Lockwood & Co. The Creeping Shadow

Seven fifteen that same morning, I was awake again in bed.

At other times, in other years, I would have greeted the day in jaunty spirits. It had been an exhilarating night, and the artificial elation that you always get at the end of a dangerous hunt still coursed through my veins. I’d gotten back early enough to fall into a brief exhausted sleep, but had been woken not long after by trash collectors shouting in the street outside. And now that my eyes had opened, I couldn’t close them again. My body was too tense. My mind was whirling.

So much of it was good, of course. The Ealing Cannibal had been a notable case, and news of its entrapment and destruction would spread widely; the reputation of all of us present in the house last night would definitely be enhanced. For me, the prospect of Penelope Fittes’s approval was particularly gratifying. With her knowledge of her grandmother’s Talent, she was unlikely to undervalue me, as Rotwell’s and other agencies had done. I could expect a slew of new cases as reward.

And Lockwood & Co. would do quite nicely, too; Ms. Fittes had made that clear enough. This pleased me. By helping them out, I’d maybe gone some small way toward paying off the debt I owed for having left so suddenly. Now that the case was successfully completed, I could turn my attention to other things.

Yes, so much of it was good. Yet my room and bed seemed bleaker on that sunny spring morning than on any rain-lashed afternoon during the foul, dark winter. Lockwood had wanted me for one job, and I’d done that job, and now there would be no more, and the pleasure I’d felt while working alongside him—and George and, yes, even Holly—made that prospect bitter. But I could have coped with it, just as I’d coped these last four months, if I’d still felt secure in my original reasons for leaving. It was to protect Lockwood that I’d left the company, and even though it had been painful, I’d known that it was right. He was safer with me gone.

Or was he? If what George had said to me was true, I might actually have made things worse. He’d become even more reckless without me there. And the varied implications of that kept me lying rigid in that bed, with the sun streaming over my rumpled bedspread.

Really, I should have tried to get back to sleep, but I was too keyed up—and keyed down; I was both hyped and befuddled at the same time. At last I got out of bed, only to stumble over the ghost-jar in the middle of the floor.

As I stood there cursing and rubbing my shin, an unsavory face manifested behind the glass. “You look worse than me this morning,” it observed. “Well, when you recover, I await your groveling thanks. You know where I’ll be.”

I went to put the kettle on. “Groveling thanks for what?”

“For my help last night in pinpointing the Source. You only found it after my tip. Quite clearly we make an excellent team, and I have an idea. I suggest we go into business together. ‘Carlyle and Skull,’ we’d call it, or possibly ‘Skull and Co.’ Yes, that’s it, with a little picture of me over the door. I can see it now….” Chuckling, it receded into the plasm.

I didn’t respond. I wasn’t in the mood. I picked up some of my scattered clothes, found my bathrobe, went across the landing to the bathroom. I came back and made coffee. I got out my casebook and tried to make a few notes about the evening, but found I didn’t have the words. The other thing I needed to do was make out my invoice to the Lockwood & Co. agency. But I couldn’t quite bring myself to do that, either. Not right then. So I took a shower, threw on some clothes, grabbed cash from my wallet, and went to get some takeout food. Obviously I should have cooked something, but I didn’t have the energy. It was the same old story.

Or at least it was until I arrived back on my landing carrying the bag from the Thai place, the Styrofoam box inside already cradling me in lovely fragrant steam, and saw that the door to my room had been kicked in.

I stood there for five or six heartbeats, looking at the broken lock. The door had been re-closed, or nearly so, and I couldn’t see inside. I glanced back across the landing at my neighbor’s door. That seemed untouched. He would be at work now, as would most of the people on the floor below. It was very quiet in the apartment building, and there was no noise coming from my room.

I set my bag of food carefully by the wall. Then I moved slowly toward the door, my hand dropping automatically to my side, where my sword normally hung. But I was in sweatpants, and had no weapon now.

When I reached the door, I waited, straining for any sound that might indicate the intruder was still inside. But beneath the ongoing thrum of traffic from the Tooting High Street hung a profound silence. I took a slow and careful breath, then pushed the door open and stepped in.

Whoever had been there was gone. The place was a mess—as it always was—and as far as I could see, looked the same as it had when I’d left it a few minutes before. Except for one difference that I spotted right away.

