The Diabolist (Dominic Grey 3) (22 page)

He deserved it all.

He reached for the bottle. “Come, then,” he bellowed, shaking the bottle at the air. “Convince me, spirits. Convince me you exist, reveal yourselves, torture me if you can.”

He sank to his knees, swigging the rest of the bottle and letting it clang to the floor. “Come if you will, but leave my memories be.”

Viktor woke the next morning on the floor, slumped in a sticky mess of spilled absinthe and drool, the dawn light bruising his temples. He pushed to his knees, feeling sick from drink for the first time in twenty years.

He stumbled to the same coffee shop and had a double espresso before his customary cappuccino. With sobriety came shame. Viktor could barely remember the end of the evening, except for the whispers lingering in his mind. He blamed it on the wormwood.

He thought again of the events of the day before, trying to see an angle with the Crowley information. Drumming his thumbs on his cup, he forced his thoughts into focus.

During the First World War, after living in New York for a time, Crowley had also made trips to New Orleans and San Francisco. The three best places in America to search for an ancient occult text. But according to Zador, Crowley already
had
the rare treatise when he had arrived in San Francisco.

Perhaps Viktor was taking the wrong approach. He checked his watch: He had about an hour to spare before heading to the airport. As he pushed away from the table, he noticed, in the corner of the coffee shop, the same dark-haired man he had seen in Zador’s bookstore the other day, the last customer to leave before Zador had locked the door. The man was absorbed
in a magazine, but when Viktor stood he had glanced his way. Or at least Viktor thought he had.

Viktor feigned a trip to the restroom and concealed his cell phone with his suit jacket, managing to take a photo of the side of the man’s face. He texted the photo to Grey and Jacques.

After walking a few streets over to ensure the man wasn’t following him, which he didn’t appear to be, Viktor hailed a taxi and strode into Zador’s shop. Viktor rang the bell, and Zador emerged from the stacks.

“We’re back, I see,” Zador said.

“You said there were only six copies of
The Ahriman Heresy
in existence,” Viktor said. “Do you know where Crowley obtained his copy?”

“Ah, a clever question at last.”

“Do you?” Viktor said.

“No.”

Viktor clenched his hands. “Do you know where it is now?”

“I thought you might never ask.”

Viktor took a step forward, eyes sparking with an intense light. “And?”

“The York Circle of Magicians is known to possess select rare items from Crowley’s estate.”

Viktor dashed to the airport, on his way to the walled city of York to investigate both the delivery of the newest letter, as well as Crowley’s copy of
The Ahriman Heresy
. As he pondered these developments, just after seeing the same man twice in twenty-four hours in a city of a million souls, he thought of Grey and his scorn for coincidence.

Viktor felt the same.

LONDON

G
rey spent the flight to London staring out the window, struggling to force away the image of the girl in the cavern, feeling the greasy residue of the violence. It didn’t matter how necessary or right his actions had been. The violence still affected him, chipped away a little more of his soul. That was the price.

After landing he took the Tube to Notting Hill. Viktor had given him the address for Alec Lister, one of the Clerics of Whitehall as well as a barrister with an office on High Street Kensington. Grey had no idea how Viktor had gotten the name.

Grey had lived in London when he was twenty after drifting out of Southeast Asia, a coiled spring of restless energy. He worked the odd nightclub security gig, fought when he had to, and spent his days taking the Tube to random parts of the city or walking the city’s parks, pondering life amid the throng of foreign faces.

London had been everything Grey thought it would be: immense, chaotic, sodden, diverse, a city bolstered by the grandeur of its past and pulsating with the swagger of its present. A megalopolis could be the loneliest of places, but Grey was used to being alone, and at least in London he felt alive.

Notting Hill looked the same to Grey as it had a decade ago, vibrant sidewalk cafés sandwiched between antiques and vintage shops, pubs so quaint they seemed fake, the pastel facades of the townhomes on Portobello. He found an Internet café, caffeinated, and did some quick research.

He didn’t find a word on the Clerics of Whitehall. What he found on the Monks of Medmenham, however, affirmed the sordid story Viktor had hinted at: gentlemen with too much money and time on their hands whose idea of a good time was orgiastic rituals and debasing religious icons.

Lovely men, these pillars of society.

Realizing how hungry he was, he stopped for lunch at a sushi bar in Notting Hill lined with black wood and neon-blue lighting. After lunch he walked a few streets over to a more commercial area, entering a four-story office building and taking the lift to the barrister’s address. The secretary, an East Indian woman with her hair in a bun, sniffed as Grey approached.

“I’m here to see Alec Lister,” Grey said.

“And you are…?”

Grey took out his Interpol badge. “Dominic Grey. I have a few questions for Alec about Ian Stoke.”

The secretary’s eyes registered nothing. She rose, opened a solid oak door, and disappeared inside, emerging seconds later. “I’m afraid Mr. Lister is engaged with conference calls the rest of the morning, and then he’s due in court. He wants to know if you could call back later in the week?”

