Johannes Cabal The Necromancer (27 page)

“An interesting place, this carnival of yours, Mr. Cabal,” said Barrow from behind him.

“Thank you, Mr. Barrow,” he replied, turning.

“It wasn’t meant as a compliment. Just a comment: an interesting place. This arcade, for example.”

“Oh?” Cabal raised his eyebrows. “How so?”

“These machines.” Barrow pointed at the tableaux. “Horror and death the whole length. Then we get to the last one—the machine, incidentally, that the police was told was the one with the recipe for poison— and that one is broad comedy. Odd, wouldn’t you say? Out of place?”

“People like that sort of thing,” repeated Cabal. “So I’m told. It was put in as an afterthought.”

“An afterthought.” Barrow walked to the door and looked out across the carnival, pondering. “I don’t like this carnival of yours, Mr. Cabal. It’s distasteful.”

“We can’t guarantee to cater to everybody.”

“That’s not what I meant. When I was still in the job, I had hunches the same as everybody else. Sometimes they were right and sometimes they were wrong. But sometimes I would have a feeling that came to me as an actually bona fide bad taste in my mouth. Horrible taste, and unmistakeable. I was once sitting in on an interview of a chap who was a possible witness in a murder case. Just a witness, you understand. Respectable man who might, just possibly, have seen something useful.”

“And you got this magical bad taste of yours?”

“In spades. And, yes, he was our killer. But at the time he wasn’t even a suspect. That’s the important thing. I had no reason to suspect him.”

“Sure you got the right man? Not just a case forced through because you forgot to brush your teeth that morning?”

“I don’t think even the most rabid police-conspiracy theorist would believe that we would frame a man by burying four bodies in his back garden and then building a rockery on top of them.”

“A rockery?” Cabal considered. “No, that does stretch credulity a little. You may have a point, in that case. I assume that when you say my carnival’s distasteful you are referring to this uncanny forensic palate?”

“When I get home, I’m going to have a very strong cup of tea in the hope it will wash it away.”

“You do that. Perhaps, one day, criminological epicurean evidence will be admissible in a court of law. In the meantime, I shall bid you a good day. I should like a few hours’ sleep if at all possible.”

“Good day, Mr. Cabal,” said Barrow, and walked back in the direction of the town.

Cabal walked back towards his office sedately until Barrow was out of sight. Then he ran. He entered the car breathless, unlocked his desk drawer, took the topmost contract from the box, and put it in his inside breast pocket.

“So she did it?” said Horst, and Cabal jumped.

“I didn’t see you there,” he said, putting away the box and carefully locking the drawer.

“I didn’t want you to. She killed her baby, then?”

“Yes. Isn’t it marvellous?” He stopped. “Not that she killed her baby, obviously.”

“No. It’s not obvious. It’s not obvious at all. I presume you’re going to go and offer her a way out of her dilemma?”

“That was the idea,” said Cabal. He didn’t like his brother’s tone at all.

Horst looked at him for a long moment. He checked his watch. “The sun will be up soon. We creatures of the night should be tucked away by then. Leave the day to creatures of the light.”

“You’re trying to make me feel guilty. It won’t work.”

“My little brother just engineered the murder of a child. There’s nothing I can do to make you feel remorse if that didn’t. I offered you the chance of redemption last night. Sorry, my mistake. Father always said I couldn’t spot a hopeless case.”

“Really?” Cabal pulled on his coat. “How unlike Father to criticise you for anything.”

Horst rose from where he was sitting on the blanket box, and Cabal fought to prevent himself shying away. “Don’t be specious. You can’t keep returning to sibling rivalry as an excuse for everything. ‘Oh, don’t blame me for my crimes against man, God, and nature. It’s my brother’s fault for being so perfect.’ No jury would convict.” He smiled and sat down again. “Would you like to hear something ridiculous? When you came for me a year ago, I was glad to see you. It was my brother who’d come back for me after all. It had taken him a while to get around to it, but better late than never. Yes, you’d sold your soul and I’d become a monster, but, apart from that, it would be just like old times.”

“And now you’re saying you were wrong?”

