Lockwood & Co: The Whispering Skull

9

That phone call wasn’t the last one we got that morning. Another came four hours later, around eight a.m., when we were trying to get some kip. Our ordinary responses in such circumstances would be to either (a) ignore it (Lockwood); (b) ask them politely to ring back (George); or (c) send them away with a shrill torrent of abuse (me: I get grumpy with lack of sleep). However, since it was Inspector Barnes of DEPRAC, summoning us to an urgent meeting, we didn’t have these options. Fifteen minutes later, dazed and breakfastless, we squeezed into a taxi and set off for Scotland Yard.

It was another perfect summer’s morning in London, the roads full of sweet grey shadow and sparkling dappled light. Inside the taxi, things were noticeably less sunny. Lockwood was whey-faced and monosyllabic, while two harvest mice could have made hammocks from the bags under George’s eyes. We said little as we drove along.

This suited me. My head was full to bursting. I wound down the window and closed my eyes, letting the fresh air blow cool and clean across my mind. The events of the evening jostled for attention – the apparition at the cemetery, the skull grinning in its jar, my argument with Lockwood – yet at the same time, everything also seemed unreal.

The skull’s warnings most of all. Stumbling my way downstairs to the taxi, the sight of the forbidden door on the landing had given me a brief, sharp pang. But the power of the ghost’s words shrivelled with the sunlight, and I knew I had been wrong to let them affect me. The thing was a liar. It sought to snare me, just as George had said. As a Listener, I had to beware.

Still, the actual conversation had been real enough. And no one else in London – perhaps no one since the great Marissa Fittes – had ever had one like it. The thought gave me a sleepy thrill as I sat there in my fuddled state. Was it the skull that was unique – or was it me?

I realized I was smiling to myself. I opened my eyes abruptly; we’d reached Victoria Street and were almost at our destination. The taxi idled in traffic, just outside the vast offices of the Sunrise Corporation. Adverts for their latest products – new lavender grenades; slimmer, lighter magnesium flares – gleamed on billboards above the forecourt.

George and Lockwood sat slumped and silent, gazing out into the day.

I sat up straight, shifted my rapier to a more comfortable position. ‘So what does Barnes want, Lockwood?’ I asked. ‘Is it Bickerstaff?’

‘Yes.’

‘What have we done wrong now?’

He grimaced. ‘You know Barnes. Does he need a reason?’

The taxi moved on, pulled up outside the shimmering glass facade of Scotland Yard, where DEPRAC had its headquarters. We got out, paid, and trudged inside.

The Department of Psychical Research and Control – or DEPRAC, as it was more conveniently known – existed to monitor the activities of the dozens of agencies now in existence throughout the country. It was also supposed to coordinate the national response to the ongoing epidemic of hauntings, and there apparently existed vast research laboratories in iron bunkers deep below Victoria Street, where DEPRAC scientists wrestled with the conundrums of the Problem. But it was in its incessant attempts to control independent agencies such as ours that the department most often entered our lives, particularly in the form of its dourly pedantic operational director, Inspector Montagu Barnes.

Barnes instinctively disapproved of Lockwood & Co. He didn’t like our methods, he didn’t like our manners; he didn’t even like the charming clutter of our offices at Portland Row, although he had complimented me on the pretty tulips I’d put in the boxes outside the windows this past spring. Any ‘request’ to call in on him at Scotland Yard inevitably led to us standing in front of his desk being scolded like a row of naughty schoolchildren.

So it was something of a surprise when, instead of being stuck in the usual waiting area, which smelled faintly of ectoplasm wipes, we were led directly into the main operations room.

It was at its quietest, this hour of the day. The London street-map on the wall showed hardly any flashing lights; no one manned the ranks of telephones. A few neatly dressed men and women sat at a table, sifting through manila folders, collating new incident reports. A bloke with a mop swept up the residue of salt, ash and iron filings that had been tramped in by DEPRAC agents the night before.

At a meeting table on the far side of the room a flipchart had been set up. Near this sat Inspector Barnes, staring grimly at a pile of papers.

He wasn’t alone. Beside him, as pristine and self-satisfied as ever, sat Quill Kipps and Kat Godwin.

I stiffened. Lockwood made a small noise between his teeth. George groaned audibly. ‘We’ve had near-death experiences,’ he muttered, ‘we’ve had domestic rows, we’ve had a pitiful amount of sleep. But this is going to drive me over the edge. If I leap on the table and start shrieking, don’t try to stop me. Just let me howl.’

