The Naming of the Beasts

‘I want the demon dead,’ Gwillam corrected me.

‘And you don’t care who else gets left in the dirt - or under it - along the way. I’ve seen you work, Gwillam. I chose Jenna-Jane Mulbridge as a partner over you - that ought to tell you a lot.’

‘Suppose I swore - on the book that I love - not to kill Ditko unless it’s absolutely unavoidable?’

‘You’re excommunicated. You’ve got nothing to lose now, have you?’

The train pulled into the next station, and Gwillam stood. The young woman turned her head to stare at him, but he moved his hand in an almost imperceptible horizontal gesture: No.

You can call me,’ he said. ‘A message left at the house in St Albans - where you tracked me down last time - will still reach me. Don’t let false pride lead you astray, Castor. You’re right that my word on this thing, even my sworn word, is worth nothing. I’ll break any promise and betray any trust, to cauterise this evil. But if your methods were a little more like mine, fewer people would have died. Consider. And when you reach the end of your own pathetic Calvary, let me know. My offer will still be open.’

He stepped down, followed by his two asymmetrical minders. Four stops to go before Paddington. I used the intervening time to get my head together and to try to shake off the lingering atmosphere of that fucking dream.

The estimable Mr Dicks was on duty at the front desk again, and his flatulent grunt as he pressed the gate release said louder than words that seeing me had made his day. I walked on by, whistling a slightly out-of-tune ‘Nkosi Sikelel’ iAfrica’.

The place was dark and all but deserted. Another guard was checking windows in a desultory way, but I didn’t see anybody else around until I got up onto the second floor and noticed the faint glow coming from between the slatted blinds of Jenna-Jane’s office. I went by on tippy-toe, very keen not to alert her to my presence.

The map room was in darkness, but when I turned on the light I found that Trudie was there all the same. She’d been sitting in the dark, up to her knees in shredded paper. That at least explained where the map had gone, although not why.

She looked up and gave me a hollow-eyed stare. She looked as though she’d been crying, but she wasn’t crying now. Her fists were clenched, but the cat’s cradles normally wound round her knuckles trailed across the floor now like Pierrot’s sleeves, giving her a tragic air.

‘You okay?’ I asked her.

‘No,’ she said. ‘Not really.’ Her tone was hard, but brittle too - a catch at the back of it warning me to tread carefully.

‘I was going to ask you how it went,’ I said, indicating the torn fragments of map, ‘but I guess I’ve got my answer.’

‘He’s not back yet. Not in London, anyway. No new lines. Nothing to go on. Waste of time.’

I waited. If she wanted to tell me what had happened, she’d tell me. If she didn’t, asking about it might bring on a crisis we probably didn’t have time for. For something to do, I started to clear up some of the mess. Where the black lines had been too thickly overlaid on each other, becoming a single indecipherable mass, Trudie had at some point resorted to a silver Sharpie marker. The silver lines, their lustre deadened by the thick black tracery underneath, looked like day-old snail slime.

‘I took your advice,’ Trudie said in that same dangerous tone.

Down on one knee, my fists full of scraps like the guy who lays the trail on a paperchase, I looked up at her. Her red-rimmed eyes blinked once, twice, three times.

‘What advice was that?’

‘You said I should look in the basement here. If I wanted to know who I was working for.’

Okay. That explained a lot.

‘Those cell blocks are a logical extrapolation from a certain position,’ I said carefully. ‘I just wanted you to think about the implications of—’

‘I know what you wanted, Castor,’ Trudie growled. ‘I told you I’ve been down there. Tonight. About an hour ago. I’d have to be pretty fucking dense not to get it, wouldn’t I?’

A pause.

‘Look. Look at this,’ Trudie said. She held out her hand, which was shaking visibly. ‘An hour. It just won’t stop.’ She took a deep breath and stood. Her hand fell to her side again, the fingers flexing and clenching. ‘Principled resignations,’ she said, shaking her head sombrely. ‘They look really bad on your CV, don’t they? Nobody likes a quitter. Especially a holier-than-thou quitter.’

I took a step towards her, but the hand came up again like a shot, warding me off. She didn’t want any consolation that I could offer, even though it looked as though the tears were starting again.

‘You’re still wrong,’ she said, ‘and Mulbridge is still right. That’s the horror of it, Castor - that we have to turn ourselves into what she is if we want to survive. Hell is coming to Earth, one piece at a time. Not the sky falling, but the ground opening up under our feet. There’s nowhere that’s safe to stand any more. If I walk out on this, it will just be because I’m a coward, like you.’