“Now I’m saying I was half wrong. I was wrong about which of us had become the monster. This whole year, I’ve watched who’s signed those contracts and I’ve said nothing, because, as far as I could see, they were going to Hell whether they signed a piece of paper or no. Some might have been a little borderline, but not by enough to make me concerned. That woman last night, though. She would never have done what she did unless you’d suggested it. She’d have worked it out. Now she’s damned whether she signs that contract or not. That’s your doing. I don’t doubt you’ve got some deal lined up for her if she signs. Do me a favour, would you?” “A favour?”

“Just do what you’re going to do and leave the contract here.” Cabal frowned. “But then it doesn’t count against the hundred.” Horst rested his chin in his hand and looked at his brother. He’d never dreamt that his brother could be so obtuse. “That’s the point,” he explained.

Cabal looked at Horst as if he were mad. “Then there is no point.” He clapped his hat on and left, slamming the door behind him.

Horst looked at the door for a very long moment, then glanced over at the hourglass. The time was all but gone: a few grains of inestimably fine sand remained in the top bulb. “I’m sorry,” he said quietly to himself. “I’m more sorry than you will ever know.”

Cabal arrived at the police station and made enquiries. He was sorely distressed that some poor woman—he managed to avoid saying “soul” at the last moment—had done such a terrible, terrible thing while the balance of her mind was disturbed. It seemed that the visit to the carnival had somehow provided, all unwittingly, the impetus for her psychosis, and— while he naturally couldn’t accept any liability—he really wanted to help any way that he could. He had to be quite insistent before he was allowed to see her. He was quite sure that Horst could just have walked straight in and they’d have fallen over themselves to make him a cup of tea. Finally, with heavy hints that he would be paying her legal expenses, he was allowed in alone.

“Well, then,” he said finally, sitting down across a plain, square table from her. “This is a sticky mess you’ve got yourself into.” She looked at him miserably, her eyes red from crying.

“I’m afraid the authorities are going to treat you very harshly for this. You probably already realise that.” She nodded and looked in her lap, where she pulled and worried a handkerchief endlessly.

“They’ll have told you that there is no machine like the one you thought you saw at my carnival, hmmm?” She gave no response. “‘The Mother’s Escape,’ I think it was.”

She stopped fidgeting. She looked sharply at him.

“It was there all right. I got rid of it the moment you walked out of the arcade. I’m sorry to say it was the most ruthless piece of entrapment I have ever been forced to commit. Yes, forced. You see, I really would be very appreciative if you would sign something for me. If you do so, you have my word that I’ll reverse what has happened. If you don’t, well, you’re obviously going to Hell anyway. If you don’t sign, the torment will start before death with a life sentence. I understand child-killers have rather a miserable time of it.”

While he’d been talking, he’d allowed his gaze to wander around the room: the barred window, the institutional green paint on the walls, some schedule of regulations framed and hung by the door. Then he looked at her and realised that if looks could kill he would assuredly have been dead for some moments. She glared at him, teeth slightly bared, an expression of hot, animal loathing on her face. She spoke so quietly, he almost didn’t catch it.

“Necromancer,” she said, as if it was the worst word she knew. At that moment, it was.

“An inference is no proof of an implication,” he replied, and produced the contract. “Do you want your life back, such as it is? Or shall I leave? I’m a busy man. A rapid decision would be nice.”

She looked at the folded paper as if its blank exterior would tell her all that she needed to know. Cabal laid it out flat, turned it so that it faced her, and slid it across to her. She looked at it, obviously not reading. Cabal had an uncomfortable feeling that she was going to start crying again. He drew his pen and offered it to her.

“Sign. Now.”

She took the pen and, her hand trembling slightly, she signed.

Cabal walked out into the new day. The last day of the carnival. He needed one last soul and had every chance of succeeding. Why, then, he wondered, did he feel so wretched?

IN WHICH CABAL DISCOVERS SOME PLACES ARE NICE TO LIVE IN BUT YOU REALLY WOULDN’T WANT TO VISIT

Cabal patted the pocket containing the contract to reassure himself that it hadn’t vanished due to some capricious event at the quantum level. No, it hadn’t. He drew a deep breath; some part of him had been rather hoping it might. He was tired, more tired than he could ever remember being, and for a man who regarded sleep as a necessary evil, this was very tired indeed. Despite it, he had no desire to rest his head. No doubt he was well past the point where sleep came easily. Besides, he might dream.

