The Devil's Detective

by Simon Kurt Unsworth

  This book is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents either are the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, events, or locales is entirely coincidental.

  Copyright © 2015 by Simon Kurt Unsworth

  All rights reserved. Published in the United States by Doubleday, a division of Random House LLC, New York, and distributed in Canada by Random House of Canada Limited, Toronto, Penguin Random House companies.

  www.doubleday.com

  DOUBLEDAY and the portrayal of an anchor with a dolphin are registered trademarks of Random House LLC.

  Jacket design by Michael J. Windsor

  Jacket illustrations © Shutterstock: pipes: Opka; flowers: Loke Yek Mang; flames: Clipart deSIGN; feather: echo3005

  Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

  Unsworth, Simon Kurt.

  The devil’s detective : a novel / Simon Kurt Unsworth. — First edition

  pages cm

  ISBN 978-0-385-53934-0 (hardcover) —

  ISBN 978-0-385-53935-7 (eBook)

  1. Private investigators—Fiction. I. Title.

  PR6121.N795D48 2015

  823′.92—dc23

  2014012828

  v3.1

  To Rosie, the owner of my heart now and forever, who gave this novel its title and who holds my hand as we walk through the world and makes every day a thing of joy and wonder.

  To Ben, my boy of boys, just because I love him.

  To Mily, stepdaughter the elder, my diving partner and all-round cool girl.

  To Lottie, stepdaughter the younger, who lives in Lottie La-La-Land and who sometimes lets us visit her there.

  The four of you are the corners of my universe, the dizzying light above me and the great spaces to the side of me and steadying floor below me, and this book is yours if you want it, with all my love.

  Contents

  Cover

  Title Page

  Copyright

  Dedication

  Part One: Information

  Prologue

  Chapter 1

  Chapter 2

  Chapter 3

  Chapter 4

  Chapter 5

  Chapter 6

  Chapter 7

  Chapter 8

  Chapter 9

  Chapter 10

  Chapter 11

  Chapter 12

  Chapter 13

  Chapter 14

  Part Two: Trails

  Chapter 15

  Chapter 16

  Chapter 17

  Chapter 18

  Chapter 19

  Chapter 20

  Chapter 21

  Chapter 22

  Part Three: Elevations

  Chapter 23

  Chapter 24

  Chapter 25

  Chapter 26

  Chapter 27

  Chapter 28

  Chapter 29

  Chapter 30

  Chapter 31

  Chapter 32

  Chapter 33

  Chapter 34

  Epilogue

  Acknowledgments

  About the Author

  PART ONE

  INFORMATION

  PROLOGUE

  From his vantage point, here up high, the lights were scattered out below Fool in an uneven swathe. They lay in tangled clusters, forming a map of the city and its outlying geographies; most were gathered around the Houska, pale firefly glimmers emerging from its bars and clubs and brothels. The smaller rashes were farther out, the estates where the heavier industries worked through the night, the walled glints of Crow Heights, the various ghettos and fiefdoms, flotsam circling that central brightness. The tiniest and palest shimmer of lights, farthest out from the center of the city, was Eve’s Harbor, where most of the working humans lived. As he watched, new lights came into being and others vanished, shifting the bellies of the clusters but never their overall shape. It was like watching the respiration of some enormous creature, he thought, as life and death pulsed through each area. Beyond them all the Flame Garden glowed, dirty and guttering, the color of burning, diseased wood.

  To Fool’s back, the vast stone wall that separated the city from what was outside was cold, its chill breath wafting around his shoulders and head. At the edge of his hearing, he could just make out the wails of the things that drifted and spun on its far side, lost and hoarse. He turned, shivering, and pulled his coat tighter, hitching the weapon on his hip so that it didn’t dig into him.

