The Devil You Know

“Fine,” I said. With a curt nod, she walked on. I swiveled on my heel and went into the room that we’d just passed, and this time all three of its occupants gave me the once-over as I walked in.

“Hello there,” said the man who’d been on the phone before. “You must be Castor.” He was about my age or slightly older—midthirties, free-falling toward the big four-oh. He had a fading tan, made more uneven by freckles, and light brown hair that was as wild as if he’d just woken up. He was dressed down, to put it politely: torn jeans, a Damageplan T-shirt, and flop-top trainers. But the bundle of keys he carried at his belt was as big as Alice’s own. On his left cheek, there was a square surgical dressing.

He gave me an affable grin and held out his hand. I shook it and read a certain tension behind the smile—tension and perhaps expectation. He wasn’t sure how to take me yet, but he had hopes that I could live up to my billing. Of course, this was the guy who had the most reason to want the ghost cleared out of here.

“Pleased to meet you, Mr. Clitheroe,” I said. Behind me, the woman whistled appreciatively and then hummed the opening bars of the X-Files theme tune. Clitheroe laughed.

“It’s just Rich,” he said. “You knew because of the bandage, right? I mean, that wasn’t some sort of—emanations from the ectoplasm—kind of thing?”

“Who you gonna call?” the woman drawled. “Gho-o-ostbusters!”

I turned to face her, and Rich made the introduction on cue. “This is Cheryl. Cheryl Telemaque—our IT specialist.” Cheryl was very compact, very striking, and very dark-skinned—the shade of brown that can legitimately be called black. She looked to be in her early twenties, and her taste in clothes clearly ran to rhinestone-studded Von Dutch tops and a weight of chunky jewelry that skirted the glittery borders of bling.

“Which one are you?” she demanded with a cheerfully piss-taking grin. “The nerdy one, the cute one, or the anally retentive one?”

“I’m amazed you have to ask,” I said. Again, I shook hands. Her grip was firm and strong, and I got an instantaneous flash of warmth and amusement and mischief—Cheryl was a real live wire, clearly. Exact voltage yet to be determined.

“Do you have to use pentagrams and candles and stuff?” she asked me eagerly.

“Not usually. A lot of that palaver is just for window dressing. I skip the candles and pass the benefits on to the customer.”

“And this is Jon Tiler,” said Rich. I turned again. Rich’s arm was thrown out to indicate the other man—the one who’d followed me with a cold-eyed stare when I walked past earlier. The youngest of the three, I guessed, and the least prepossessing physically—he was five six in height, overweight by about forty pounds or so, and his flushed face was replete with burst blood vessels. He wore a short-sleeve shirt with some kind of floral design on it in shades of orange and pink and green—as if he was dressed for jungle operations in a fruit salad.

“Hi,” I said, holding out my hand. He gave me a curt nod, but he didn’t take the hand, and he didn’t speak.

“Jon teaches all the little kiddies,” said Cheryl, in a tone that—though jokey—seemed slightly loaded.

“I’m the interpretation officer,” said Jon with a sullen emphasis.

The soft answer turneth away a whole heap of wrath and makes people take you for a pliable idiot into the bargain. “Interpreting what, exactly?” I asked.

“The collection,” Jon said. “People come in. I do sessions for them. And it’s not just kids, Cheryl. We lay on plenty of programming for adults, too.”

“Sorry, Jon,” said Cheryl, casting her gaze down like a chidden schoolgirl.

Rich jumped into the pause that followed before it could get awkward. “We’ve got a remit from the Education Department,” he said. “They’re one of our funding streams, and they set us targets. We’re supposed to run one-day courses for kids in National Curriculum stages two, three, and four, and outreach sessions for adult learners. Alice oversees, Jon delivers. With help from a couple of the part-timers.”

Jon went back to what he’d been doing, which was photocopying pages from a book on an oversized and slightly antiquated printer/copier. He turned his back on me fairly pointedly, and I wondered what it was about me he objected to so strongly. A possible answer suggested itself at once, and I made a mental note to check it out when I got the chance—assuming that I was still on the job after my interview with Peele.

There was still no sign of Alice, so I decided there was no harm in starting to collate a bit of information.

“Rich,” I said, “if you don’t mind talking about it, how did you come to get hurt?”

Cheryl jumped in before he could answer. “I’ve got the film rights,” she said cheerfully. “He signed them over to me on a beer mat, so you’re too late.”

Rich grinned, a little sheepishly. “It was really weird. I was just wrapping up for the night, right? Three-quarters of an hour late, as per usual.”

“Who else was around to see this?”