Maxie’s Demon (10 page)

The trouble was where
to go. The further the better, you might say – and the faster. But if I did that, I might just confirm suspicions that I was mixed up in the Mass Murder on the Marshes – I could see the headlines
already – or even responsible for it. If they got to Ahwaz he’d try to pin it all on me, for one. And there weren’t any safe boltholes in the world any more, not even for villains a lot richer than me. You could even be hauled back from Brazil these days. So should I sit tight, go into work as usual and play Mister Know-nothing? Fine if the cops were after me; not so good if Ahwaz was. Not with Chaddy
his usual helpful self; worse if he suspected I had something to do with his mysterious case of the trots.

Funny, that, how effective it had been. A big reaction to a small thing. Like my getting angry on the phone – or afraid out on the marshes. Everything getting out of hand, getting too big for me.

I twisted and turned, feeling more and more nervous and taut. It was as if I was waiting for
something, as if I as expecting – a call, or maybe a knock on the door, the wrong kind. I drew my cold knees up and hugged them. Who was I kidding? Nobody called here that I ever wanted to see. Any knock would be the wrong knock.

Finally I sprang out of the creaky bed, picked up the plastic bag my new shirt had come in and wrapped the envelope up in it, very carefully, sealing it tight with some
sticky labels I had lying around. I checked the door was locked, though I knew perfectly well it was. Then, very quietly, I opened the window, and with my damp jeans brushing my legs I twisted out and around to a point in the brickwork of the old chimney-stack behind.

That
psychic I’d placemanned for had started as a straight magician, with me as one of his stooges – the ‘totally unrehearsed’
guy who’s called up out of the audience and sawn in half or vanished from a little box, that kind of thing. You had to be a pretty good contortionist for that. Nobody larger or less lithe than me could twist around enough to even look at the bricks there, let alone reach them. I tugged out one I’d carefully loosened a while back, to hold a few valuables such as the old man’s watch, before I’d decided
it was safer in the pawnshop. In slipped the envelope, and the brick went back neatly, with a slather of spit and grime from the roof to camouflage it. I ducked back shivering under the blankets, not lying down but pulling them up under my chin. That expectant feeling was growing stronger, building up to some sort of horrible, sweaty peak.

Then the door popped open. Not burst, not flew, just
popped from shut to ninety degrees like that, as if there was no such thing as lock or bolt or wedge, and stopped dead, without a crash or anything. Light from the bare bulb in the hallway flooded in. Equally suddenly a face thrust around the door.

Not a face I knew – and yet it was familiar somehow. A man’s, lined but not old, and striking – coarsely handsome, even, despite a wart or two and
the greasy brown hair and beard that framed it. I yelped, and it gave me an encouraging toothy beam.

‘How goes it with you, esquire? Eh?’ A soft, rolling accent, none I could place. In other circumstances there might have been some charm in it, and the twinkling eyes. ‘Now tell me if you will, sir, hast had any odd happenings of late?’

I
choked. ‘You mean – besides this one?’ I gaped at the
impossible face an instant, then ducked under the blankets. Stress – I was having nightmares, that was it, the kind you get just before waking. When I came out it’d be gone.

Surprisingly, it was. The door was shut, locked and everything as if it had never opened, the stairway light was evidently off. Not a sign of any visitor. I swallowed, barely; my mouth felt like a mummified dog’s bum. I levered
my shaking legs on to the floor and staggered over to the muddy washbasin. The rusty tap-juice was soothing nectar. I was just tilting back another when the image in the mirror engaged me with a friendly leer, and spoke. Oh yes, and it had somehow sprouted greasy hair.

‘Strange events is my meaning, good master! Like maybe visions that come upon you of a sudden, feelings of great exaltation,
potencies and powers, as may be?’

The glass burst like a bomb in the gritty bowl. I squealed and whirled around, and there at the window – on the fourth floor, mind – was a face, as well. Only this one was different. This one I did recognise.

At least it was polite. It gave a sort of grave, shy smile, lifted a rather odd skullcap and mouthed at me. A pretty earnest question, by the look of it,
and I could just about lipread ‘happenings’, and maybe also ‘curious’. It was the old gink from that horrible house – and come to think of it, the hairy fellow was the other one, the one I’d landed on. Well, wasn’t that nice? Practically old mates. I screamed and dived under the bed.

