Lockwood & Co.: The Creeping Shadow (10 page)

I
n some ways, what happened after that was just like the old days. We’d seen the client and had the briefing; next we’d prepare our equipment and research the case. If we were to visit Ealing that evening, there was no time to lose, so Lockwood set the wheels in motion as soon as we left Fittes House. Standing on the crowded sidewalk, he promptly divided forces; he and Holly would buy extra supplies of salt and iron, while George would scour the National Newspaper Archives to find out all he could about the Guppy murder. And I—

What would
I
do? Where did
I
fit in?

“We’ll meet you at the Café Royale in Piccadilly Circus, Luce,” Lockwood said. “We can all get a taxi from there. Four o’clock okay? That’ll give you time to sort out your own stuff, won’t it?”

“Sure,” I said.

I was still thinking about what Penelope Fittes had said to me a moment before. That it had been
her
idea to involve me. At my apartment the previous day, Lockwood had somehow skirted around that particular detail. Unless I’d missed something, he’d very much made it seem as if the impulse had come from him.

“Great, then we look forward to seeing you later. Isn’t it an excellent case? I’m glad you’re with us on this one.”

“Sure…” Obviously, it didn’t
really
matter whose idea it had been to bring me along. And I didn’t have any right to feel annoyed about it, either. I was the one who’d left Lockwood & Co., after all.

Business, that’s all it was; just business. “Actually,” I said, “there’s just one thing. Four o’clock’s too late—it won’t give us enough daylight when we get to Ealing. Better to arrive well before dark, so we can get the lay of the land and plan the layout of our circles. It’s best to take preliminary readings before sunset anyway. And it’ll give us the chance to look in all the nooks and crannies that would be invisible to us after dark. For all those reasons, I’d suggest we meet at two.” I smiled coolly at him. “Agreed?”

Lockwood nodded; if he was perhaps slightly taken aback, he hid it well. “I see what you’re saying, but would that give George enough time—?”

“I think it’s a very good point that Lucy makes,” Holly Munro said, unexpectedly. “George?”

George made some minor adjustment to his glasses. “Getting gobbled by a big bloke has never been my idea of fun,” he said, “even if said bloke
is
a ghost. I’m all for taking extra care. Yes, I’ll be finished at the Archives by two. Let’s go with that and get there early.”

Lockwood’s expression had become one of studious unconcern. “You’re all probably right. Fine. Two o’clock it is, Lucy. We’ll see you there.”

“Do you want anything from Mullet’s supply store?” Holly Munro asked me.

“No, it’s okay, thanks,” I said. “I’ve got everything I need. I’ll see you later.”

I turned before they did and made off into the crowd. I was going against the flow, having to force my way a little, but that suited my mood just then. When I was sure I was out of sight, I took a side road down to the Thames Embankment, where a lot of the cheaper merchants plied their trade under the brick arches of Hungerford Bridge. It had been a fib, what I’d said just then. I was almost out of supplies.

I didn’t feel bad about the fib, though. I’d been lied to as well.

The tide was low, and wet gravel glinted steeply at the base of the Embankment wall. Seagulls wheeled high above. The road was busy with traffic; I crossed over and walked upriver toward the bridge. Above my head, spotlighted billboards advertised the latest products of the giant Rotwell Agency. In one poster, their mascot, Roger, a roguish cartoon lion, gave a mighty thumbs-up while trampling a cartoon ghost. In another, Roger held some of the exciting new home defense equipment that had been dreamed up by the scientists of the Rotwell Institute and was now, thanks to their partners in the Sunrise Corporation, available to customers everywhere. In a third, he appeared with his paw draped over the bulky shoulder of Steve Rotwell, the agency’s chairman, whose personal pledge—
WE FIGHT TO MAKE SAFE YOUR NIGHT
—was printed in a speech bubble emerging from his mouth. Steve Rotwell’s teeth sparkled, his green eyes twinkled, his chin protruded like the prow of a gunship; he radiated more machismo than the cartoon lion. He was the epitome of reassurance in the age of the Problem and—thanks to all this advertising—the most popular figure in London.

