by Paul Crilley
Ranson frowns. He pages through the file Parker gave him, then glares at Armitage. ‘This isn’t over,’ he says, and stalks away to the elevator.
Armitage turns to face everyone else.
‘Right,’ she says. ‘I’m sure you’re all wondering what’s going on. Let’s just say that reports of my demise have been greatly exaggerated, and leave it at that. I’m still me and I’m still your boss.’
The crowd broke into a slightly self-conscious cheer. Armitage’s eyes widen in surprise.
‘What the bloody hell is that? Don’t tell me you’re glad I’m back. Right. First thing you all need to do is look up Stockholm Syndrome, then get back to work. Move!’
The crowd slowly disperses. Armitage watches them go, then turns her attention to me. ‘Anything on the sin-eaters?’ she asks.
‘Nothing in GHOST. Not even a mention.’
Armitage frowns. ‘That’s odd.’
‘That’s what I thought. I’ve asked Eshu to track back through the database and see if there have been any changes or updates.’
‘You think someone’s deleted it?’ She thinks about this, then shakes her head. ‘No. The database is global. How would they get into it?’
‘Hackers? It might be difficult, but it’s certainly possible.’
‘Fine,’ says Armitage. ‘Let me know if he finds anything. And that word? Any translation?’
‘Nothing. I reckon we should pay a visit to Harry Grimes.’
Armitage’s face twists in distaste. ‘Grimes? Don’t like that man. He’s got too many friends. Never trust a person with a large group of friends.’
‘Well . . . sure. But he also has the largest list of contacts in the country. If anyone knows something about sin-eaters, it’ll be him. And if not him, he might know someone who does.’
Armitage chews her lip, then nods. ‘Fine. We’ll have a word with him. Meet me out front in twenty minutes.’
I head back to my desk. The dog is still sleeping. I nudge him with my foot.
‘Heading into Durban. You coming?’
‘Is it hot out?’
I glance at the skylight high above. Blue sky. ‘Looks like it.’
‘Then no. I’m not coming.’
‘Suit yourself,’ I say, and take the elevator back to the accommodation block so I can shower and change.
Durban has many nicknames, but the one that springs to mind as Armitage and I make our way along Grey Street, cooking in the morning sun, is Poison City.
Users huddle in doorways, stand in alleys, swaying like pieces of cloth in a breeze. You know straight away they’re high. There’s an emptiness to their stare, a vacancy of spirit that makes them stand out. Like zombies in a crowd of the living.
The drug of choice used to be Tik, more commonly known as crystal meth, but now it’s Whoonga, a lethal mix of brown heroin, rat poison, and detergents mixed with dagga and tobacco to stretch it out. Twenty bucks a hit, four hits a day, and your life withers away like a slug in a bath of salt.
It’s only eleven in the morning but already the heat is like a physical presence, a weight that rests across my shoulders and back, prickling sweat from every pore despite trying to keep to the shade.
‘How does it . . . you know?’
‘Feel?’
I nod.
‘Like I’m watching myself on a movie screen.’
I frown, not getting it.
‘All my emotions are still here. But it’s like I’m watching them being felt by someone else. Like I’m on the outside looking in. I spoke to Parker and she says that might pass. That revenants are actually the closest you can get to being human without actually, you know, being human.’
‘I am sorry,’ I say softly. I glance at her sidelong.
‘For what?’
‘For doing this . . . without permission.’ I hesitate. ‘But I’m not sorry you’re back.’
She grins at me, the old twinkle in her eye. ‘Not getting sappy on me, are you, London?’
I don’t reply. We pass stalls selling Indian spices. I smell cinnamon, curry, and paprika. Heat waves rise off another stall, the sizzle of cooking samoosa growing louder as we approach. My stomach rumbles, but there’s no way I’m buying anything from one of these stalls. I did it once and ended up flat on my back with food poisoning for three days.
‘Besides,’ she casually says, ‘it’s probably for the best.’
‘How so?’
‘At least now my insides won’t spontaneously shift backwards and forwards in time. Seeing as they’re dead.’
It takes me a moment to hear what she just said. I stop walking. She carries on ahead, hands stuffed in her long coat.
