Vicious Circle

“Good evening, father,” I said. “I wonder if you can help me. I need a number for a Biblical research organization, which I believe is located in Woolwich. Does that ring any bells with you?”

“Yes indeed,” said Father Braithewaite immediately. “The Ignatieff Trust. I should be able to obtain their number—I’ve several publications of theirs on my shelves. Just a moment.”

There was a clunk as the phone was put down, followed by a variety of other bangs, rustles, and scrapes which seemed to go on for a hell of a long time. Finally, just as I was about to hang up and try somewhere else, the priest came back on the line.

“Here it is,” he said, and recited a number to me. Since I didn’t have any way to write it down, I asked him to repeat it and committed it to memory.

Thanking him for his help, I hung up and dialed the new number. It was the right place, but all I got was a recorded voice and an invitation to leave a message on the answerphone.

Well, in for a penny. “This is Castor,” I said, “and my message is for Father Gwillam of the Anathemata Curialis. Ask him to call me on this number. As quick as he can, because the clock’s ticking. If he’s still looking for Dennis Peace, you can tell him that the trail’s gone dead. Literally. The only way he’s going to get to Abbie Torrington now is through me.”

I hung up, and settled down to sweat out the wait, hoping that they wouldn’t come and take the phone away from me before I got my answer. Also, that this wasn’t one of those cleverly doctored payphones that block incoming calls.

It wasn’t. The phone rang after about fifteen minutes and I scooped it up on the first bounce. If the cops outside the door heard the sound, they didn’t respond to it.

“Hello?” I said.

“Mr. Castor?”

I remembered the dry voice. I’d forgotten the inhuman, puritanical calm.

“Yeah.”

“Gwillam here. What can I do for you?”

I told him, and he laughed without any trace of humor. It was like hearing a corpse laugh.

“And is there anything else you’d like?” he asked, the irony in the words not making it through to the remorselessly level voice. “Any dead relatives of yours we can intercede for? Or we could stop along the way and pick you up some pizza . . .”

“We’ll talk terms later, Gwillam,” I told him, in no mood for light banter. “For now, just you go ahead and let the dogs out.”

I hung up, hard enough to split the plastic of the receiver.

Nineteen

I’M NOT GOOD AT WAITING. I NEVER HAVE BEEN. I’VE MET people who can switch into Zen mode when there’s nothing going on and just mentally hibernate until the toast pops up. I tend to be punching the walls after a while—or in the absence of walls, other people.

Basquiat had left me my watch, which was either a rare sign of humanity or the most insidious and refined torture. I looked at it often enough over the next few hours to wear a hole in the glass.

The day dragged on, like a glacier fingernailing its way down a mountain. I couldn’t settle to the car reviews again, so I found myself leaning on the windowsill looking out across Highgate Hill, where the sun, shot down in terrible slo-mo, made the sky over Marx’s tomb flare a deep enough red to have satisfied even him.

Maybe that red sky was an omen of some kind—happy shepherds notwithstanding. Just before the sun touched the horizon there was a sound like the clapping of God’s hands, followed by an endlessly prolonged scream-cough-scream of breaking glass.

The fire alarms went off all over the building, including one just outside my door that drowned out any sounds from farther away. I felt the vibrations of running footsteps, though; then immediately afterward there were shouts in the corridor outside. I heard some kind of bellowed challenge or warning, cut short as something hit the door with enough force to pop the top hinge.

The door leaned inward an inch or so, and then a second impact made it topple forward into the room, crashing down a few inches from my startled face. One of the uniformed constables came down with it, obviously unconscious even though his glazed eyes were still half-open. Even though it was the one who’d tossed his small change onto the floor so I had to grovel for it, I still felt a twinge of compassion for him. But it passed.

The werewolves, Zucker and Po, stepped over the body. Zucker was in human form—or what passed for human form with him. Po was a monstrous tower of flesh, the remains of a torn shirt still clinging to his barrel-like torso in strips here and there. An unfeasible array of yellow-white fangs bristled in his face, drawing my gaze so completely that the other features became a sliding blur as he lumbered past me to check that the unfortunate cop wasn’t likely to get up again soon.

Zucker flashed me a scary smile.

“We were in the neighborhood,” he said. “Thought we’d drop in.”

“And me without a cake,” I mourned.

“We don’t eat cake. You got anything you need to pick up on the way?”