Just Another Judgement Day Read online

  “But that’s all stopped! They don’t need the clinics any more, just this Parlour. And they all look like teenagers! It’s not fair!”

  “Well,” I said reasonably, “If this Parlour is doing such a good job, why don’t you go there, too?”

  “Because they won’t have me!” Percy slumped in his chair, and suddenly looked ten years older, as though he could only maintain his air of glamour through sheer effort of will these days. “I have offered to pay anything they want. Double, even triple the going rate. I begged and pleaded, Mr. Taylor! And they turned me away, as though I were nobody. Me! Percy D’Arcy! And now my friends don’t want me around any more. They say I don’t . . . fit in.

  “Please, Mr. Taylor, I need you to find out what’s going on. Find out why the Parlour won’t let me in. Find out what they’re really doing behind those closed doors . . . and if they are cheating, shut them down! So I won’t be left out any more.”

  “It’s not really my usual kind of case,” I said.

  “I’ll pay you half a million pounds.”

  “But clearly this is something that needs to be investigated. Leave it with me, Percy.”

  He stood up abruptly, pulling his dignity back about him. “Here’s my card. Please inform me when you know something.” He tossed a very expensive piece of engraved paste-board on to the table before me, then stalked off back through the crowd with his head held high. A smattering of applause followed him. I picked up the card, tapped it thoughtfully against my chin a few times, and looked at Suzie.

  “It’s something to do,” I said. “You interested?”

  “I’ll come along,” said Suzie. “Just to keep you company. Will I get to kill anybody?”

  “Probably not.”

  Suzie shrugged. “The things I do for love.”

  In the sane and normal world outside the Nightside, if you’re getting older and starting to look your age, there’s always cosmetic surgery and associated treatments. In the Nightside, the rich and the famous and the powerful have access to other options, some of them quite spectacularly nasty and extreme.

  The Guaranteed New You Parlour was situated in Uptown, the very best part of the Nightside, offering only the very best services for the very best people. Suzie and I went there anyway. The rent-a-cops in their colourful private uniforms took one look at us and decided they were needed urgently somewhere else. The neon there was just as hot, but perhaps a little more restrained, and the clubs and restaurants and discreet establishments glowed in the night like burning jewels. And the lost souls filling the streets and squares were all pounding the pavements in search of a better class of damnation.

  In Uptown, even the Devil wears a tie.

  The Guaranteed New You Parlour occupied the site of what used to be a rather tacky place called The Cutting Edge, an S&M joint for people with a surgery fetish. It got closed down for cutting corners on the after-care services, and for being too damned tacky even for the Nightside. The new owner had pulled the old place down and started over, so the Parlour was a gleaming new edifice of steel and glass, style and class, with pale-veined marble for the entrance lobby. Someone had spent a lot of money pushing the place up-market, and it showed. But then, money attracts money.

  Suzie and I studied the Parlour from the other side of the street. Very rich people came and went, in stretch limousines and private ambulances, but though a great many old people went in, only young people came out. Which was . . . odd. There are ways of turning back the clock to be found in the Nightside, but the price nearly always involves your soul, or someone else’s. And there are any number of places that will sell you false youth, but nothing that lasts. What did the Guaranteed New You Parlour have that no-one else could provide?

  I headed for the main door, Suzie right there at my side. Her steel chains jangled softly, and the butt of her pump-action shotgun stood up behind her head from its holster down her back. There were two very large gentlemen in well-fitting formal suits standing on either side of the door. Security, but discreet, so as not to frighten the nice ladies and gentlemen. They tensed visibly as they saw Suzie and me approaching but made no move to challenge us. We swept past them with our noses in the air and strolled into the lobby as though we were thinking of buying the place. We got various looks from various people, but no-one said anything. We walked right up to the huge state-of-the-art reception desk, and I smiled pleasantly at the coldly efficient young lady sitting behind it. She wore a simple white nurse’s uniform with no markings on it, and her smile was completely professional while at the same time possessing not an ounce of any real warmth. She didn’t bat an eye at my trench coat or Suzie’s leathers. This was the Nightside, after all.

  “Welcome to the Guaranteed New You Parlour, Mr. Taylor, Ms. Shooter,” said the receptionist.

  I considered her thoughtfully. “You know who we are?”

  “Of course. Everyone knows who you are.”

  I nodded. She had a point. “We’re here about Suzie’s face,” I said.

  Suzie and I had already decided this was our best chance for getting a close look at the Parlour’s inner workings. One side of Suzie’s face had been terribly burned during an old case, leaving it a mess of scar tissue. Her left eye was gone, the eyelid sealed shut. It didn’t affect her aim. The damage was my fault. She’d never have been hurt if she hadn’t been helping me out. Suzie forgave me almost immediately. But I don’t forgive me, and I never will.

  She could have had her face healed or repaired in a dozen different ways. She chose not to. She believed a monster should look like a monster. I never pushed her on it. We monsters have to stick together.

