decency and good taste.
Susan nodded and the two women kissed. It went on for long enough that I had to take an interest in the wallpaper so as not to feel like a voyeur.
‘Let’s go,’ Juliet said, when she had sole possession of her own lips again.
Susan squeezed her hand, gave her a slightly brittle smile. ‘See you later,’ she said.
On the A1081, as we breached the M25 ring and headed north towards St Albans, Juliet broke the silence that had fallen between us.
‘You’re making no progress,’ she said.
‘At the Salisbury? No, you’re right. I’m getting nowhere fast.’
‘And you blame me.’
I thought about that one. ‘I wish you’d picked another time to get strong and silent on me,’ I admitted. ‘This has turned into a fucking nightmare.’
‘But still you invited me to come with you tonight.’
‘Well, you asked. And to be honest, I might need the back-up. He’s a whimsical little sod, and he’s got it into his head that we’re playing on different teams.’
‘Is he wrong?’
‘Usually, no. But this time, I think I might be able to bring him round to my way of thinking.’
Juliet digested that statement for a moment or two, various emotions passing over her expressive face. The last time Juliet and Gwillam had crossed swords, he’d managed to get the drop on her with a Bible reading — the Good Book being to him what a tin whistle is to me. It had rankled with her for a long time afterwards, because it meant that she’d been in his power, however briefly. He might even have been able to banish her to wherever demons go after they’re exorcised, which is nowhere good: or possibly just nowhere, full stop.
‘I’m looking forward to seeing him again,’ she said at last. ‘It will be . . . interesting.’
‘But I don’t want any trouble unless he starts it,’ I clarified. ‘This is a public-information campaign, not a vendetta.’
Juliet looked at me with detached curiosity. ‘And why is that, Castor?’
‘Because he’s more use to me as an ally right now than as a corpse,’ I said bluntly.
‘And if he refuses to be an ally?’
‘Then we’ll have to see.’
Church Street turned out to be a very narrow road in the middle of a bewildering one-way system at the further end of St Albans High Street. I left Pen’s car illegally parked in front of some gates that led God knew where, and we looked for the Rosewell Ecumenical Trust. It was a modest-looking building that seemed to have been made by knocking two old workmen’s cottages into one structure. The sober, black-painted door looked fairly solid, but came equipped with both a bell and a knocker. I applied myself to both.
While we waited for an answer, Juliet examined the wards that were nailed to the doorposts and the stay-not painted on the wall. They were intended to deter the dead, and the undead, from entering this place.
‘Anything likely to slow you down?’ I asked.
She shook her head brusquely. ‘Not for a moment. They make my skin itch a little, but they won’t keep me out.’
There was a sound from inside of bolts being drawn. A very unecumenical face stared out at us: pug-ugly and brimming with surly suspicion, topped with black hair in a military-length razor cut.
‘Yes?’ it said.
‘We’re here to see Father Gwillam,’ I said, giving him a beaming smile.
He tried to shut the door in our faces, so Juliet slammed it back into his. Then she pushed him up against the wall of the narrow vestibule and I walked on in past him. He rallied, driving a punch into Juliet’s kidneys that actually made her frown slightly. She gripped his throat, slapped him across the face hard enough to make his head snap round a full ninety degrees, and then pitched him out into the street where he fetched up in a heap against a parked car. Its sidelights started to flash and it wailed on a rising pitch as its alarm went off.
Juliet closed the door on the intrusive sound. I looked around me. The ground-floor layout of the place was what an estate agent would have described as deceptively spacious: we were in a hall with a tiled floor, from which three doors opened off. The decor was High Victorian, which in the Catholic Church almost passes for contemporary. The inadequate light came from uplighters high up on the walls and from a heavy and unlovely wrought-iron chandelier suspended from three evenly spaced chains.
I kicked open the first door, seeing a roomful of books beyond and smelling the contemplation-and-dust smell of a library or study. The second was a broom cupboard. I was going for the third when running footsteps sounded from our right: we turned to see two men coming down the stairs towards us. One of them was Gwillam, a book in his hand and a pair of reading glasses on his nose. The other was a slight, bald man in a plain black suit, whose teeth were bared in a subtle but permanent snarl.
Gwillam opened his mouth to speak, but he was too late because Baldy was already in the air, launching a flying kick towards Juliet’s face. Not a bad opening gambit, all things considered, but when his leading foot reached its intended destination, Juliet wasn’t there any more. She leaned sideways, her movements seeming almost lazy because they were so perfectly timed that there was no need for haste. Her right arm flicked out and flexed at the elbow, intersecting the bald man’s trajectory and punctuating his leap with a queasily suggestive impact sound. He jackknifed in mid-air, his forward momentum catastrophically sabotaged, and hit the floor in a rolling heap of limbs. He didn’t get up again.
Gwillam’s gaze was locked on Juliet’s face. He recognised her at once, on a level deeper than sight: he knew her for what she was. He began to intone as he descended the stairs towards us, his voice an octave lower than its normal register. ‘Would you tarry for them till they were full grown? They found a plain, in the land of Shinar, and they dwelt there. The right hand of the Lord hath done–’
‘One more word,’ Juliet said, unconcerned but a little stern, ‘and you’ll die where you stand.’
Gwillam fell silent. He was good, and he was quick, but he knew he couldn’t complete an exorcism before Juliet reached him. He’d only managed to bind her last time because neither of us had seen his particular MO before.
But he lowered the book, allowing us to see that he was holding something else in his other hand. It was a handgun.
‘No,’ he said. ‘You won’t touch me.’
Juliet stared at the gun for a moment in silence. Then she laughed softly, richly. ‘Is that for me or for yourself, servant of Heaven?’ she murmured deep in her throat. ‘Either way, the distance between us is too small for it to matter. Perhaps if it were already pointed at your head, and your finger on the trigger, you could pulverise your own brain while your purpose still held. But see, you stand there listening to me, and seeing me, and smelling me, and it’s already too late. So now –’ her voice had sunk to an insinuating whisper, and her eyes narrowed as she spoke ‘what will you do?’
Gwillam was staring at Juliet in fixed astonishment. His mouth had fallen open a little way, as though he’d been about to speak and then been struck by some insight that took his breath away. He made a strangled sound that had no consonants in it.
‘Come to me,’ Juliet said, raising her hand.
Gwillam came, stumbling down the stairs with a rocking gait. His movements were as stiff and uncoordinated as a zombie’s: so much of his mind was taken up with Juliet that there was barely enough left to handle basic motor functions. He walked right up to her, and then stopped when she raised a hand to signal that he’d come close enough.
She stood facing him, her breasts thrust forward, her head on one side in a parody of coquetry. They stared into each other’s eyes, and for a long time neither of them moved. A lazy, terrible smile spread slowly over Juliet’s face: Gwillam’s breathing became louder and more laboured with each gulp of air he took.
‘You may love God, Thomas,’ Juliet growled, ‘but now you’ve learned a different love. I hope you think of me often. And I know that whenever you think of me, God will be far from you.’
The joke was getting a little thin. I’d needed Juliet to get me in here, and I guess I’d known all along that she wasn’t going to let Gwillam go with a warning. Maybe I was looking for a little payback myself, for the hurt the good father had put on me already, but I wasn’t comfortable watching this sado-psycho-surgery.
‘Break it up,’ I told Juliet.