‘What?’
She stops and turns. Nods cheerfully. ‘You know how it is. A lifetime of using shinecraft. Comes to us all in the end.’
I remember all the medical equipment in her room. ‘What was wrong with you?’
‘My internal organs. They were . . . taking holidays along my timeline.’
I think about this, then shake my head. ‘I don’t get it.’
‘At night. I’d wake up feeling like I was having a heart attack. Or my joints would seize up and I couldn’t move. Turns out my organs were swapping places with their . . . other selves. I’d get an eighty-year-old heart in my chest, or my kidney suddenly regressed to a five year old’s. Had a lot of health issues when I was a bairn. Doctors never could figure it out. Now I know.’
‘How long had this being going on?
‘About six months. But it didn’t happen every night, like.’
‘How long . . . You know . . . Until . . . ?’ I trail off.
‘How long did I have left?’
I nod.
‘It was getting worse. Lasting longer. My brain took a trip last time. Had Alzheimer’s for a night. Went wandering around in the garden in my nightie. Then there were the demons. But that was a separate thing.’
‘The . . . ?’
‘Demons. They tried to possess me. Like in The Exorcist? Apparently the build-up of shinecraft in my body over the years attracted them.’
I just stare at her.
‘I had to get a priest in. Looked nothing like Max Von Sydow, though. Was a bit disappointed in that.’
‘Did he succeed?’
‘No. Got torn apart. Wasn’t strong enough. There were bits of him everywhere. After that, I just tried to handle it on my own.’
‘Why didn’t you say?’
‘What for? It comes to us all in the end. Nothing you could have done.’
She starts walking again.
‘And . . . now?’
‘Seems to be all gone. Demons and time-hopping body organs.’
‘So . . . I actually saved your life?’
She gives me one of her looks. ‘Don’t push it, lad.’
‘Sorry.’
We pass a second-hand shop with a rack of clothes displayed on the sidewalk. A shop assistant sits in a white plastic chair, one hand gripping the rack in case someone decides to make off with it.
‘That’s what this job does to you,’ say Armitage.
I glance at her questioningly.
‘It was brought on by . . . you know. What we do. Magic.’
‘You’re sure?’
She nods. ‘Jaeger said so.’
I mentioned before that using shinecraft is not conducive to a long life? That’s the kind of thing we’ve all got to look forward to.
About twenty feet farther on we turn into a narrow alley between a barber shop selling pay-as-you-go phones and a boarded-up pawn shop.
We stop walking.
There’s a large van parked next to a garage door up ahead. The van is rocking violently, bouncing back and forth as if the Hulk and She Hulk are having some private happy time.
The van doors slam open. Something huge grabs the sides of the vehicle and pulls itself out, crushing the metal beneath its hands. The creature straightens up and stretches as two armed figures appear out of the building
to the left.
The huge creature casually backhands them, sending them sailing over the van to slap painfully onto the pitted asphalt beyond.
‘Hey,’ I say. ‘That’s Buno.’
Buno is a Bungisngis – a type of cyclops from the East Indies. This particular cyclops is a repeat offender, in and out of our Division multiple times over the years.
The massive creature blinks its bloodshot eye and focuses on us.
‘Hey there, Buno,’ I say. ‘You were supposed to be in court last week. What happened?’
Buno starts to giggle, high-pitched and unpleasant, then lumbers towards us. His huge mouth is filled with serrated shark teeth and he has two lethal tusks to either side of his upper lip.
Shit. I fumble for my wand. Armitage steps to the side, watching Buno approach with interest.
‘Hurry up, Potter,’ says Armitage encouragingly.
I frown, then clear my mind and summon up the wind. There’s not much around, though. No moisture in the air at all. So I end up sucking the surrounding air in and using it as a battering ram, throwing it into Buno. The force lifts him off his feet and slams him against the alley wall, holding him there.
He doesn’t stop giggling once.
The door at the end of the alley slams open and Harry Grimes runs out with a long pole clutched in his hands. There’s a metal collar on the end of the pole. Grimes pushes it towards Buno and it snaps around his neck. The cyclops immediately stops giggling, hanging slack against the wall.
