The Devil You Know

I went back to the records that Dodson had given me. None of the later file notes indicated that the dead woman had been identified at any stage in the investigation. In fact, “investigation” was probably too grandiose a word for it. The police had done a little doorstepping to see if anyone had heard anything, despite the pathologist’s clear note that there was “no evidence of trauma or sexual congress in situ.” They’d taken a statement from the site manager, who’d confirmed that the skip was unused and unattended for at least a week before the body was found. They’d done a little tiptoe through the missing-persons list, put in a routine information request to Interpol, then sat back and brewed up. It was immaculate autopilot policing; nobody cared, and nobody was going to chase their own tails over some Eastern European whore found naked and used up on a building site. Even with the immigration quotas down, it was still a case of some for everyone, and more coming.

I paid for the coffee I hadn’t touched, left the café, and headed off down Old Compton Street. I was still missing something, but I sort of knew the shape of it now. I could fill it in by looking at the pieces that surrounded it.

Damjohn was a pimp. He ran strip clubs and brothels in the Clerkenwell triangle, and someone at the Bonnington knew him well.

Gabe McClennan was an exorcist. He’d been to the archive, but whatever he went for, he’d been firing blanks that day. He’d silenced the archive ghost, but he hadn’t killed her.

Rosa was a whore. She worked for Damjohn. Damjohn had gone out of his way, it seemed now, to make sure I got to see her—and then she’d tried to kill me with a steak knife because of something she thought I’d done to some other woman.

The ghost was from somewhere in Eastern Europe—probably Russia, since Russian seemed to be her native language. But she’d died in Somers Town, raped and murdered, and her spirit was trapped in the basement of a public building where she had no compelling reason to be in the first place.

Some one thing joined all of these things together and made sense out of them. But the closest I had was the card the ghost had given me on my second day at the archive, with its cryptic inscription ICOE 7405 818. The more I chewed it over, the less it seemed to mean.

Under the circumstances, the last thing I was in the mood for was a wedding. But that was where I was going to go.

The Brompton Oratory, immortalized in song by Nick Cave & the Bad Seeds, which was another set of associations I could have done without. But I had to admit, speaking as an atheist, that it was a hell of a place of worship—all vertical vistas and baroque flounces. If you got married here, you wouldn’t need a wedding cake.

Three white limousines were parked out in front of the building, the lead one decked out with white ribbons. Two ushers in immaculate morning suits standing in the portico stared aghast at my trench coat and my general air of walking in out of a storm. They were a matched pair in one respect only—they both had exactly Cheryl’s complexion. But one was a barge pole stood on its end, while the other was both an inch shorter than me and six inches broader—muscle, from the look of it, not fat. It was this handy-looking gentleman who rolled into my path, like one of those kids’ trucks that Tonka used to make out of stainless steel, that you could drop off a cliff without even scratching the paintwork. I warned him off with an admonitory raised finger. “I’m on the bride’s side,” I told him. “Let’s not do anything to spoil the mood.”

“We’re on the bride’s side,” the barge pole said sternly, stepping up on my other side. “Let’s see your invitation.”

I made a show of going through my pockets, hoping that some other late arrival would roll up and distract their attention. No such luck.

“It’s here somewhere,” I offered. “Can I go in now and show it to you later?”

“What’s the name of the bride?” Barge Pole demanded by way of a compromise.

Bugger. “I’ve always called her by a nickname,” I hedged.

“What nickname?” Tonka Toy getting in on the act now.

I tried to think of a nickname. His fist closed hard on a handful of my shirt, and his face creased in a stern frown. Inspiration struck just in time to stop me going arse over tip down the steps.

“Oh, I remember now,” I said, smacking my brow to punish my brain for its erratic performance. “Cheryl’s got my invitation. Cheryl Telemaque. My fiancée.”

“Fiancée?” The barge pole sounded appalled, and the burly guy looked stricken enough to make me wonder if he was carrying a torch for Cheryl himself. Either way, that seemed to do the trick. I slipped between them and was in through the door before they could react. Neither of them followed me.