Poison City Read online

  Paul Crilley is a Scotsman living in South Africa. He

  also writes for television, comics, and computer

  games. His previous books have mainly been for

  children, among them The Invisible Order series about

  a hidden war being fought on the streets of Victorian

  London between mankind and the fae.

  Poison City is his first novel written solely for adults.

  Poison City

  Paul Crilley

  www.hodder.co.uk

  First published in Great Britain in 2016 by

  Hodder & Stoughton

  An Hachette UK company

  Copyright © Paul Crilley 2016

  The right of Paul Crilley to be identified as the Author of the Work

  has been asserted by him in accordance with the Copyright,

  Designs and Patents Act 1988.

  All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced,

  stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted, in any form or by any

  means without the prior written permission of the publisher, nor be

  otherwise circulated in any form of binding or cover other than that

  in which it is published and without a similar condition being

  imposed on the subsequent purchaser.

  All characters in this publication are fictitious and any resemblance

  to real persons, living or dead, is purely coincidental.

  A CIP catalogue record for this title is available from the British Library.

  ISBN 978 1 473 63161 8

  Hodder & Stoughton Ltd

  Carmelite House

  50 Victoria Embankment

  London EC4Y 0DZ

  www.hodder.co.uk

  For Caroline, Bella, and Caeleb

  Contents

  Chapter 1

  Chapter 2

  Chapter 3

  Chapter 4

  Chapter 5

  Chapter 6

  Chapter 7

  Chapter 8

  Chapter 9

  Chapter 10

  Chapter 11

  Chapter 12

  Chapter 13

  Chapter 14

  Chapter 15

  Chapter 16

  Chapter 17

  Chapter 18

  Chapter 19

  Chapter 20

  Chapter 21

  Chapter 22

  Chapter 23

  Chapter 24

  Acknowledgements

  Chapter 1

  The first thing the dog does when I walk through the door is sniff the air and say, ‘You forgot the sherry, dipshit.’

  He stares at me, the colour of his eyes shifting between jaundiced yellow and soul-of-a-serial-killer black. He knows I hate that. It’s his lazy-ass way of saying, ‘You open that mouth it better be to say: Sorry, dog. I’ll get right on it, dog.’

  That’s how he insists on being referred to, by the way. Just ‘dog’ or ‘the dog’. I’ve tried giving him a name, but he’s not having it.

  I drop the rucksack filled with bullets on the kitchen floor. ‘I’ll get it later,’ I say. ‘Got stuff to do first.’

  He growls, then whines and tilts his head to the side, trying to cover all possible responses to my failure to act as an enabler to his alcoholism.

  I give him the middle finger.

  ‘You know what?’ he says. ‘I hate you. With every fibre of my being.’

  ‘Love you too, man.’

  ‘Come on, London. You know I need my afternoon sherry. What’s so important you couldn’t stop at the liquor store and buy me a bottle? You got a date? Joined a cult? Is the circus in town? Tell me so I can laugh derisively in your face.’

  I sigh. You know all those cute dogs in the movies you saw as a kid? Jock? Benji? Lassie? Well, the dog is nothing like that. He’s the complete opposite of that. He’s the dog equivalent of a pervert in a dirty raincoat, sucking methylated spirits through a loaf of bread while watching porn and cackling to himself. He looks a bit like a border terrier, but don’t let that fool you. Cute and friendly he is not.

  But you know what? He’s OK.

  Actually, no, I’m lying. He’s not OK. Not by a long shot. He’s like that one friend you’ve known since high school. The one who drinks too much and tells sexist and racist jokes. The one you wouldn’t admit to knowing if you bumped into him with actual people from the real world.

  But we’re used to each other by now. And as long as I keep him stocked up on OBs, (Old Brown sherry – the cheapest, nastiest stuff on the market), he’s golden.

  I pull out a stool, park myself at the kitchen counter. ‘We think we’ve found out who’s taking the kids.’

  That shuts him up.

