The Devil's Detective (41 page)

One of the Sorrowful—a farmhand, Fool supposed—had a machete, its blade nicked and worn but its edge sharp, and he clambered onto Adam's back, sawing and hacking at its wings. Adam reached behind, trying to spin, but its movements were slow and the man avoided the grasping fingers easily and carried on chopping. The mass of people was thickening now, kicking and punching, no longer throwing rocks but using them as hand weapons, using the edges to slash at Adam's flesh.

Its damaged wing came loose first, was cast back into the crowd to a great cheer, and was rapidly followed by the other. Adam screamed, tried to fall and roll, but the sheer weight and mass of the crowd kept it at least partially upright, kept it a target for their fury. It was simply too great, too violent, to be stopped.

The Sorrowful raged, forming a caul about Adam, and the Fallen was soon lost to Fool's view.

By the time the Sorrowful had finished, very little of Adam was left. It had been torn to pieces, the pieces carried out into Crow Heights' streets in a triumphant rally. Its head and wings were held at the head of the procession, their holders making swooping motions with them, nodding its head, and the crowd laughed.

Fool followed them, limping. He was tired, too tired to feel victorious even when members of the crowd came over to him and held him or shook his hand. He had caught the murderer, but at what cost? The Falling of one angel and the death of another? The death of his colleagues? Around him, the Sorrowful celebrated; they cheered and sang, but Fool had the impression things were gathering behind the Heights' windows, taking note. This behavior would surely be punished. Nothing in Hell went unnoticed.

Eventually, Fool made his way back to the main gates and sat by the wall, leaning against one of the stunted trees that grew there, watching. More and more of the Sorrowful flooded in through the damaged entrance. Some were carrying banners, some the leaflets; all were cheering. A constant stream of them came over to him, shaking his hand or touching his face or shoulders and thanking him, although he wasn't sure what for. One gave him a leaflet on which a barely recognizable version of himself was drawn over the words
HELL NEEDS MORE OF HIM
. He crumpled the paper after looking at it for a few seconds and put it in his pocket.

The crowd was spreading through Crow Heights. Fool heard distant shouts, the sounds of violence and things breaking, screams.
You may have killed the Fallen
, he thought,
but don't expect the rest of Hell not to fight.
As if to prove him right, a group of the Sorrowful appeared, carrying an injured woman back through the streets and out of the Heights, her blood leaving a bright trail across the ground.

“It has been so wonderful,” said a voice from behind him.

“No, it hasn't,” said Fool without looking around. He was too tired to accept any more compliments, too tired and sick and sore and hurt.

“Oh, but it has, Fool,” said the voice. It sounded dry and leathery, and when it laughed the noise was like two pieces of linen being ground together. This time, it came from above him.

Fool looked up; just branches and leaves. The tree had a vine curling through it, tiny orange flowers sprouting from it as he watched. No people, just plants.

Plants and flowers.

“That's right, Fool, that's so right!” said the Man, the leaves and flowers shaking as he forced his voice out through them. “Did Adam really think he could kill me? I live in the very smallest places, Fool, scattered throughout Hell's lands, and no mere angel can best me! But now Rhakshasas and those other old fools think I am gone, and I have you to thank. You got noticed, Fool, and how simple it was to point you in the right direction, to keep you noticed by human and demon alike so that they might use you against me, and that I might use the situation against them. I no longer exist, Fool, but I am
everywhere
!”

“Why?” asked Fool, too exhausted to be truly shocked, asking the
why
not just of the Man but of everything, hoping for answers even though he knew they would not be forthcoming.

“Why? Why not, Fool, why not? Now I am free, the most free thing in Hell, and intend to have fun!”

“Fun?”

There was no reply; he didn't expect one. Instead, the leaves shook above him one last time, as though in good-bye, and then the tree and the vine were still.

Fool sat for a long time, listening to the violence in the Heights, to screams and howls and roars and the sound of buildings falling and fires swelling, and eventually he thought he ought to move. He was just about to rise when he heard a second voice.

“You've done well, Thomas, very well,” said Elderflower. He had
appeared at Fool's side as silently as ever, as though he had stepped out of the air next to him.

“Have I?”

“Of course,” said Elderflower, looking around at the running, shouting humans. He sniffed deeply. “Can you smell that?”

“No.”

“It's smoke, Thomas. Wood smoke. Crow Heights is beginning to properly burn. It has been set alight by the crowds in their anger. By tonight, it will be ablaze. Down in the Houska everything's calm, but as word reaches the rest of Hell about today's work it, too, will ignite. Then the factories, and the farms perhaps. The boardinghouses, definitely. Everything will burn, Thomas.”

Something was wrong. There was a new sound in the air, a rhythmic crashing, the roar of something mechanical. New sounds, like nothing Fool had heard before but somehow terribly familiar. Elderflower was right, Fool could smell it now: fires. Thick smoke was drifting toward them from somewhere in the Heights, black palls of it writhing and turning.

Elderflower was standing by Fool, his long coat flapping slightly, his hands clasped behind his back. He was facing into Crow Heights, watching the smoke, looking away from Fool. Fool lifted the feather from his pocket, looked at it and stroked it, marveling at its softness even after all it had been through, and then very carefully slipped it into Elderflower's cuff.

