Mike Carey - Vicious Circle (Felix Castor 2)

Vicious Circle
Mike Carey
Hachette

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

Copyright 2006 by Mike Carey

All rights reserved. Except as permitted under the U.S. Copyright Act of 1976, no part of this publication may be reproduced, distributed, or transmitted in any form or by any means, or stored in a database or retrieval system, without the prior written permission of the publisher.

Grand Central Publishing

Hachette Book Group USA

237 Park Avenue

New York, NY 10017

Visit our Web site at www.HachetteBookGroupUSA.com.

First eBook Edition: July 2008

ISBN: 978-0-446-53760-5

Contents

Also by Mike Carey
The Devil You Know

Alphabetically, to Ben, Davey, and Lou;
chronologically, to Lou, Davey, and Ben.
They wont stay where I put them anyway,
thank God, so either way is fine.
May the world be good enough for them.

In the UK edition of this book I thanked my editor, Darren, my agent, Meg, publicist George Walkley, desk editor Gabriella Nemeth, copy editor Nick Austin, and my wife, Lin, all of whom played crucial roles in its creation. Im thanking them again now, but this time with a Damon Runyonstyle New York accent.

And because the American edition has been through an entirely different alchemical process, Id also like to thank Grand Central Publishing editor Jaime Levine and publicist extraordinaire Lisa Sciambra, both for making the U.S. edition happen and for all of their heroic efforts during my recent ten-city U.S. book tour (which included keeping me alive and sane). They go into the box labeled people I feel privileged to have met. So do Charlotte Oria, Claire Friedman and her totally amazing family (Jeff, Jeremy, and Jacob), James Sime and Kirsten Baldock, Tad Williams, Richard Morgan, Chris Golden, Alan and Jude of Borderlands, Kristine and Jeannie and their colleagues at the Encino Barnes and Noble, and Doselle Young (whom I also have to thank for one of the most memorable games of pool Ive ever lost).

Sometimes I love this job.

T HE INCENSE STICK BURNED WITH AN ORANGE FLAME AND smelled of Cannabis sativa. In Southern Africa it grows wild: you can walk through fields of it, waist-high, the five-fronded leaves caressing you like little hands. But in London, where I live, its mostly encountered in the form of black, compacted lumps of soft, flaky resin. A lot of the magics gone by then.

Det. Sgt. Gary Coldwood gave me a downright hostile look through the tendrils of the smoke, which curled lazily up through the cavernous interior of the warehouse, the sweet smell dissipating along the aisles of sour dust. The warehouse was on the Edgware Road, on the ragged hinterlands of an old industrial estate: judging from the smashed windows outside and the rows and rows of empty shelves inside, it had been abandoned for a good few yearsbut Coldwood had invited me to join him and a few uniformed friends for a legally authorized search, so it was a fair bet that appearances were deceptive.

Have you finished arsing around, Castor? he asked, fanning the smoke irritably away from his face. I dont know if all this tact and diplomacy is something he was born with or if he just learned it at cop school.

I nodded distantly. Almost, I said. I have to intone the mantra another dozen or so times.

Well, Jesus, you know? It was Saturday night, and I already had a heap of my own shit to cope with. When the Met calls, I answer, because they pay on the nose, but that doesnt mean I have to like it. And anyway, I figure that if you give them a little showmanship theyll be more impressed when you come up with the goods. Look, boys, I say in my own devious way, this is magic: it has to be, because its got smoke and mirrors. So far, Coldwoods the only cop whos ever called me on it, and thats probably why we get along so well: I respect a man who can smell the bullshit through the incense.

But tonight he was in a bad mood. He hadnt found a dead body in the warehouse, and that meant he didnt know what he was dealing with just yet. Could be a murder, could just be their man doing a runner; and if it was a murder, that could be either a golden opportunity or six months of covert surveillance going up in aromatic smoke. So he wanted answers, and that made him less than usually tolerant of my sense of theater.

I murmured a few variations on om mane padme om, and he kicked the heel of my shoe resonantly with his Met-issue heavy-duty policemans boot. I was sitting on the floor in front of him with my knees drawn up, so I suppose it could have been worse.

Just tell me if you can see anything, Castor, he suggested. Then you can hum away to your hearts content.

I got up, slowly; slowly enough for Coldwood to lose patience and wander across to see if the forensics boys had managed to shag any prints from a battered-looking desk in the far corner of the room. He really wasnt happy: I could tell by the way his angular facereminiscent of Dick Tracy, if Dick Tracy had joined-up eyebrows and a skin problemhad subsided onto his lower lip, forcing it out into a truculent shelf. His body language was a bit of a giveaway, too: whenever he finished waving and pointing, which he does when he gives orders, his right hand fell to the discreet shoulder holster he wore under his tan leather jacket, as if to check that it was still there. Coldwood hadnt been an armed response unit for very long, and you could tell the novelty hadnt worn off yet.

I ambled across the warehouse toward the door Id come in through, away from the forensics team, watched curiously by two or three poor bloody infantry constables who were there to maintain a perimeter. Coldwood knows my tricks, and makes allowances for them, but to these guys I was obviously something of a sideshow. Ignoring them, I looked behind the filing cabinets that were ranged along the wall to the right of the door, banged on the cork notice board behind them, which had sheaves of dusty old invoices clinging to it like mangy fur, and turned the girlie calendars over to look at the bits of gray-painted cinder block they were covering. Disappointingly, there was nothing there. No hidden doors, no wall-mounted safes, not even old graffiti.

I looked down at my feet. The floor of the warehouse was bare gray cement, but just here by the notice board and the filing cabinets there was a ragged rectangle of red linoleuma psychedelic sunburst pattern, very retro-chic unless it had been there since the seventies. Id noticed another piece, with the same pattern, underneath the desk. Here, though, there were scuff marks in the dust where the lino had been moved in the recent past. I kicked down experimentally with my heel. There was a slightly hollow boom from underneath my feet.

Coldwood? I called over my shoulder.

He must have caught something in my voiceor else hed heard the hollow note, toobecause he was suddenly there at my elbow. What? he asked suspiciously.

I pointed down at the lino. Something here, I said. Does this place have a cellar?

Coldwoods eyes narrowed slightly. Not according to the plans, he said. He beckoned to two of the plods and they came over at a half run. Get this up, he told them, gesturing at the lino.

They had to move the filing cabinets first, and since the cabinets were full they took a bit of manhandling. I could have helped, but I didnt want to get into an argument about demarcation. The linoleum itself rolled up as easy as shelling peas, though, and Coldwood swore under his breath when he saw the trapdoor underneath. It was obviously something he felt his boys should have spotted first.