misshapen snouts, looking like nothing that had ever lived or moved on the face of the Earth.
Juliet breathed in and then out, savouring the tang of blood on the air – or more likely some other spoor that I couldn’t even detect.
‘Go and look for that rope,’ she suggested, her voice thick.
It was hard to walk away from her – like walking uphill with a bag of rocks on my back. The attraction she exerted was that strong: as strong as gravity.
I took my time poking around the storeroom for a suitable coil of rope. The hormonal stranglehold on my mind had loosened by this time, and I was aware that the petrified little kids had been stuck at the bottom of the pit all this time, hearing the roars and snarls and howls of agony from above them. I was aware of it, but I truly didn’t want to go back too soon and catch a glimpse of Juliet feeding.
By the time I did step back into the shed, she was sitting in the open space left by the shattered trapdoor, her legs dangling over the edge, entertaining the children with her own version of Little Red Riding Hood. Of the two
‘It was my fault,’ Sue repeated, more defiantly this time – as if warning me that any criticism of Juliet was off-limits. In the one eye that was still functional, tears brimmed but didn’t fall.
With more tact than I can usually muster, I closed the street door. At the same time, Sue remembered my face-saving lie about needing a drink and fled to the kitchen, mumbling that she’d bring me a glass of water. I went through into the lounge and waited for her there. I knew her well enough to be sure she wouldn’t want an audience for her weeping.
As I waited, sitting on a black leather sofa that squeaked whenever I breathed, the surly assistant at the library came back into my mind. I thought I could see now why he’d been so truculent with me. Sue kept her private life to herself and presumably hadn’t introduced any of her work colleagues to Juliet, so the guy had put two and two together and got the square root of one, pegging me for an abusive boyfriend.
‘Water,’ Sue said, coming in with a tray. ‘And some biscuits. Just ginger thins – that’s all we’ve got. I haven’t . . . I didn’t do my weekly shop at the weekend.’
She set the tray down and retreated to a chair opposite me, angling her body so that the damaged side of her face was mostly out of my line of sight. She’d brought a glass of water for herself too, because a good hostess doesn’t let her guest drink alone. She held it in both hands but didn’t raise it to her lips.
‘Can you tell me what happened?’ I asked. Any small talk would have sounded grotesque in these circumstances, so I just cut to the chase.
Sue’s shoulders twitched, a subliminal suggestion of a shrug.
‘We had an argument,’ she said, her voice slightly tremulous. ‘It was the usual thing, really. Jules doesn’t like it that I go out to work. She’d rather I stayed here and just . . . well, just . . .’ I nodded emphatically to get her over the bump. I knew exactly what she meant. It wasn’t that Juliet saw Sue just as a sex object; she saw her as the provider of many pleasures and diversions, with sex at the top of the list. But there was no getting round the fact that Juliet wanted Sue to be a stay-at-home housewife, servicing her needs uncomplainingly whenever they arose. Maybe feminism hasn’t reached Hell yet, or maybe one woman subordinating another is a special case. In any event, the question of Sue having a life apart from Juliet had been a snake in their Eden before now.
But it had never come to blows. Juliet tended to treat Sue as something precious and fragile that might break if carelessly handled, which is actually true of anyone in Juliet’s hands, because her strength is as the strength of ten, even if her heart is only about as pure as New York snow.
‘She’d been nervy for a few days before this,’ Sue went on, staring morosely into her glass. ‘Not herself. Snapping at me about things that didn’t really matter. Normally she’s calm about almost everything. It’s only a few things that make her angry. And even then, it’s sort of a . . . a big, heavy disapproval. She doesn’t throw tantrums. She doesn’t shout, or throw things.’
‘And this time she did?’
Sue shot me a sheepish, unhappy look. ‘Me,’ she said. ‘She threw me. Does that count?’
‘How long did the fight go on for?’ I asked, trying my best to make this seem like a doctor’s consultation so I didn’t have to respond to the hurt in her face. ‘And how did she . . . you know, how did she feel about it afterwards?’
‘It wasn’t a fight, Felix. She hit me, and I tried to get away, and she hit me some more. You know how strong she is. There was nothing I could do.’ Sue paused, frowning, reconstructing the scene in her mind. ‘She was sorry, afterwards. Or . . . perhaps puzzled is a better word. She couldn’t understand how it had happened. She apologised lots of times, and said it would never happen again.’
Her voice was breaking, and she was obviously close to another storm of tears. When she stopped speaking, I waited in silence, giving her the chance to pull the curtains decently closed on those terrible, shaming emotions. I suppose it must always be like that for succubi: every relationship you form has to have an element of addiction to it. You’re not just someone’s partner; you’re simultaneously the drug they crave and the pusher who supplies their craving. Then again, as far as I knew, Juliet was the first succubus ever to set up house on Earth and try to live monogamously. It was uncharted territory.
‘I told her . . . it was all right,’ Sue said. ‘That I forgave her. But it was the last . . . the last time. It had to be. I said if it happened again, she’d have to leave.’ She laughed hollowly. ‘You can imagine how convincing that sounded. If she left me, I think I’d kill myself. Or else I’d just die anyway, from not having her here.’
The surface of the water in her glass became choppy and turbulent as Sue’s hand shook. Distracted, she put it down on the floor beside her chair, but then had no idea what to do with her hands.
‘You said she’d been keyed up,’ I said. ‘Was there something specific that was on her mind? Is she working a difficult case?’
Sue shook her head, shrugged. ‘She doesn’t talk to me about her work,’ she said. ‘Not unless I ask. But I don’t think she’s got much work on at the moment at all. Sometimes Sergeant Coldwood calls her, to read a murder scene, but that hasn’t happened for a few weeks now. She was laying down wards in a hotel that’s being renovated in Ealing. And there was a geist, locally – in Wembley. But it was only moving furniture, not being violent. Just business as usual really.’
‘But there could be a job she took on without telling you?’
‘It’s possible.’ Sue didn’t sound convinced.
‘I’ll talk to her,’ I said. ‘If there’s something on the professional side that’s distracting her, maybe she’ll open up to me about it. She trusts my judgement on that stuff.’
‘Thank you, Felix,’ said Sue humbly. She could just as easily have said, ‘Distracting her? She punched me in the face hard enough to turn it particoloured. Seemed pretty focused to me.’ But Sue hasn’t ever been the kind to make a drama out of a crisis.
I got up. There are a lot of things you can do at a moment like that to let the other person know you feel their pain. Most of them are outside my repertoire – or at least outside the relationship I have with Sue Book.
‘I’ll talk to her,’ I said again, the words sounding even more awkward the second time around. ‘Listen, if it happens again, and you need somewhere to go, Pen has about a million rooms doing nothing. You can come and stay any time.’
Sue nodded, giving me a weak smile, but clearly didn’t trust herself to speak again.
I left her there, hanging on the cross I’d wanted so much to be nailed to myself, and went on my merry way. Which, let’s face it, was getting less merry by the moment, even before I went over to the Costella Café and met up with Gary Coldwood.
But the fact that I was already looking like a wet weekend just saved him the unhappy obligation of wiping the smile off my face.
Gary looked hunted. He was sitting at the back of the long, narrow dining area, as far away from the window as he could get, dissecting a slightly watery portion of scrambled eggs on toast with grim and humourless precision.
There was no table service, so I grabbed a coffee and went over to join him.
‘I’m telling you this as a friend,’ he said when I sat down opposite him. ‘Which means, if you tell anyone else