Barnes looked at his watch as we approached. ‘At last,’ he said. ‘Anyone would think you’d had a difficult night. Sit down and pour yourselves some coffee. I see you still can’t afford proper uniforms. Is that egg or ectoplasm on your T-shirt, Cubbins? I swear you had that the last time I saw you. Same shirt, same stain.’

Kipps smiled; Godwin looked blank. Yet again their outfits were crisp and spotless. You could have eaten your lunch off them, provided their faces didn’t spoil your appetite. Yet again I was conscious of my sorry state: my unbrushed hair, still dampish from my shower; my rumpled clothes.

Lockwood smiled round questioningly. ‘We’re happy to wait while you finish your meeting with Kipps, Mr Barnes. Don’t want to butt in.’

‘If you’re firing them, I know of two vacancies,’ George added. ‘Toilet attendants needed at Marylebone Station. Could wear those same jackets, and all.’

‘Mr Kipps and Ms Godwin are here at my request,’ Barnes said. ‘This is important, and I need more than one set of agents on hand. Now sit down, and stop glowering at each other. I want your full attention.’

We sat. Kipps poured us coffee. Is it possible to pour coffee unctuously? If so, Kipps managed it well.

Barnes said: ‘I’ve heard about your efforts at Kensal Green last night. Mr Paul Saunders of’ – he checked his notes, spoke with fastidious distaste – ‘of Sweet Dreams Excavation has given me a basic summary. I’m going to pass over the fact that you should have contacted us straight away to dispose of that coffin. In the light of what has happened since, I need all the details you can give me.’

‘And what has happened, Mr Barnes?’ Lockwood asked. ‘Saunders rang early this morning, but he wasn’t in a state to give me details.’

Barnes considered us thoughtfully. His face was as lived-in as ever, his pouchy eyes still sharply appraising. As usual, though, it was his impressive moustache that attracted my attention. To me, Barnes’s moustache closely resembled some kind of hairily exotic caterpillar, probably from the forests of Sumatra, and certainly previously unknown to science. It had a life of its own, rippling and ruffling in accordance with its owner’s mood. Today it seemed fluffed out, bristling with purpose. Barnes said: ‘Saunders is an idiot, and he knows that he’s in trouble, which makes him no good for anything. Had him in here an hour ago, blathering and blustering, making every excuse under the sun. The short story is that the iron coffin you found has been ransacked, and the contents stolen.’

‘Did someone get hurt?’ I asked. ‘I heard that a night-watch kid—’

‘First things first,’ Barnes said. ‘I need a full account of what happened to you when you opened the coffin. What you saw, what you heard; all the relevant phenomena. Go.’

Lockwood gave the story, with George and me pitching in with our impressions too. I noticed that George was hazy about what had happened to him when he and Joplin were in the circle. The way he told it, Bickerstaff’s ghost had swept down as soon as they’d approached the coffin. There was nothing about them both standing frozen, helpless, unable to move.

When I mentioned the voice, Lockwood frowned. ‘You didn’t tell me that before.’

‘Just remembered it now. It was the ghost, I suppose. It badly wanted us to look at something. Said it would bring us “our heart’s desire”.’

‘It was talking to you?’

‘I think it was talking to all of us.’

Barnes stared at me a moment. ‘You have impressive Talent, Carlyle. Now, this object that so startled Cubbins – you say it was a mirror or looking-glass, with a sort of wooden frame?’

George and I both nodded.

‘Is that it?’ Quill Kipps asked. ‘Not much of a description to go on.’

‘There was no time for a proper look,’ Lockwood said. ‘Everything happened very fast, and frankly it was too dangerous to spend time studying it.’

‘For once,’ Barnes said, ‘I think you acted wisely. So, to sum up – it seems we had two possible Sources in the grave. The body of Dr Bickerstaff and the mirror.’

‘That’s right. The apparition must have come from the corpse,’ Lockwood said, ‘because our net was still covering the mirror at the time. But from what George experienced, that mirror certainly has some kind of psychic energy of its own.’

‘Very well, then.’ From among his papers, Barnes took several glossy black-and-white photographs, which he set face down in front of him. ‘I’ll now tell you what happened in the early hours of this morning. After you left, this Mr Saunders had the coffin removed by one of his forklifts; it was taken to the chapel and carried inside. Saunders says they made sure all your silver nets and other seals were kept in place. They put a chain round it, set a night-watch boy to guard the door, and got on with other business.’

