by Mike Carey
As the recitation went on, we were driving through narrower and narrower streets, until we reached a point where the rough-cast walls on either side almost clipped the Lexus’ wing mirrors. Now, as Mr Anastasiadis reached his low-key but impassioned conclusion, we turned - with about as much room for manoeuvre as an elephant has in a tanning bed - into an overgrown yard with high walls painted lemon yellow. Three of the walls were free-standing, while the fourth was the frontage of the Ditko house.
It was built on the same scale as the yard, which was one degree up from Lilliputian, and despite the paint, which made a bold and optimistic statement, it had clearly been allowed to fall almost into ruin in recent years. The pitched roof was sway-backed, like a spavined horse, and there were great pockmarks in the limed rough-cast, showing bare single-skin brickwork beneath. Weeds grew up between the slate-grey flagstones of the yard, almost to the height of a man, and one of the windows had a perfectly circular hole through it, starred all around with fracture lines, the hallmark of a local kid with a catapult and a relaxed attitude to other people’s property.
The place made a bleak enough impression, but when Mr Anastasiadis wound down the car window, between one breath and the next a sweet smell of honeysuckle flooded in on us. It was growing wild up the outer walls and the house’s frontage, annealing the decay by immersing it in its own opposite.
‘I will wait for you here,’ Anastasiadis informed me. ‘In this neighboorhood, it is best not to leave the car unattended.’
It was hard to argue with that. In front of this tumble-down cottage, the Lexus looked like news from nowhere - something not just from another world but from another age of humankind.
I got out and crossed to the door. It was painted black, the paint now blistered and flaking where the slo-mo blowtorch of entropy had played across it. At first glance there was no keyhole, but actually it was only the lock plate that was missing. A small, neat circle had been drilled into the wood, close enough to the jamb to be in shadow and not immediately noticeable. I had to jiggle the key around in the blind hole until it found its berth, but then as soon as the key was turned the door sprung open of its own accord, the warped wood pushing it away from the frame with a dry twang like the sound of an arrow hitting a target.
The door gave directly onto a small living room. It was filled with an immense profusion of things. There were six ill-assorted chairs, beautifully carved but from two different tribes, the ladder-backs facing the wheelbacks across a farm-house table piled high with old newspapers. Newspapers served as curtains too, taped across the two narrow windows. Out in the centre of the room, beyond the table, stood an ancient iron mangle. Boxes lined the walls, two and three and four high. A tall dresser held not plates and cups but more papers along with a meerschaum sculpture of a tram and a radio with a red plastic casing that had to be 1960s vintage. From the ceiling (why waste a surface just because it’s upside down?) a massive drying rack hung on four pulleys. Yet more sheets of newspaper had been folded neatly over its wooden runners to shield any clothes that might be hung there from dust or splinters. There were no clothes, but a great many electrical flexes had been slung over the rack in long, neat rows, all ending in the two-pronged European plug. They looked like dead snakes hung up to cure, lolling their forked tongues.
The room smelled of dust and lavender. A slender blade of sunlight bisected it neatly where one of the sheets of newsprint had been poorly fitted into the window frame. Thick motes swirled in its glow on sluggish thermoclines, showing the air to be as heavily freighted as the solid ground.
I picked up a pile of papers at random from the dresser: old letters, old bills, old articles laboriously cut out with short-bladed scissors from defunct periodicals. The Ditkos had bought a lot of newspapers and had put them to a lot of uses, but clearly they had read the news in them too, and set aside the items that seemed worthy of being remembered.
The boxes seemed mostly full of crockery and cutlery, although one that I opened contained books. Crabbed writing on the lid of each presumably recorded its contents. It looked as though the family had moved from a bigger place and had never finished unpacking, maybe because there just wasn’t enough room here to hold their things. Or maybe some of these boxes held the things that Rafi had asked his brother to send on to England after him. In any case, there was nothing that corresponded to Mr Anastasiadis’s phrase ‘valuables or keepsakes’.
