Vicious Circle

He shrugged easily. “Place is meant to be open to our kind all the time. Part of the deal. Castor, yeah, it’s starting to come back to me now. You’re a Liverpudlian, aren’t you? Part of the north-south brain drain. Good to see you again.”

He took the hand I offered and gave it a firm, brief shake. Nothing readable there, but I hadn’t expected there to be; he looked like the sort of guy who kept his emotions pretty tightly locked down. He nodded me toward a couch that was stacked with old newspapers, magazines, and unopened mail. “Grab a seat. You looking to sign in?”

I sat down, shoving some of the old letters aside. Behind me, Lockyear crossed to the galley. I watched him out of the corner of my eye as he picked up a still-smoking cigarette from an ashtray there, half-raised it to his lips, but then seemed to change his mind and stubbed it out without taking a drag. “Not right now,” I said. “Actually, I was hoping to get a little free advice.”

“Advice?”

“Yeah. You know, tap the whisper line.”

Reggie smiled at my coy phrasing. “Well, go for it. We’re happy to help if we can, aren’t we, Greg?”

“Sure. Happy to,” Lockyear echoed. He sat down at the breakfast bar, a long way from Reggie’s unfinished breakfast.

“Thanks. The fact is, I’m looking for someone.”

“Someone I know?”

I nodded. “Could be, yeah. Someone who used to live here, anyway, but maybe not during your time. Guy name of Dennis Peace.”

Reggie frowned in thought, as if he was running that name through his memory banks. “Peace. No, doesn’t ring any bells. You know a Dennis Peace, Greg?”

Lockyear looked round at the sound of his name, his expression the same mildly astonished double-take I’d seen him use outside. I was reminded of Stan Laurel, although maybe that was just the hair. He stubbed the cigarette out again, absently, in spite of the fact that it was already dead. “Yeah,” he said. “I know Peace. Well, I used to know him. He lived here for about six months of last year. Bastard never cooked once. Why? What’s he done?”

This was addressed to Reggie, but Reggie turned to me because obviously that was my question to answer if it was anybody’s.

I decided to tell the truth, as far as I could. It’s not like exorcism as a profession generates a whole huge heap of fellow feeling, but I didn’t want to try to extort any information out of these guys by selling them some tired line about Peace owing me money or whatever. That sort of thing will inevitably turn around and bite you in the ass sooner or later. “Someone hired me to find him,” I said. “He’s meant to have a kid with him. A little girl, who—well, who isn’t his. She was abducted from her parents’ house. Peace was there the day it happened, or at least that’s what I’ve been told. So her parents think maybe he took her. I want to see if that’s what happened. And if it is, I’m being paid to get the kid back.”

Reggie said nothing, just kept looking at me with a gambler’s deadpan.

“Well, I never met the man,” I conceded, responding to the skepticism in that look. “This is just a job, and it could all be bullshit as far as I know. Sooner I find him, sooner I find out.”

“Sounds like a job for the police,” Reggie observed. He was standing over me, watching me more closely than the occasion seemed to call for. Having offered me a seat, he made no move to sit down himself.

“Yeah, I guess it would be, if the girl was alive. But she’s dead.”

“All the more reason—”

“I mean, she was already dead when he took her.”

Reggie gave the kind of slanted nod that means “hell of a story.” “There are some very nasty people out there,” he observed. “A lady takes a terrible risk.”

I recognized the quote, let it pass. “Does anyone make a note of forwarding addresses, when someone leaves here?” I asked, giving a tottering pile of envelopes a meditative tap.

“The Trust does. But we’re not the Trust.”

There was definitely an edge in Reggie’s voice now. I could see that we were heading for a point at which he was going to give up the unequal struggle between mood and manners and tell me to sod off. But I was feeling a little bloody-minded myself, now—maybe because of the headache, which was back worse than ever—and I wasn’t quite ready to back off. I looked across at Greg Lockyear, who was now leaning forward with his elbows on the counter and looking out across the Thames toward the Gallions Point marina as if it were the most riveting thing he’d ever seen. A conviction started to grow in me.

“Greg,” I said, leaning out past Reggie to get a better line of sight. “You keep in touch with Peace at all, after he left here?”

Reggie didn’t like the fact that I’d just done an end-play around him, and Greg—when he turned his dazed-rabbit eyes my way—didn’t look all that happy to be back in the conversation. This was making friends and influencing people the Felix Castor way. “No,” Greg said, shaking his head emphatically. “No, I never really got on with him all that well. Glad to see the back of him, to be honest.”