The Doorkeepers

Ten

“Trust me,” Ella repeated, and there was a sudden rumble of thunder.

Josh blinked and stared at her. The three of them were still standing facing each other in her Earl’s Court flat. Outside it was raining hard. The window was open a few inches so that they could smell the ozone, and hear the clattering of water down the drainpipe.

“That was … unreal,” said Josh. He reached out for Nancy’s hand, and squeezed it. Nancy looked as bewildered as he did.

“You thought you were somewhere else?” asked Ella.

“That’s right. I thought I was back at Star Yard. The place where Julia was supposed to meet the man from Wheatstone Electrics.”

“I was there too,” said Nancy. “It was so clear… I believed I was really there.”

“Didn’t you see it?” Josh asked Ella.

“No … I stayed here to make sure that you both came back. You have to be careful, when you start messing around with potions like that.”

“I went to Star Yard and then I went through a kind of a narrow alleyway and found myself someplace else.”

“You actually went through the alleyway?” said Nancy. “I didn’t. I just stayed in Star Yard. I guess I was too frightened to go any further.”

“So what does it all mean?” Josh wanted to know. “I went through the alleyway and met some guy with a hood over his face … just like the Hooded Men in the nursery-rhyme picture.”

“Do you know what you were seeing?” said Ella. “You had Julia’s ectoplasm flowing through your bloodstream, and what you were seeing was what Julia wanted you to see. She was showing you the way to discover how she died. She was showing you the way through.”

“So that alleyway in Star Yard … that’s one of the ‘six doors’?”

“Perhaps. It’s certainly the way through to somewhere.”

“But we checked it out. It’s nothing but a blank wall.”

“You need a ritual. You need some way to get through. Jack be nimble. Jack be quick. Perhaps you don’t need to do anything more than light a candle.”

“Supposing that’s nothing but a children’s song? Suppose that alleyway doesn’t lead to anyplace at all?”

“Then I don’t know, Josh. I’ve done my best for you. When it comes to the spirit world, there aren’t any tour guides. The Hereafter on Five Dollars a Day. You have to find your own way.”

Another extravagant burst of thunder made the lamp shake and the ornaments rattle. There was a few seconds’ pause, and then the rain began to beat so furiously on the roof outside the window that spray came through the open window and sparkled on Ella’s geranium plants.

Josh said, “You’re right. You’ve been a great help, Ella. But I guess we’re on our own, from here on in.” He took his billfold out of his back jeans pocket and took out a twenty pound note. “Listen … we have to give you something for doing this. You don’t normally hold séances free of charge, do you?”

“I can’t take your money, Josh. I did this for Julia.”

“Come on. Buy something for Abraxas if you won’t take it for yourself. I’m sure Julia would have wanted you to have it.”

“You don’t know yet, what Julia wants. When you find out, come back to me.”

“You’re sure?” said Josh, offering her the note again.

“If you’ve really discovered one of the six doors, there’s a chance that I won’t ever see you again, not in this life. So try to remember that you owe me twenty pounds. It’ll give you one more reason for coming back.”

Nancy came up and took hold of Josh’s arm. “Josh …it’s getting late. I think it’s time we left.”

“Yes, you go on and catch up on some sleep,” said Ella, kissing Josh on the cheek.

“I’m sorry I made such a mess. Puking and all.”

“That wasn’t your fault. Anyway, puke is easier to clean up than ectoplasm.”

It was still raining hard so Ella lent them a large yellow umbrella. She took them down to the front door, and kissed both of them again.

Josh said, “What happened up there, that was real, wasn’t it? I didn’t dream it?”

Ella’s eyes shone white in the gloom of the porch. “What happened up there, Josh, was the realest thing that you’ve ever experienced in the whole of your life. I swear to you.”

Josh’s throat was sore and swollen, and even though he gargled with dispersible aspirin before he went to bed, he hardly slept.

When he did manage to doze off, he had endless unraveling dreams about walking down narrow London alleyways, left and then right and then left and then right and never reaching the end. In his dreams it was raining hard and he was forced to wade knee-deep through wet leaves and trash. He saw something that looked like a note or a letter, and he bent over to pick it up. It turned out to be a cream-colored cigarette packet called Player’s Weights. Josh briefly wondered what kind of cigarettes would be referred to as “weights”; he dropped the packet and carried on wading through the rubbish.

