The Absolute Book

by Elizabeth Knox

  Taryn uncovered her face. ‘We don’t know what it is.’ She glanced at Shift and moved closer to Jacob. ‘He says he’ll keep me safe. That the Land of the Pact is safe for me.’

  Shift made a little avian clicking noise, but didn’t interrupt her.

  She continued. ‘I can’t imagine why he’s so stymied by the demon chasing me and the ones who were possessing Claude Pujol, Khalef and Tahan. He says he hasn’t any more idea what’s going on than I have.’

  Jacob said, ‘And has he fully outlined what kind of safety his land offers? Its freedoms, and its rules?’

  Shift said, softly, ‘No one ever sees me straight.’ It didn’t sound like a complaint.

  Jacob rolled his shoulders to loosen them and announced that he had better call Hemms again before she sounded any alarms. ‘And it’s highly likely Raymond Price knows about your request for a surgeon.’

  ‘MI5 are bugging Alan?’

  ‘Price may be watching me in the hopes of locating you. I wouldn’t be surprised. I spoke to him briefly yesterday, and got the feeling the scope of his investigation has changed. Perhaps there was something on the drone footage that alarmed them.’

  ‘Drone footage?’ Shift said.

  They both ignored him.

  ‘But how can anyone see my dropping off the map as criminal?’ Taryn said. ‘It’s just a mystery, Jacob.’

  ‘A mystery with corpses and trespasses is a crime, Taryn.’

  9

  Night in a Tree

  Jacob took his phone out the landward side of the building. It was around five, and the sky beyond the angles of Palfreyman’s showy house was a soft yellow. There was dew on the lawn. Jacob halted at a pale patch of something on the grass and stooped to examine the evidence—fur, each strand flecked at its end and blue-grey at its roots. A halo of fur where an owl had stood on one foot using the claws of the other, and its beak, to pluck the corpse of its prey—probably a squirrel. The centre of the halo was a coin-sized patch of clean grass. There was no blood, no skin, no bones, only fur. The squirrel had been plucked, then carried off or swallowed whole.

  This discovery, and the black wall of pine trees on the boundary, the phone in his hands, and the absence of a viable script for a situation update, all filled Jacob with a vast sense of loneliness.

  Jacob respected his colleague Hemms, and had some warm feelings for her. But most of his warm feelings were for his principles, loyalties and beliefs. His beliefs, though, had become a problem. He had known what to do with Taryn Cornick. It was simple. He’d put pressure on her till she cracked. He was sure of her guilt and had been just as certain that she deserved no quarter. She had used her husband’s money to buy a death. She had walked away from it, and flourished. She’d threatened him with her famous father. She was one of those people who get bad service in a restaurant and try to scare the staff with their thousands of Twitter followers. She was ‘Taryn Cornick of the Northovers’, whose name seemed to have currency in more than one world.

  Jacob was tired, and a little nostalgic for the surety of his own wounded pride. But wasn’t what was happening to him now the kind of change he’d been waiting for his whole life?

  As a child the only way Jacob Berger had of recognising anything as exceptional was by its effect on his parents. There were only ever faint clues. His family was as dedicated to switching off any ‘upsetting news’ as they were to keeping the property tidy. They wouldn’t show concern at national or international events, only getting worked up when their local council made a section of the high street one-way, or brought in ‘those clattering bins’ for kerbside recycling. All causes of excitement became alien to young Jacob. Either they were none of his business, or they were silly.

  When he was twelve a visiting aunt complained of Jacob that he had the smug air of having seen everything before. Jacob’s problem was that he was unimpressed by what he could see—his provincial suburban existence, where unusual movements always counted as ‘going too far’, so that the neighbour who lost his licence after a drink-driving conviction was treated perfectly civilly, whereas the one whose unknown griefs drove him to get up in church and shout that God must be mad was shunned. Not coldly shunned, only helplessly. The drunk driver’s failings were not an embarrassment; the other man’s expression of torment was.

  Teenage Jacob was bored, but he was not above it all. He was never sufficiently at ease or firm on his emotional feet for that.