  The cold coming off the stone smelled clean and wet, the only place Fool knew that did. At times like this, when the air shifted and brought with it heat from the Flame Garden, he was able to stand facing the stone so that his front was cold and his rear warm, and it was like being in two places at once. Escort duty was boring, but at least it brought him out here, where Hell became nothing but an array of light and dark that he could choose to turn his back on, if only for a few hours.

  Fool turned again; if he stood still too long his feet began to ache. The ground on the Mount was hard and rough, and sharp edges dug through the soles of his boots and into his feet like teeth. Time was, a constant stream of sinners had walked this road and back, barefoot and bloody, but those days were long gone. He stepped a few yards back along the path, but went no farther. Partly it was duty; he had no idea when the delegates were expected and couldn’t risk not being there for their arrival, but also it was caution. Out here at the edges, even a few feet from the wall, things lived that were wild even by the city’s troubled standards. The gate itself and the area around it were safe, but away from the pale blue light that came from the tunnel, the shadows had claws and appetites.

  Even now, Fool was being watched.

  It was not simple instinct that told him this; twice, patches in the darkness had thickened, shifted, moved around him as he waited, and once a voice had called out “Man” in an elongated whisper that sounded as though the speaker’s mouth was too full to form the sound correctly. Too full of what, Fool didn’t like to think about. He turned again, thinking humorlessly, Little spinning Fool, and saw something moving in the tunnel.

  How long the tunnel was, or what was at its end, Fool did not know. He was forbidden to enter, as was everyone except the delegates and the successful Sorrowful (who by that point were no longer the Sorrowful, Fool supposed, but more likely the Gleeful or the Joyous). It was long, though, he knew that, its illuminated length stretching as far as he could make out into the rock in a wide, arched corridor. There were no lamps in it that he could see, but it was bathed in light nonetheless, a cold gleam that seemed to come from the walls themselves and that cast no shadows. He went to the entrance, knowing that it would be some time yet before the delegates arrived but also knowing that this was the point of it, this was the Duty. He had to be there, honor guard and escort, from the moment they emerged from the tunnel, standing as an obedient servant, faithful as a dog. Little dog, he thought, little Fool dog. Looking up, he watched the clouds. Even at night they glowed, the gleaming whiteblue of promise and hope. They were never still, the clouds, scudding and swirling, occasionally breaking to allow him glimpses of the other city beyond them.

  The shapes in the tunnel approached slowly, coalescing from the light as they came toward him. He watched them emerge, forming, imagining that cold blue light making itself into perfect, flawless, hard flesh, and flexed his toes in his thin boots. He was cold, the air settling into the folds of his clothes, puckering his skin and raising hairs across it. Fool waited, and watched, and made out details.

  Four of them, as ever, one in front carving the air like the prow of a boat, and the others behind. One of the following, the one at the rear, was framed by arced
patches of brightness that reached high above its head, moving, flexing wide to fill the tunnel. He sighed; they were almost here, their skin shining, bright and flawless. He had time for one last look up at the clouds, breaking again to reveal the city beyond and its white walls and myriad windows, showing the pillared glories of Heaven.

  At the edges of his vision, lower than Heaven, he saw the frayed and dirty light of Hell, and then the angels reached the end of the tunnel and were with him.

  The first looked older than Fool, its skin lined with perfect wrinkles that folded up into themselves as it smiled at him and said, “Hello. You are our escort, I take it? I am Adam.” Adam was shorter than Fool and bearded, and his eyes were a startling, brilliant blue, like the air around the spires of distant Heaven. As he emerged from the tunnel’s mouth, he opened his arms widely as though to hug Fool and his black robe swung around him in a way that reminded Fool of flowing water. His skin was so pale it was almost translucent, unmarked by the traceries of veins or the fleck of hair or pore. Fool stepped aside, looking down; looking at Adam was like trying to stare at a candle flame without blinking, but even the ground glinted as though reflecting Adam’s light. It made his eyes ache.

