Managing Death Read online

‘You chose this place because you knew it gives you an advantage over me,’ I say.

  ‘What a cynic.’

  ‘I prefer to call it realism.’ I point towards the dark god in the sky. ‘Maybe it’s just too big. Maybe it’s something that we can’t do anything about at all. But we have to try.’

  ‘What do you know about that thing up there?’ she asks.

  ‘That the Stirrers worship it and that it’s drawing closer. What else is there?’

  Suzanne waves her hand dismissively, as though the Stirrer god was nothing more than a buzzing insect. ‘Look, I want to offer you a deal. Think about all the resources you would have at your disposal. My offices, my staff – they’re much bigger than yours. And that difference in staffing is even larger now after your little problem.’

  The ‘little’ problem she’s referring to, the one that led to my promotion, wiped out Mortmax’s Australian offices and, almost, due to a minor Regional Apocalypse, Australia’s living population. Workplace politics can be genocidal in my line of business. And when things get that way they have a tendency to spill out into the world. The Spanish Flu, the Black Death – they were both preceded by ‘problems’ in my industry.

  ‘You let that happen, too.’ I glare at her. None of the RMs stepped in to help. In the end it had been left up to me. ‘All of you are guilty of that.’

  Suzanne’s eyes narrow just enough that I know I’ve got to her. ‘You know the rules,’ she says, ‘our hands were tied. Morrigan manipulated us.’

  Morrigan manipulated me more than anyone. But I’m not going to let Suzanne get away with her comment. ‘Excuses aren’t going to save the world. Morrigan was small time compared to that.’ I point at the Stirrer god amassing on the horizon.

  Suzanne raises her hands placatingly. ‘I have my best people working on it,’ she says. I open my mouth to speak but she jumps in first. ‘But that’s not why I’m here. You need me.’

  ‘Like a coronary.’ My turn for a condescending grin.

  Suzanne grimaces, though I can see that I’ve amused her, which makes me a little grumpier. ‘Try not to be so aggressive. Yes, this is scary for you, Steven, I understand that. You’re a newly negotiated RM, in the process of building up your Pomps. It’s going to be years before you’re at full strength. You’re vulnerable. You can barely shift without throwing up.’

  Fair assessment so far. But I can’t let it lie. ‘I’ll get better.’

  ‘Of course you will,’ she says, ‘but I can help you. I can ease the transition. I can lend you more Pomps, for one thing.’ She reaches out, squeezes my hand. Her fingers are warm. I pull away, and Suzanne frowns, but not with anger. She dips her head, even manages a smile. ‘I understand exactly what you’re going through. I can guide you.’

  ‘I’ve already got Mr D for that.’

  Suzanne’s face tightens, her smile attenuates, whatever humour there was in her eyes leaves with it. I’m familiar with that expression – I tend to bring it out in people, and Mr D was even better at it than me.

  ‘Mr D was never one of us,’ she says. ‘You want a second-rate mentor? You stick with that idiot. I’m giving you a chance.’ She bends down, grabs a handful of the dust which coats everything here, and lets it fall. Only it doesn’t. The dust drifts around her lazily, glowing in all the colours of a particularly luminous acid trip. It spirals around her head creating a halo, and beneath it she’s all shadows, sharp angles and full lips. The darkest points of her face are her eyes. When she smiles, her teeth are white and straight. ‘No one understands this place, this job, like I do. Just consider it. That’s all I’m asking.’

  ‘And what do you get out of it?’

  ‘I get an ally, Mr de Selby, and one who is aware of his powers and limits, one who doesn’t go off rushing madly into things, making it difficult for everyone. Mr D isolated himself. He never really bothered with us. Sometimes I think he delighted in making enemies. When you think about all the people who died – all that you’ve lost – remember who let it happen. Morrigan had the schemes, but Mr D allowed him to flourish in your branch.’

  She has a point.

  ‘Steven, I liked your family. Michael and Annie were good people. The things your father did for Mortmax … He even lifted our profits in the States.’

  I can imagine Dad rolling in his grave at that. He’d always been slightly embarrassed by his business acumen. All he’d really wanted was to be a Pomp. Now Dad, if pressed, would have made a great RM. Mum, too. I wish they were here. I wish I knew what they would do.