  He did leave as soon as he was able. And at university he found things to admire, like other people’s enthusiasms, especially in the fun first year when none of them minded their debts and responsible adulthood seemed a long way off. By degrees Jacob arrived, an adult, in an already decided world, another occupier among many occupiers and few owners. A world where changes of government that caused various of his university friends to tear their hair out seemed to Jacob not much more than the seasonal differences in the taste of milk depending on the richness of pasture. Matters of governance and regulation were organised reasonably well, as far as he could see. And they might be much worse. Jacob was always able to imagine worse. His gifts were as limited as almost everyone else’s. His strongest distinguishing trait was his lifelong restless disdain. He didn’t have a calling, only a skill set. He was clever, and cool-headed, and prepared to do tough things so long as someone he trusted offered him a good enough reason.

  Jacob’s class and temperament pointed him to the police force. To the watchdogs, who were also hunting dogs and had more in common with the wolves they prevented than the flock they protected. It suited him to be in a line of work where he could reflexively relegate a vast majority of people to the status of dim innocents who needed looking after. He enjoyed the game of being a detective, the twists and turns of this target, that plot. The things that took a toll on others—like constantly seeing the worst of people, or encounter after encounter where the other person was badly frightened—left his temperature unchanged.

  But lately Jacob had undergone a troubling alteration in attitude. Instead of enjoying the smug sense that he knew more than the civilians, Jacob found himself simply wanting the world to change. And then it did. He recalled the very erudite lawyer he regularly had a drink with explaining to him why the coming referendum wasn’t going to devolve into the usual political point-scoring but, instead, produce something extraordinary. ‘And it’s not just Murdoch and immigrants and implied promises about what might be done to save the NHS by the very people dismantling it. It’s not just memories of busy shipyards and grandad’s self-respect. No, it’s an almost mythical yearning, as though, if only we can create the right conditions, a stranger might come out of the mist, thrust a sword into a stone, and say, “Whosoever draws forth this blade . . .”’

  And now here he was, having returned from another world, with a much better understanding of the depth of his ignorance concerning what might be yearned for, and not be mythical.

  Hemms picked up on the tenth ring. When he said hello she said, ‘Is that you, Jacob? This isn’t your number.’

  ‘It’s a prepaid. My phone took a swim and is in a bag of rice. Rosemary—I’ve found Taryn Cornick.’

  ‘You didn’t think to tell me you were looking?’

  ‘I’m telling you now. I’m at the Palfreyman house in Norfolk.’

  She said, ‘Okay. Since we’re coming clean, I know about Palfreyman’s request for a doctor. Is Ms Cornick ill?’

  ‘God, that was quick,’ Jacob said. MI5 wasn’t just keeping Hemms up to date, but up to the minute.

  ‘What is it with you and Taryn Cornick?’ Hemms said.

  Jacob ignored her question. The scope of Hemms’ imaginings was useful to him. Let them be full and mixed. Let them form a sediment, and settle on something obvious, like infatuation. He said, ‘Ms Cornick’s former husband is a man who can summon doctors to make house calls for what’s going to turn out to be nothing more than a UTI.’

  ‘Symptoms?’

  ‘I said a UTI, didn’t
I? Those symptoms.’

  ‘Jacob, you’re not being coy about women’s stuff, are you?’

  Jacob grunted.

  ‘Raymond Price tells me he encouraged you to follow Ms Cornick to France.’

  Jacob had called Price from the platform of London St Pancras to report—needlessly—on Taryn Cornick’s movements. Price said, ‘Your DS tells me you’ve taken some leave. That makes you free to follow Ms Cornick should you wish to.’

  Jacob said, yes, he had taken leave, but not of his senses.

  ‘Please yourself,’ Price said.

  Jacob usually heard ‘Please yourself’ as ‘Piss off’. But Price was asking him to indulge his instincts. It felt like an invitation to play. So Jacob did. He ended his call and stepped from platform to train—in good time, though three minutes after his punctilious prey. His badge got him over any difficulties he might have had boarding without a ticket. He’d never been to Provence. At the worst, he thought, he’d just be kicking around some pretty place and have to buy a few things he already owned, like shirts and jeans and swimming trunks.

  ‘So it’s true?’ Hemms said.

  ‘I followed Price’s suggestion because he’s been generous with information.’

  ‘I don’t like him, Jacob. I feel as if he’s trying to cut you out from the herd.’