  Someone has been stealing kids from the townships. Kids who haven’t gone through their naming ceremonies yet. Eleven in the past three months. The families went to ORCU – that’s the Occult Related Crimes Unit of the South African Police Force – and they in turn passed it on to Delphic Division. Because let’s face it, ORCU is a waste of space and the closest they’ve ever gotten to the supernatural is daring each other to say Candyman three times in front of the mirror.

  ORCU is the public face of the country’s supernatural police. Delphic Division is where the actual work gets done.

  The families of the missing kids thought it was a tokoloshe, but I thought differently. That’s why I requested the case. The ages of the missing kids, the way they just vanished into thin air . . .

  It was them. It had to be.

  After three years, they were getting back in the game. They thought it had all blown over, that they were forgotten.

  They’re very much mistaken.

  ‘Come on,’ snaps the dog. ‘You know my bladder can’t take this kind of suspense. Who’s the naughty thief stealing little kiddy-winks?’

  ‘Babalu-Aye.’

  The dog stares at me then erupts into wheezy laughter. Which in turn descends into a horrific coughing fit, making him sounding like an asthmatic coal miner with lung cancer.

  ‘Seriously?’ he says, when he finally gets himself under control.

  ‘Seriously.’

  ‘Would never have pinned that on him. Didn’t think he had the imagination.’

  Babalu-Aye is the orisha of disease and illness. (An orisha is what we call a Tier-One supernatural. The word orisha is supposed to refer to the Yoruba gods, but over the years it’s become the catch-all term for anything . . . other: gods, demons, nature elementals, whatever. There are other tiers below the orisha, but they’re the biggest pains in the arse.)

  Everyone thinks of Babalu-Aye as this mild-mannered old god called upon by the sick to make them feel better. Only thing is, that’s not the whole story, because Babalu-Aye likes to cause disease as well. Which he does quite often, apparently.

  ‘You know where he is?’ asks the dog.

  I nod.

  ‘And . . . what? You’re going to just walk in and take him on?’

  ‘No choice. Another kid went missing yesterday. Might still be time to save him.’

  ‘Doubt it,’ says the dog cheerfully. ‘Come on. Forget it. Let’s go out drinking instead. Drinking is good. Hunting gods is bad.’

  ‘You know I can’t. The gods are bad enough as it is. I’m not going to let him think he can just snatch kids whenever he feels like it. Let one get away with it, they all start getting ideas.’

  ‘And tell me. Is this little escapade on the books or off?’

  I hesitate. Delphic Division’s budget is being squeezed by pencil-pushers in Parliament, and my boss, Armitage, is under pressure to only take on ‘high-return’ cases. Whatever the hell that means.

  But that doesn’t stop Armitage. Oh, no. She just surreptitiously passes me the case
file, taps her nose, and tells me, ‘Take care of it, there’s a good lad.’

  Plausible deniability is just one of the super-fun phrases I’ve learned while working at Delphic Division.

  But I don’t mind. Not this time. I’ve been waiting for this chance for three years now. It’s the only reason I stayed on at the Division, when it would have been a hell’ve a lot easier to just sink into the drink and let oblivion take me.

  The dog plods forward and sniffs the rucksack at my feet. ‘What’s that smell?’

  ‘Pixie dust.’

  ‘Yeah? Well, Tinkerbell’s got cancer or something, because that stinks like a match factory and a methane farm fucked each other and had ugly babies.’

  I ignore him, reaching into the cupboard by my knees and pulling out my antique double-barrel sawn-off. It’s a thing of absolute beauty, filigreed and silver-plated. I won it in a game of poker with Mathew Hopkins, an utter psycho who started hunting witches in the 17th century. Last I heard he was still alive and doing his thing over in Russia.

  I take a box of shotgun shells from the rucksack, crack open the gun, and slot two into place. I put the remaining six in my pockets.

  The lead shot inside the shells has been removed and replaced with petrified dung balls, courtesy of Aka Manah, a Zoroastrian demon who’s currently tenth in line for the throne of Hell. It’s Aka Manah’s job to take care of naughty demons down below. He’s Judge Dredd to their Mega-City One citizens, and every part of him can kill an orisha.