“What's going on, Elderflower?” he asked.

“Change, Thomas, change. Hell is changing.”

“Why?”

“Why not, Thomas, why not? Hell was once a place of absolute burning and is now a place of uncertainty, and both are terrible but people can get used to anything given enough time. ‘This is how it is,' they say. ‘This is Hell. We will survive.' We cannot have that, Thomas, no indeed. This is Hell, Thomas, and Hell is not somewhere to be used to, to be complacent about. So we allow and encourage Hell to change.”

“Change to what?”

“Can you hear it, Thomas?” said Elderflower, apparently ignoring Fool's question.

“Hear what?”

“You can, Thomas, I know you can. That sound, the sound of your new force.”

“New force?”

“Demons, Thomas. Demons and humans all in uniforms as black as Hell's darkest night. Hundreds of them, thousands, imposing the law upon the rest of Hell's inhabitants. They're yours, Thomas, to order and lead.”

“I don't understand,” he said. His head hurt, his body hurt, but the worst was the feeling opening in his stomach as though it was hollowing out in increasingly large swathes.

“This is your reward, Thomas, because you played your role so beautifully.”

“Role?” he asked. “I didn't play a role. I was investigating.” Even as he spoke, he knew, though. Knew.

“Each step carefully designed, Thomas. Each one set for you to move along. All of it, Thomas, from Adam onward, all to get us to this point. Unstable Adam, ready to fall, exposed to the right sights, scared Rhakshasas, fearful of the Man and wanting answers, the Man himself thinking he was at the center of the web when he was really only another strand in the grandest design of all. And you, Thomas, scared and hurt but moving onward anyway, given the feather so that you might see clearly and grow in stature and become what I needed you to be. You're a hero, Thomas; people love you because you stood up to demons, because you issue orders and the demons obey, and they want more like you. More Information Men, more order, more control. And I will give it to them, Thomas, oh yes I will! And do you know the most wonderful thing? They'll welcome this change, hold their arms open and say how it's what they want, law and order and protection, and in a few months or years when the laws are suffocating them, and when the fear of being arrested and tortured and imprisoned on little more than the say-so of their neighbors is so huge they can hardly breathe, they'll remember that they invited this in and they'll hate themselves for it.

“And you, Thomas,” said Elderflower, removing the feather from his cuff and turning to face Fool, “will be its head, and they will see a human, not a demon, responsible for their pain and they will hate even more.”
Elderflower looked down at the feather and he suddenly seemed huge, his face filling the sky and his eyes gleaming, his hair twisting into great curled horns emerging from his temples. The feather bloomed to flame, burned briefly with a greasy smell, and then was gone apart from a smear of ash across Elderflower's fingers that he wiped away on his coat.

“I have grown tired of Hell the way it is,” Elderflower said, “so I have changed it.
You
have changed it, Thomas, and for that you have my thanks. Great times are coming.”

Then the first of the new Information Men arrived, ranks of them jogging in step with each other, their feet crashing down in unison and making that pounding, roaring noise. There were demons and humans, men and women, all in black uniforms with silver buttons. Large transports rolled in behind them, and when they stopped the rears opened and more Information Men emerged and began spreading out across the square. They formed into a phalanx in front of Fool and stopped.

“They're waiting, Thomas,” said Elderflower. “The first orders of the new Hell need to be given.”

Fool rose unsteadily to his feet, unable to speak. It was too big to hold in his head, too ungainly to fit his thoughts around. All of them, Balthazar and Adam and Diamond and the Man and Rhakshasas and Gordie and Summer and himself, all moving to the rhythms of Hell's beat.
Had he ever really been free?
he wondered. Ever had a choice? Were there places he could have acted differently, gone in a new direction?

No
, he thought, and the voice in his head seemed to be his and Gordie's and Summer's all at once. This was Hell, and that was its purpose, and he was simply another speck grinding within its huge and grotesque wheels. Elderflower smiled at him, nodded, turned, and walked away, leaving cloven prints in the mud.

Around Fool, the smell of burning grew thicker.

So I wrote this book, but I didn't do it without the help and support of a huge number of people. There are, of course, too many to name, but a tip of the cowboy hat and a click of the boot heels have to go to:

Diane and Kurt, best parents I've ever had, for the love and the bed and the support;

Rebecca and Adam, little sis and brother-in-law, for pretty much the same thing;

Rob Bloom at Doubleday and Michael Rowley at Del Rey UK for taking a chance;

John Berlyne at the Zeno Agency for early advice and having faith in me;

Steve Marsh, best friend and the person who told me to write this book and not the other one I was planning;

Andrew Worgan, other best friend, for the whiskey;

Steve Volk, for the advice and coffee;

All the authors and filmmakers whose work I've adored, alive and dead, the ones I've met and the ones I never will, for the influence and the pleasure they keep on bringing me;

The rail network that covers the UK, upon which most of this novel was written;

Mostly, though, I need to thank Rosie. Without her, I'd be a smaller, sadder person and the world would be a smaller, sadder place. Hold my hand, babe, and let's walk into the future.

Simon Kurt Unsworth was born in Manchester and lives in a farmhouse in Cumbria, in the United Kingdom. He is the author of many short stories, including the collection
Quiet Houses. The Devil's Detective
is his first novel.