The Naming of the Beasts

She thought about it for a second before answering. ‘The redemption train,’ she said at last.

‘Which is what, exactly?’

Trudie swirled the liquid in her glass, staring down into it like my mum reading tea leaves. ‘What it sounds like. You try to make up for something bad you’ve done. Balance the books. That’s how a lot of people get into the order. It makes a lot of sense, at first, even though it’s never that easy. Atonement’s got its own built-in logic. But you, Castor . . . you’re a mystery to me.’

‘Yeah?’ I asked. ‘In what way?’

Trudie shook her head. ‘You’ve been through all this shit - Ditko’s possession, the White City Riot, the insanity at the Salisbury - but you never seem to put two and two and two and two and two together.’

‘Meaning . . . ?’

‘Meaning that it’s not just isolated incidents. So why do you pretend it is? “Nothing is at stake.” Do you remember saying that to me? I remember it. It was the night when the Salisbury burned and Asmodeus got free.’

‘The night when you and Gwillam carved me up,’ I reminded her - not to pick a fight, just to keep things clear.

She rolled her eyes. ‘If you like. But my point is that you said it, even when the world was coming to pieces all around us. You’re like some anti-Chicken Licken, running around telling everyone the sky isn’t falling, when you ought to be able to see that it damn well is.’

Some of the things that had happened since that night flashed through my mind like a slide show, things that weren’t on Trudie’s list but made her point, if anything, even stronger.

‘I may have been wrong about the sky,’ I conceded. ‘But if I admit that it might be falling, will you at least consider the possibility that fanatics like Gwillam and Jenna-Jane aren’t doing anything to hold it up?’

Trudie tapped the side of her glass, watched the ripples chase each other from edge to centre and back again. Then she looked up and met my gaze. ‘Doing something is better than doing nothing,’ she said flatly.

‘Is it? So if your bed’s on fire and you’ve got no water, you might as well douse it in petrol?’

‘You know what I mean, Castor.’

‘Yeah, I do. Have you seen what J-J keeps in the cellar yet? If not, take a look. Then we’ll talk some more.’

An uncomfortable silence descended. Trudie finished her drink and I made some serious inroads into mine.

‘You said you had something to tell me about Asmodeus,’ I reminded her. I just wanted to hear her out and get away now. The sense of camaraderie that comes from any shared ordeal had dissipated quickly, and I was feeling the distance that separated us more keenly than ever. I’d been wrong to think there could be any common ground between us.

‘After I left the order . . .’ Trudie began hesitantly. Then she lapsed into silence again. After a moment she stood up. ‘I think maybe I need another drink,’ she muttered and headed for the bar.

It took her a while to get served. Another bunch of guys with flashy cameras had rolled in and there was a logjam at the bar. Two in the morning seemed to be happy hour in this place. When she came back, bringing me another pint of London Pride and herself what looked like a triple whisky, she tried again.

‘I told Father Gwillam that same night - the night when we met - that I was out of the game,’ she said. ‘I was angry at the way I’d been set up. I told him I couldn’t be a part of the order because I couldn’t trust him any more.’

‘How did he take that?’

She laughed ruefully. ‘It didn’t seem to bother him all that much. He certainly didn’t beg me to stay, anyway. And he didn’t apologise. He just said I should think carefully about my decision, because it would be irreversible. Once I left, I couldn’t come back. The Anathemata would strike me from their list retroactively, so I wouldn’t ever have been a part of their operations. I’d be forbidden from contacting anyone in the order or talking about our work, with the implied threat that if I didn’t keep quiet, they could turn my volume down permanently.

‘So . . . I walked. And I thought that would be the end of it. But it wasn’t.’

‘Harder to make the break than you thought?’

Trudie was grim. ‘No, Castor. I said I was through, and I was through. But despite what Father Gwillam said, they weren’t quite through with me. About three weeks later I went back to the hostel where I’d been living. It was more of a barracks, really, for the members of the order, but it looked like an ordinary church hall from the outside. I needed to clear out the last of my stuff, and I’d emailed one of the deacons to say I was coming.’