  Suzanne shivers. It’s cold here, and I doubt she would ever show such vulnerability willingly, but my father raised me this way: I shrug out of my coat and put it around her shoulders. She’s wearing Chanel No. 5, my mother’s favourite perfume. I remember coming home, after my parents had died. The house had smelled of it and it was the first time the reality of their deaths really hit me. It was also the first time that I wondered if moving into their place was a mistake.

  I pull away. Suzanne doesn’t notice, or pretends not to, though she does look at me oddly. ‘You are a gentleman, Mr de Selby.’

  I open my mouth to speak, but she’s already gone. ‘Hey! What about my coat?’

  All I have to answer me is dust falling to the ground again. I crouch down and scoop up my own handful. In my palms it’s just dust, gritty and grey. I open my fingers and it drops. Only the souls in the sky, and the nearby city of Stirrers, offer any light.

  My right biceps tingles, then burns. Ah, finally. Wal crawls out from under my shirt and stares up at me.

  ‘I don’t trust her,’ Wal says. No surprise there, that’s Wal’s standard response, though it’s been proven remarkably accurate.

  ‘Where were you?’ I ask.

  ‘Stuck to your arm,’ he says, looking more than a little chagrined. ‘She stopped me, I don’t know how. But she did it well.’

  I grin at him cruelly. ‘Ah, so there are things, very useful things, she could teach me.’

  Wal slaps me across the face with all the force of a handful of tissues. ‘You shut your mouth.’

  He actually looks hurt.

  A dim hooting comes from the city of Devour – like a parliament of malevolent and fractious owls. Bells ring and, all around us, the dead whisper their brittle, final whispers before drifting out of hearing and further into the Deepest Dark.

  The air chills. Both of us feel it. I don’t have my coat anymore, but Wal is the only one who is naked.

  He shivers. ‘I don’t like this place.’

  He’s not the only one.

  6

  ‘I can’t believe I’m going to be late!’

  Most of my clothes are in piles in the bedroom. But my suit, one of eight I own, hangs in the wardrobe. A Pomp never leaves their suit on the floor. Never. And I’m RM now, I have to set the standard. I slip into it like a second skin. It’s Italian, and cost me three weeks’ salary – and that’s my current salary. This meeting with Cerbo is formal; tracksuit and jumper just isn’t going to cut it. Lissa watches, then hits me with the most deafening wolf whistle. I can’t understand how she finds this body attractive. OK, maybe a little, I do work out. And the suit looks pretty fine. But still, I feel my cheeks flush at Lissa’s scrutiny.

  I knot my tie, straighten everything, and even I have to admit that I look good.

  Though not nearly as lovely as Lissa. I want to be back in bed with her. We never seem to spend enough time together. A moment apart is an ache in my chest. Tim might be right, new love and all that. But I never felt this intensely for Robyn. And Lissa is the only woman I have ever pursued to Hell.

  ‘Maybe I should call off this meeting, spend the morning with you. You’re not working till late, I’ve seen the schedule. We could …’

  Lissa appears to give this some serious thought. ‘No, Tim would kill you, and me. Not after all we’ve done trying to get you engaged with the business again. The Moot’s a week away. You’ve got to – stop that!’

 
She doesn’t push me away, though, as my lips brush her neck. Then – I feel her body stiffening with the effort of it – she does, and I’m backing off the bed, away from the intoxicating smell of her. ‘You’ll crush your suit, or, at the very least, stretch the front of those pants.’

  ‘Oh.’ I look down. ‘I see what you mean.’

  And I’m blushing once more. Lissa grins at me wickedly. I straighten my suit again.

  Yeah, new love. Such new, new love.

  ‘How do I look?’

  ‘You’re the bomb,’ she says.

  ‘The bomb?’

  Lissa laughs at me. ‘Just get out of here. Or your cousin will have an aneurism.’

  ‘How’s the hair?’

  She squints at me. ‘Still thinning.’

  ‘I hate you.’

  ‘No, you don’t.’

  I kiss her again, and then I shift to Number Four.

  It’s another body punch of a shift. I miss my office by about fifteen metres. End up at the reception desk. Lundwall blinks at me.