A nagging voice kept saying, “You lost something, mate? You lost something, mate? You want to watch yourself, mate. You’re looking for trouble, you are. You want to watch yourself.”

He tried to reply but his lips felt as if they had been anesthetized.

“You want to watch yourself, mate,” the voice persisted.

“You’re going to get yourself in shtoock, you are. You’re going to end up brown bread.”

Nancy slept soundly and silently as she always did. Just after seven o’clock, a warm sun began to shine through the open-weave drapes, and Josh drew them back to look out over a bright cloudless morning in West London, with the sparrows chirruping and the traffic already busy. Down in one of the gardens below, a man in a grubby undershirt and gray pants was admiring a row of beans and smoking a cigarette. Josh sat down on the bed next to Nancy and stroked her tangled shiny hair. Eventually he bent over and kissed her on the forehead and the tip of the nose and she opened her eyes.

“Wake up,” he told her. “It’s a beautiful day.”

She turned over and smiled at him. “I was having such an amazing dream. I was back home, in my mother’s house, and all of my relations were there. My grandfather and my grandmother, my aunts and my uncles, my nieces and nephews, everybody.”

“It’s good to have your family reunions in dreams. It sure saves on air fares.”

“I could never have had this reunion anyplace else. My grandparents are dead, remember? So are three of my uncles.”

“So what was the occasion?”

“I’m not really sure. It was kind of a farewell party.”

“A farewell party? For who?”

“For me, I guess. Everybody came up one by one and kissed me on the cheeks and gave me a little gift.”

Josh couldn’t fully understand why, but Nancy’s dream made him feel worried. He switched on the television news while he showered and dressed. A car bomb in Ulster had killed a well-known woman lawyer. The European Commission had imposed a ban on British-cured prosciutto. American warplanes had attacked Iraq and accidentally blown up a school, killing twenty-three children.

He put on a plain blue shirt and a pair of blue jeans. Nancy wore a simple maroon dress with a matching headscarf and all of her Modoc jewelry, silver and turquoise and red enamel. They went down to the hotel restaurant. The rosy-cheeked girl behind the counter asked Josh if he wanted his “full English” again, but he contented himself with a peach yogurt. He still felt sick at the thought of bringing up Julia’s lung.

“You’re quiet,” said Nancy during breakfast, laying her hand on top of his.

“I was thinking about that old woman in the hospital. I mean, do you think that was a coincidence, her telling me that rhyme about the six doors? It’s almost as if she was planted there.”

“Planted? An old woman like that? Who would do that? And why?”

“We never would have known about the six doors otherwise, would we? It’s like that movie about the Twelve Monkeys. I just get the feeling that somebody wanted us to find out about them.”

“Then they would have called us up or left us a note, wouldn’t they? Not sent a hundred-year-old woman to tell us a Mother Goose rhyme.”

“It’s the kind of thing that spies used to do. Like the SOE, during World War Two. They sent all their messages in poems.”

“But this isn’t wartime, is it?”

On the far side of the restaurant Josh could see a television silently showing the twisted Vauxhall of the dead Irish lawyer. “It’s always wartime, someplace or another.”

They drove to St Thomas’s Hospital, and walked through the automatic doors into the sunny, white-tiled reception area. A middle-aged woman with gray bouffant hair and a strident blue suit kept them waiting while she finished a conversation with one of the hospital porters about her holiday in Kos. “Mosquitoes! You should have seen me. I was all blown up like a balloon.”

Josh emphatically cleared his throat. When the receptionist didn’t take any notice, he did it again. She swiveled around in her chair and peered at him through fishbowl glasses. “Nasty cough, dear. ENT, is it?”

“I haven’t come here for treatment. I’ve come to visit a patient.”

“Ward?”

“I’m sorry, I don’t know which ward she’s in. But she’s a very old lady, a hundred and one years old, and her name’s Polly.”

“I’m sorry, if you don’t know the ward.”

“How many old ladies of a hundred and one do you have in this place?”

“I’m sorry, I couldn’t honestly tell you, offhand.”

“Well, how many old ladies of one hundred and one called Polly do you have?”

“We’re not allowed to reveal patients’ ages. It’s against policy.”

“But the policy about knowing her age is irrelevant if I know it already.”

