Vicious Circle

On the whole, though, this didn’t look too bad. The fact that it was a ragged cut meant it would knit together that much quicker, and Pen had done a thorough job of cleaning it out. All it needed now was a dressing strip and the home team was back in the game.

Pen wasn’t quite so convinced. “You should let Dylan look at it,” she said. “If this festers, Fix, it’ll be bad news.”

“It wasn’t exactly ‘Your annuity matures’ to start with,” I grumbled back gracelessly. Then, remembering my manners, “Thanks for patching me up. But let’s not bring Dylan into this. He might draw the wrong kind of conclusion about the circles you move in.”

“Was it this that cut you?” Pen asked, holding up the knife. I’d put it down on the side of the bath earlier, well out of the way. I really didn’t like to see it in her hands: that edge was just too damn perfect, and Pen was too emphatic with her gestures when she got worked up. I took it from her, quickly but gently.

“No,” I said. “This would have made a clean cut. A really clean cut. Have you seen the edge on it?” I turned the blade edge-on to her so she could see it in all its scary beauty. That meant I was looking at the flat of the blade, and I noticed now that it had a floral motif on it: leaves in pairs, etched directly into the steel, ran from the hilt to within an inch of the point.

Pen gave the knife an ill-favored look as I put it down again on the sink top. Then I had a better idea: I took a used toilet roll tube that looked to be about the right width and slid the knife inside it. The broad tang stretched the cylinder enough to hold the blade rigidly in place. I was a lot less likely to lose a finger on it now.

“I hate it when this stuff happens,” Pen muttered, dropping blood-encrusted swabs of cotton wool into the waste bin. “Why do you take jobs that get you beaten up and cut open and thrown off roofs and all that macho rubbish? Aren’t there enough of the other kind?”

“The other kind?”

“You know what I mean. ‘Get that bogey man out of my closet. Bring Granny back so she can tell us where she put the rent book. Tell my Sidney I’ve remarried and there’s no room in my bed for him anymore.’ ”

She turned her back on me to wash her hands. It looked unnervingly symbolic.

“I can’t always tell which kind of job is which,” I said, defensively. “I don’t get any special kind of pleasure out of this stuff.”

“No,” she agreed glumly. “I suppose not.”

“How’s Rafi?” I asked, to change the subject.

“Still asleep.” She turned to face me again, wet arms folded, face set. “I’m serious, Fix. You should just walk out of this one while walking is still an option.”

This was a disturbing development: normally when I bring up Rafi it derails the conversation at least long enough for me to get to the door. Obviously we were starting to know each other too well.

“The problem is, Pen, I’m working on a lot of different things right now. I can’t walk out on all of them.” It was the plain truth for once: I really didn’t know which job Puss and Boots had been sent to frighten me away from. The answer could be right there in what they’d said to me, but I was buggered if I could dig it out. “Someone didn’t close the circle, and a little bird flew the nest.” That didn’t sound like Coldwood’s drug barons. It might refer to the thing in the church, but there was nothing birdlike—or little, for that matter—in the presence I’d sensed there. Abigail Torrington? Maybe. But she hadn’t flown anywhere: she’d been flat-out stolen.

What it came down to was that I didn’t have enough information just then even to guess who wanted shot of me, still less why. But it didn’t matter in any case, because the part of me that’s stubborn and intractable and bloody-minded—which is not a small part, by any means—was determined to stay with this until I knew what it was about. Pen read that conclusion in my face and shrugged, giving it up in disgust.

“Just remember I told you so,” she said. “So I don’t have to say it later on when something ten times worse happens to you.”

“I’ll sleep on it,” I said. Then I gave her a hug and retreated to my room at the top of the house, which normally gives me a bit more perspective on the world.

Tonight I was too bone weary to think. But before I surrendered to gravity and sleep, I called Nicky. He didn’t sound very happy to hear from me.

“Christ, Castor. What is it, three hours? Even Buddy Bolden doesn’t give you the right to ask for fucking miracles.”

“I’m not looking for a progress report, Nicky. I was just wondering if you happen to know where the Collective is moored right now.”

“Thamesmead,” he said, without a pause. “Thamesmead West. Pier Seventeen, just down from the Artillery Museum.” Yeah, that would be the sort of information a paranoid zombie would have at his well-preserved fingertips.

“Who’s on board?”

“No, Who’s on first.”

“Ha ha ha.”