‘He controlled?’ I ask.
‘Yeah.’
I nod and step away, flicking the wand to cancel the summoning. Grimes uses the pole to drag Buno along the alley. We follow after as he guides the cyclops towards the garage.
Harry Grimes. Bail-bondsman to the orisha. He’s a bit of a double-edged sword, is our Harry. See, not all orisha are gods and angels. Most of them are just Tier 1s and 2s. Regular supernaturals, the equivalent of petty criminals, pimps and users stealing for their next fix. And someone has to put up the money to cover their bail (or the orisha equivalent of money. Sometimes gold, sometimes souls, sometimes favours. It can be anything, depending on the judge).
Grimes is the person who puts up the bond, for a hefty fee, of course. In the process he’s earned a reputation as being a tough son of a bitch with knowledge of and contacts within the orisha world that are second to none.
The garage door slides up with a metallic rattle and he pulls Buno inside. We follow him into a large empty room then into a short hallway. There’s an old rusted bicycle with no wheels sitting on the floor. A sun-bleached photograph of a family on holiday hangs on the wall.
We enter his reception area. It’s so generic as to be almost invisible. Ancient aluminium chairs, a table with ten-year old magazines, and a wilted fern. His receptionist, Lydia, sits behind a desk covered with bulging folders. She’s holding a phone in the crook of her neck while she types on one of those old clickety-clackety keyboards. Her monitor is CRT, no fancy LCD screens for Harry Grimes. He’s a known cheapskate.
Grimes pushes Buno into one of the chairs. The metal legs creak then give with a groan, depositing Buno butt-first onto the floor.
‘Oh, for fuck— you know what? Stay there. OK?’
‘OK,’ says Buno.
The fact that Buno is being so obedient might impress Joe Average, but the truth is we gave Grimes the method for manufacturing these collars. He has a freelance conjurer on his payroll, and when he has to put up the bond for an orisha, the conjurer draws out some of the client’s spirit and attaches it to the collar. The client also has to enter into a binding magical spell that acts as a contract, giving command of themselves over to Grimes when the collar is in place.
’Course, none of them think he’ll get a chance to use it on them. Those that run off before their court dates think they’ll get the hell out of Dodge before Grimes even knows they’re gone. But he hasn’t lost a single orisha yet. Those that run are always caught, usually by freelance bounty hunters. I’ve taken on a few jobs myself when money was tight.
‘Yeah, I’m not sure about that, honey,’ says Lydia into the phone. ‘You say your bail has been set as “the dreams of the Djinn Al’aka as he sits trapped for a millennium in his bottle”? What’s that? Two millennia? Let me guess. The judge was that Victorian ghost? Mr Ravenhill? Yeah, thought so. Look, I’ll talk to Harry, see what he says, OK?’
She hangs up and looks at Harry. He shrugs. ‘Give me a few hours to call around.’ He glances at us. ‘You want tea? Coffee?’
I shake my head. Armitage does likewise and we follow him through a door behind Lydia’s desk.
The three of us can barely fit into the room. It’s more like a walk-in closet than an office. There are no windows, so the heat is stifling. Two desk fans placed in opposite corners of the room battle to push the turgid air around.
I look around for a place to sit. No chance. Filing cabinets are lined up around the walls and an old chipboard desk takes up the rest of the space. There are files everywhere: piled up to either side of his chair, on his desk, on top of the cabinets.
‘Christ, how can you work in here?’
Grimes looks around as if seeing his surroundings for the first time. He shrugs and sits down, reaching under his desk for a bottle of water. He gulps some of it down.
‘So,’ he says after he’s drained half the bottle. ‘Hot enough for you?’
Armitage smiles sweetly at him. ‘You know, I actually arrested someone who asked me that once.’
‘Did you now? And I take it you’re Armitage? His long-suffering boss?’
‘That’s right.’
‘Great. Now we all know each other. What can I do for you? You looking for more work?’
‘Uh . . . no.’ I throw a sideways glance at Armitage. The Division has a bit of a strict policy on moonlighting. ‘We were hoping you could tell us a bit about a class of orisha.’
‘Sin-eaters,’ says Armitage.