“Ah, but you don’t know who she is, do you? If I told you who she was, that would be the same as revealing her age.”

Josh was just about to shout at her in sheer exasperation when he caught sight of the hospital porter who had been pushing Polly into the X-ray room. He said, “Hold on,” to the receptionist and pushed his way through the crowds of patients. He managed to catch the porter just as he reached the elevators.

“Hold up a minute! Please!”

The porter gave him a gilded grin. “It’s all right. This lift takes a very long time coming. I didn’t have a beard when I first pushed the button … That’s a joke,” he added, with the pedantic care of somebody who looks after the elderly.

“Polly,” said Josh. “The old girl, one hundred and one years old.”

The porter kept smiling, but his eyes were no longer focused. “I’m sorry.”

“What do you mean, you’re sorry? Yesterday morning we met outside the X-ray Department. You were pushing this very old woman in a wheelchair. She called out my name, so I stopped you and I talked to her for a couple of minutes. You told me her name was Polly and that she had just celebrated her hundred-and-first birthday.”

The porter kept on smiling at him blankly.

“You don’t remember that? That was less than twenty-four hours ago.”

“We asked you about the Mother Goose rhyme,” put in Nancy. “Six doors they stand in London Town. Don’t you remember that?”

“I’m sorry, madam. I was born in Punjab. I didn’t speak English until I was seventeen.”

“That’s what you said yesterday, too.”

“I don’t think so, sir. You must be making a misidentification.”

“It was you, God damn it. You were pushing this white-haired old lady called Polly. You told me how she kept on grabbing people.”

The elevator arrived, and the door opened. A man on crutches pushed his way between them. “I’m sorry, sir,” said the porter. “But I am very busy now. So, please.”

Josh snatched his lapel and pulled him quite violently away from the elevator doors. “You listen to me, my friend. I don’t know why you’re lying to me, but I need to find that old lady and that’s exactly what I’m going to do. Either you take me right to her, right now, or else I’m going to drag you around this hospital, ward by ward, until I do.”

“I’m sorry, I shall have to call security.”

“Go on then, call security,” Josh challenged him, although he didn’t have the faintest idea of what he would do if he did.

The porter looked at him for a long time, saying nothing.

“Well?” Josh demanded.

“It is the best plan for you, sir, if you leave quietly. There is no woman called Polly.”

“What are you trying to say to me?”

“I am saying that there is no woman called Polly. Enough that you know the rhyme. Now, please release me. There could be somebody watching.”

Josh released his grip on the porter’s lapel and slowly looked around. He didn’t know what he was looking for. Men in hoods? But all he could see was people in plaster and people in wheelchairs and people with an almost comical assortment of exaggerated limps. When he turned back, the porter had gone.

“Something’s wrong here,” he said, taking hold of Nancy’s hand. “Something’s very, very wrong.”

“This is beginning to frighten me,” said Nancy, as they left the hospital and walked back across the parking lot. The sun was dazzling and the wind fluttered her scarf. “What happened last night… that was so gross. And now this. That porter was telling us a barefaced lie.”

Josh unlocked the car. “First I want to go back to the alleyway in Star Yard. We both saw it, didn’t we, and theoretically that’s impossible, two people having the same hallucination. So it must have some kind of significance. If there’s nothing there, then OK. We’ll have to admit that somebody’s playing us for mugs. We’ll tell Detective Sergeant Paul everything that’s happened and leave it to her to go figure. That’s a promise.”

DS Paul had left them a message to call her. When Josh managed to get through, she sounded brusque and busy. “Crimewatch was a washout, quite frankly. Very disappointing. We had only twenty-seven calls, which must be their worst response ever.”

“Any leads at all?”

“We’re still checking two of them, but I’ll have to be candid with you and say that they don’t look hopeful.”

“You mean you’re stymied?”

“That’s not entirely accurate. We still have quite a few avenues of inquiry left open to us.”

“Avenues of inquiry? That sounds suspiciously like official speak for sitting on your butts scratching your heads.”

“Mr Winward, you’re an American. You’re probably not used to the way that police investigations are conducted in Britain. They’re extremely low key, as a rule. No car chases, no gunfights. Just steady, solid policework.”

“Resulting so far in what we Americans call squat.”

