Vicious Circle

“And London?” Even as I asked the question, the answer hit me. And the only reason I hadn’t seen it before was because I was sitting so close to it.

“London was where he was. The demon they wanted to raise. Except that he was half-raised already, because some other shithead had tried it two years back and gotten it wrong, the way Fanke said amateurs always do.”

Asmodeus. Peace didn’t even need to say it. The last few pieces fell into place as I finally made the connection that my subconscious mind had made two days ago. Yeah, something else did happen on Saturday night. Rafi had his episode, as Asmodeus clawed his way up out of the oubliette, yawned, and stretched.

An image came into my mind: of Rafi screaming in agony, his head thrown back, oblivious of everything except whatever it was that was tormenting him.

“You sabotaged them,” I said. “You broke the ritual before they finished it.”

“Only just,” growled Peace, bitterly. “It took me a long time to find out where they were keeping her. And by the time I got to the house it was too late—they’d already taken her. But I caught Mel and some piece of piss who was fronting as her husband. And I got the drop on them.”

“Stephen Torrington,” I said. “The real Stephen Torrington. He was the guy who owned the house, right? Some English satanist who Fanke was using as a cover?”

“ ‘Was’ being the operative word,” Peace spat. “I think his head will take more putting together than Humpty fucking Dumpty.”

“You killed two people, Peace. It’s not a joke.”

He scowled at me with something like resentment. “What are you talking about? Him I killed, yeah. Mel—I hit her. I remember hitting her. Because I had to make her tell me where Abbie was. I had to stop the whole thing before it got too far. Maybe she thought I was going to kill her, because I must have looked like some kind of a maniac. But I didn’t have the stomach for it.”

“But—there was a woman’s body. Tied up and beaten and then shot in the stomach . . .”

But with a different gun. I suddenly remembered that odd detail from Nicky’s summary. With a different gun, and maybe as much as three hours later. That didn’t make any sense. Unless . . .

“Did she tell you? What you needed to know?” I asked Peace.

“Yeah. They’d found some old Quaker meeting house in Hendon that was boarded up. It was exactly what they needed: a place where people had prayed, and sung hymns, or whatever it is that Quakers do when they let their hair down. A place where people had worshipped, anyway, because that’s one of the ingredients in the shit they do. I left her tied to a chair. If I could’ve killed her, I would have. I fucking hated her enough to do it. I just—when it came right down to it, I couldn’t pull the trigger with her looking at me. I kept thinking about Abbie. Abbie growing inside her. It made me weak.”

“Don’t beat yourself up,” I said grimly. “Fanke finished what you started. When the cops got to the house they found two bodies, a man and a woman, and they ID’d the woman as Melanie Torrington. I think he must have figured out how you got that address, Peace—and I think he didn’t like it much. So it was really handy for him that you left her hands tied: meant he didn’t have to get into an unseemly scuffle or anything like that.”

It also meant that the blonde he’d brought into my office, and then considerately sent away so she didn’t have to relive her trauma, hadn’t gotten those bruises from Peace. She was beaten up just to serve as a prop and prepare the ground so Fanke could work on my tender feelings.

Peace took the news in dazed silence. It was probably just as well: right then I was full of anger and contempt for him as well as for Fanke. He might have been protecting his daughter, but the pair of them had been dancing this slow, smoochy dance around each other for long enough, and a lot of innocent people had gotten hurt because they were caught in between.

“She deserved to die,” Peace said, more to himself than to me. “After all she’d done—”

“Maybe she did,” I said, wearily. “Or maybe she was just a bare-arsed bondage freak who Fanke reeled in the same way he did you—because he needed something she had. In her case it was a womb, and an open-minded attitude to sex acts that draw blood. In yours it was functional sperm. For Christ’s sake, Peace, have you really gotten it that wrong? Did you think she was your enemy? Because it looks to me like you were both played by an expert.” And so was I, I reminded myself. I had no reason to feel smug here: I’d fetched the stick and rolled over and played dead like the best of them.

Peace got angry, and that was a mistake because it started him coughing again and the pain closed down his lines of communication for the best part of a minute while he wheezed and hissed like an overfilled kettle. There was no steam, though: Peace’s fires were burning pretty low now.