“What? Freelance what?”

“Familiar.” Familiar. “Don’t look like that. Familiar. Don’t act like you’ve never heard of one.”

Billy thought of black cats. “Where is it now?”

“I don’t know, I don’t want to know. It did what I paid it for.” Dane did not look at him. “Job done. So it’s gone.”

“What did you pay it?”

“I paid it nuts, Billy. What would you think I’d pay a squirrel?” Dane’s face was so deadpan flat Billy could not tell if what he was facing was the truth or contempt. Welcome to this world of work. Magic animals got paid in something, nuts or something. Billy examined the pictures and books in Moore’s own dark grey chambers.

“Baron…” Billy said.

“Oh, we know Baron,” said Dane. “And his little friends.”

“He told me some books got stolen.”

“They’re in the library,” said the Teuthex. He poured tea. “Can’t use a photocopy to persuade the world.”

Billy nodded as if that made sense. He faced Moore. “What’s happening?” he said. “What did that… man… want? And why are you keeping me prisoner?”

Moore looked quizzical. “Prisoner? Where is it you want to go?”

There was a silence. “I’m getting out of here,” Billy said. And then very quickly he said, “What did… Goss… do to Leon?”

“Would you be very offended if I said I don’t believe you?” Moore said. “That you want to get out? I’m not sure you do.” He met Billy’s stare. “What did you see?” Billy almost recoiled at the eagerness in his voice. “Last night. What did you dream? You don’t even know why you’re not safe, Billy. And if you go to Baron and Vardy you’ll be considerably less so.

“I know what they said about us.” He almost twinkled, a vicar being a good sport. “But that little faith-gang called ‘police’ can’t help, you know. You’re in the Tattoo’s sights, now.”

“Think about the Tattoo,” Dane said. “That face. That man’s face on another man’s back. How was you going to deal with that, Billy?” After a silence Dane said, “How you going to get the police to deal with that?”

“It isn’t just that, either,” Moore said. “As if that weren’t enough. I know it’s all a bit… Well. But it isn’t just the Tattoo, even. Suddenly, ever since something or other, everyone agrees the end’s in sight. Nothing unusual in that, you might say, and you’d be right except that I do mean everyone. That has… ramifications for you. You need to be with a power. Let me tell you. We are the Congregation of God Kraken. And this is our time.”

THEY EXPLAINED.

London was full of dissident gods.

Why? Well they have to live somewhere. A city living in its own afterlife. Why not?

Of course, they’re all over, gods are. Theurgic vermin, those once worshipped or still worshipped in secret, those half worshipped, those feared and resented, petty divinities: they infect everybloody-where. The ecosystems of godhead are fecund, because there’s nothing and nowhere that can’t generate the awe on which they graze. But just because there are cockroaches everywhere doesn’t mean there aren’t cockroaches in particular in a New York kitchen. And just because angels keep their ancient places and every stone, cigarette packet, tor and town has its deities, doesn’t mean there’s nothing special about London.

The streets of London are stone synapses hardwired for worship. Walk the right or wrong way down Tooting Bec you’re invoking something or other. You may not be interested in the gods of London, but they’re interested in you.

And where gods live there are knacks, and money, and rackets. Halfway-house devotional murderers, gunfarmers and self-styled reavers. A city of scholars, hustlers, witches, popes and villains. Criminarchs like the Tattoo, those illicit kings. The Tattoo had run with the Krays, before he was Tattoo, but really you couldn’t leave your front door unlocked. Nobody remembered what his name had been: that was part of what had happened to him. Whatever nasty miracle it was had en-dermed him had thrown away his name as well as his body. Everyone knew they used to know what he was called, including him, but no one recalled it now.

“The one who got him like that was smart,” Dane said. “It was better when he was around, old Griz. I used to know some of his guys.”

There was a many-dimensional grid of geography, economy, obligation and punishment. Crime overlapped with faith-“Neasden’s run by the Dharma Bastards,” Dane said-though many guerrilla entrepreneurs were secular, agnostic, atheist or philistine ecumenical. But faith contoured the landscape.

“Who’s Goss and Subby?” Billy said. He sat guarded between them, looking from one to the other. Dane looked down at his own big fists. Moore sighed.

“Goss and Subby,” Moore said.

“What’s their…?” Billy said.

“Everything you can think of is what.”

“Badness,” Dane said. “Goss sells his badness.”

“Why did he kill that guy? In the cellar?” Billy said.

“The preserved man,” the Teuthex said. “If that was his handiwork.”

Billy said, “That Tattoo thought I stole the squid.”

“That’s why he was hunting you,” Dane said. “See? That’s why I had that familiar watching you.”

“You preserved it, Billy. You opened the door and found it gone,” Moore said. Pointed at him. “No wonder Baron wanted you. No wonder the Tattoo wanted you, and no wonder we were watching.”

“But he could tell I didn’t,” Billy pleaded. “He said I had nothing to do with anything.”

“Yeah,” said Dane. “But then I rescued you.”

“We got you out, so we’re allies,” Moore said. “So you are his enemy now.”

“You’re under our protection,” said Dane. “And because of that you need it.”

“How did you take the Architeuthis?” Billy said at last.

“It wasn’t us,” said Moore quietly.

“What?” But it was a relic. They would fight for it, surely, like a devout of Rome might fight for a shroud, a fervent Buddhist might liberate a stolen Sura. “So who?”

“Well,” said Moore. “Quite.

“Look,” he said. “You have to persuade the universe that things make sense a certain way. That’s what knacking is.” Billy blinked at this abrupt conversational twist, that word unfamiliarly verbed. “You use whatever you can.”

“Snap,” said Dane. He clicked his fingers, and with the sound came a tiny fluorescent glow in the air just where the percussion had been. Billy stared and knew it was not a parlour trick. “That’s just skin and hand.”

“You use what you can,” Moore said, “and some what-you-cans are better than others.”

Billy realised that Dane and his priest were not, in fact, changing the subject.

“A giant squid is…” Billy petered out but he was thinking, Is powerful medicine, a big thing, a massive deal. It’s magic, is what it is. For knacking. “That’s why it’s been taken. That’s why that tattoo wants it. But this is craziness,” he added. He couldn’t stop himself. “This is craziness.”

“I know, I know,” Moore said. “Mad beliefs like that, eh? Must be some metaphor, right? Must mean something else?” Shook his head. “What an awfully arrogant thing. What if faiths are exactly what they are? And mean exactly what they say?”

“Stop trying to make sense of it and just listen,” Dane said.

“And what,” Moore said, “if a large part of the reason they’re so tenacious is that they’re perfectly accurate?” He waited, and Billy said nothing. “This is all perfectly real. The Tattoo wants that body, Billy, to do something himself, or stop someone else doing something,” Moore said.

“All these things have their powers, Billy,” he said intensely. “‘There are plenty of currents on the way down deep’ is what we’d say. But some go deeper, quicker, than others. Some are right.” He smiled not like someone joking.

“What would someone do with it?” Billy said.

“Whatever it is,” Dane said, “I’m against it.”

“What wouldn’t they?” Moore said. “What couldn’t they? With something that holy.”