A single door led to a back room, off which a narrow staircase opened. It was much darker here. I groped for a light switch, found one at last to the right of the doorway and flicked it on.
A bare hundred-watt bulb flared into life over my head. From all around the room, a hundred Rafis stared back at me.
‘Sonofabitch!’ I muttered involuntarily.
‘His photos and his journals,’ Jovan had said - and he’d sneered at Rafi’s obsessive self-regard. Judging from this evidence, he hadn’t been exaggerating.
Some of the photos were five by three or six by four, snapshots taken with an ordinary thirty-five-millimetre camera, but many of them had been blown up - the largest, poster size with the grainy stippling that comes from trying to squeeze too much detail out of a poorly resolved original.
They were all portrait shots, not family groups nor even whole-body studies. A relentless gallery of head-and-shoulders close-ups, the blurred backgrounds merging into one, the only variety coming from Rafi’s facial expressions and from the vagaries of the lighting.
It was unsettling to meet my friend’s gaze so many times at once in this sad, abandoned place.
I took a few steps further into the room, and something shattered under my foot. I looked down, startled: more photos, in glass-fronted frames. No, I realised, as I knelt to examine them more closely. These were actually photographs printed on glass rather than paper, in black and white, but backed with coloured card so that the lighter areas became islands of intense red or green or gold.
The one I’d shattered had a silver backing. The memory of Rafi’s silver-lined cell at the Stanger Care Home came forcefully into my mind, and then, although silver isn’t gold, the tune of that old vaudeville favourite ‘I’m only a Bird in a Gilded Cage’. Rafi had gone a long way from this cramped room to find an even smaller cage in London, but both rooms were spacious compared with the vaulted oubliette of his own skull, which was where he was really trapped.
I pulled myself out of this pointless reverie with an effort. I still had a plane to catch, and even to appease Mr Anastasiadis there was nothing here I wanted to take with me.
I went upstairs briefly. I found two tiny bedrooms, a double bed in one, two small singles in the other. There was no room for any other furniture. The double bed still had blankets strewn across it, so it looked as though it had been vacated only recently, but no sheets covered the bare, stained mattress.
I went into the other room, glanced perfunctorily around. Through the dust-smeared window - no curtains here, not even of newspaper - I could see the yard below and the laywer’s big, imposing car. Half a dozen or so of the neighboorhood children were watching it from the yard entrance, their faces mostly sullen and disapproving as though the vulgar display of wealth offended them on principle.
Turning from the window, I noticed a small fleck of bright red colour against the bleached grey of the floor-boards. There was something under the left-hand bed. I squatted down to look a little closer.
The something turned out to be the top-most of a pile of four or five small fat notebooks. I picked it up, flicked through the pages. Lines of tight Slavonic script in faded blue ink met my gaze.
Rafi’s journals? Jovan said he’d burned them, but perhaps he’d only wanted to. At the front, where the writer of a diary might be expected to write his name, there was indeed a short string of characters. Rafael Ditko? Maybe. I picked up the little stash of books, slipped them into my greatcoat’s capacious outer pockets and headed for the stairs. If they were Rafi’s journals they might be worth having. The be
tter I knew Rafi, the deeper and stronger my sense of him became, the more likely it was that I could separate him from his demonic bunk-buddy - assuming I could get a translation done before Asmodeus cornered me in a dark alley and strangled me with my own intestines. It was still a long shot, but it was something. At least I could tell myself - and Jenna-Jane - that I wasn’t coming away completely empty-handed.
I retraced my steps, down the stairs and back through the room of photos. One I hadn’t seen before caught my attention, one of those where the image had been printed on glass. In this picture, Rafi seemed to be about twelve years old. He was standing on the broad stone steps of a large old building, and whatever he was wearing must have been of a very light colour, because the pale gold backing shone through most of it. Perhaps it stood out from the rest because Rafi was so young in it, while in most of the others he was either in his late teens or early twenties - a period at which his self-love seemed to have reached its pinnacle - or perhaps it was just that his smile was so radiant, his satisfaction with the world and his place in it so transcendantly perfect.