  Number Four. This is Australia’s Pomp Central, and the major node in the southern hemisphere’s Underworld–living world interface, which makes the architecture interesting in a multi-dimensional kind of way. Outside one part of the building, Brisbane is in the middle of a boiling, sweating summer. And outside another part, Hell is going through a rather mild spring. The seasons rarely correspond. In here, the air is loud with the hum of air-conditioners and the creaking of the One Tree.

  Phones ring throughout the office. People are working busily and trying hard to ignore me and my clumsy entrance. I get the feeling that Tim has been doing a fair bit of storming around this morning. Tim is great at his job, but you don’t want to get him mad. He says it doesn’t help that I’m so casual about the whole thing. Well, I think we balance each other out perfectly.

  But I would think that.

  I stumble over to Tim’s office and open the door without knocking. He’s stubbing out a cigarette when I appear and looks guilty.

  ‘Gotcha,’ I say.

  ‘What if I was having a wank or something here?’

  I smirk. ‘Hardly. If you had to choose between smokes and masturbation there’s no contest.’

  ‘Ah, your deductive capabilities astound me, Holmes.’

  Other than the ashtray heaped with cigarettes, Tim’s room is as neat as an anally retentive pin. I’m more than a little envious of his work ethic. His inbox and out are emptied throughout the day and there’s a well-marked year-planner on one wall. Seven days from now, on the 28th of December, the Death Moot begins. He’s circled that day, and the two that follow it, in thick red marker. I’ve a year-planner somewhere under the mess on my desk.

  This was once Morrigan’s office. Tim hasn’t changed it that much, apart from the photo of Sally and the kids next to his keyboard – I bought him the frame. He’s even using the same daily desk calendar, the one with the inspirational quotes. Everything from Dorothy Parker to Sun Tzu is in there. He and Morrigan shared a deep commitment to work, a fastidiousness about everything in their life, and a love of beer, though Tim has never tried to kill me. But the way he’s looking at me, maybe that’s all about to change.

  Then the pain of the shift hits me in a residual wave.

  Tim waits politely until I finish dry heaving before he starts taking strips off me. ‘Jesus, mate! Could you at least have a shower before coming to work?’

  I shrug. No point telling him how hard it was to leave Lissa this morning. Then I see the bandage on his left hand. ‘Not like you to be out with the Stirrers. Was it a hard stir?’ Sometimes a Stirrer will require more blood than usual to stall it.

  Tim shakes his head. ‘I wish, it’d mean I was out of the office more. No, the door’s being particularly demanding today.’ Number Four may be the only place that demands – well, not so much demands, but takes – a blood sacrifice of its staff on entry. RMs are exempt, most of the time, something I’m pleased about. For me, it’s usually only a tiny pricking of the thumb, and weeks may go past where it asks for nothing. I wonder if the ferocity of Tim’s sacrifice has anything to do with the massive portent I spent part of last night cleaning from the bathroom.

  Tim throws me a small spray can of deodorant. I manage to catch it before it hits my head. Then he hurls a pack of breath mints. Not so lucky with those, they skitter all over the desk. I scoop up a few of them.

  ‘I’m guessing you didn’t clean your teeth before you headed over here,’ Tim says.

  ‘You guessed wrong. Anything else?’ I pop a handful of mints into my mouth, regardless.

  ‘Oh, I haven’t started yet.’ His hands rest on his hips. ‘You cut it this fine again, and you can find yourself another Ankou.’

  ‘Where am I going to find one as good as you?’

  ‘Exactly. Which is why you are never going to do this again. Now, I’ve been thinking about this Death Moot –’

  ‘Is Cerbo here?’ I interrupt.

  ‘Not yet. Wonder of wonders, we’ve actually got five minutes.’

  ‘Good. I had a meeting with Suzanne Whitman last night.’

  ‘And you have only told me this now because … ?’

  ‘Look, it was late. I didn’t want to wake you. At least you can sleep.’

  ‘Still having trouble, eh?’

  ‘Shit, Tim, I’ve been whingeing about this for a month.’

  ‘Pardon me if I’ve been too busy to notice.’ And as if to prove his point, his mobile starts ringing.

  He looks at it. ‘It’s only mildly urgent,’ he says. ‘I’ll call them back.’

