The Devil You Know

In fact, in a profession not much known for its ethical probity or compassion, McClennan stood out as a twisting, weaseling, backstabbing bastard. I knew two or three guys from whom he’d stolen clients, money, or equipment, and half a dozen stories about people he’d screwed over. Someone even told me once that Gabe took a huge wad of cash from Peckham Steiner, the sanity-deficient granddaddy of all Ghostbusters, just before he died, on the pretext of building him a “safe house” where ghosts wouldn’t be able to touch him. But Steiner is likely to turn up sooner or later in any story that exorcists tell. I don’t normally listen to tattletale stuff like that unless I’ve got some personal experience to weigh it up against, so I’d been professionally courteous toward Gabe the first few times we’d met—and on one job, he’d actually sought me out because I had firsthand experience of a factory in Deptford he’d been asked to disinfect.

I’d agreed to help him and had offered him a thirty-seventy split, which he’d cheerfully accepted. Bearing the stories in mind, I asked for cash on the nose, and he counted it out into my hand underneath the green and yellow overpass at the Queen Mary’s end of the Mile End Road. Then we walked off in opposite directions, and before I’d gone a hundred yards, I was jumped and rolled by two guys who came at me from behind. They might have had nothing at all to do with McClennan, but it sure as hell looked like he was renegotiating the deal on the fly. At any rate, that was the last time we ever collaborated.

“Wait for me here,” I told Pen. “With the doors locked. Keep the keys in the ignition, and drive away if anybody comes.”

“Anybody but you, you mean?”

I gave her a solemn nod. “You’re on the ball, chief,” I said. “I like that in a woman.”

“After tonight, Felix, I think I know more than I ever wanted to know about what you like in a woman.”

I let that one pass. It was too close for comfort.

“What are you going to do if he’s not there?” she demanded.

By way of answer, I showed her the balding black velvet bag that held my lock picks. She shook her head in tired disapproval, but said nothing. She knows all about Tom Wilke and how I obtained my indefensible skills. She fervently disapproves, but right then I could see that it paled into insignificance next to all the other murky shit that was flying around.

I got out of the car and crossed the street. There were three bells over on the left-hand side of the door that roughly corresponded with the three signs. I pressed the one marked MCCLENNAN. Nobody answered. I pressed again and looked around me as I waited.

Greek Street is an after-midnight kind of place, but most of the nightlife had already rolled over and turned out the lights; we were only a couple of hours away from dawn.

But after a few moments, I heard footsteps from inside, accompanied by the atonal creak of badly warped floorboards. A bolt was drawn, then another, then a key turned, and the door opened a crack. Gabe McClennan, in his shirtsleeves and with a heavy stubble on his face, stood in the gap.

He stared at me for a few moments, looking totally nonplussed. It was clear that I was the last person he expected to see on his doorstep at four in the morning. Actually, it was one step beyond nonplussed, into the related domain of baffled and hacked-off.

“Castor,” he muttered. “What the fuck?”

“I wanted to consult with you on a job I’m doing, Gabe.”

“In the middle of the night?”

“Well, since you’re still up . . .”

He rubbed his eyes with the heel of his hand.

“Castor,” he said again. He laughed and shook his head as if he couldn’t believe it. “Yeah, whatever. Come on in.”

McClennan turned and walked back inside, and I followed. The light on the third floor clearly wasn’t anything to do with Gabe; the door he opened was right off the first-floor landing, next to a doorless cupboard full of electric meters and half-bald mops lying drunkenly against the wall.

Despite the shabby frontage and the dubious location, Gabe’s office was a hell of a step up from mine. It was dominated by a huge antique desk with ball-and-claw feet that was big enough to split the room in two. His filing cabinet had four drawers, a cherrywood veneer, and a vase full of chrysanthemums on top. He even had a diploma on the wall, although Christ only knew what it said. Two-hundred-meter swimming certificate, most likely.