“You don’t have to be shirty, Mr Winward. I assure you that we’re doing everything possible to find the people who murdered your sister.”

“Tell me the truth. She was my sister. I think I deserve the truth.”

“All right. But if you quote me on this, I shall deny it. We have interviewed more than two and a half thousand people in two days. We have checked every single working CCTV camera in central London, every single one, and inspected the CCTV systems of more than four hundred restaurants and nightclubs. We have carried out DNA tests on forty-three different men of seven different ethnic origins. We have contacted every single employment agency in the Greater London area, as well as every hospital and clinic, private or NHS. We know a lot of people who didn’t kill your sister, but so far we’re no nearer to discovering who did.”

Josh was silent for a while. Then he said, “I see. OK. Well, thanks for being upfront. I didn’t mean to embarrass you or anything. Perhaps you’d check with me tomorrow.”

He put down the phone. Nancy looked up and said, “Why do you talk to everybody as if they’ve brought you a molting cockatiel to look at?”

“The police haven’t gotten anyplace at all.”

“What about that Crimewatch program?”

“Nothing. It’s supposed to have the biggest audience of any crime-prevention program in Britain. You’d think that at least one person would have remembered seeing Julia. Shit, she was pretty. You’d think that one guy would have noticed her, walking along the street. Well, maybe not. There’s supposed to be more gays to the square inch in Britain than there are in San Francisco. Maybe they just don’t notice women.”

He paused, and massaged the back of his neck with his hand. “Unless, of course, she wasn’t here to be noticed.”

It was two thirty-five p.m. when they found a spare parking meter on Carey Street, less than a hundred yards away from Star Yard. The day was still sunny, although the traffic fumes had created a faint haze everywhere, as if the Gothic buildings and the brightly dressed people who were hurrying around them were slightly out of focus. Nancy was carrying six candles and three metal candleholders in her bag, which they had bought at the Roman Catholic shop behind Westminster Cathedral. Neither of them were Catholics, but Josh thought that Catholic candles might carry more mystical authority. It was all that Nancy had been able to do to prevent him from buying a vial of holy water and a genuine palm crucifix from Jerusalem.

“For that price, they should at least have given you a guarantee that it was trodden on by Jesus’ personal donkey.”

They turned into Star Yard. It faced south, so the sun was shining into it, but somehow the sun fell short of the corner where the niche was. Josh peered into the shadows. The niche still looked like a complete dead end. It was still cluttered with rubbish and it still stank of rotten leaves and urine. “This isn’t the way I saw it last night,” said Josh. “It was deeper, then. What do you think?”

“You’re right. It was definitely deeper.”

“So what do we do? Light the candles, and say a few words, and hope that it mysteriously changes?”

“Why not?”

Josh opened the box of candles, shook out three of them, and stuck them on to the spikes of the candleholders, in front of the niche. Several passers-by glanced at them curiously, but nobody stopped to ask them what they were doing. That was one thing that Josh liked about England: at least people pretended that they were minding their own business.

He lit the candles and stepped back. “Still doesn’t look any different,” said Nancy, shading her eyes with her hand.

“Maybe there’s a special ritual.”

“Maybe we should just recite the rhyme.”

“OK,” said Josh. He stood in front of the niche, with the three candles flickering at his feet, and raised both hands, palm outward, as if he were giving the benediction.

“Six doors they stand in London Town. Six doors they stand in London, too. Yet who’s to know which way they face? And who’s to know which face is true?”

He repeated the rhyme three times. Nothing happened. The niche remained solidly bricked up.

“I’m beginning to feel a little stupid here,” said Josh.

“Let me try,” said Nancy. She stood in front of the niche in his place. She crossed her arms high in front of her, closed her eyes, and repeated the rhyme three times. Then she said, “Great Spirit, if there is a way through here, show it to me, guide me, that I may discover the white man’s Happy Hunting Ground. Show me the way, so that I may find answers for my questioning mind, and peace for my anxious heart.”

She recited something else, in Modoc. Then she bowed her head and stepped back.

“What did you say?” asked Josh.

“I appealed to the Great Spirit’s pride. I said that He could open any door, even a white man’s door.”

Josh waited beside her, but still nothing happened. Five minutes passed, and the sun went in.

“Nothing,” said Nancy.