  The receptionist’s smile didn’t waver one bit. “Of course, Mr. Taylor, Ms. Shooter. If you’ll just fill out these forms for me . . .”

  “No,” I said. “We want to see what this place has to offer first.”

  The receptionist gathered her papers together again. “One of our interns is on his way here, to give you a guided tour,” she said, still professionally cheerful. If I smiled like that on a regular basis, my cheeks would ache. “Ah, here he is. Dr. Dougan, this is . . .”

  “Oh, I know who you are, Mr. Taylor, Ms. Shooter,” the intern said cheerfully. “Doesn’t everyone?”

  “Our reputation precedes us,” I said dryly, shaking his proffered hand. He had a firm, manly grip. Of course. He offered his hand to Suzie, but she just looked at it, and he quickly pulled it back out of range and stuck it in his coat pocket as though he’d meant to do that all along. He wore the traditional white coat, along with the traditional stethoscope hanging loosely around his neck.

  “Every medico in the Nightside knows about you two,” he said, still cheerful. “Most of us get our training in the emergency wards, patching up people who’ve come into contact with you.”

  I looked at Suzie. “If nothing else, it seems we provide employment.”

  Dr. Dougan babbled on for a while, telling us how marvellous the Parlour was, and how fantastic its new techniques were, while I looked him over. His coat was starched blindingly white and had clearly never seen a bloodstain in its life. And he was far too young and handsome for a real hands-on doctor, which meant he was a shill. He was just for show. He wouldn’t know anything about the real inner workings of the Parlour. But we followed him through the rear doors into the show ward behind the lobby, because you’ve got to start somewhere. Dr. Dougan never stopped talking. He’d been given a script designed to sell the Parlour’s services, he’d learned every word of it, and by God we were going to hear it.

  The show ward turned out to be very impressive, and utterly artificial. Neat patients in neat beds, none of them suffering from anything unsightly or upsetting, attended to by very attractive young nurses in starched white uniforms. There were flowers everywhere, and even the antiseptic in the air had a trace of perfume in it. Lots of light, lots of space, and no-one in any pain at all. A complete dream of a hospital ward. We weren’t actually allowed to talk to any of the
patients or nurses, of course. The intern did his best to blind us with statistics about recovery rates, while I looked around for something, anything, out of place. The ward looked absolutely fine, but... something about it disturbed me.

  It took me a while to realise that the whole ward was simply too normal for the Nightside. If this was all the rich and powerful patients wanted, they could get it in Harley Street. The clincher was that not one of the patients or the nurses so much as glanced at me, or Suzie. And that was very definitely not normal.

  Dr. Dougan broke off from his speech when the doors burst open behind us and half a dozen security men moved quickly forward to surround us. Large men, with large bulges under their jackets where their guns were holstered. Suzie looked at them thoughtfully.

  “We’re not here to make any trouble,” I said quickly. “We’re just looking.”

  “Visiting hours are over,” said the largest of the security men. “Your presence is disturbing the patients.”

  “Yeah,” I said. “They do look disturbed, don’t they? We’ll come back another day, when they’re feeling more talkative.”

  He didn’t smile. “I don’t think that would be wise, Mr. Taylor.”

  “Is he giving us the bum’s rush, John?” said Suzie. Her voice was calm and lazy and very dangerous. The security men held themselves very still.

  “I’m sure the nice gentleman didn’t mean anything of the kind,” I said carefully. “Let’s go, Suzie.”

  Suzie fixed the man with her cold blue eye. “He has to say please, first.”

  You could feel the tension on the air. Everyone’s hands were only an impulse away from their guns. Suzie was smiling, just a little. The main security man gave her his full attention.

  “Please,” he said.

  “Let’s get out of this dump,” said Suzie.

  The security men escorted us out, maintaining a respectful distance at all times. I was impressed at their professionalism. I’d known Suzie to reduce grown thugs to tears with only a look. Which begged the question—why would a supposedly straightforward operation like the Guaranteed New You Parlour need heavy-duty security like them? What kind of secret were they hiding, that needed this level of protection?

  I couldn’t wait to find out.

  We gave it a few hours before we went back again. Long enough to make them think we were thinking it over and still planning our next move. We killed the time at a pleasant little tea-shop nearby, where I enjoyed a nice cup of Earl Grey while Suzie wolfed down a whole plate of tea-cakes, and amused herself by practising her menacing glare on the trembling uniformed maids and the steadily decreasing number of fellow customers. The place was pretty much empty by the time we left, and the maids were refusing to come out of the kitchen. I left a generous tip.

  “Can’t take you anywhere,” I said to Suzie.

  “You love it,” said Suzie.

  When we returned to the Guaranteed New You Parlour, the whole place had been locked down tight. Doors were firmly closed, windows were covered with reinforced steel shutters, and a dozen security men were making themselves very visible, politely informing anyone who approached the Parlour that it was currently closed to all visitors and new patients. Some very rich and famous people wanted to get inside very badly, but for once, shouting, bribes, and temper tantrums got them nowhere. The Parlour was closed. I felt quite flattered that I’d made such an impression. Though to be honest, a lot of it was probably due to Suzie. Quite a few places close early when they see her coming, which is why I usually end up doing the shopping.

