by Tim Lees
From close up, it was nothing: just an old stone wall set with a single door. But from across the street, you saw what stood above: the tower, the peaked roof, the saints looking down like guardsmen from their niches in the masonry. It was a church, half swallowed by the houses all around it. The door was plain but for a metal crucifix at eye level, and an old black ring handle, which I turned. It opened easily. I stepped inside.
The light was faint and smoky. Candles flickered as I shut the door. The traffic noises died. The air smelled sweet with wood polish and incense. Somebody was sitting in the third row from the front, head down—though not, I thought, in prayer. Dayling.
I moved along the center aisle till I could see him clearly. He had the flask on the floor between his feet and he was leaning over it, like a cold sufferer inhaling vapors. The clips on the flask were up, the plug partway unscrewed, but the core still hidden. Something was crusted on the rim. When I saw that, I realized what he’d hit the kid with.
Dayling himself was simply staring—not at the flask, but at something just above the pew in front of him. I couldn’t make out what. There seemed to be nothing there. I took a few steps closer and said, “Hello, Andrew.”
He swung to face me, and I froze where I stood.
It was a glimpse—it can’t have lasted much more than a second—and yet that transformation, that twisting and distortion of the flesh—I could never afterwards forget it.
He wasn’t human. He wasn’t Dayling anymore. His forehead slumped back, and the eyes were sharp, bright flames, like fireworks buried under heavy brows. His nose was blunt and spread across his face, his black lips pulled back in a snarl, and there was heat in him, a heat that I could feel over a yard away.
It was an ancient face, one I doubted had been seen in two or three millennia, but in that moment I had no doubt what I was looking at: the face of the great and fearsome god, the spirit of the long-lost city of Assur.
Chapter 17
The Sanctuary
I waited. My nerves were tingling. He put his head down, and when he lifted it again he looked normal, though I didn’t trust that. Once again he stared ahead, as when I’d first walked in.
The temperature went down. The air cooled. I said, “I’m going to close the flask now, Andy? All right?”
A little spasm twitched across his features. I went closer, dropping on one knee beside him. I was vulnerable then, I knew, and yet he didn’t try to stop me. I took the flask from between his feet, then quickly straightened up and stepped back. I hurriedly rescrewed the plug and dropped the clips. I keyed in the check codes. Numbers flashed, then stopped. The thing was full.
I felt my stomach unclench, and my shoulders drop.
There were hairs caught on the edge of the flask, stuck in a scab of dried blood.
I said, “What’s going on, then?”
His eyes moved. That was all.
I set the flask down on the floor, away from him.
I said, “It’s not just money, is it?”
He lowered his head. He looked tired, now— horribly, almost unbearably tired.
“You wouldn’t do it just for money, would you? There’s something else here, right?”
I might have been a thousand miles away. I couldn’t even tell if he was hearing me.
“There’s this kid, lying in your hotel room. You know about that? He’s been pretty badly cut. Was that you, Andrew? Did you do that?”
He didn’t look up, but he said, “Is he all right?”
“No. He’s bleeding like a stuck pig. We called an ambulance.”
I waited for an answer, but it didn’t come.
“Did you do that? Was that you, Andrew? Andy?”
“I don’t . . .” And now he turned to me. It was him—nothing else now, nothing weird or preternatural. He shivered. His face contorted and I realized he was trying to smile; trying to be normal. “I don’t think so. No. Only . . . it might have been. I don’t know.”
“You mean you don’t remember?”
His hands came up. He frowned. “I remember it . . . happening. I just don’t know if it was me.”
“How did you leave the hotel?”
“Well. Suppose I just—walked out the door. That’s the usual thing. Hm?”
“We had people outside, front and back. They never saw you leave. So, if that’s what you did . . . neat trick.”
“Hm.” And then he did smile, gave a little nod. “Suppose it was, rather.”
“Tell me.”
“But Chris. You ought to know. You always know, don’t you?”
“Not this time, mate.”
The smile was still there, just a little smug now, just a little bit too smart for its own good.
“Well, I’m surprised. I’m so surprised.”
“Gloat after, if you want. You got me, OK? I’m baffled. Flummoxed. Utterly confused. That what you want?”
“But you always know. Always, always. Don’t you?”
“Andrew. Tell me.”
He sucked a breath. He said, “I let the god out. Not much.” He held up thumb and forefinger. “A tiny, tiny piece of him. Enough.”
“Andrew—”
“They fold you. That’s what they do. It hurts a bit but then they twist you up, right out of space and time and all this . . . shitty stuff. The four dimensions. Up at an angle. See?” His hands began to shake, a sudden agitation, like a seizure, but he stilled himself, and when he spoke again his voice was quieter. “It’s calm there. You look down—except it’s not down. Everything’s still going on, only it’s like you’re looking down. There’s no progression there, you see. No—no one thing after another. Cause and effect. Doesn’t exist. Like your whole life’s just a deck of cards, every moment, and you look at any card, and you can shuffle them, move them around, they don’t follow one another anymore, the way we think they do. It’s all—” He threw his hands up. “You look down at your life, and it’s like every moment, going on forever. Infinite. Boxes within boxes, all opening at once. All different, all the same.”