“Well … I guess that’s it. No door. No parallel world. I never really believed in it, did you? Not in my heart of hearts. Not one hundred percent. All I can say is, it was better than thinking that some sadistic bastard had her locked up in a basement all that time.”

Nancy looked down at the candles. “What are we going to do with these?”

“Leave them there. It’s not much of a shrine, but it’s better than no shrine at all.”

They waited for a moment longer, and then they began to walk back down Star Yard toward Carey Street. A gray cat came around the corner, a gray cat with green eyes and sharply pointed ears. It had a black leather strap around its neck and a small silver cylinder was dangling from the strap. It walked up the yard at an odd diagonal, crossing in front of them.

“Here, puss,” said Josh. It glanced up at him disdainfully and went on its way.

“That must be a first,” said Nancy. “An animal that ignores you.”

Josh stopped to watch the cat go on its haughty way up Star Yard. “What does it mean when a gray cat crosses your path? You’re only going to have moderately bad luck?”

“Maybe it’s lost,” said Nancy.

“It didn’t look lost.”

“You never know. It had something around its neck. Maybe we should check it out.”

Josh stuck two fingers in his mouth and let out three slurred whistles, like a California quail. “Here, boy! Here, Smokey! Let’s take a look at you!”

“How do you know its name?”

“Because I know owners. Black cat, Lucifer. Tabby cat, Tabitha. Gray cat, Smokey. And for some reason, stick insects are always called Randy.”

The gray cat ignored him and continued to walk up the yard. When it reached the candles, however, it stopped for a moment and regarded them with narrowed green eyes.

“Here, Smokey!” Josh called it. But without any warning the cat jumped over the candle flames and disappeared into the niche.

Josh and Nancy waited for a moment. “What the hell is that animal up to?” said Josh.

“It’s probably doing its business.”

“Great. So what I thought was the door to a parallel world was nothing more than a cat’s toilet?”

All the same, Josh waited a little longer. Nancy said, “Come on, Josh,” but Smokey still didn’t reappear.

“So what’s taking him so long?”

“How should I know? Maybe he’s found something interesting to read.”

“Jesus, Nancy, I’m being serious.”

He walked back to the corner and looked into the niche. He turned back to Nancy and shrugged. “He’s not here. He’s vanished.”

“You’re sure he’s not hiding under all of those leaves?”

“No. He’s vanished.”

Nancy looked up. On all three sides of the niche, the soot-stained walls rose more than seventy feet, up to roof level. Josh said, “He couldn’t have climbed up there. Not without ropes and pitons.”

“So where did he go?”

“I don’t know. He just jumped over the candles, and he—”

They looked at each other. “He jumped over the candles,” Josh repeated.

“Jack be nimble, Jack be quick, Jack jump over the candlestick. You didn’t do that, did you? You didn’t jump.”

Josh looked around. Star Yard was quite busy now with people walking through it on their way to Chancery Lane – solicitors’ clerks and secretaries and superior-looking barristers with their book-bags slung over their shoulders. The last thing that he wanted to do was hurl himself over the candles and collide with a solid brick wall, right in front of an audience. Especially such a stiff-upper-lip audience.

“Are you going to try it, or what?” asked Nancy.

“Sure. Sure, I’ll try it.”

“Well, go on then. Try it.”

“What if I’m wrong?”

“Then you’re wrong, that’s all. Look – if you don’t want to do it, I will.”

“Maybe I ought to say the rhyme again.”

“The cat didn’t say the rhyme, did it? The cat just jumped.”

Josh took a step back, ready to jump, but before he could do so, Nancy said, “For God’s sake, Josh,” and jumped herself.

“Nance!” Josh shouted. But Nancy didn’t hit the wall. She landed on the other side of the candles, among the leaves, and in some extraordinary way the wall seemed further away, even though it wasn’t. She turned to him and smiled. “It’s all right” she said, although her voice sounded watery and strange, as if she were trying to talk to him through a diving mask. She started to make walking movements toward the wall even though she must have already reached it. She walked six or seven paces before she turned around again.

“It’s here!” she called. Her voice sounded even more distorted. “There’s another alleyway, here to the left!” She lifted her arm and pointed and her hand disappeared from sight, right into the brick. “It’s here, you can make your way through!” With that, she took a step sideways and disappeared too.