  ‘Don’t worry about me.’

  Hemms changed the subject. ‘Did Palfreyman tell his wife about Claude Pujol’s suicide?’

  ‘Yes, and she was naturally upset by the news.’

  ‘And what does she have to say about her disappearance?’

  ‘Nothing yet.’

  ‘Price says his people thought her stalker followed her to France, and got her. But then she was called at the usual evening time, yesterday, from a phone in the Red Lion in Chisenbury. We have a description from the proprietor. A male, fortyish, freckled complexion. He bought a beer. Paid cash. I’d very much like to run that by Taryn Cornick. Myself.’

  ‘Where are you now, Rosemary?’ Jacob said.

  ‘At my desk.’

  He didn’t believe her. ‘Should I not mention it to her, then? Your Chisenbury witness?’

  ‘Suit yourself, Jacob. I know you will.’

  Jacob wrapped up the call, stepped out of the halo of squirrel fur, and went back indoors.

  Taryn was standing by the living-room windows in the lemony dawn light, as motionless as a stone. The main door was open. The scoured concrete ramp that ran from the terrace to the beach was wet, its end invisible in the mist. Shift was out on the ramp, standing, head bent. At his feet was a bird, huge, black, its head in a silver cowl of condensed water vapour. Shift gave a big demonstrative shiver and took several steps back towards the door. He came through it and turned to them. He said, ‘Taryn, can the raven come in?’

  Berger said he couldn’t see why the raven would want to come in. Then they both just stared at Shift.

  The raven struck the glass with its beak. A single, gentle tap.

  Jacob said, ‘I suppose it talks.’

  ‘Yes,’ Shift said. ‘But only ever to the purpose.’

  ‘Do you know what it wants?’ Taryn said.

  The bird was eyeing them all, turning its head one way, then the other.

  ‘No, I don’t.’

  ‘Taryn?’ Jacob said.

  ‘All right. All right.’ Taryn was trembling so badly she had to sit down.

  Shift opened the door and the raven hopped and ambled into the house. It flew up to perch on the back of the white leather sofa and shook its head, shedding drops of water, then settled the wet points of its feathers and looked around.

  ‘I think I’ve seen you before,’ Taryn said, to the raven.

  ‘That was my sister,’ said the raven. Its voice was deep, but without resonance. Dry. The last word of the sentence was slightly curtailed. Its tone was uninflected, but not robotic.

  Shift said, ‘Everyone supposes they’re brothers but any wise male god will have female advisors.’ Then, to the raven, ‘Have you been following Taryn since we first saw her?’

  ‘What?’ said Taryn.

  ‘On and off,’ said the raven.

  Shift turned to the others. He said, with reverence, ‘This is Munin.’

  ‘Naturally,’ said Jacob. He got out his phone, pressed voice record, and slid it across the coffee table nearer the bird.

  Munin swooped on the phone and delivered a volley of sharp pecks with her big strong beak. Its screen shattered. She continued until its light was extinguished.

  Jacob said, ‘Look. I’m fighting for my dignity here.’

  ‘You don’t know what your dignity is,’ the raven said.

  ‘I know it’s doing its job and keeping me from running screaming from the room.’

  ‘When the godly wish to speak to human beings we can’t have them running away from us.’

  Jacob was incensed. ‘So you’re controlling my response?’

  ‘Your own instincts are. The same instincts that guide you to fight or flee a lion make you stand still and listen to a god.’

  ‘You mean, now that the situation has arisen, I’m behaving in line with atavistic conditioning concerning gods?’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘Munin,’ Shift said, ‘stop setting Jacob straight and tell me why you’re here.’

  ‘You, and Taryn Cornick of the Northovers, emerged from your gate and walked to Alnwinton. From there you rode in a car to Monmouth, where you caught a train and then a bus northwest. You got off the bus at Morston. From there you made your way to the coast along a dyke beside the fens.’

  Jacob was impressed. The raven seemed to have followed Taryn’s movements more comprehensively than MI5 were able to.

  ‘Five days before that you turned your gate almost as far southeast as it goes. Do you know that every time you use your glove to move a gate to any extremity it wakes up more?’