The ghost-jar was gone.

I stayed where I was. I didn’t move anything except for my eyes. For a long time I stood scanning the room. I surveyed it from the cluttered sink to the disordered bed, from the top of the open dresser to the stacks of equipment by the door. What else was different? What else had changed?

I looked at the table, where I’d slung my wallet the night before. The wallet was still there; it even had a couple of bills sticking out of it.

I looked at my rapier, propped against the back of the chair. A pricey Spanish blade that Lockwood had bought for me the previous summer. Still there.

I looked at my bags, stuffed with all the expensive paraphernalia of a freelance operative. All those salt-bombs and iron canisters, those cylinders of Greek Fire. You could get good money for those, if you knew the right people. But they remained precisely as I’d left them, completely untouched.

Nothing else had been taken. Just the skull.

Someone had come in, knowing the ghost-jar would be there, wanting it and nothing else. They’d taken it, and left. They’d done that during the (I made a rough calculation) ten or fifteen minutes I’d been out. So they’d been watching the building, waiting for me to leave. They’d known or guessed my movements. That bit wasn’t difficult, since I did the same thing almost every morning after a case. The guy in the Thai place pretty much knew me by name. Half the street probably knew I’d potter out to get food at some time in the morning.

But whoever had been here had known about the ghost-jar, too.

They knew about the skull, which was something I took pains to keep hidden.

Who knew about it? Lockwood and George, of course. And Holly, too: I’d told her about it months ago. What about Quill Kipps, last night? No—I’d been very careful. In any case, stealing didn’t seem Kipps’s style. So who else?

Who else had seen it?

I stood a long time, thinking.

Then I went back out into the hall and brought in my breakfast, which was still hot. After all, there’s no use wasting a good Thai.

After eating, I dried my hair properly, and changed into my work clothes. My coat smelled a bit of stale sweat and fear from the night before, but who was going to notice?

I put on my belt and made a cursory check of all its pockets. Not that I was expecting to use it against ghosts right then—I had a different quarry—but I needed it to hold my sword.

I picked up my rapier and strapped it on. Finally I glanced in the mirror, at my pale face and blazing eyes. Amazing what a theft does to you: all my previous weariness and befuddlement were gone.

With that, I left the room, pulling the door softly shut behind me.

A short walk south from the main compound of the Fittes furnaces in Clerkenwell was the paved, triangular space known as Clerkenwell Green, where tall lime trees sheltered a cluster of public benches, and a knot of sandwich bars and pubs serviced the needs of the furnace workers. Close by rose St. James’s Church, with its empty, pretty grass churchyard, which had been depopulated of graves since an outbreak of Phantasms decades before. On pleasant days, as the early shift ended and the Klaxon sounded from the furnace chimneys, a stream of orange-clad men and women emerged from the gates and descended on the green to have their lunch and wash the taste of burning from their tongues. Furnace operators, oilers, stokers, storage clerks, and ash-boys: all of them thronged together to join the human tide.

As did the attendants working the booths of the vetting room. Or so I was prepared to bet that morning.

By taking the Tube and walking swiftly, I had arrived on the green just before the lunchtime rush. I selected a bench not far from the lime trees, where I had a good view of the cafés and an ornamental ghost-lamp kept me in shadow.

Far off, the sirens sounded; I sat and waited, and watched the sidewalks. In dribs and drabs, the flow began. Within a few minutes, the quiet green, like a stream in snow-melt, had become a surging mass of activity. People filled the square; lines wound from the sandwich bars; birds flew in panic from the rooftops; pigeons frenzied over pastry crusts; every inch of every seat was packed. I sat where I was, impervious, unmoving.

The lunch hour proceeded; the lines dwindled. Discarded sandwich wrappers drifted like baby ghosts across the green. I waited without impatience. The vetting room attendants began their work at dawn, and would do another shift that afternoon. It was a long day. Food was necessary. Sooner or later, he would come.

And so it was that, at approximately 12:36 p.m., I saw a familiar freckled young man tripping swiftly down from Sekforde Street. He wore a raincoat over his jumpsuit, and his cropped fair hair was obscured beneath a knit cap. His fists were driven deep into his coat pockets, and his narrow shoulders were raised high. It seemed that Harold Mailer felt the cold.