Whatever it was, I took the damn thing with me.
Mr Anastasiadis was very pleased to see me emerge from the house. The feral kids had doubled in number now, and they were eyeing the Lexus with a malevolent hunger. ‘The airport,’ the lawyer said without preamble. Then he said a whole lot more, loudly, in Macedonian, looking at me but obviously playing to the wider audience.
‘What was that?’ I asked, when we were both in the car and backing out of the yard. The kids parted reluctantly to let us through. One or two of them took a kick at the bodywork en passant. Anastasiadis winced at each dull clunk, as though he was feeling the blows himself.
‘I called you chief inspector,’ he said a little disgruntledly. ‘And I asked you how your investigation was coming along. I thought this might deter those little thugs from hurting my car. But sadly, Mr Castor, such a deterrent is still beyond the grasp of human science.’
His gaze fell on the photo, which I was holding in my lap. ‘This is all you took?’ he said. ‘Well, it is a nice moment to commemorate, I suppose.’
‘What moment?’ I asked him.
‘The first communion. This is Jovan or Rafael?’
‘Rafael,’ I said. ‘How do you know when it was taken?’
The lawyer shrugged. ‘The white robe,’ he said. ‘And the steps of Hagia Katerina. Every house in Skopje has a photo like this.’
It was funny and painful at the same time to think of Rafi taking communion. The wine and wafer would stick in his throat now, and make the demon bellow like a bull under the gelding knife. Was there a possibility there? I wondered briefly. Trick Asmodeus into swallowing the host or drinking communion wine? The answer was no, of course. I could hurt him easily enough, but tricks like that wouldn’t pull or push or blast him out of his human vessel, and he’d recuperate with terrifying speed. If there was a magic bullet, that wasn’t it.
We stopped at a red light, which didn’t seem to be in any hurry to change. I was a little worried about catching my flight now, but I took advantage of the delay to fish one of the books out of my pocket and show it to Anastasiadis.
‘I took these too,’ I told him. ‘I think they may be Rafi’s journals.’
He took it from me and flicked through it curiously.
‘His name is inside the cover,’ he acknowledged. ‘Rafael Cyril Ditko. Yes. This is a diary of some kind. Or at least each entry has a date attached to it.’
‘Do you know of any way I could get them translated?’ I asked.
Anastasiadis handed the book back to me, returning his attention to the road as we started moving again. ‘Of course,’ he said. ‘I use translators myself all the time, for deeds and contracts. If you were willing to leave the books with me, I could arrange to have it done.’
‘I need it done quickly.’
‘Then it will not be cheap. But still I can arrange it.’
I chewed on that one for a moment. Expense was no object for Jenna-Jane, but if I took her money to get the journals translated, I’d have to share the contents with her. Actually, that was an optimistic projection. More likely, Jenna-Jane would get first dibs and I’d be copied in on a need-to-know basis.
‘How much is it likely to be?’ I asked.
Anastasiadis made a one-handed but expansive gesture, suggesting very concisely how painful it was for him to have to ask for cash down for what was really a favour to a friend, and how distasteful he found monetary transactions in general. ‘Five hundred pounds sterling,’ he suggested. ‘One hundred for each book.’
Not an easy sum for me to scrape together right then. I considered. The diaries were still a long shot. Most likely they were full of the same sort of stuff that fills all adolescent boys’ diaries - wet dreams, football scores and cod philosophy. All the same, I decided to keep it in the family.
‘Do one of the books to start with,’ I said. ‘I’ll wire the hundred quid when I get back to England.’
‘Thank you. All the necessary details are on my card.’
We got to the airport with about twenty minutes left before check-in closed. Rolling to a halt in a no-stopping lane and cheerfully ignoring the soldiers on security duty at the kerbside, Anastasiadis got out of the car to say goodbye to me. I shook his hand and thanked him for all his help.
‘It was my very great pleasure,’ he assured me solemnly. ‘I did little enough for Jovan, when all is said and done. If I can help his brother, at no additional cost to myself because I am not after all a charity, this will please me. You will send that money, Mr Castor, yes?’