‘Wait a minute,’ Lockwood said. One of his familiar transformations had come over him. All signs of fatigue had been left in the taxi; now he was alert, interested, radiating concentration. ‘That chapel is Saunders’s office. He and Joplin work in there. Where were they the rest of the night?’

‘According to Saunders, he and Mr Joplin were busy in another sector of the cemetery. Most of the night-watch team were with them, though there were always people coming and going in the camp: fetching equipment, taking breaks and so on.

‘Midway through the night, around two-thirty, the guard changed over. Saunders supervised it, and took the opportunity to look inside the chapel. Says it was all quiet, the coffin exactly as before. Another lad, name of Terry Morgan, came on watch. Eleven years old, this boy.’ Barnes glared round at us, and rubbed his moustache with a finger. ‘Well, dawn came at four-thirteen this morning, so that’s when the psychic surveys had to stop. Just before four-thirty another kid came to the chapel to take over from Terry Morgan. He found the door hanging open. Inside was Morgan’s body.’

My heart gave a jolt. ‘Not . . .’

‘No, fortunately. Out cold. But he’d been coshed with something hard. Whoever hit him had then flung open the coffin, thrown all your seals aside, and tipped the contents out onto the floor.’

He turned over the top two photographs and spun them along the table. Kipps took one, Lockwood the other. We leaned in to take a look.

The shot had been taken from just inside the chapel door; in the background I could see one of the desks and a portion of the altar. All across the floor was splashed a mess of agency equipment: our iron chains, our silver net, and several other seals and wards with which we’d secured the coffin. In the centre, the iron coffin lay on its side, with the mummified corpse half tumbled out onto the flagstones. Bickerstaff was just as unappetizing as my brief glimpse last night had suggested, a blackened, shrunken thing in ragged robe and mouldy suit. One long bony arm splayed out at an unnatural angle, as if snapped at the elbow; the other lay palm up, as if reaching for something that had gone. Fronds of white hair stretched like the legs of drowned spiders around the naked skull.

‘Nasty,’ George said. ‘Don’t look at that face, Kat.’

The blonde girl scowled across at us. ‘I’m used to such things.’

‘Yes, you work with Kipps here, don’t you? I suppose you are.’

Kipps was frowning at the picture. ‘That coffin looks heavy to lift,’ he said. ‘Must be more than one thief.’

‘Excellent point,’ Barnes said. ‘And you’re right. Terry Morgan woke up in hospital an hour ago. He’s pretty shaken, but he was able to describe how he was attacked. He heard a noise in the undergrowth beside the steps. He looked over, saw a man in a dark ski-mask fast approaching. Then someone else struck him from behind.’

‘Poor kid,’ I said. Kat Godwin, sitting opposite, raised an eyebrow at me. I stared back at her, expressionless. I could do the stony-faced look too.

‘And so the mirror is gone . . .’ Kipps mused. ‘They must have done it near dawn, when they thought it was safe to remove the defences. Still, it was a risky thing to do.’

‘What’s really interesting,’ Barnes said, ‘is the speed of it. The coffin was opened around midnight. Less than four hours later the thieves were at the door. There wasn’t time for word to spread normally. This was a direct order from someone at the scene.’

‘Or someone who’d recently left the scene,’ Kat Godwin said. She smiled at us.

I glanced at Lockwood. He was staring intently at the photo, as if something in it puzzled him. He hadn’t noticed Godwin’s jibe. ‘Who knew about the coffin?’ I said.

Barnes shrugged. ‘The excavators, the Sensitives, the night-watch kids . . . and you.’

‘If you think we did it,’ I said, ‘feel free to search the house. Start with George’s dirty laundry basket. That’s where we always hide the stuff we steal.’

The inspector made a dismissive gesture. ‘I don’t think you stole it. But I do want it found. Mr Lockwood!’

‘He’s half asleep,’ Kipps said.

Lockwood looked up. ‘What? Sorry.’ He put the photograph down. ‘The mirror? Yes, you were saying you want it found. May I ask why?’

‘You know why,’ Barnes said gruffly. ‘Cubbins only had to glance at the mirror to feel a weird and foul effect. Who knows what it would have done to him? Besides, all psychic artefacts are classified as dangerous materials by the state. Their theft, sale or dispersal among the population is strictly forbidden. Let me show you something.’