I peeled myself off the bench and watched him go past. He crossed the green and disappeared into a baked potato joint, from which he presently emerged carrying a bulky paper bag. Looking neither right nor left, but going slightly more slowly now, he started back the way he had come.

I did not wait for him but went on ahead, walking up Sekforde Street at a brisk pace, until I located a small alley on the correct side of the road. It was dark, evil-smelling, and mostly filled with trash cans, which suited me very well. I ducked inside and waited, and soon came footsteps on the sidewalk that told me Harold Mailer drew near.

There may be praying mantises that can strike with greater speed. If so, I haven’t met them. One moment Mailer was meandering along in the bright spring sunlight, sniffing happily at the contents of his bag; the next he found himself pinned against the cold wet bricks of an alley with my knee in his groin and my elbow pressed against his neck.

“Hello, Harold,” I said.

He made a curiously squeaky noise that might have meant anything. I shifted my elbow slightly. The strangulated cough that followed wasn’t much better.

“Lucy! What are you…what are you doing?”

“Just wanted a word with you, Harold.”

“Can’t we do it at the booth? I’m late. Got to get back. My shift—”

“Couple of questions for you. Private ones. Best done quietly, down here.”

“Is this a joke?”

“This morning,” I said, “somebody stole something from me. They broke into my apartment and took a valuable ghost-jar, and the relic it contained. They didn’t take my money or any of my other valuables. Just the jar. No one knew about that jar, Harold. No one but you.”

Harold Mailer’s eyes had a hooded quality that made them look both sleepy and evasive. They flicked from side to side, as if seeking help, then steadied. He grinned at me, his top lip clammy with perspiration. “I don’t know what you’re talking about. I haven’t taken anything! Let go!”

“The last time I came to Clerkenwell you saw the skull in the jar, Harold. I know you did. Then you told somebody about it. Who?”

He struggled a bit then, so I increased the pressure on his windpipe. It was probably a mistake, since he coughed all over me, but I’d never beaten anyone up before.

“So what if I saw the jar?” he croaked when I relented. “Why would I care what weird stuff you had? Why would it mean anything to me?”

“Oh, but haunted relics mean a lot to you, don’t they?” I said. “More than you let on. Let me ask you something else. Three nights ago I brought you a mummified head. You took it and gave me a receipt. What did you do with it then?”

“The head? I burned it! You saw me!”

“No, Harold. No, you didn’t. You kept it. You sold it. And I know that, because it was bought up at a black market auction the very same day.”

“What? You’re mad!”

“Am I? I saw it there.”

That was a bit of a lie, but what can you do? Harold Mailer would just have gone on denying it, which would have wasted my time. Besides, Flo had seen it, and she was reliable.

He moistened his lips. “What were you doing at a black market sale?”

“What are you doing selling forbidden artifacts, Harold? You know the penalties for black market trade. You know how seriously Barnes takes this—or you will very soon, when I go to see him.”

“This is so mad, Lucy. You’re insane.”

“Who do you sell this stuff to, Harold? For the last time: Who did you tell about my skull?”

Close-up, I could see that his eyes were greenish, flecked with yellow-brown. Something changed in them then; defiance turned to fear, and I knew I had him.

“Can’t tell you,” he gasped. “I can’t. Upon my life. The walls have ears.”

“We’re in an alley, Harold. No one’s here. The only ears littering the place”—I brought my rapier slowly into view—“are going to be yours, if you don’t start being helpful.”

Since I’d collared him, one of his knobbly hands had been scrabbling at my wrist. For a moment, just for a moment, I felt the quality of the pressure change and knew he was considering fighting back. What would have happened then, I don’t know; he was as tall as me, and not much weaker, and I wouldn’t really have been able to cut off his ears or any other part of him. But he was a coward, physically as well as morally, and the moment passed.

“All right, all right, give me a little space.” He blew out his lips as I moved back a step, holding my rapier at the ready. He flexed his shoulders, a small, scared teen in an oversized coat, trying to rustle up some courage. “I need time to think. I need time….What’s that rank smell, anyway? Is it your coat?”

“No, Harold, it’s the alley.”

“Smells like stale sweat.”