He adjusted his dark-blue spectacles and looked around. It was the first time he’d actually entered Penlow on Thurse, and what he saw depressed him. It looked absolutely idyllic, exactly the sort of place that folk dream of retiring to before they examine their pension fund and end up in a terrace next door to a psychotic with a dog, a baseball bat, and a sousaphone. It raised the question “Where do the citizens of Penlow go to retire?” Cabal didn’t care. The place bothered him inexplicably.

A postman shot by on his bicycle, smiling and saying hello as he swept down the road to a junction. Despite there not being another vehicle on the road for as far as the eye could see, the postman slowed, checked both ways, and signalled before joining the main road. A place where bicyclists—postmen to boot—obeyed the laws of the road. Cabal had seen many strange things in his life, of which the walking dead were the least. He’d run for his life from the guardians of Solomon’s Key, avoided the attentions of the gargoyle Bok, and studied, although been careful not to blow, a bronze whistle upon which the words “QUIS EST ISTE QUI VENIT” were deeply inscribed. None of these, however, had filled him with such a sense of hidden threat and foreboding as this polite and cheerful postman.

“All I need now is a friendly vicar and I’ll know I’m in trouble.” He turned and walked into a priest, a man of gentle and genial demeanour in his mid-sixties.

“I do beg your pardon, my son. I was just ruminating on my sermon and …” He paused and looked at Cabal over the top of his half-moon spectacles. “But you must be one of the people from the travelling carnival, I declare! How do you do! I’m delighted to make your acquaintance. I’m the vicar at Saint Olave’s, just over there.” He gestured towards a small parish church of heartbreaking architectural excellence in picture-postcard grounds. “Will you still be here on Sunday? Perhaps you would like to attend the service. We’ve always got space for visitors.”

“No, I’m afraid that won’t be possible.”

“You’re moving on, no doubt. In my youth, such a peripatetic life held great appeal. Now, however …” He spread his hands and smiled so sweetly Cabal was caught by opposing urges to strike him and adopt him.

“We won’t be here,” replied Cabal. “That’s true, but I wouldn’t attend anyway.” He smiled. “I’m a Satanist.”

The vicar smiled back. Cabal felt a need to check his own smile in a mirror to make sure it was still the thing of fear that he’d carefully cultivated for years.

“Ah, me,” said the vicar, infuriatingly unshocked. Cabal might as well have admitted to preferring spring to summer or a fondness for chocolate digestives. “And are you happy?”

Cabal’s large quiver of cutting replies proved unexpectedly empty. He had been ready for almost any response but sympathy. “No,” he managed to say finally. “No, I’m not. It’s not something I chose to be. It’s more like work experience. I intend to give it up as soon as possible.”

“I shan’t argue with your decision. Dear me, no. I cannot argue with your decision. It seems very wise to me. Well, I must be getting on. I’ll bid you a good day, sir.” Cabal found himself shaking the man’s hand, thanking him for his concern, and wishing him a pleasant morning.

Cabal watched the vicar wander off in the direction of his perfect church and bet himself that the sermon would be perspicacious, amusing, and interesting. People would enjoy going to church. He found himself envying them. He stopped and inspected the sensation. What was wrong with him? He sat down on a well-sited and unvandalised bench and set about sorting himself out. He was almost glad when the little girl sat down at the far end of the bench. He loathed children and was glad that here, at least, was a situation he could trust his reactions in.

“Hello,” said the little girl, and smiled a gap-toothed smile brightly at him. Cabal suddenly felt broody. An insane urge to find a good woman, settle down, and have a couple of kids—one of each—lit upon him like a thing out of a nightmare.

Staggering to his feet, he managed a disjointed warning against talking to strangers before walking quickly away. He needed somewhere quiet to pull himself together. A short expedition into the churchyard resulted in a hasty retreat, as his feet started to smoke. He’d forgotten about the danger of consecrated ground in his soulless state. That was another inconvenience he’d be rid of once he found somebody. Just one more person. It worried him that he’d forgotten about the danger: combusting footwear was an experience that tended to stay with a person. Yet that was exactly what he’d done—blithely forgotten all about it, seduced by the tranquillity of the place. His sense of foreboding was deepening by the minute.