  Shift heaved a sigh and ran his hands through his hair, which was tangled and made tearing sounds. ‘Fine. Since you’re following me, I’ll satisfy your curiosity. Demons are entering and crossing the Sidh. They go armed with shotguns loaded with iron.’

  It seemed he’d decided to explain himself. Or perhaps with Munin it was impossible to be slippery and sidelong.

  ‘As far as I can tell they are only passing through the Sidh on their way here. Which is very odd. Up until now they’ve been content to come here only in spirit, to do the usual things, possess people, rap on tables, cover things in slime and shame. Now suddenly they’re trespassing in their bodily forms. I’ve tried to corner one and ask it questions, like, “What the hell is Hell doing?” Bodies I can corner. One I followed to a library in Aix-en-Provence, where it lay in wait for Taryn. Which didn’t make sense because she already had a demon passenger. And so did the librarian she was on her way to meet.’

  The raven set up a storm of flapping without moving from the spot. Jacob’s ruined phone skidded off the table and an Arts and Crafts bowl followed, but Jacob snatched it out of the air before it hit the floor. Munin folded her wings, arched her neck and, ruff raised, made a series of loud noises like a cat trying to cough up a fur ball. She shook her feathers flat and peered at Shift with one eye, then the other. ‘What do you suppose Hell is doing?’

  Shift said nothing.

  ‘Help us out here,’ Berger said.

  ‘Jacob’s interest is earnest. He is a defender of the realm,’ Shift explained to the raven.

  ‘You’re trying to change the subject by explaining everyone else’s relation to matters. You do that,’ Taryn said.

  Munin croaked in pleasure. ‘He’s always done that. An expert in telling others how they fit into the scheme of things.’

  ‘Very well,’ Shift took a deep breath. ‘For a while now I’ve been feeling that those of my people I take time to speak to, like Neve, have begun to treat me as if I’m only living with them on sufferance. I think they’re softening me up. Perhaps they’re planning to compel me to give up my Taken people
at Hell’s next Tithe.’

  ‘Your Taken, or possibly yourself,’ said the raven.

  Shift ignored this. ‘I didn’t take my people for the Tithe, so why should I let them go? Anyway—with the Tithe so near, I have to keep my wits about me. But if there is anything movable in Hell’s position, perhaps I can make some arrangement that will secure my people’s safety for the next hundred years. And maybe the safety of every Taken. I do think it must mean something that Hell is suddenly sending demons across the Sidh.’

  ‘And building server farms in Pakistan,’ Jacob said.

  Shift gave Jacob an appreciative glance. ‘Yes, and that. That is very mysterious.’

  ‘Hugin will know what a server farm is,’ Munin said, making a mental note.

  ‘As for Taryn, I saw she had a passenger and, since exorcisms are dangerous, and often deadly, and since spirits can’t go into the Sidh without a body of their own, and Taryn’s passenger was a spirit, I chose to take Taryn through my gate. Which I swung around to Aix. I have the glove.’ He pulled the gold claws from under his sweatshirt and waved them at the raven.

  ‘Yes, Shift,’ the raven said, drily. ‘It’s only when you’re carrying it that we can find you. You are very obscure in yourself, but the glove is a beacon of magic.’

  ‘Oh yes, I forgot,’ Shift said, not particularly convincing. Jacob had the impression he was telling himself to remember to stop carrying the glove. Shift continued, ‘The demon who shot me could have chased us from Aix to the Sidh, but it chose not to. I was riddled with iron. If it had followed us, it could easily have killed us. I don’t know why it didn’t follow us. They’re not known for their good sense.’

  ‘Did the defender of the realm have a demon too?’

  ‘Jacob just got tangled up with us. I was bleeding and he and Taryn helped me.’

  The raven’s head swivelled. After a time her left eye settled on Taryn. ‘Does Taryn Cornick have any idea how she came to pick up a demon?’

  Taryn gestured for Shift and Jacob to sit. And, as skins formed on the remains in their coffee cups, and the wedge of Brie collapsed and began to exhale ammonia, Taryn told them all how, when she was ten years old, her grandfather’s secretary Jason Battle went mad and tried to burn the library at Princes Gate. How Battle wasn’t himself and seemed to be looking to destroy a Torah—a ‘Torah above the Torah’.