Moloch didn’t notice at first. He was still delivering his gloating monologue, drawing out the pain and the humiliation of Juliet’s death so that it would measure up to the happy fantasies he’d been living on for the last century. He was working on her face with both hands, talking in a low intimate murmur now so that his words didn’t reach me. The blimp was above and behind him, its tentacles stretching down through his chest and into hers. Of course: if murderers had a patron saint, it would be Juliet. This must be the best part of the meal.
A naked rhythm is slyer and more slippery than a whistled tune. It’s like the narrow blade of a shank, slipped in between your ribs, that doesn’t even hurt until it moves and starts to make a broader incision. I let it go in deep, deeper, deeper still. My hoarse, hissing breath was a part of the pattern now, and the sounds my wrists made against the cuffs of my shirt, and the creak of my shoes as I shifted my weight, coming up on one knee. All of it, all the negligible, tiny, repeated, inscaped sounds were converging into something impossibly subtle, impossibly slender and sharp. The effort of keeping it so tightly focused was like a physical ache in my guts. I held it as long as I could.
Then I let the rhythm-blade unfold like the spokes of an umbrella inside the demon’s rancid, pulpy heart.
Moloch stiffened suddenly and turned to stare at me in wide-eyed astonishment.
‘Three – three most useless things in the world,’ I croaked, forcing the sounds out of my lacerated throat. I could taste the blood that came with them.
‘Castor-’ he muttered, unbelieving, uncomprehending.
‘A nun’s tits – the pope’s balls – and a round of applause for the band.’
The blimp exploded with a wet, flaccid, whimpering belch. Moloch’s chest exploded too, where the tentacles were routed through it: ribs showed like jagged teeth through his ruined flesh. His human form toppled over like a tree and fell full-length on the floor, unmoving, a greenish-black stain spreading lazily out from underneath it.
It felt like an impossible task to get back on my feet, but I knew I had to try. The gunfire, the wanton destruction wrought by the bulldozer and the screams of the dying wouldn’t have gone unnoticed: after all, this wasn’t Kilburn. It wouldn’t be too long before the bright-eyed boys in blue came around to see what the trouble was, and it was probably a good idea if they didn’t find us here.
Juliet was a mess. I knew – rationally – that any damage she survived she could repair: this body was just something that she wore when she was in town. All the same, it hurt to look at her, and my hands shook as I picked her up. She was a lot lighter than she looked, as I’d discovered on an earlier occasion. She hung limp in my arms: her lips moved, but no sound came out.
‘I’m going to have to carry you,’ I told her. ‘I know your back’s broken, but I can’t think of any other way of doing this. I hope it doesn’t hurt too much.’
Finding the last remnants of the strength she’d lent to me, I carried her to the door, down the hallway and out into the chill night air.
This wasn’t over yet. There was still one more man I had to visit tonight: visit, and maybe kill. Again.
The wind was as strong as ever: and now at last the rain began to fall, with perfect timing, like the tears of two hundred funerals saved up and shed at once.
25
The big advantage of Juliet’s Maserati was its acceleration: it had warp engines as well as impulse power. When I got onto the North Circular – which at three in the morning was mercifully deserted – and put my foot down on the pedal, six or seven cartloads of bullying G-force pressed me back into the hand-stitched leather and the street lights blue-shifted. I got to Chingford Hatch in what felt like a minute and a half.
The gates of The Maltings were wide open, and so was the front door. Just like the last time I’d been here, all the lights were on: but this time there was a general absence of people running around like headless chickens. I parked up and glanced at Juliet lying across the back seat, absolutely still.
It was too dark to tell whether the healing process had already begun. If she were conscious, I could ask her how she was feeling: and then if she broke my little finger, as she’d threatened to do back in Alabama, it would be a sign that she was starting to rally. In any case, I couldn’t take her with me where I was going.
I got out of the car and walked across the stone flags to the door. I still didn’t see a soul, and dead silence met me in the hallway. I wandered from room to room, expecting an ambush at first and looking behind every door, but you can’t keep those hair-trigger reflexes honed for ever. After a while it became more of a tense stroll.
I found Covington in Lionel Palance’s bedroom. He was sitting in a steel-framed chair next to Palance’s bed, reading the old man a bedtime story – and it wasn’t Noddy. I guess he must have put his foot down about that. I walked into the room, making as little noise as I could, and stood behind him while he read. He did the voices pretty convincingly.
‘“What have you been doing, Taffy?” said Tegumai. He had mended his spear and was carefully waving it to and fro.
‘“It’s a little berangement of my own, Daddy dear,” said Taffy. “If you won’t ask me questions, you’ll know all about it in a little time, and you’ll be surprised. You don’t know how surprised you’ll be, Daddy! Promise you’ll be surprised.”
‘“Very well,” said Tegumai, and went on fishing . . .’
Covington glanced across at his audience of one. Palance was already asleep, his chest rising and falling without sound.
Covington closed the book and put it on the bedside table, in the midst of all the medicines. His movements were a little jerky and so one or two of them fell off onto the floor: he picked them up and put them back in their places. He leaned forward, kissed Palance on the forehead without waking him, and then straightened again, squaring his shoulders as though for some ordeal.
‘Castor,’ he said, turning for the first time to acknowledge me. He looked impossibly tired. ‘How did it go?’
‘Pretty well, Aaron, all things considered.’
‘Meaning?’
‘Meaning that if you went to Mount Grace right now, you’d find it looking like a morgue.’
‘Well – good. That’s good. At least, I presume it’s good. And you and your . . . team all came out of it okay?’
I made a palm-wobbling, so-so gesture. ‘We had one fatality. Fortunately.’
He stood and looked calmly into my eyes. ‘And now you’ve come for me.’
‘Pretty much.’
‘Fancy a whisky?’
‘Pretty much.’
Covington led the way down the stairs to the same room we’d used the night before. It felt like another lifetime. He picked up the Springbank, but I put my hand on his arm and shook my head.
‘Something rougher,’ I said. ‘Please. Rotgut, if you’ve got any.’
He found some blended Scotch with a name I didn’t recognise and held it up for my approval. I nodded.
‘“Bartender, give me two fingers of red-eye,”’ he quoted. He mimed the punchline, poking his fingers towards but not into my eyes. I didn’t laugh. I wasn’t in the mood, somehow.
He set out two glasses and poured a generous measure into one. Then he looked at the bottle, thought better of it and took that, leaving the other glass empty on the bar.
‘Shall we sit down?’ he asked, gesturing.
‘Whatever.’ I followed him across to the leather three-piece. He sprawled on the sofa and I took one of the chairs. He chinked the bottle to my glass and then took a deep swallow of the whisky: he didn’t even shudder although God knew it wasn’t smooth.
‘You called me Aaron,’ he observed, running his tongue across his lips.
‘You’d prefer I called you Peter?’
Covington thought about that. ‘No, not really,’ he admitted. ‘Actually – in a strange way – there’s a rightness to it. I made up Silver for myself, but Aaron was the name I was born with. What goes around, comes around. How did you know?’