“Are we going to argue about odors now? I want answers.”

“Okay.” He was looking up the alley, twitchy as a jackrabbit, and at first I thought he was thinking of making a bolt for it; but it was a different kind of twitchiness—he was frightened of who else might be near. A few yards away, in the sunlit street, furnace workers were strolling past in ones and twos, but none of them looked our way.

“Okay,” Harold Mailer said again, “I’ll tell you—not that I know that much. Some men made contact with me three months ago. Black marketeers, I guess—I don’t know. They offered me money if I could slip them the best Sources that came in. Since the rules were tightened, the market for artifacts has gotten so hot; there are some people who’ll do anything for them. I needed the cash, Lucy. You don’t know what it’s like, working here; you get paid peanuts, and the Fittes bosses treat you like scum. It’s not like being an agent—”

“Yeah, yeah,” I said. “Skip the sob story. So you pass them the Sources, and burn substitutes in their place.”

“Only the best ones, the most powerful pieces. It’s easy enough; no one ever looks closely at what we roll into the fire.” He tried a weak grin. “I mean, where’s the harm in it, really? Doesn’t hurt no one.”

I pressed the rapier against his belly. “Is that so? You forget, they stole my property. Because you told them about it. You gave them the tip. Why?”

“I’m sorry, I know that was wrong. It’s just, they’re getting impatient for good stuff, Lucy. It’s like they can’t get enough of it. Sometimes I don’t have anything good, and they get angry….But they like information, too, see? You have to keep them happy.”

“So who are these men? What do they want the Sources for?”

“I don’t know.”

“Well, what are they like? Describe them.”

“I don’t know who they are.”

I stepped away from him. “That’s useless, Harold. You’ve given me nothing. I’m going to Barnes now. Get off my arm.”

He lurched forward with a cry, and caught at my sleeve. “You don’t understand. They’re not nice people, Luce! You don’t spend time staring at them. You transfer the stuff and leave. Everything’s done after dark. Listen, I can help you. I’m giving them a package tonight. You could be there. You could watch—see them, follow them maybe, I don’t know, as long as you keep me out of it. What do you think? I could do that for you. I could do that, Lucy, if you don’t…What? Why are you laughing?”

“I know just what would happen. You’d hand me over to them and run off.”

“No! I swear! I hate them! They’re bad news, Lucy. I should never have gotten in with them. Only the money was so good. Listen, they’re dropping off a message this afternoon, telling me the place. It’s different each time. Always somewhere in Clerkenwell, but I never know where. I could meet you, once my shift ends. Here, or in the churchyard. I could tell you what’s been arranged. Then you could wait tonight, maybe hide someplace. It’ll be fine as long as they don’t find out you’re there.”

Well, I could think of a thousand reasons why this was a bad idea, and all of them stemmed from Harold Mailer’s complete untrustworthiness. It seemed quite likely that he would prefer to see me dead than ruin his lucrative little trade, and letting him go would give him ample time to set up such an outcome. Having said that, I clearly wasn’t going to do much better here.

He was watching my face, sidelong. “I’ll make it worth your while,” he said.

“If anything happens to me tonight,” I said, after a long pause, “if you betray me in some way, I have friends who will hunt you down and make you pay. You’ll wish you’d thrown yourself into one of your furnaces instead of crossing me.” It was the best threat I could think of, but it sounded pretty weak, not to mention clichéd. Harold Mailer didn’t seem to care. He was nodding, white-faced, desperate to be gone.

“Dusk, then,” he said, “at St. James’s churchyard. There’s a bench in the center, where the four paths meet. I’ll be there. I’ll have the information you need. But they can’t know about you, Lucy. They can’t. You’ve got to believe me. You don’t know what they’ll do. Promise you won’t ever tell them that I spoke to you.”

“If you keep your word with me,” I said, “I’ll do the same. Otherwise…”

“Oh, you agents always play fair, I know that.” He was clutching for his lunch bag, lying abandoned on the ground. “Everyone loves the agencies.” Then he was sidling away from me, his coat scuffing against the bricks, his face a queasy stew of duplicity, dislike, and fear. He got to the corner and rounded it like a rat, pressed close to the edge, gathering speed. “At dusk,” he said again, and was gone.