‘Sin-eaters?’
‘Yeah. You know the stories. They go to the house of the deceased—’
‘I know the stories,’ he says. ‘But that’s all they are.’
‘You mean you’ve never dealt with one?’
‘Never.’
‘But . . . somebody has to know something,’ says Armitage.
‘Well, sure. Somebody might. But not me.’
Shit. Another dead end.
‘Actually . . .’ says Grimes.
‘What?’
‘How do you feel about the fae?’
‘I find them very annoying, smug, and obtuse. Why?’
‘Because there’s one – a lore-collector. It’s a holy position among the fae. Her official title is the Lord High Lore-Keeper and Guardian of the Ancient Rites and Hidden Histories of Mankind.’
Armitage snorts. ‘Jumped up and full of themselves, the lot of them. What does everyone else call her?’
‘Gran.’
‘Seriously?’
‘Seriously.’
‘Where is she?’ I ask.
‘The Sleeping Market.’
‘That’s started up again?’ I say in surprise. ‘Where?’
‘Warwick Junction. She’s there every night on Muti Bridge. Least, until they move on. But I reckon that will only be in the autumn. They like the sun too much.’
‘Thanks.’
‘No problem. You’ll have to get there before the normal markets close for the day, though. No way in once the gates are locked down.’
We leave Grimes’ offices and head back along Grey Street. I skirt around a shop owner pushing plastic crates of bread into his store, shaking my head at a dude trying to sell me an old Japanese knock-off cell phone.
My phone rings. Parker.
‘What’s up?’
‘There’s been another murder.’
I stop walking. ‘A sin-eater?’
‘Could be. Same MO.’
‘Where is it?’
‘The Oyster Box hotel. Ou
t in Umhlanga. Victim’s name is Caitlyn Long.’
‘Isn’t the Oyster Box that five star place? Where all the Hollywood big shots stay when they come here?’
‘The very same. As you can imagine, they’re very keen to keep this as quiet as possible.’
I tell Armitage and we climb into her car.
‘Oyster Box, eh?’ she says, glancing over her shoulder, then pulling out into traffic. ‘I think this is going to be a long investigation. They might have to put us up for the night.’
‘Yeah,’ I say. ‘Good luck with that. I’m not a hundred per cent confident they’ll even let us in the front door.’
Immaculately scrubbed cobbles lead to an open air foyer outside the hotel. Huge ferns planted in intricately painted pots line the walls. Palm trees flank the building, flags on the roof fluttering in the warm breeze.
The glass doors are watched over by a tall black man wearing a glaringly white colonial uniform. He looks nervous, ill at ease.
He glances at Armitage in her old coat and scuffed shoes and steps forward to block our way. We show him our IDs before he gets a chance to ask us to leave.
‘Where’s the manager?’ Armitage asks.
He doesn’t get a chance to respond. A short guy in a charcoal suit walk-runs towards Armitage and me. He peers around me, checking the parking lot. I follow his gaze.
‘Don’t worry,’ says Armitage. ‘No big nasty police cars to scare the rich guests.’
He bows slightly, managing to combine the bow with a cringe. ‘Ha-hah. Yes. No. Of course. No offence. Sorry.’ He straightens up and tries to smooth his suit. ‘Bit of a rough morning, as I’m sure you can imagine. Um . . . the name’s Mason.’
I nod. ‘Where’s the body?’
He winces at the word. ‘If you’ll just follow me. I’ll ah . . . take you to the unfortunate . . . guest. She’s in the presidential suite.’
He stands aside and gestures for us to enter. We walk through the doors, onto brown tiles. Cool air wafts over us, but from hidden air-conditioning vents, not the slowly circling ceiling fans. Ferns and greenery lurk in alcoves, concealed lighting illuminates oil paintings.
Mason takes us past the reception area, heading straight for an elevator. Two uniformed SAPS officers are standing discreetly in the shadows, almost swallowed up by the foliage of the pot plants. Armitage and I flash our IDs at them and the manager swipes a card over a sensor. The elevator doors open immediately and we step inside. The doors close and I feel a lurch as we get moving. I check out the wall. No buttons.