  Even his shit.

  I really wish I had more shells, but at two thousand rand a pop, these have already destroyed my operational budget.

  I shove the shooter inside the rucksack. There’s another box inside, this one filled with thrice-hexed 9mm silver-plated rounds. I slot them into the magazine of my Glock 17, shove the pistol into the back of my trousers and toss the leftover ammo back into the bag. There are a few other little surprises in there as well, but I’m hoping I won’t have to use them. They’re not exactly . . . low-key.

  I turn my attention to the dog. ‘You coming?’

  ‘What about the Covenant?’ he says, giving it one last try. ‘You can’t just go around killing gods. Armitage should know fucking better than to even ask.’

  He actually has a point there. The Covenant is the agreement made centuries ago between mankind and the gods/monsters/supers/orishas/whatever-the-hell you want to call them. It runs along the same lines as Mutually Assured Destruction, where both sides know that if one faction kicks off the whole world will burn. There’s a book the size of a telephone directory filled with supernatural laws we’re all supposed to stick to.

  The operative word here being supposed. If everyone obeyed the law I’d be out of a job.

  ‘Just have to make sure I don’t get caught,’ I say. ‘You coming or what?’

  The dog sighs. ‘Got no choice, do I? If you die, who’s going to buy me my sherry?’

  ‘That’s what I love about you, man. You’re all heart.’

  Durban, wedged up against the east coast of South Africa, is the dirtiest, strangest, most violent place I’ve ever lived. It’s the soul of South Africa. A sweaty one-night stand of a city where anything goes and the warm Indian Ocean washes all your sins out to sea the next morning.

  Durban is a schizophrenic mix of colours and impressions. A serial killer wearing a fake identity, struggling to present a facade of normality to the world. Grey 1970s concrete buildings, painted with dull greens and reds in an attempt to liven up the drabness. Dusty skylines, shading up from sepia to blue. Street signs advertising craft markets and muti doctors. (Mutidoctors – what us ignorant foreigners would call witchdoctors.) Litter everywhere, newspapers, pamphlets, fruit peel, broken glass, everything stepped on and pummelled into mulch, a carpet of dirty memories and forgotten troubles.

  Then on top of this is the brightness. The yellow ANC signs, the red EFF billboards. The vibrant, clashing colours of the thousands of street traders who come here from all over the continent, about half of them smuggled aboard the ships that draw into the busiest port in Africa: Swahili, Tanzanian, Malawian, Indian, Zimbabwean (and, increasingly, Russian).

  Walking through the streets is an attack on the senses. The bright clothes, the stabbing sunlight, the conflicting smells of fruit and spices, curry powder and cinnamon, marijuana and sweat.

  That’s the city itself. But then, right at the edge of all that you have a tiny oasis called the Golden Mile. A bubble of rich obliviousness, the expensive cream floating on top of the scum, uncaring of what goes on beneath.

  The Golden Mile looks like it has been transported here from Venice Beach. Four miles of prime beachfront real estate stretching from the Blue Lagoon to the Durban Harbor. A wide, brick-paved promenade fronted by hotels and apartment blocks, populated by tourists and surfers, joggers and cyclists, dog walkers and hipsters.

  This is where I live, right on the outer edge of the Obliviousness Bubble. A tiny apartment in Windemere Road. Not because I’m rich, you understand. But because I bought the place when the beachfront still belonged to the drug dealers and pimps. It kind of still belongs to them, but they’ve gone a bit more upmarket now. All that foreign money.

  I step out of the cool lobby of the apartment building into a furnace oven. I squint. The sidewalk is steaming, the moisture from the recent storm hanging in the air, a wet heat that clings to me like damp clothing.

  Summer in Durban. Nothing like it for humidity, hot weather, and bad tempers.

