The Naming of the Beasts

Since then I’d met a McClennan daughter, Dana, and now here was a McClennan nephew. It seemed to bear out my theory that exorcism was a hereditary trait. Too bad it couldn’t have chosen a better field to sow its seeds in.

‘Yeah,’ I agreed. ‘I knew your uncle. How’s he doing?’

‘He’s dead,’ Gil said. The words were voiced way back in his throat, and he bared his teeth on the final consonant.

‘I know,’ I said. ‘I meant since then. Do you keep in touch?’

Gil stared at me hard for a second or two, not saying a word. But I knew the answer in any case, and it was no. Gabe McClennan had run into Juliet back when she was still going by her old name. Physically and spiritually, he’d been chewed up, swallowed down and shat out a long time ago.

‘Gil is a very valued member of our in-house team,’ Jenna-Jane said, gesturing me to a chair as she sat down again herself. ‘Doing your old job, Felix. The job of pontifex and psychopomp. Do you miss it at all? We’d love to have you back.’

The pontifex and psychopomp thing was one of J-J’s favourite lines. They were two of the pope’s official titles: builder of bridges between this world and the next, and chief dispatcher of human souls to their eternal reward. An exorcist wasn’t really either of those things, but pride was always J-J’s besetting sin. If even her servants held the power of life and death, then what did that make her?

‘I don’t have the stomach for that stuff any more,’ I said, knowing as I said it that it was the kind of half-truth that everyone takes to be a lie. But Jenna-Jane nodded as though I’d confirmed a suspicion she already had.

‘Yes,’ she said. ‘It was the moral dimension that made you feel you had to leave us in the first place. Your concerns over our Rosie.’

Our Rosie. She meant Rosie Crucis, the oldest ghost in captivity. But she said it in such an affectionate tone that the horror and cruelty of Rosie’s capture were momentarily occulted by the homely phraseology.

‘You won on that one,’ I reminded her, since I couldn’t say that my feelings on the subject had changed in the years since.

‘Nobody wins when friends quarrel, Felix,’ Jenna-Jane chided me seriously. ‘No, I think it’s true that our work induces a certain . . . narrowness of vision. Inevitably, I’m afraid. Morality reveals itself on the macroscopic scale, but is invisible in the detail work.’

‘I have no idea what that means,’ I said.

‘It means we’re serving the greater good,’ Gil McClennan chipped in, offering his opinion like an apple for the teacher and getting a smile and a nod in return.

‘Yes,’ said J-J. ‘The greatest good. I have something more to say to you on that subject, Felix, but I’d like to let it sit a little while. What was it you wanted to talk to me about?’

The crunch point. Probably better to get it over with quickly, because the longer I sat here the more likely I was to do something irrevocable - possibly involving the EMPIRICAL RESEARCH statuette.

‘Rafi Ditko,’ I said tersely. ‘I think maybe it’s time we collaborated.’

J-J affected surprise, although presumably it was the mention of Rafi’s name that had got me in through the door. She glanced at Gil, who made a non-committal gesture, and then at Gentle, who nodded. ‘I’m familiar with the case, Professor Mulbridge,’ she murmured.

‘Good.’ Jenna-Jane returned her attention to me, looking a little perturbed. ‘If you’ll forgive me for being blunt, Felix,’ she said, ‘Rafael Ditko is the very last subject on which I’d expect us to find common ground.’

J-J sets the bar high, but that was a miracle of understatement even by her standards. We’d been fighting an undeclared war over Rafi for the best part of a year now. I’d only taken him from the Stanger Care Home in the first place to keep him out of her eager, grasping little fingers, and I’d told her more than once that if it came to a choice between shooting Rafi in the head and letting the MOU have him, I’d probably end up having to toss a coin.

It’s funny how your own words come around to drop their pants and moon you sometimes.

‘Yeah,’ I said flatly. ‘Times change. But the common ground was always there, Jenna-Jane. We both want Rafi alive. For different reasons, admittedly, but alive is alive. So I’m prepared to work with you to bring him in, in return for a guarantee that you won’t bow to any outside pressure you might get to pull the plug on him.’

J-J frowned. ‘Outside pressure? You intrigue me, Felix. But tell me, have you ever known me to bow to pressure? From any source?’

I had to admit that I hadn’t. The idea had kind of a whimsical sound to it, like Jack the Ripper holding a door open for a little old lady and saying, ‘No, after you . . .’

Jenna-Jane clasped her hands together under her chin with just the index fingers extended, pressed to her pursed lips. She considered for a few moments in silence while - out of a lack of other viable options - I sat and waited for the wheels to turn.

‘Do you know where Ditko is?’ she asked at last.