His eyes were wide now, although I wasn’t sure that we were seeing the same things.
“They push you up, above it all. They push you up, and then you drop back down . . .”
“OK.”
“This is the trick, see, Chris. This is the trick. I—oh, it’s a good one, it’s a good one. I left before I even got there. Now tell me I’m clever. Go on. Tell me. Like you used to in the old days. It’d mean a lot, coming from you.”
His forehead wrinkled.
“Yeah, for old times’ sake. I know.”
“Old times!” He clapped his hands. “Oh yes. Old, old, olden times . . .”
“Why hurt the boy?”
“Because I needed to.”
“That’s not like you.”
“Isn’t it? What’s like me, then? Since you obviously know. What’s like me?”
I put my head back. Light from a streetlamp poured in through the colored glass, cast a medallion of pink and yellow on the far wall.
I said, “We need to think what’s going to happen to you now.” I didn’t rise to his taunts. I spoke calmly, rationally. “If you’re honest with me, maybe I can help. I’d like to. If you’ll let me. But at this point . . . well. Not looking good, is it?”
He grunted what might have been assent.
“So let’s work something out. You help me understand what happened, I’ll do what I can on my end, OK? I’ll do what I can. By the way,” I said, “if you’ve still got the blade on you, could be a good plan to get rid of it.”
He gave a slight nod, reached into his pocket and produced a steak knife. I suppose he’d got it from the hotel kitchen. The blade and handle were both streaked with blood. There was blood on his fingers. And his clothes. I shuffled my shirtsleeve down over m
y hand and took the blade by the tip, then dropped it in my coat pocket. I hoped the dry cleaner would be good with stains.
“Smart,” said Dayling. “Fingerprints. DNA. They’re going to throw the book at me, aren’t they?”
“Probably.” My phone buzzed. I said, “Mind if I . . . ?” and he made a vague, go-ahead gesture.
It was Justine. I told her where I was and what I was doing.
“We have the police,” she said.
“Yeah. We’re not going to keep them out of it, are we?”
It was all up now with Dayling, at least for the moment. Meanwhile, the Paris branch would call whoever they knew in the local cops, and Seddon would be calling up the Foreign Office, and favors would be swapped and everyone would be polite and gentlemanly and the whole thing would become an utter mess. I said, “Stall them for a while, can you?” and hit End Call. Dayling seemed a little more relaxed; in fact, he looked more dazed than dangerous.
I sat down near him on the bench. Not too near, just in case.
“Talk to me,” I said. “Just help me understand.”
He rallied at this; gave me a comradely smile, as if I’d just bought in a new round. He was like the Dayling I’d once known again, but frazzled, weary, worn out like an old suit. He put his soiled hands between his knees as if to hide them.
“I’ve had a rotten life, you know. You didn’t know that, did you, Chris?”
I shook my head.
“Just— bloody awful. Childhood. When I think about it—”
“You never said.”
“Well, if you don’t talk about it, you think maybe it’ll go away. Very English, really. Americans’d be in therapy. But we’re—oh, like that sign you see around. Keep calm and carry on. You know?”
“I know.”
“Still. Doesn’t always work like that. Forget things for a while, maybe—almost think you’re normal for a while. But they never really go away.”
I nodded. He mimicked me, a quick nod of the head.
“All it takes,” he said, “a minute or two, just here and there. And that’s it—whole life ruined. Doesn’t seem fair, really, does it?”
“No. No, it doesn’t.”
“Whole life. Wrecked.”
“Can you,” I said, “can you tell me what we’re talking about here? Specifically?”
But he was disingenuous. “Childhood, aren’t we? Just childhood.”
“And something else, I think.”
“People get so soppy over it. I’ve never understood that. Truth is, childhood stinks. You’re small, no one listens to you, anybody can do anything they want, and you can’t stop them.” His voice was small and empty. “Stinks. Stank. I dunno . . .”
“I saw some scars on your arms. Way back, years ago. They weren’t obvious, but . . .” It was like trying to sneak up on a nervous animal. I said, “Was it to do with that?”
“You ask a lot of fucking questions, you do.”
“I want to understand.”
“I want to understand. That, you’ll never do.”
“Was it some kind of child abuse? Is that what we’re talking about?”
“Oh my God. Quick, aren’t you?” He levelled a finger at me. “Smart boy,” he sneered.
“That’s . . . well. That’s awful.” We’d only a few more minutes left now. I was silent for a moment. Then, as people do, I suppose, I tried to offer him some hope.
It was probably the stupidest thing that I could have done.
I said, however dreadful it had been, he wasn’t alone. There were others who had suffered the same way. They got help. They got counseling, support groups. They got—
“They got over it,” he singsonged, and for a moment there was real rage there—nothing weird or unnatural, just sheer, human rage.
He waved me off.
“Forget it. Forget it, will you? It’s just nonsense anyway. Just wittering on, that’s all.”
I looked back at the door. The cops would be near now.