A
tidal wave of old beer cans, sweet wrappers and used contraceptives – God, how old were those? Were they mine,
even? – shot out the other side, so it wasn’t exactly deep concealment. But Christ, it felt better. Until, that is, I opened my eyes again and saw the old man’s face peering myopically under the blanket on that side.

‘I do most earnestly beg your pardon, my esteemed sir, but I do desire your further acquaintance—’

I squeaked, because my throat was too tight to scream, twisted around and found
myself almost nose to nose with the hairy fellow. He had nostril hairs like corkscrews, and a small crop of warts around his nose.

‘Begging your pardon, young sir, lest I give you cause for unease! But in the matter of which I enquired but now, namely some degree of strange happening in your life—’

I tried to speak. Nothing came out.

‘Some sudden irruption into your daily affairs,’ intoned
the old apparition from behind me. ‘Everyday acts growing unexpectedly potent, perchance? The unexpected arrival of assistance in difficult situations, even?’

I fluttered my lips and nodded weakly. Anything to make them go away.

‘Ah
hah
!’ said the old fellow in a satisfied kind of way. ‘See you now, Brother Edward, the truth of my contentions?’

I
looked around. Edward was still there, but his
features had crumpled up in deep thought, practically to the point of disappearance. He looked like an abstract arrangement of hair and warts, and believe me, it wasn’t an improvement.

‘Aye, aye,’ his voice muttered, with a much grimmer kind of satisfaction. ‘And the agent of this assistance, my master? A … sturdy fellow, sans doubt?’

I shook my head, and flapped my fingers. He seemed to read
the gesture.

‘Not one, then? Several?’

‘Y-yes,’ I managed.

‘Ah.’ They nodded sagely to one another. ‘Well, my good sir,’ the older man continued. ‘I must pray that patience of you which Elihu counselled unto Job. Although, I trust, your visitations will be less severe. But fear not! At some moment not long distant we shall appear again unto your good self. There we shall unfold unto you the
several actions and causes of this unfortunate error!’

‘Oh – you don’t have to—’

‘And we shall offer you a sure and certain release,’ he continued relentlessly, bobbing and bowing. ‘Until then, good master—’

Blink. He wasn’t there. Neither was brother Edward.

I lowered my face weakly on to the floor, and raised it hastily as the dust in the rotten old carpet got up my nose. They say ninety
per cent of your household dust is you, and if that was right I’d just inhaled about half of me back. I sneezed, repeatedly, and hit my head on the bedsprings every time, with a sort of spavined twang. The tart downstairs started hammering on the ceiling.

‘Don’t ya know there’s people tryin’ ta fuckin’ sleep down ’ere?’

‘Well, that’ll make a change!’ I shouted back, and heaved myself wearily
out from under. Wait a minute – if
she
was trying to sleep, it must be dawn, after six even. Where had the night gone? I was still sneezing, I was still damp, and unless I assumed I’d just had a nightmare, I’d hardly slept a wink. Wonderful. No wonder my eyes felt like pits of rat’s pee. I slopped the dust off my face, dodging the broken glass in the bowl, and fell face down in my vomitous pillow.

So they were coming back were they? Just let ’em try.

I
drew one deep breath, felt sleep wash over me like comforting layers of black silk – and was jolted by hammering at the downstairs door. I shot up on one elbow and reflexively screamed,
‘Piss off!’

There was a sudden rumbling on the stairs, a scream from the tart cut off by a single barked word. Even the first explosive letter triggered
an instant reaction.

‘Police!’

I was off the bed in an instant, snatching my still wet jeans and trainers off the line and wriggling into them, writhing as the soaking seams squeezed their little trickles down my legs. I was already jamming my feet into the squelchy trainers when the door boomed and bent under a heavy fist.

‘
Oi! Open up in there!
’

My instincts were doing all the work. Call
it a conditioned reflex, if you like. The rational Me was wittering with panic. I hadn’t expected Plod anything like this soon. Then a thrill of horror trickled down into my crutch, just like the jeans only chillier still. There was a quicker way they could have linked me with the night’s doings – information received.

Chaddy,
the son of a bitch! Hearing what Ahwaz had told me, knowing Fallon’s
form as well as I did – he could put the two together when the news hit the grapevine. As it would in less than no time. And wouldn’t he enjoy turning a penny on it from his bed of pain – or maybe throne! Too dangerous to grass on Ahwaz directly, of course; but on me, who’d care? And the cop computers could find citizens even quicker than Ahwaz, sometimes.