“I’m afraid not.” He thought for a moment, then said, “Tell him Sir David Naughton sends his regards from Harare.”

Grey had neither the time nor the inclination to go through local law enforcement to get Lister’s attention, so he took a gamble. Sir David Naughton was a British diplomat Grey had met during the Juju investigation in Harare, and he had a proclivity for poking his nose into dark and secret places. Grey thought him an exceptional candidate for membership in the Clerics of Whitehall.

The secretary disappeared, then reappeared and flicked her wrist. “He’ll see you now.”

She closed the door behind Grey. A plush office sprawled before him, with a window overlooking the bustle of Kensington. A lean older man with wispy gray hair, large ears, and tufted silver eyebrows sat behind a desk, an arrogant lilt to his mouth.

“I’m afraid I’ve no idea who you are,” Alec said. “You say Naughton sent you?”

“I knew Naughton in Zimbabwe, when I was looking into the disappearance of an American diplomat at a Juju ceremony. I thought you might know the name.”

The silver eyebrows angled upward.

“Right now I’m investigating the death of Ian Stoke,” Grey said.

“Who?”

“Don’t.”

“I’m afraid I’ve no idea—”

Grey slammed his hands down on the desk, and Alec jumped. “You’re a member of the Clerics of Whitehall, as was Stoke.”

Alec said nothing. Grey let him stew. The best interrogation technique, especially when Grey had as little actual information as he did, was to let Alec’s mind run wild with possibilities. Was Grey here to bust him? Did the authorities know about the secret ceremonies and the underage attendees? Grey was sure Alec Lister had plenty to think about.

When he started fidgeting Grey doled out a little more information. “Ian got a letter a week ago, didn’t he? A letter giving him six days to step aside as leader of the Clerics.”

Alec swallowed but managed to keep his superior tone. “How do you know about the letter?”

“Because you’re not the only lowlifes on the hit list. Who’s in charge of the Clerics now?”

No answer.

“Is it you?” Grey said. “Or Dante?”

This time Grey got a reaction. Alec shrunk into his seat as if deflating. “God, you know about Dante? Who
are
you?”

“Is Dante in charge now?”

“If you think we’re the criminals”—he gave a short, hysterical laugh—“then you haven’t met Dante. He’s an animal, that one. A very cunning, vicious animal. Dante and his ilk are a sorry lot.”

“Your predecessors sounded pretty sorry themselves,” Grey said.

“The Monks? Christ, we’re nothing like them,” he said with a snort, though Grey could tell by the shifting of his eyes that they, in fact, were. “What is it you want, then? No one was present when Ian died, and I don’t know anything about it other than the letter.”

“Were you with him the night he died?”

“I talked to him on the mobile,” Alec said. “There’s a night guard on his street, and he retired to his room. He thought it was an idle threat, some kook. The maid found him at sunrise the next morning, on his bedroom floor.”

Grey felt like he was plugging a dam with his thumb. It took far longer than a few days to investigate something like this properly, the forensic report hadn’t even come in, and by the time he found a clue the next letter would be delivered and another victim found dead.

“I’ll need to see the house,” Grey said.

“I don’t have a key, so I don’t see how—”

“Just take me. Now.”

Grey kept his hand on Alec’s elbow as they walked down the busy street. Ian’s residence was only a few blocks away on Ladbroke Mews, a quiet cul-de-sac just inside Holland Park. Grey’s eyebrows rose as they entered the tree-lined, cobblestone scythe of a street; it was stocked with immaculate, stand-alone brick homes with ground-floor garages. This was the center of London, and those properties would cost millions.

Ian’s three-story home had an iron entrance gate, and the white brick facade was trimmed in black wood and draped with climbing roses. Grey inspected the front door. Solid and likely dead-bolted. Grey would need cover of darkness for that job. He led Alec to the rear of the house, inspecting as he went. High windows and fairly secure.

Any half-trained professional could break into a house. It was the alarm system Grey saw, the wires and the cameras, that raised questions about the night of Ian’s death.

“Did the alarm go off that night?” Grey said.

“No.”

No alarm meant one of three things. Either a master thief was involved, someone Ian knew assisted with the murder, or the Magus teleported himself inside and administered poison gas. Grey was going with option number two.

“Have the police talked to the guards and checked the cameras?” Grey said. “Did anyone go inside that night?”

“Not a soul, other than Ian.”

“He drove in?” Grey said.

“I assume so. Bollocks, I don’t know.”

Grey rubbed at his stubble. “The cameras probably don’t reach inside the car.”

“Anyway, Ian has tinted windows.”

“I’m sure he does. Was he seeing anyone?”

“Just the same young filly he’d been seeing for a few months. But you must understand,” he said with a creepy smile, “Ian always had a young filly, the younger the better.”

Grey’s voice hardened. “Do you know her name?”

“Why would I?”

Grey took him by the elbow again, exerting pressure on the ulnar nerve. Alec yelped in pain. “This isn’t a courtroom,” Grey said. “I ask the questions, and you answer.”