I scowled and hurried past. I’d once seen Rotwell kill a man by sticking a sword straight through his chest. The ads didn’t have quite the desired effect on me.

I visited the salt merchants, bought my supplies, and came out onto the Embankment again. Beyond the billboards, stone steps led down to the gravel, and here an unsavory figure crouched, a mud-stained burlap bag beside her. She was scraping dirt off a variety of pronged instruments that had been laid out on the Embankment wall. From the sun-blistered puffer jacket, straw hat, slime-caked boots, and the seabirds lying unconscious nearby, I recognized Flo Bones, a relic-girl of my acquaintance. Flo trawled the Thames shoreline for psychic jetsam washed up by the river, and sold it on the black market. She’d helped Lockwood & Co. on several occasions and was prickly, but decent enough, provided you stepped carefully and always breathed through your mouth.

As I approached, Flo was scooping gunk off a strange wide spatula-headed implement. She glanced up, saw me, and flicked a glob of muck over the wall.

“Well, look what the tide’s brought in,” she said.

“All right, Flo.” By her standards, this had been a pleasant greeting. She hadn’t flicked the muck at me, either, which was a first. “See you’ve been busy,” I said. “Any joy?”

“Found lots of rubbish. Two drowned rats, a pig’s head, and now you.”

I grinned and sat on the wall beside her. “Sorry to hear that.”

“Well, I was at a relic-man’s meeting half the night. Only managed a few hours’ work. Found me a couple of bones with faint auras, and a rusty whistle that carries some kind of psychic charge. That’s all.”

“Doesn’t sound too bad. You’ll sell them, then?”

Flo pushed her hat back and scratched at her hairline, the one clean part of her face. “Dunno. Got to raise my game these days. There’s a lot of strong items on the market, and the best of ’em are selling well. They say there’s a new collector in town, and the dealers are buying up everything decent.” She glanced at me with her shrewd blue eyes. “Guess who was at the meeting last night, snaffled all the good stuff? Winkman.”

“Julius Winkman?” He was a black marketeer whom Lockwood & Co. had helped put in prison the year before.

“No.
He’s
still inside. It was his wife. Well, his son was there, too, but it’s Adelaide who calls the shots. She bought up all sorts of weird and wonderful Sources at the show last night. A haunted painting, a bloodstained glove, a mummified head, a Roman helmet…” Flo spat over the wall. “Me, I thought half were fakes, but the kid vetted them and said they were kosher. Old Ma Winkman bought the lot. All going straight to this new collector. Anything good we find, we’re to bring it to the next night-market too. I’ll polish up the whistle, as best I can, but I’m not sure it’ll cut it.” She tapped her instrument on the wall. “So, where’ve you been hiding, Carlyle? Been ages. Barely been able to contain myself, not seeing you.”

“I’ve been working.”

“Not for Lockwood.”

“No….” I eyed the instrument. “What
is
that thing?”

“Slime flange.”

“Oh…Yeah, I’ve been working for myself. But I’ve just been with Lockwood, as it happens. Going to do a job with him. Only a one-off. I’m not rejoining.”

“No, well, of course you aren’t.” Flo picked up a sharper tool, thick with blue-black river clay. “That Holly Munro’s still there, isn’t she?”

I paused. “Actually, it wasn’t because of Holly that I left.”

She scraped muck off her prong. “Uh-huh.”

“I had other reasons.”

“Uh-huh.”

“You don’t believe me?”

“Can you hold this muck-prong a tick?” Flo said. “I’m getting dirt everywhere.”

“Yeah….Now I’m getting it all over
me
.”

“Just need to wipe my hands.” She did so, on her puffer jacket. “There. That’s that done. Well, been nice seeing you, Carlyle. I’ve got to go. There’s a lukewarm kebab waiting for me in Wapping.”

“Lovely…Flo,” I said, as she gathered up her tools and shoved them in the belt beneath her coat, “this mummified head you mentioned. What was it like?”

“I dunno. Eyes, ears, nose, and mouth, the usual. Why?”

“Anything else? Just that I came into contact with one myself a couple of nights ago.”