  “Welcome to Hell, sir,” he said, feeling foolish. No matter how often he carried out escort duty, he never got used to the feelings of clumsiness and gracelessness that being next to these creatures raised in him. They were so beautiful, so graceful, a note of elegance in Hell’s lumpen flesh, and he never knew how to act, despite his official status, or what to say. Were these things even male? Was “sir” correct, or was there some other form of address he should know? He felt clumsy and uncoordinated in front of the angel, stolid and slow and heavy.

  “Welcome?” asked Adam lightly. “No. There is no welcome here, I would hope, but only the opposite, the knowledge of pain and suffering and the distant chance of redemption.”

  “Perhaps it means to insult us,” said a second voice, and one of the figures behind Adam stepped forward, came out from the blue and into the darkness, bringing with it a light that didn’t so much gleam as dazzle, as though it were lit from within by an inferno. Glancing up, Fool could make out little through the light, except that it was naked and that great arcs hung behind it in the air, shifting and flexing. Wings, thought Fool, looking back down to where the dirt was awash with reflected light. Angel’s wings.

  “Welcoming the Lord’s emissaries to Hell hardly seems appropriate, does it? It should be prostrate before us, begging our mercy and deliverance, praying that we allow God’s mercy to burn it away to nothing, but instead it stands and extends welcome as if we were common visitors. No wonder it remains damned.”

  “Hush, Balthazar,” said Adam softly. “He means no offense.”

  Balthazar, noted Fool. The arm and guard to Adam’s brain and command; the other two would be mere archive and scribe, and would not be introduced. He sometimes wondered if they even had names, if they were not things defined solely by their roles and without personality.

  “Perhaps it does not understand respect, or who it is and who we are,” said Balthazar. His glow had faded, dropping and thickening so that now it was almost red, and Fool risked looking at him. He was taller than Adam and younger (No, he told himself, not younger but appearing younger. They have no age except that which they choose to show, wasn’t that what Elderflower had said once?), and now there was something in his hand, held up, wavering in front of Fool. He thought at first that it was a sword, aflame, but it was not; it was simply a column of fire that danced and writhed around itself and threw its furnace gleam across his face.

  “Balthazar,” said Adam, his voice still soft. “Do not find battles where none exist, my friend. He is Hell’s chosen representative and meant no offense, I am sure. Did you?”

  “No,” said Fool, looking into Balthazar’s beardless, handsome face. The angel was smiling, revealing teeth like polished marble. The fire wavered in front of Fool’s eyes for a moment longer and then was gone, not lowered but disappeared. Balthazar clasped one hand in the other in front of his flat stomach and stepped back, his wings flapping slowly in the air above him, alabaster-white and silent. He nodded, although whether to himself, to Adam, or to Fool, Fool couldn’t be sure.

  Fool turned and began to walk back down the path, glancing over his shoulder to make sure the angels were following. Adam was close to him, smiling, and his head bobbed slightly when he saw Fool looking at him. Balthazar came after and then the other two. They were smaller, their shoulders folded forward and their heads down so that their faces were invisible. Balthazar still held his wings aloft, angled forward so that they looked like scythe blades now, sickles against Hell’s nighttime sky. As they walked, Adam’s and Balthazar’s light pressed the darkness back from the path, revealing thin, twisting plants and scrubby earth and something that capered just beyond the edge of Fool’s vision. It followed them all the way down to the carriage, making slopping noises and lip-smacking sounds and, once, calling, “Man! Man and friends! Nice friends” in that too-full voice, stretching the last word out as though it were tasting it, sucking something sweet. At the sound of it, Adam cast his gaze into the darkness and said, “Be quiet, creature.”

  “Brave man, brave friends,” said the creature.

  “Be silent,” said Adam, his voice not changing, “and bite your tongue.” He glowed briefly, the blue flash revealing something large in the scrub that wheeled around and darted away, and they heard nothing more from it.