‘Consider it sent,’ I assured him.
‘Then in the expectation of its arrival, I will make a start on the translation.’
Since I had a few minutes’ leeway before I had to sprint for the gate, I decided to check in with the Führer-bunker and see how things were going there. I tried my mobile first, but it couldn’t find a service, so I had to use a payphone. That meant changing bills into coins - coins which were impossibly small and thin, as though metal was in short supply locally and they were making a little go a long way. Dropping a couple of dozen little silver wafers at random into the slot got me a dialling tone, and that got me the MOU switchboard. It didn’t get me Trudie Pax though, even though I asked for her. Instead - I suppose predictably - I was put directly through to Jenna-Jane.
‘Felix,’ she said brightly. ‘You’ve been much on my mind. Was the journey worth your while?’
‘Afraid not,’ I said bluntly. ‘Jovan and Rafi haven’t talked in years. He couldn’t tell me anything we don’t already know. Or maybe he just didn’t feel like talking, since he’s going to be executed tomorrow. I had a chance to visit the family house and go through some old stuff of Rafi’s, but I came up empty there too.’
‘Things that belonged to Ditko? Might there be a stronger focus than the fingernail for Pax to use in her divination?’
I thought of the photo. ‘Potentially,’ I said. ‘I’ve got something she can throw into the mix, anyway.’
‘So the time wasn’t totally wasted.’ J-J sounded irked all the same, as though she realised she’d been taken for a ride for once in her life and wasn’t enjoying the novelty. Abruptly, she switched tack. ‘When do you arrive back in London?’ she asked.
I glanced up at the departures board. It was easy to locate my flight, because there were only another three heading out that evening. ‘About midnight,’ I estimated.
‘Get a good night’s sleep. Gilbert has assembled his team for the Super-Self exorcism. He claims he has a full complement without your participation. I’d still like you to be there though. If things don’t go to plan, an additional exorcist might make a great deal of difference. Especially one of your experience. I’ve delayed the operation until tomorrow night for that reason.’
‘I’ll be there,’ I said.
‘Excellent. Before that though, I think another early meeting is in order. I’ve be
en unable to locate your Mr Moulson, despite having tracked down his previous three addresses. But we’ve been reviewing Pax’s maps, and we have a few insights to offer.’
‘With regard to what, Jenna-Jane?’
‘With regard to the issue of where Asmodeus might be found.’
The hairs on my neck pricked up like good little dogs at their master’s voice. ‘You’ve found him?’ I asked, trying to keep my tone neutral.
‘Not yet. But I may be able to direct your search. Tomorrow, Felix. Eight o’clock. Sleep tight.’
She hung up, leaving my mouth open on a question. I checked my watch. Time was really tight now, but it was a small airport and the gate was probably fairly close to the check-in. I hung up, fed the machine some more coins and dialled again.
The ringtone sounded half a dozen times, and I was about to give it up as a bad job when someone finally picked up.
‘Hello?’ Juliet said.
‘No rest for the wicked, babe,’ I told her.
12
Jenna-Jane was right about the value of an early night. Standing outside Super-Self at half past one in the morning, asleep on my feet, I asked myself for the hundredth time what the hell I was doing here when my bed was five miles north and two east.
But then the answer came stalking down the street towards me, the cynosure of all eyes - I counted six, including mine, the other sets belonging to a homeless guy and a roosting pigeon on a window ledge. All the same, she walked like a queen in procession, the night unrolling its monochrome carpet before her.
I detached myself from the doorway and waved, but Juliet had seen me already. Of course she had: her eyes were adapted for much darker places than this. They had the same faint glow to them that I’d noticed back at the Gaumont. More unsettlingly, the proportions of her body looked subtly different. She was taller, leaner, longer-limbed, without being any less beautiful, any less perfect. She was dressed in red rather than her usual black, and it was shocking to look at, the leather jacket shining with a liquid gloss, as vivid as an open wound, the pleated skirt infolded like labia.
