The girl tried to twist away but stilled when I pricked her throat with the point of my blade. We were jammed together in the close dark of the cupboard. She smelt of fear and alcohol; fear oozed out of her in a discrete package that clung inside her hood, and she tried and failed to use this newborn imp against me.
“It will not obey you as long as I am here,” I said. “Did you really think you were more powerful than me?”
“I fooled you, didn’t I?”
“For a little while, but no longer. When did you start to work for Cagliostro?”
“I don’t work for anyone.”
“You made a compact with him. You told him that you had found out where I lived, and you agreed to steal my book for him.”
“I told you, I don’t work for anyone.”
Keeping the point of my blade at her throat, I pulled the briefcase from her grasp. “What would I find, Miranda, if I looked in here?”
She looked at me, sullen and defiant and scared.
“The man who wants the book you stole could not find my house, attempted to lure me into an insultingly obvious trap, and hides behind a foolish pseudonym. If you had the benefit of a proper education, Miranda, you would know that the Count of Cagliostro was a charlatan who died more than two hundred years ago, a peddler of quack remedies whose chief fame is that he was immortalized in the writings of Alexander Dumas. I doubt that I have anything to fear from the man who has taken his name, and I also doubt that he has anything to teach you.”
“He showed me how to break your wards, and he said he’d show me other stuff, too. He’s a powerful man,” Miranda said sullenly, “so you better watch out.”
“We will soon see how powerful he is — you arranged to meet him here, did you not, in your ‘usual place’? I warned you about the affinity of imps for telephones. One inhabits your mobile phone, and has been listening to your conversations. You arranged to meet Cagliostro. Very well. We will wait for him together.”
“He’ll hurt you.”
“No, he won’t. And I won’t let him hurt you, either.”
“I can look after myself.”
“I know that you can,” I said. “But the way you are going about it will only do you harm. I know about your father, Miranda. I know what he did to you, and I know what you did to him. I understand-”
She twisted in my grip again, started to shout bloody murder, the perennial cry of the London mob, and kicked at the door of the cupboard. I twisted the key and stood aside and let her run.
A large man in one of the green sweatshirts worn by the public house’s staff stood at the top of the stairs, wanting to know what all the noise was about. I plucked up an imp and flung it at him and left him there, whimpering some nonsense about rats, and followed Miranda. I knew that she would go straight to Cagliostro. It was time to meet him.
The red Jaguar was waiting at the end of Camden Passage. Donny Halliwell eased out of it like a cork from a champagne bottle.
I raised the briefcase, and told him that I would deal only with the man for whom he was working. The driver of the Jaguar said something; Donny Halliwell reached into the pocket of his crumpled jacket and showed me a small black pistol. His smile was a grimace, as if wires had pulled up the corners of his mouth. One of his front teeth was gold. “Get in the car,” he said.
I climbed into the back. Miranda was hunched in the corner, small and scared. She looked at me, her lower lip caught between her teeth, and looked away when I told her that everything would be all right.
“There is a sword in his cane,” the man behind the steering wheel said. “Deal with it.”
Donny Halliwell took my cane from me, unsheathed the blade, stuck it between two paving stones, and put a right angle in it. He left it quivering there like a broken Excalibur, and levered himself into the car, making the back seat unpleasantly crowded and enveloping me in a yeasty smell of old sweat. The driver put his arm on the back of the passenger seat and looked at me. I realized that I had seen him two nights ago, in the cafe, and knew that he must be the man who called himself Cagliostro.
“You can let the girl go,” I said. “She has nothing to do with this.”
“She tried to cheat me,” Cagliostro said. His was the kind of clipped English accent that had been the norm on BBC radio until about twenty years ago. With his square, handsome face and black polo-neck sweater worn under a black corduroy jacket, he looked like a philosophy professor who has written a bestselling book traducing the ideas of his colleagues. His black hair, almost certainly dyed, was cut very short, showing the white scalp beneath; his eyes were the pale blue of sunlight seen through snow, and unblinkingly intent. He looked older than me, but he was not.
Beside me, Miranda stirred and said, “I never cheated you. I was going to give you the book, but he found me, didn’t he? He took it back.”
“You should have given it to me straight away,” Cagliostro said.
“We had a deal. You said you’d teach me stuff.”
“And so I will,” Cagliostro said. “Such wonders. What a pity that you and Mr Carlyle will not survive them.” He looked at Donny Halliwell and said, “Show me the book.”
The big man took the briefcase from me and snapped its locks. Cagliostro touched the book with long white fingers, then told his servant to close the briefcase and set it on the front seat. He smiled at me and said, “You do not recognize me.”
“We have met before?”
“In 1941,” Cagliostro said, and put the car in gear and pulled out into the traffic, ignoring the outraged horn blast of a bus.
“Which side were you on?”
“You must ask?”
“I suppose not.”
“I was a mere boy then. And because it took me some time to learn how to prolong my life, I have aged somewhat. You, however, look much as you did then. You even wear the same silly costume.”
“It is not a costume,” I said, remembering the young man who had given me a calm look of pure hatred as he stood between two military policemen, in a room hazed with the smoke of the onetime code pads that he had burnt while soldiers had fought a gun battle with his associates. I told him now, “You had some small talent in the matter of the dead. You believed it to be a form of magic when we first met, and I thought you foolishly deluded. If you still believe it, then I am afraid that my opinion has not changed.”
“See how he talks,” Miranda said to Cagliostro. The poor girl was still trying to win his favour. “He thinks he’s more important than anyone. That’s why I helped you.”
“This man was an enemy agent in the Second World War,” I told her. “A Nazi spy. He bound ghosts to important buildings. The ghosts acted as markers or beacons for others of his kind, who rode in bombers.”
“Sounds cool,” Miranda said.
“It was very cool,” Cagliostro said. He was a skilful and ruthless driver, riding hard on the rear of the car in front of the Jaguar, overtaking it on the inside at the big roundabout as he aimed the big car into Old Street. “Unfortunately, flattery will not undo the damage you have caused.”
“He called himself Count Roemheld then,” I said. “It was no more his real name than Cagliostro.”
“Names are powerful things, Mr Carlyle,” Cagliostro said. “I do not give up mine lightly.”
“I did everything you asked,” Miranda said. “I got him to go to Rainer Sue’s house.”
“Yet Mr Carlyle escaped the trap. I wonder, young lady, if it was because you told him about it.”
“I never!”
“I escaped,” I said, “because your trap was so very crude. I defeated you once, and I will do so again.”
But despite my brave words and the voluptuous feeling of calm that had possessed me ever since I had committed myself to this confrontation, I was not certain that either I or Miranda would survive it. I did not know how much power Cagliostro had gained since we had last met, and I had not counted on Donny Halliwell being armed. Miranda had been right. I was no longer wise to the ways of the streets. I did not assume that English criminals would carry pistols as casually as Wild West cowboys.