  “Is this how we are to travel? Is this what they send for Heaven’s delegation?” asked Balthazar when they reached the bottom of the slope. They were standing by the carriage, Balthazar in front of the rear door, blocking it, and Adam watching him. Fool was standing between the two angels, the scribe and archive at his side, faces still downcast. Balthazar was beginning to glow again, the light rippling out from his skin like sweat, his arms opened wide and his wings shivering as they slowly expanded, stretched out behind him.

  “Balthazar,” said Adam. Fool stayed silent, knowing that there was nothing he could do. The carriage was small and had seats for only four in the rear, meaning that the angels would be cramped for the duration of the journey, but this was what the Bureaucracy had given him. There were bigger vehicles, but not many, and none that he could drive. Most of the inhabitants of Hell walked or used the massive trains that shunted slowly back and forth between the farms and the industries, jumping on and off whenever they could. Fool and his colleagues, Hell’s two other Information Men, were usually among them.

  “We should fly,” said Balthazar, stepping away from the carriage and beating his wings downward fiercely, sending billows of dust and grit into the air around Fool. One of the nameless ones, looking at Balthazar, began to unfurl its wings, and Fool watched, fascinated, as they unfolded from its back and stretched out. They were smaller than Balthazar’s, less grand, reminding Fool more of the scrawny things that he had seen on the birds in Hell’s flocks, flocks preyed on by the larger flying things that sometimes filled the sullen sky. Delicate feathers bristled at the wings’ edges, and then Adam made a gesture with his hand and the scribe, or archive, immediately folded its wings back in. Pressed close against its back, they became almost invisible, fading and vanishing into its robe.

  Balthazar looked angrily at Adam and beat his wings again, creating a savage gust of air that rocked Fool back on his heels and made the carriage shake. Adam watched patiently as Balthazar tried again, furiously hooking his wings around his body in brutal downthrusts. Another, much smaller, pair of wings unfurled from around the angel’s feet, and these, too, began to beat furiously. Fool closed his eyes as the grit rose into them and as Balthazar’s light flared, fiery and intense.

  “Balthazar,” said Adam, “this is Hell, the place of no freedoms. You cannot fly here, my friend, because flight is a joy and no true joy is allowed. Only the chalkis and their ilk can take to the air, Balthazar, because they take no pleasure in it; you know this.
It was explained to you before our arrival. We are here by invitation, yes, but we have to obey the rules like everyone and everything here. Be calm, my friend.”

  The beating, shifting air settled and Fool opened his eyes again. Balthazar was staring at Fool, his face curling and distorting into something that was impossible to look at, something beyond human or demon, beyond beauty. Something terrible, a thing not of rage but of absolute belief in itself, of justice without question. He took a step toward Fool, one arm rising and the shimmering tongue of fire coruscated in the air, stretching out from his hand, and then Adam spoke again, saying only, “Balthazar.”

  The angel whirled away and wordlessly lashed his wings out, banging both into the carriage. The vehicle bounced violently, lifting and then settling back onto its wheels with a metallic groan and a splintering of glass. There were new dents in its doors, and one of the windows wore a starred crack.

  “I apologize for my companion,” said Adam, walking over to Balthazar, who was finally pulling his wings down, gathering them against his back and wrapping the smaller pair around his ankles, where they melted into his skin. The fire vanished again, leaving behind it an after-image of red embers, the memory of burning imprinted on the air. He did not turn as Adam came close to him, and did not flinch as a feather was pulled from one wing. Adam turned, bringing the feather to Fool and holding it out.

  “Balthazar is, perhaps, overwhelmed to be here for the first time in the territory of the Great Enemy, and he forgets himself. Or rather, he remembers himself too much, remembers his role in the Above and forgets that an angel of Michael in Hell cannot act as he would in Heaven. He will learn, though, because whether he likes it or not, he and I and the rest of our delegation are your guests and must act accordingly,” he said, holding out the feather farther so that it danced, like the flame before it, in Fool’s face.

  “A symbol of our regret. Please, take it as a sign of your forgiveness,” Adam said.