Dead Men's s Boots

But Rafael Ditko isn’t a lunatic: he’s just someone for whom the criminal justice and psychiatric care systems have no other label that fits. And, after all, he does hear a little voice inside his head, telling him what to do: the voice of the demon Asmodeus, who took up residence about four years ago and – thanks largely to me – has never gone home again.

It was almost eight when I got to the Stanger, which I hoped would still put me ahead of Jenna-Jane’s agenda. I nodded to the nurse at the reception desk, relieved to see that it was Lily: she’s known both me and Webb long enough to have no illusions about the score, and she nodded me through without asking me to sign the visitors’ book.

One of the male nurses, Paul, who knew I was coming (another late-night call) was waiting for me outside Rafi’s cell. I gestured a question at him, thumb up and then down. He shrugged massively.

‘He’s quiet,’ he said. ‘Kind of. Had a rowdy night and I guess he’s resting now. Still wide awake, though.’ He was unlocking the door as he spoke, but he paused with his hand on the handle to look me full in the eye. ‘You’re not gonna like what they’ve done to him,’ he warned me. ‘Try to keep your cool, okay?’

‘Okay.’

Paul swung the door open and I stepped in, announcing my arrival with an echoing clang because the floor inside Rafi’s cell is bare metal: steel, mostly, but with a lot of silver in the mix too. I know because I paid for it to be installed: cost a small fortune, but it’s worth it because for at least some of the time it keeps Rafi’s passenger from getting too frisky.

Friskiness didn’t seem to be an issue right now, though: in preparation for transit, Webb had Rafi trussed up tighter than a Christmas turkey.

They’d built – or perhaps Jenna-Jane had supplied – a massive steel frame, about seven feet high by four wide, standing on three sets of wheels like a mobile dress rack. The resemblance didn’t end there, either: Rafi was hanging inside this construction, in an all-over-body straitjacket fitted with a dozen or more steel hoops to which lengths of elasticated cable had been attached. Like a spider trussed in his own web he dangled at the centre of the frame on a slight diagonal, his face the only part of him that was visible. I would have expected that face to be livid with demonic rage, but it was a near-perfect blank, the eyes – all pupil, no white – staring at me and through me.

‘OPG?’ I asked Paul.

‘Yeah.’

‘Inhaled or injected?’

‘Both.’

‘Bastards.’ I could smell the stuff in the air now – although it was the propellants rather than the gas itself that I was smelling: OPG itself is too volatile to linger for more than a couple of seconds after it’s been used. It was produced as a weapon – a nerve toxin, derived from the less potent Tabun – but was banned for military use decades ago. You can still use it on the mentally ill, though, because of a sweet little legal loophole: in tiny, almost homeopathic amounts it’s been proven to slow the onset of Alzheimer’s and to have a sedative effect on manic patients. I was willing to bet that the amounts we were talking about here were more in the bulk haulage range.

‘I’m gonna leave you to it,’ Paul said. ‘And if anyone asks I’m gonna lie and say I never saw you. Sorry, Castor. Bastards they are, but for now I still work here. We’re meant to be wheeling him out to the front in a few minutes, so you’d best keep it short.’ He stepped out and pulled the door almost to behind him.

‘Hey, Castor,’ said Rafi, his voice crystal clear despite the zoned-out stare.

‘Hey, Rafi,’ I answered, giving him the benefit of the doubt until I could be sure. I came in a little closer, but not too close: I wasn’t sure how much give there was in those elastic straps. ‘Asmodeus in there too?’

‘Yeah, he’s here. He’s not happy with you.’

‘I bet. Can I have a word?’

There was a long silence. I waited it out, knowing from past experience that there was no way of rushing this. Asmodeus rose or fell under his own steam and at his own pace: and the massive OPG hit, whimsically cross-connecting the circuitry of Rafi’s nervous system, wouldn’t help much either. But slow ripples began to pass across Rafi’s face, each one leaving it subtly altered. The effect was slow enough that you could convince yourself it was an optical illusion, but it didn’t much matter how you rationalised it: after half a minute or so, the fact was you were looking at a different face.

The new face, wearing Rafi’s features like a savagely ironic quote, stared at me with a sour grimace twisting one corner of its mouth.

‘Can’t hear the cavalry,’ Asmodeus said, sounding like he was crunching down on a mouthful of ground glass.

‘They’re coming,’ I answered, with more confidence than I felt. ‘In the meantime I was going to ask a favour.