  Tim slips his phone into his pocket and smiles at me. ‘Now, this is interesting, really interesting. If the US RM is so keen to negotiate, the others can’t be too far behind. What did she want?’

  ‘She said she wanted to help.’

  Neither of us successfully choke down the laugh that follows.

  ‘Said I could do with an ally.’

  Another snort.

  Tim checks his watch. ‘We’d better get to your office. Cerbo will be there in a minute.’ We walk past the desks of Pomps and the hallway that sits in the middle of the office, the one that leads directly to Aunt Neti’s parlour. She’s baking scones or muffins or biscuits; the smell drifts down the hall. Probably expecting a visitor. I can’t help wondering who.

  My office is a bit stuffy. I switch on the lights and the aircon. It’s your basic sort of corner office, except for Brueghel’s painting, ‘The Triumph of Death’ against one wall (not a copy, the real thing, all those skeletons bringing on the apocalypse, herding the living to Hell) and the throne, of course.

  I drop into the throne, and my region immediately grows more vital around me. The beating hearts, the creaking tree.

  Sitting in my throne I feel what Tim’s reports can only tell me. We’re stretched painfully thin. My Pomps are struggling out there. It might be a picture of industry in the offices, but it’s little more than a veneer painted over chaos. I’ve been ignoring this for far too long.

  ‘We need more staff,’ I say to Tim.

  ‘Lissa’s doing the best she can,’ he says irritably. ‘It’s not exactly easy to advertise for Pomps. There’s a whole bunch of stages that we have to steer people through. I think it’s remarkable that we have as many staff as we do.’

  ‘We’ve got to do better.’

  ‘You could take a more active role. That might help,’ Tim says sharply.

  ‘I’m doing the best I can,’ I say, mimicking his tone.

  Tim groans, shakes his head. ‘How about a unified front?’

  ‘Yeah, how about it?’

  ‘Sometimes you piss me off, de Selby.’

  I grin at him. ‘That’s what family is for.’

  ‘Maybe that’s why I decided to become a Black Sheep.’

  ‘Nah, you can’t escape it no matter what you do. As long –’ and I stop myself there. I was going to say as long as there is family left, but there isn’t that much f
amily remaining. There are some things neither of us are ready to joke about.

  I’m almost relieved that Faber Cerbo shifts into the foyer at that moment. Apparently Ankous can do that, if their RM is sufficiently skilled. Morrigan could, and it didn’t seem to hurt him, either, the prick. Cerbo’s appearance is presaged by a slight pressure in my skull. His heartbeat, a sudden addition to my region, is loud – like you’d expect from an Ankou – even louder than Tim’s, and at a steady sixty beats per minute.

  I glance at my watch. He is exactly thirty seconds late, and I can’t help feeling that Suzanne is making a point. Lundwall – heartbeat ninety-three bpm, up from seventy, now that Cerbo has appeared at his desk – leads him into the room.

  Faber Cerbo, like any self-respecting Pomp, is in a suit. We all are, here. As though Death was truly like any other business. Well, we can pretend. The real reason is the vast number of funerals we attend and morgues and mortuaries we visit. In those places a suit makes you virtually invisible – even in Brisbane on a forty degree day. Unlike Tim and I, Cerbo is wearing a hat, a bowler. That, and the pencil-thin moustache, make him look like a mash-up of a British accountant from the thirties and the filmmaker John Waters, and are completely at odds with his Texan accent. I’ve never liked wearing hats, they mess up my hair. But it suits him, somehow. Gripped in his left hand, his nails coated with black nail polish, is a brown leather folder.

  Cerbo doffs his bowler, and rolls his shoulders. Bones click with the movement.

  I don’t get up from my throne, in fact I make a point of swinging back on it, looking as casual as I can. After all, here I am in the seat of my power, so to speak. It is poor form to neglect it.

  I nod at Cerbo and gesture to one of the chairs in front of the desk. He gives a swift and slightly mocking bow – well, I think it’s mocking, and if I can’t be sure, the odds are high. My rise to RM was something of a shock to a lot of people – myself included – and I’m not treated as seriously as I could be. But then again, it fits into my tactic. Just grin and let them think you’re stupid.

  Tim shakes his hand. Cerbo gives him a warm smile then sits down, so lightly it’s as if he’s hardly sitting at all. He puts the folder on the table.