The Devil You Know

“But you understand,” said Damjohn, sitting back, “the offer hasn’t been made. Not officially. Because the answer comes first.” He looked at me expectantly, really enjoying himself. McClennan was staring at me, too, with so pure and incandescent a hatred that he reminded me of one of those South American frogs that sweat venom. That wasn’t because I’d rifled his filing cabinet; it was because Damjohn was trying to seduce me instead of just getting some heavies in to make my arms and legs bend the wrong way.

And that made it easier, in a way. So did Katie, in another way, but that’s more than I can explain. I stood up.

“The offer hasn’t been made?” I repeated.

Damjohn shook his head reassuringly, imperturbably.

“Then I’m not telling you to shove it up your arse and tamp it in with a polo mallet. I’ll stick with the devils I know. Until next time, eh?”

I left my drink unfinished on the table. Gargling it and spitting it in Damjohn’s face would probably have counted as rude.

As I was walking through the foyer, heading for the street door, the phone rang in the little alcove, and the duty bouncer picked up. At the same time, a burst of louche jazz sounded from behind me and made a synapse connect somewhere in my memory.

It took only a second to try it out. I stepped outside and stood to one side of the door. On my mobile phone, I flicked through the last dozen calls or so until I found the number I was looking for: 7405 818. When I dialed, I got the engaged signal. I waited about thirty seconds; tried again.

From inside the club, I heard the phone ring. On my cell, I heard the gravelly voice of the bouncer. “Hello?”

“Wrong number,” I said. “Sorry.”

ICOE 7405 818. Someone at the Bonnington Archive had the number of a brothel in his Rolodex. Not sinister in itself, maybe—but given Damjohn’s touching interest in me, it was another link in the chain.

Then, when I was heading west toward the Bonnington, I made another connection. I’d been thinking about that missing page in the incident book, and suddenly I saw a way that the book could help me even in its maimed form.

So despite almost being carved up with a steak knife and failing to find hide or hair of Rosa, I was in a pretty good mood when I got back to the archive. I’d resisted temptation, discomfited my enemies, and started to put the pieces of this sad-ass puzzle together in a new order. All in all, I was feeling the smug satisfaction of a job well begun and therefore half done.

Right up until Alice told me I was fired.

Fifteen

I JUST NEED ANOTHER DAY,” I SAID, AMAZED TO HEAR a tone in my voice that sounded like pleading. “Honest to God. One more day will do it. Peele said I could have until the end of the week.”

Alice’s stony face didn’t soften by so much as a muscle. She was holding my trench coat in her hands, and now she thrust it back at me.

“Is this yours?” she demanded in an overemphatic, “this is for the record” voice.

“Yeah. It’s mine. Look, Alice, I’m serious. All I need to do now is nail down a few more bits and pieces. I’m there. Really.”

“Frank stowed your coat on one of the racks,” Alice said, ignoring me completely. “Then he needed to leave the desk, so he decided to put it up in a locker, where it would be safer. When he folded it up, these fell out of the pocket.”

She brandished her keys in my face.

Shit. I’d had a fuzzy half memory of transferring the damn things to my trouser pocket. That probably didn’t count as extenuating circumstances, though.

“You left them behind in the church the other night,” I said. “I was going to give them back to you, but it slipped my mind.” Come to think of it, that didn’t sound a whole lot better.

“Did it?” she inquired with biting sarcasm. “Castor, the first conversation we ever had was about the value of the collection and how seriously we take our security. Since then, you’ve been in and out of here for the best part of a week, having to be swiped through card readers, having to wait while doors were unlocked for you and then locked again behind you. I find it hard to believe that none of that made any impression on you. That it all just . . . slipped your mind.”

“Is all of this aggression intended to cover your embarrassment at losing the things in the first place?” I asked.

If I thought candor would disarm Alice, I was wrong. She unleashed a torrent of profanity that surprised me not so much by its vehemence as by its breadth. Her face flushed first deep pink, then red, and although she wasn’t entirely coherent, a few key points did stand out of the rushing tide of invective. One, I was a thief; two, I’d compromised the archive’s security; three, Peele had agreed I shouldn’t be allowed back inside the building.

“You’re out!” she yelled at me. “You’re out of here, Castor. Now! And we’ll expect our deposit back tomorrow. Otherwise, we’ll get it back through the courts! Get him out of my bloody sight, Frank.”