Barnes flicked copies of another black-and-white photograph down the table. This one showed the drab interior of a public hall. The photo had been taken from the back of the room. About ten people sat in wooden pews, facing a raised platform. A policeman stood on this, and strips of police tape could be seen stretched across a doorway. Sunlight speared through windows high up by the roof. On the stage was a table, and just visible on this table was an object like a broad glass fruit bowl.

‘The Carnaby Street Cult,’ Barnes said. ‘Twenty years ago. Obviously before your time, any of you. But I was there, a young officer on the case. It was the usual thing. Bunch of people who wanted to “communicate” with the dead, learn secrets about the afterlife. Only they didn’t just talk about it; they went about buying objects from the relic-men in the hope they might meet a Visitor one day. See that bowl there? In it they put their precious relics: bones found buried in the yard of Marshalsea Prison, with the manacles still on ’em. Well, often enough the relic-men sold them any old junk, but this was the real deal. A Visitor came. And you can see the kind of message that it brought them.’

We stared at the photo, at the slumped heads of the congregation in the pews. ‘Hold on,’ Kat Godwin said. ‘So those people . . . they’re all . . .’

‘Dead as doornails, every man jack of them,’ Barnes said heartily. ‘Thirteen, all told. I can give you dozens of other instances – could show you the pictures too, but I dare say it would put you off your breakfast.’ He sat forward, began prodding the desk with a hairy finger. ‘The message is this. Powerful artefacts are deadly in the wrong hands! They’re like bombs waiting to go off. This mirror, or whatever it might be, is no exception. DEPRAC is highly concerned, and we want it found. I’ve been instructed to give it full priority.’

Lockwood pushed his chair back. ‘Well, good luck to you. If we can be of any further assistance, just let us know.’

‘Much against my better judgement,’ Barnes said, ‘you can. I’m short-staffed this morning. There’s a serious outbreak in Ilford, which many DEPRAC teams are working on. Since you’re already involved with this case, and since it could be argued that it’s your fault the thing wasn’t handed to us last night, I want you to pursue it. You’ll be properly paid.’

‘You’re hiring us?’ George blinked at the inspector. ‘Just how desperate can you be?’

The moustache drooped ruefully. ‘Fortunately the Fittes Agency has offered Kipps and his team as well. They’re also on the case. I want you all to work together.’

We stared in dismay across the table. Kipps and Godwin gazed coolly back.

I cleared my throat. ‘But, Mr Barnes, it’s a big city. There are so many agents to choose from. Are you sure you need to use them?’

‘Pick a madman off the street,’ George protested. ‘Go to a rest home and choose a random OAP. Anyone would be better than Kipps.’

Barnes gave us all a baleful glare. ‘Locate the missing relic. Find out who’s stolen it and why. Do it as quickly as possible, before someone else gets hurt. And if you want to keep my good opinion’ – the moustache jutted forward; teeth appeared briefly beneath it – ‘you’ll all work well together, without sarcasm, insults or, above all, swordplay. Do you understand?’

Kipps nodded smoothly. ‘Yes, sir. Of course, sir.’

‘Mr Lockwood?’

‘Certainly, Inspector. That won’t be a problem.’

‘Here’s the way it is,’ Lockwood said as we all left the room together. ‘You keep out of our way, and we’ll keep out of yours. No espionage or funny business on either side. But now we come to the little matter of our contest. This is our opportunity to go head to head, as we agreed. Are you still up for it, or do you want to back out now?’

Kipps let out a short, barking laugh. ‘Back out? Not likely! Our agreement comes into force as of today. First side to track down the mirror and bring it to Barnes wins the bet. The loser takes out the advert in the paper and eats very public humble pie. Agreed?’

Lockwood had his hands in his pockets; he looked casually round at George and me. ‘Are you both happy?’

We nodded.

‘Then the contest’s on as far as we’re concerned. Do you want to discuss it with your team?’

‘Oh, I’m ready for it,’ Kat Godwin said.

‘What does Bobby Vernon think?’ George asked. ‘I assume he’s here.’ He looked left and right along the empty corridor.

Kipps scowled. ‘Bobby’s not that small. We’ll fill him in later. But he’ll go along with what I say.’

‘All right, then,’ Lockwood said. ‘A race it is. Good luck.’

They shook hands. Kipps and Godwin walked away.

‘There’s a bathroom there,’ George said. ‘You might want to wash that hand.’

‘No time.’ Lockwood smiled at us grimly. ‘We’ve got a contest to win. Let’s go.’