He stared at me, deadpan. ‘That’s all in hand,’ he said. ‘If you’re looking to clock up some overtime, Castor, you can forget it. I don’t want you, and more to the point I don’t need you.’
‘You might want to know what you’re facing, all the same,’ I said. ‘And you might need this.’ I held up the key to the gym’s front door. McClennan recognised it at once, or maybe just guessed what it was. He took it out of my hand, looked at it thoughtfully for a moment, then nodded.
‘You’ve got your assignments,’ he said to the other exorcists in the room. ‘Get moving. Samir, wait for me downstairs.’
‘I’d rather make a start,’ said Samir.
Gil didn’t even look round; his eyes were locked on mine. ‘Make a start then,’ he said. ‘I’ll call you when I get over there.’
The room gradually emptied until it was just the four of us: Trudie, Jenna-Jane, McClennan and me. Gil looked at Trudie and motioned with his head towards the door. She didn’t move. ‘If it’s about Super-Self,’ she said, ‘I’d like to hear this. I’m part of that team too.’
‘If you need to hear it,’ Gil said with heavy emphasis, ‘I’ll brief you later, at the same time as everyone else. Right now this is private. Go make yourself a cup of coffee, Pax. Make me one too.’
Reluctantly, Trudie headed for the door. As soon as it closed behind her, McClennan turned to Jenna-Jane, holding the key up in his hand. ‘He stole this from a secure cupboard,’ he said. ‘That’s where the rest are. I signed them back in yesterday morning, as soon as I got here. You think he stopped at the keys? He’s probably raided med cabinets, equipment, case files . . .’
‘I took it off the ring while I was talking to you, Gil,’ I told him. ‘Sleight of hand, not breaking and entering. Not that I’ve got anything against petty larceny, you understand; it’s just more effort.’
‘I want him off my team,’ McClennan said to J-J as if I hadn’t spoken.
‘Gilbert . . .’ she said, sounding as though this rift between her little lambs distressed her beyond bearing.
‘It’s not as if he brings us anything. It’s not as if we need him.’
Jenna-Jane turned to me. ‘What do you bring us, Felix?’ she asked in a colder and more businesslike tone.
‘The rickety twins,’ I told her.
She made an open-handed gesture. ‘Go on.’
‘Between the Strand and Wych Street,’ I said, ‘from the middle of the nineteenth century right up until they levelled the whole area to build the Aldwych in 1901, there were two theatres: the Opera Comique and the Globe. They were mostly underground. In fact the Opera Comique was reached through tunnels; it didn’t even have a street-level entrance.’
‘I’ve heard of the Opera Comique,’ Jenna-Jane said musingly. ‘Some of the early Gilbert and Sullivan operettas were performed there – before D’Oyly Carte built the Savoy.’
I shrugged. ‘If you say so, Jenna-Jane. I’m not big on Victorian theatre. I can tell you though, courtesy of the London Metropolitan Archive, that there was a really nasty incident there in 1879. The theatre had fallen into debt, and some bailiffs tried to repossess the sets and props. They got into a stand-up fight with the cast in the middle of a performance. Then someone knocked over a lantern and the set caught fire. Four hundred people in the audience, all trying to get out of a burning basement through the same three tunnels. Mostly in the dark . . .’
‘Why is this relevant?’ Gil demanded angrily. ‘What has the fucking nineteenth century got to do with—?’
‘Hasn’t the penny dropped yet?’ I yelled back at him. ‘The ghosts in the swimming pool are actors. They’re not from Roman Britain; they’re from the cast of some crappy play. I saw one of them last night blowing her nose on a lace fucking handkerchief. And she was wearing button-up boots!’
That shut him up for a moment, so I pressed on, determined to get to the point that really mattered.
‘So the ghosts are about a century old,’ I said, addressing myself to Jenna-Jane. ‘That’s still unusual, but it’s not impossible. It’s just right at the end of the bell-shaped curve. What is unusual is the thing that’s in there with them.’
McClennan opened his mouth to bandy some more words with me, but J-J held up an imperious hand for silence. ‘What thing?’ she asked.
‘My source calls it a Gader’el,’ I said. ‘It’s demonic, but it’s something we haven’t met before. It feeds on fear. Probably the fear still attaching to that site was what brought it there in the first place. It’s like an angler fish, J-J. It sits down there in the dark, dangling those old ghosts like a lure. When living people come in close to look, it gets its hooks into them. It amplifies any fear they’re already feeling, turns it into blind terror, and somehow it takes nourishment from that.’
I turned to look at Gil now, seeing only resentment and suspicion on his face. ‘The point is,’ I told him, ‘you can’t destroy it with a frontal attack. It’s not like the demons we’ve met before; it’s . . . I don’t know, a lower life form. More primitive. More instinctive. Trying to exorcise it just makes it hit out harder. That’s why Etheridge got damaged the way he did, and why your other man – Franklin – ran under a car.’
McClennan shook his head, but slowly and without much conviction. He was thinking, and thinking was taking some of the momentum out of his anger. It was hard for him to listen to the message when he wanted so badly to kill the messenger, but I could see that I was getting through to him.
‘So what are you saying, Felix?’ Jenna-Jane asked.
‘I’m saying you need to wait,’ I said. ‘There’s probably a way to drive this thing out without facing it head on. I had an idea last night: sort of a time bomb. A way of giving this thing some grief from a safe distance. I don’t know if it will work, but I want to try it. It will take a while to set up, that’s all. A day or two. Maybe longer.’
‘From a safe distance?’ McClennan echoed me. ‘How would that work?’
But Jenna-Jane was already shaking her head, very firmly. ‘We go ahead with the plan as agreed,’ she said.
‘Why?’ I demanded. ‘Why take the risk?’
‘Because we’re scientists,’ she said simply. ‘We gather data and then we reach conclusions based on that data. We don’t prejudge, however tempting a particular prefabricated theory may be. By all means proceed with your own plans too. If Gilbert’s team doesn’t succeed tonight, you can try your alternative method. I see no harm in that – in having two strings to our bow.’
‘The harm is that your first string might snap and put someone’s eye out,’ I said caustically. ‘You’re sending your people into a dangerous situation when there’s no need.’
I looked to McClennan for support, but J-J’s rationalist call to arms had stiffened his sinews. ‘I think the team I’ve put together will be up to the job,’ he said, toeing the company line. ‘You can tell me what your back-up plan is, if you want to. If I think it’s got any merit, I’ll put someone on it.’
There was a dead silence. Both of them looked at me expectantly. All I could think of was to quote Gil’s own words back at him, like a snot-nosed schoolkid doing dumb insolence.
‘Well maybe I’ll brief you later,’ I said. ‘If you need to hear it.’
Nobody was going to give me any exit music, so I just left. Jenna-Jane called out something to me, but I was already halfway down the corridor and I didn’t hear it.
Trudie Pax was loitering by the lifts, leaning against the wall with her arms folded and a grim look on her face. She straightened as I approached. ‘I have to get out of here,’ she said.
‘I thought you were on map duty,’ I reminded her.
‘I’ll come back later. Right now I need the air.’
‘When you go back,’ I said, ‘take this with you.’ I handed her the package and she hefted it, feeling its weight.
‘What is it?’ she asked.
‘A photo of Rafi. Take a look.’
She tore away the paper from one corner and examined the contents of the package without enthusiasm.
‘I’ve seen this technique before,’ she said. ‘The photo was developed right onto the glass, right?’