Flo gathered up her burlap sack. She leaned over the wall, surveying the line of mud that ran east along the north shore of the Thames. “’S’not high tide for another hour….Think I’ll go that way. The head? Hard to tell the details, what with all the cobwebs on it. Man’s. Bit of a pointy black beard going on. I wasn’t paying much attention. It was in a silver-glass case; and, like I say, it was already spoken for. They said there was a powerful Specter attached to it. Winkman bought it for a lot of cash, I’m sure.”

I was frowning at her. “Do you know who brought it in?”

But with a wave and a waft of unwashed air, Flo Bones was gone. In moments she had skipped down the tidal steps and was crunching away from me along the Strand.

The Café Royale showed its broad glass front on the western side of Piccadilly Circus, where double rows of coffee-colored tables stretched beneath its brown-and-white striped awnings. An arc of brick-lined channels, cut into the sidewalk and filled with running water, gave it protection from restless spirits during the night; toward dusk, lavender fires would be lit beside the doors. It was a popular spot even after dark; in early afternoon on this late winter day, the place was almost full, the windows wet and steamy. When I arrived, weighed down with equipment bags and a ghost-jar in my backpack, I found Holly Munro waiting at a table just inside the door. She was reading a copy of the
Times
.

“Have you heard the latest?” she said, as I sank gratefully into the seat opposite. “Says here there are street kids following adults around in London. Late afternoons, on cloudy sorts of days, you know. They make money by alerting the grown-ups to ghosts. They tell them they’re being followed, that something in a white sheet is trailing after them, or that there’s a Tom O’Shadows dancing at their heels. The kids carry iron railings stolen from outside houses. Cash is handed over, then they wave the sticks around and send the ‘ghosts’ packing. It’s a complete scam, but they put on a real show. Hair-raising to watch, apparently, and impossible for the adults to disprove.”

I shrugged off my coat. It was warm in the café, and I was already hot. “Those kids have to make a living somehow. There’s a lot of poverty nowadays. We can’t all be agents, can we?”

“I know. We
are
lucky, aren’t we, Lucy? I’ll order some tea. The boys won’t be long. Lockwood’s fetching the bags from Portland Row, and George will be here soon.”

She busied herself making eyes at the waiters, and I sat back and considered her. It was her skin that always got to me. It was darkly buttery, with not a pimple to be seen. And her features, too—everything was in the right place. There’d been a time when her easy perfection drove me mad, and I knew that in my disheveled, wildly imperfect way, I’d done the same to her. To be fair, since meeting her that morning she’d treated me with careful attention and respect; but since the same could also be said of a gloved scientist holding a blob of plague bacillus on a glass slide, I didn’t read too much into it.

“How are you finding it, going solo?” she asked once the tea was ordered.

“It’s all right,” I said. “I get to pick my hours and jobs. I work with many different agencies. I make a bit of money.”

“You’re so brave,” she said. “To leave and strike out on your own. It’s very risky.”

“Well, it has its compensations. I’ve learned a lot about my Talents and gotten better at managing other people, even the irritating ones.”

She gave a laugh. Oh, joy—it was the special tinkling one that set my teeth on edge.

“Someone at Portland Row really missed you, you know,” she said.

I kept my voice light. “Well, I missed everyone, too, of course….Er, who
was
that?”

“Who missed you most particularly?” Her laugh again; her big dark eyes smiled at me sidelong. “Can’t you guess?”

It was hot in that café. I did something with the sleeves of my sweater. “No.”

“Me.”

“Oh. What—?
Did
you?”

“I know we had our issues, Lucy, but it’s been odd being the only girl. Lockwood and George are lovely, of course, but they’re both off in their own worlds. George with his experiments, and Lockwood…” Her brow formed shapely furrows. “He’s so restless and remote. He never sits still long enough for me to reach him. I was going to ask you about that, whether you found…Oh good, and here are the boys, too.”

In a few minutes we were all crammed in together, our bags wedged between us and the steamed-up window. I was bunched close to George, who acknowledged me with the barest nod. Lockwood radiated excitement. His face glowed in anticipation of the night to come. “The team’s all here,” he said. “Excellent! Right, I’ve arranged a taxi ride to Ealing in half an hour. The Fittes representative will meet us at the house. He’ll have the keys.”