Isn’t reflex amazing? By the time they
had the strainer jack across the frame and burst the door open, I was already halfway out of the window with hardly a conscious thought, all driven by sheer stark terror. Beat that, Dr Pavlov!

I was vaguely aware of rushing and shouts at my back, but I was above all that, scrabbling out on to the window ledge in the grey, dank dawn. A little way along an extension roof branched out at ninety
degrees into what had been the back garden. I could scramble along, but jump across more easily – I thought. I dithered about making a grab for my money, thought better of it and sprang. Great sausage fingers clawed at my collar, then something seemed to give and I landed with a crash that dislodged several tiles and most of my breath. Clinging on like a monkey, I half expected to see the cop dangling
shreds of my shirt, but instead the great oaf was gaping at a handful of what looked like coarse red-brown hair. Maybe I was a monkey.

Then I had
something else to worry about. Another thug bulged out on to the ledge and leaped. He reached the ridge too, but the overstrained ridge-tile split beneath his great Doc Ms and he skidded, flailed and slid – both ways at once. His boots shot down the
crackling tiles with a shower of ruddy sparks and he landed heavily astride. His eyes bulged, his mouth opened so wide he could have moonlighted as a goldfish, and he sprawled flat along the ridge, conveniently in the others’ way. I wasn’t hanging around. I reached the end of the roof, clinging like a minor ape and gibbering like one too, and slid down into the gutter among the leaves and dead pigeons.
I reached over, grabbed the drainpipe, dislodging a foul old nest, and began trying to shin down it.

That wasn’t too easy. I was a floor lower now, but that left three to fall and it looked a lot further than it did on the nice solid stairs. The pipe shifted and creaked at every move I made. I whimpered and hugged it as if it was my only friend in the world, which wasn’t too far off the mark
right then. Then I heard a cheery shout from below, and felt a great wash of despair. I should have known even the Blue Meanies would have the sense to cover the back yard. Somebody was humorously opening a dustbin and inviting a little turd to drop in.

Who could they possibly mean?

I leaned over to see if I could grab the next pipe. Immediately there was an ominous grating creak and a little
trickling rain of mortar as the pipe fasteners pulled out of the wall above me. I wailed horribly, then shrieked in even greater fright. About a million miles below my slipping feet the end of the pipe that was still fastened to the wall exploded outwards in a scarlet flare and snapped off just above the ground. It swung outwards, with me still clinging like the Night Lemur, or Aye-Aye –
aiaiaiaiaiai!

I saw the
rubbish-strewn remnants of the lawn flash by before my eyes. I’d expected my past life, but maybe this was symbolic.

Then the pipe hit the solid old garden wall, and we parted company. There was, as they say, a moment’s confusion. Then there was a tremendous thump, a horrible shower of fragments, and an enveloping stench that could have given the marsh lessons.

I threshed feebly in
a slimy black sea. Either it was the Styx, or I’d landed with lethal accuracy right in one of the neighbourhood garbage mountains, binbag Vesuviuses that the council trucks passed by hurriedly, presumably in case somebody jumped out and hijacked them to Morocco. Morocco might have been an improvement, mind you; we bred a pretty fierce strain of trash around here.

I struggled upright, wheezing
and cursing; a black bag savaged my ankles. I fell down again in a shower of fruit peel and pizza boxes – who was crazy enough to deliver round here? – then sprang up again as a wave of bulky bodies crested the wall behind me like the Rwandan Olympic Hurdles Team (Mountain Gorilla Division).

I took a running start, trailing streams of everything you can imagine but wouldn’t want to. How is it
deprived areas have so much more to throw out? Especially since we’re really hot on recycling our garbage, usually by cooking it. The only consolation was the crashes and cries of disgust behind me. I hadn’t noticed yet that I was running the wrong way.

I was that
little bit disoriented. Instead of weaving a way through the back alleys, I’d headed straight for the main road. I registered this
important fact round about the time I turned the corner and came face to face with three running uniforms and a panda car with its roof-light flashing. I yelped and wheeled, but I hadn’t a hope in hell. I whipped back around the corner, and straight into a tangle of strong arms. I threshed and fought. Then I realised they weren’t in uniform, those arms; in fact, they were mostly bare, and they didn’t
smell of Old Spice, either. And they rattled and jangled when they moved.