  I unlock the door of my faded green Land Rover and climb in. She’s an ancient thing that devours diesel at a rate I didn’t think possible and breaks down about seventy per cent of the time she’s on the road. But I’ll never get rid of her. We’ve been through a lot together.

  I flick a hidden switch beneath the dash. My own personal security device that cuts off the flow of diesel to the engine when I’m not using her. I’m not saying Durban beachfront is particularly crime-ridden – it’s the same as anywhere in South Africa – but over the past year thieves have tried to steal my car thirteen times. That I know of.

  The dog jumps into the passenger seat and checks himself out in the wing mirror while I peel out into traffic, do an illegal U-turn, and head along the Golden Mile. North Beach passes to our left in flashes of sun and shade as I head around the traffic circles and deeper into town. Our destination isn’t too far away. About five kilometres as the bird flies.

  ‘Hey, London,’ says the dog after a while. ‘Got a question for you.’

  London. Or ‘London Town’. My unasked-for nickname. My real name is Gideon Tau, but I got saddled with London because that’s where I’m from. I worked in the Met for fifteen years before moving over here under something of a cloud. Oh, and ‘London Town’ because it sounds sort-of-but-not-really like ‘London Tau’. All the wags at the Division think it’s hilarious.

  ‘As long as it’s not like your last question. I told you that’s what Google is for. Just make sure safe-search is switched off.’

  ‘No, no. Nothing like that. You know that movie?’

  ‘Which one?’

  ‘The one about the incest. With the nazis. And the terrorists trying to take down the government.’

  I do a quick mental search of all the movies we’ve watched recently. None of them match up.

  ‘Not ringing any bells. Give me specifics.’

  ‘Come on, man. You know the one. The space nazis and the brother and sister? And the dad cuts off the kid’s hand and he’s all like, “N-o-o!”. ’

  I frown. ‘Are you talking about The Empire Strikes Back?’

  ‘That’s the one!’

  Space nazis and incest. I suppose that’s one way to describe it. ‘What about it?’

  ‘Well . . . were you guys really stupid back then?’

  ‘Huh?’

  ‘’Cause the guy’s name is Darth Vader, right? And it’s supposed to be a big surprise that he’s the kid’s dad, yeah?’

  ‘It w
as a big surprise. This was before the internet. People went into a movie without knowing the whole plot beforehand.’

  ‘Yeah but . . . the guy’s name. Darth Vader. Vader is Dutch for father. Darth means dark. His name literally means Dark Father.’

  I flick the visor down to block out the afternoon sun. Left my shades back in the flat again. ‘Well . . .’ I say defensively. ‘So what? We didn’t go into it expecting him to be someone’s father. You’re only acting the smartarse with hindsight.’

  ‘Bullshit. I would have called that right there in the theatre.’

  ‘Yeah, I don’t think so,’ I say, stopping behind a long line of cars. I lean out the window and see that a minibus taxi has stopped dead in the middle of the street to pick up passengers.

  ‘I would have, man. We’re not even talking spoilers here. Just common sense.’

  I ignore him and drum my fingers on the wheel. My gaze drifts to the right. I can just see the metal fountain outside the entrance to uShaka Marine World. Families are filing inside to spend an enormous amount of money pretending they’re in an upside-down shipwreck while they watch sharks swimming around behind safety glass.

  Insider’s secret: the water holds more than sharks. A Jengu water spirit calls the place her home and she steals a tiny piece of every visitor’s soul to feed on. Not a lot, you understand. Just enough to keep going. The equivalent of a couple of cents out of every Rand spent. We do monthly checks on her to make sure she’s not overstepping the mark.

  The taxi driver eventually decides he’s crammed enough bodies into his minibus and pulls off with a spurt of oily smoke, allowing us to get moving again. I take the next right onto Prince Street and find an empty spot to park.

  ‘This it?’ asks the dog.

  I nod across the street at a dirty white wall covered with peeling paint. The peaks of a cluster of buildings jut up above the wall, stark against the blue sky.

  ‘Addingtons,’ I say. ‘Used to be a kid’s hospital. Been closed for thirty years.’