“Tell me something.”
He grunted.
“There’s still a couple more minutes. Tell me what you planned to do. Sell the flask? Was that it?”
“That was . . . certainly an option. I’d had an offer.”
“And what? Money wasn’t good enough?”
“It was very good.”
“So . . . ?”
“I couldn’t do it, in the end. I had it in my hands and I just . . . couldn’t part with it. Funny, hey? And I got away. Got clean away. But then, I sort of stuck. I wasn’t going to sell it, but I’d nowhere else to go. So I’ve been sitting here.” He gave an awkward laugh. “You run and run, and then you just . . . run out. You’re at the end of it. You can’t go anywhere.”
“Don’t think I understand that.”
“No. No, well.” He said, “I told you that I used to go to church.”
“Yeah.”
“I’d hide there. Just like this. Where nobody could find me.”
“A sanctuary.”
“That’s it. Yes. Sanctuary.”
“You hurt that boy.”
“I had to. I thought—oh, silly, I suppose. I thought that—that—” He jerked his chin towards the flask—”I thought it would change everything. Like they tell you: in Jesus Christ I am a new creation. But it’s not like that. It’s not Jesus. All the gods, they want something. They need something back, but we’ve forgotten that. We think we can just use them, but they need things in return. They need sacrifices. They need pain.”
I stood up, put the flask into my backpack. Then I sat with him again.
“You’re telling me you . . . what? Sacrificed the boy. That it?”
“He was just a guide. To take me to the buyer. But by the time he got there—well, we’d been talking, me and the god. Not in words. But I could feel him, I could hear what he was saying.
“I thought, maybe it’d work, if I did it to myself, but I couldn’t. So I did it to him, instead.”
“And the god just . . . sneaked you out?”
“Oh, better than that. Much better.”
I heard a door open behind me. Light touched the altar.
“What then?”
“He made it so I was never there at all. Good trick, eh? Good trick.”
Justine stepped forward. The police were with her.
I stood up slowly. I put my hand out for Dayling. “Hey,” I whispered. “Time to go.” And I pulled him to his feet.
Chapter 18
A Black Mercedes
I could feel him shaking. I hooked my hand under his arm and I could feel the spasms racing through him, wave after wave, like a fever. He didn’t try to stop or hold back. He was passive, almost limp. The cops held off till we got three or four steps from the church, just far enough to give them room. And then they jumped us.
I lost my balance, toppled backwards, and smacked against the wall. Dayling they dropped. There must have been a dozen of them, holding his arms, his legs, his head. They got his hands behind his back and cuffed him. No one spoke. No one shouted or gave orders. Somehow it was worse for that. They dragged him to his feet, raised him bodily just like a slab of meat, and threw him in the van. I said, “No—wait—there’s no need—” Then I remembered what the guy on Dayling’s floor looked like, and realized they weren’t taking any chances.
A black Mercedes stood across the street. Two men got out, leaning on the side of the car, watching us. From time to time, one of them would pass a comment to the other, but there seemed to be no urgency, no sign they planned to get involved. The police ignored them. I wasn’t so lucky.
“M’sieur.”
Someone tugged at my sleeve. The cops wanted a statement. Then they wanted my backpack, which I wouldn’t give them. This started a long verbal tussle, i
n which Justine, to her credit, took a very firm stance. She addressed them like a bunch of naughty little boys. The backpack, she announced, was Registry property, protected under international license. It could not be touched. Some phone calls were made, and a lot of angry Gallic gestures followed. They say Parisians are rude, but they’re no worse than Londoners. It’s just what happens in a big city: nobody has any time for you, and cops have least of all.
Seddon phoned. “The Americans,” he said, “are kicking up a stink.”
“The Americans are parked across the street,” I said, “and they’re not kicking up a stink at all. I wish they were.”
“You’ve got the flask?”
“If I can stop the local gendarmes taking it away from me, then yes.”
“They should have been told better now. Let me try again . . .”
But they hadn’t been told better. I hung up on Seddon. Justine said, “I think you must go with them. I will do the best I can.”
“You’ve got a supper date.”
“Unhappily, m’sieur, I also have a job.”
I wasn’t moving, though. Or not just yet. I talked to them in English, which no one seemed to understand. Then one of them decided it was time for action. He was young and clearly fancied himself. He moved in, snatched the backpack off my shoulders, but I grabbed it, and then the two of us were nose-to-nose, tugging the pack this way and that just like a pair of kids in the school playground. It was ridiculous. Unfortunately, it was the kind of ridiculous that usually ends with beatings, bruises and a charge of resisting arrest. His mates stood around, watching, obviously amused. I was looking right into his face. I could see the anger there, the way his jaw thrust forwards. I wondered if he’d even started shaving yet.
Things were starting to get nasty—he’d made a botched attempt to knee me in the balls—when I heard crackling from the cop car radio. The driver gave a shout, and just like that, the whole business was over. The young cop dropped the pack. No explanation, no final word. He went back to the car. The rest of them began to stir, as if released from a spell, and amble away. That was it. Like somebody had pulled the plug and we were done.