  The security men looked like they knew what they were doing, so Suzie and I wandered casually round the side of the building. Not to the back. That’s an amateur’s mistake. Any security force worth its wages knows enough to guard the back doors as closely as the front. But there’s nearly always a side entrance, used by staff and maintenance, that most people don’t even know exists or think to mention. There were still a few oversized gentlemen keeping an eye on things, but they were so widely spaced it was easy to sneak past them.

  The side door was right where I expected it to be. Suzie dealt with the lock in a few seconds, and as easily as that, we were in. (Getting past locked doors is just one of the many skills necessary to the modern bounty hunter. Though it does help if you’ve got a set of skeleton keys made from real human bones. Personally, I’ve always attributed Suzie’s skills with locks to the fact that they’re as scared of her as everyone else is.) We found ourselves in a narrow corridor, whitely tiled and brightly lit, with not a shadow to hide in anywhere. There was no-one about, for the moment. Suzie and I moved quickly down the corridor, trying doors at random along the way, to see what there was to see. A few store-rooms, a few offices, and a toilet that could have used a few more air fresheners. It all seemed normal and innocuous enough.

  A set of swing doors let us into the main building. The lights were bright, every surface had been polished and waxed to within an inch of its life, but still there was no-one about. It was as though the whole place had been evacuated in a hurry. The silence was absolute, not even the hum of an air-conditioner. I looked at Suzie. She shrugged. I’d seen that shrug before. It meant You’re the brains; I’m the muscle. Get on with it. So I chose a corridor at random and started down it. Several corridors later, we still hadn’t encountered anyone, not even a guard doing his rounds. Surely they couldn’t have shut the whole place down just because Suzie and I had expressed an interest? Unless . . . there never had been anything going on there, and the whole place was only a front for something else . . .

  I was starting to get a really bad feeling about this. When hospitals go bad, they go really bad.

  It didn’t take long to find the ward we’d been shown earlier. It was as still and silent as everywhere else. I quietly pushed the door open, and Suzie and I slipped inside. The lights had been turned down low, and the patients were shadowy shapes in their beds. There were half a dozen nurses, but they were all standing very still, in the central aisle between the two rows of beds. They didn’t move a muscle as Suzie and I slowly advanced on them.

  It was so quiet I could hear Suzie’s steady breathing beside me.

  Up close, the nurses seemed more like mannequins than people. Their faces were utterly empty, they didn’t breathe, and their fixed eyes didn’t blink. Suzie produced a penlight and briefly shined it in a nurse’s face, but the eyes didn’t react at all. Suzie put the light away, then punched the nurse in the shoulder; but she only rocked slightly on her feet. We checked the beds. The patients lay flat on their backs, staring sightlessly upwards. They weren’t dead. It was more like they’d never really been alive. A show ward, with show nurses and show patients, not a bit of it real. I murmured as much to Suzie, and she nodded quickly.

  “Window dressing. But if this is just a show for the visitors, where’s the real deal? Where are the real wards and the real patients? Percy D’Arcy’s celebrity chums?”

  “Not here,” I said. “I think we need to dip below the surface, see what’s underneath all this.”

  “Underneath,” said Suzie. “The real deal’s always going on underneath, in the Nightside.”

  We made our way quickly through the ward, heading for the far doors. I kept expecting the nurses and patients to come suddenly alive, and raise the alarm, or even attack us. Instead, the nurses stood very still, and the patients lay unmoving in their beds, like toys that weren’t currently being played with. A horrible suspicion came over me, that perhaps the whole world was like this, whenever I turned my back . . . By the time we got to the far doors, I was practically running.

  We found a stairwell easily enough and descended a set of rough concrete steps to the next level. There were no signs on the walls, nothing to indicate where the stairs might lead. Clearly either you knew where you were going, or you weren’t supposed to be there. The air was very still, and there wasn’t a sound to be heard except for our feet on the rough concrete. The steps fell away before us for quite a while,
taking us deep down into the bedrock under the streets. At the bottom of the steps we found another set of swing doors, perfectly ordinary, with no lock or alarm. Suzie and I pushed cautiously through them, and found ourselves in an entirely different kind of ward.

  It was huge, with rows and rows of beds stretching away into the distance. And in these beds were hundreds and hundreds of very real patients served by more high-tech medical equipment than I’d ever seen in one place. Suzie and I moved slowly forward. There were no doctors, no nurses, just naked men and women lying flat on their backs, hooked up to intravenous drips, and respirators, and heart and lung and kidney monitors. Breathing tubes and catheters and more than one set of heavy leather restraints . . .

  I found my first clue in the nurse’s cubicle. There was a large book lying open on a table, next to a row of monitor screens. The old-fashioned printed pages were written in English, French, and Creole, and I understood enough of it to know what it was about. Voodoo. The gods of the loa, their powers and practices, and all the things you could do with their help.