking night. Two guys, both carrying guns with no serial numbers on them. No ID, no pack drill. Deadfall trap got one of them, and the other died when I routed the mains power through the lock he was trying to pick to get in to me. Coincidence? I asked myself. Old friends getting nostalgic? My fucking batshit family, coming in for another pass? But no. After five minutes on the internet I turn up this Coldwood thing, and then I know it’s you.’
‘Nicky-’ I didn’t even know what I was going to say. There was a tight, wound-up feeling in my chest that felt like it was climbing upwards. This was my fault. John Gittings and Vince Chesney counted as negligent homicide,
