‘Spare me,’ said the man. ‘If it were possible to rid myself of this disease by visiting it instead on you, I would do so in an instant.’

He gurgled, and it took Angel a moment to realize that he was laughing.

‘In fact,’ he added, ‘I would visit it upon you anyway, were it possible, if only for the pleasure of sharing.’

‘Mr Cambion,’ said Louis. ‘You have not changed.’

With a flick of his wrist, Cambion moved the lamp so that its light now fell upon his ravaged face.

‘Oh,’ he said, ‘but I have.’

Its official name was Hansen’s disease, after the Norwegian physician Gerhard Armauer Hansen who, in 1873, identified the bacterium that was its causative agent, but for over 4000 years humankind had known it simply as leprosy. Multidrug therapies had now rendered curable what had once been regarded as beyond treatment, with rifampicin as the base drug used to tackle both types of leprosy, multibacillary and paucibacillary, but Cambion was one of the exceptional cases, the small unfortunate few who showed no clinical or bacteriological improvement with MDT. The reasons for this were unclear, but those who whispered of him said that, during the earliest manifestations of his disease, he had been treated unethically with rifampicin as a monotherapy, instead of in conjunction with dapsone and clofazimine, and this had created in him a resistance to the base drug. The unfortunate physician responsible had subsequently disappeared, although he was not forgotten by his immediate family, helped by the fact that pieces of the doctor continued to be delivered to them at regular intervals. In fact, it wasn’t even clear if the doctor was dead, since the body parts that arrived appeared remarkably fresh, even allowing for the preservative compounds in which they were packed.

But truth, when it came to Cambion, was in short supply. Even his name was an invention. In medieval times, a cambion was the mutated offspring of a human and a demon. Caliban, Prospero’s antagonist in The Tempest, was a cambion, ‘not honour’d with human shape’. All that could be known of Cambion for sure, confirmed by his presence in the old apothecary’s, was that his condition was deteriorating rapidly. One might even have said that it was degenerating, but then Cambion had always been degenerate by nature, and his physical ailment could have been taken as an outward manifestation of his inner corruption. Cambion was wealthy and without morals. Cambion had killed – men, women, children – but as the disease had rotted his flesh, limiting his power of movement and depriving him of sensation at his extremities, he had moved from the act of killing to the facilitation of it. It had always been a lucrative sideline for him, for his reputation drew men and women who were at least as debased as himself, but now it was his principal activity. Cambion was the main point of contact for those who liked to combine murder with rape and torture, and those who devoutly wished that their enemies might suffer before they died. It was said that, when possible, Cambion liked to watch. Cambion’s people – if people they even were, as their capacity for evil called into question their very humanity – took on jobs that others refused to countenance, whether for reasons of morality or personal safety. Their sadism was their weakness, though. It was why Cambion’s services remained so specialized, and why he and his beasts hid themselves in the shadows. Their acts had been met with promises of retribution that were at least their equal.

When Angel had last seen Cambion, more than a decade earlier, his features were already displaying signs of ulceration and lesions, and certain nerves had begun to enlarge, including the great auricular nerve beneath the ears and the supraorbital on the skull. Now the ravages of the disease had rendered him almost unrecognizable. His left eye was barely visible as a slit in the flesh of his face while the right was wide but cloudy. His lower lip had swollen immensely, causing his mouth to droop open. His nasal cartilage had dissolved, leaving two holes in the center of his face separated by a strip of bone. Any remaining visible skin was covered by bumps that looked as hard as stone.

‘What do you think?’ said Cambion, and spittle sprayed from his lips. Angel was glad that he had not chosen to stand closer to the desk. After that first, and last, encounter with Cambion, he had taken the time to read up on leprosy. Most of what he knew, or thought he knew of the disease, turned out to be myths, including that it was transmitted by touch. Routes of transmission were still being researched, but it appeared to be spread primarily through nasal secretions. Angel watched the droplets of spittle on Cambion’s desk and realized that he was holding his breath.

‘Don’t look like you’re getting no better,’ said Louis.

‘I think that’s a safe conjecture,’ said Cambion.

‘Maybe you ought to try—’ Louis clicked his fingers and turned to Angel for help. ‘What’s that shit you use? You know, for your scabies.’

‘Hydrocortizone. And it’s not scabies. It’s heat rash.’

‘Yeah, that’s it,’ said Louis. He returned his attention to Cambion. ‘Hydrocortizone. Clear that shit right up.’

‘Thank you for the advice. I’ll bear it in mind.’

‘My pleasure,’ said Louis. ‘You give what ails you to Spongebob Squarepants outside too?’

Cambion managed to smile.

‘I’ll let Edmund know what you called him. I’m sure he’ll find it amusing.’

‘I don’t much care either way,’ said Louis.

‘No, I don’t imagine that you would. As for what troubles him, he has a condition known as lagophthalmos, a form of facial paralysis that affects the seventh cranial nerve, which controls the orbicularis oculi, the closing muscle of the eyelid. It leaves him unable to properly lubricate his eyes.’

‘Man,’ said Louis, ‘you quite the pair.’

‘I like to think that Edmund’s exposure to me enables him to put his own problems into some kind of perspective.’

‘It would do, if you hired a bodyguard who can see right.’

‘Edmund’s not just my bodyguard. He’s my nurse and my confidante. In fact’ – Cambion waved his right arm, displaying the stump – ‘you could say that he’s my righthand man. My left, though, continues to have its uses.’

He displayed his left hand for the first time. It still had three fingers and a thumb. They were currently wrapped around a modified pistol with an oversized trigger. The muzzle of the gun pointed loosely at Louis.

‘We was going to kill you, we’d have done it already,’ said Louis.

‘Likewise.’

‘You were hard to find.’

‘Yet here you are. I knew that you’d get to me eventually, once you’d exhausted all other avenues of inquiry. You’ve been tearing quite a swathe through the city, you and your boyfriend. There can’t be a stone left unturned.’

It was true. Within hours of the shooting, Angel and Louis had begun asking questions, sometimes gently, sometimes less so. There had been quiet conversations over cups of coffee in upscale restaurants, and over beers in the backrooms of dive bars. There were phone calls and denials, threats and warnings. Every middleman, every fixer, every facilitator who had knowledge of those who killed for money was contacted directly or received word through others: Louis wanted names. He desired to know who had pulled the trigger, and who had made the call.

The difficulty was that Louis suspected the shooter – or shooters, for Louis believed that the combination of shotgun and pistol used pointed to a team – had not been sourced through the usual channels. He had no doubt that they were pros, or at least he had started off with that assumption. It didn’t smell like amateur hour to him, not where Parker was concerned, and the likelihood of two gunmen reinforced that belief. If he was wrong, and it turned out that some enraged loner was responsible, then it would be a matter for the cops and their investigation. Louis might get to the shooter first if the information leaked, but that wasn’t his world. In Louis’s world, people were paid to kill.