Lockwood (17 page)

‘You want to talk to
that
?’ I whispered.

Lockwood made no answer, but pattered down the river stairs. I followed. Halfway down, the steps became soft and wet with moss. Lockwood reached the last step, but went no further. He raised a hand and called out over the dark expanse. ‘Hey, Flo!’

Away across the mud the figure froze. I sensed, rather than saw, the pale face staring at us from afar.

Lockwood raised his voice again. ‘Flo!’

‘What if it is? I haven’t done nothing.’

The reply, rather high and cracked, didn’t carry well; it would have been natural to move closer, but Lockwood was cautious. He remained standing on the bottom step.

‘Hey, Flo! It’s Lockwood!’

Silence. The figure straightened abruptly; I thought for a moment it was going to turn and run. But then the voice came again, faint, hostile and guarded. ‘You? What the bloody hell do
you
want?’

‘Oh, that’s fine,’ Lockwood murmured. ‘She’s in a good mood.’ He cleared his throat, called out again. ‘Can you talk?’

The distant person considered; for a few seconds we heard nothing except the sloop and slosh of the river along the shore. ‘No. I’m busy! Go away.’

‘I’ve brought liquorice!’

‘What, you’re trying to bribe me now? Bring money!’ More silence; just the sucking of the water. Away in the haze a head was cocked to one side. ‘What
kind
of liquorice?’

‘Come and see!’

I watched as the figure began to plough its way rapidly towards us through the mire. It was a limping witch, a night-hag from a child’s fever-dreams. My heart beat fast. ‘Um . . . what would have happened,’ I said, ‘if she
wasn’t
in a good mood?’

‘Best not to ask,’ Lockwood said. ‘I saw her chuck an agent into the river once,’ he went on reflectively. ‘Just lifted her up by the leg and tossed her in. Flo was in a good mood
that
day too, as it happens. But she’ll like
you
, I’m almost sure. Just don’t say much, and stay out of stabbing distance. I’ll handle it from here.’

The shambling creature drew close, dragging the sack, bearing the light before it. I glimpsed a pale and filthy hand, the crown of a tattered straw hat. Great boots sucked and slurped in the mud and shingle. Lockwood and I instinctively moved up a step. A sudden groan, a curse; the sack was swung up and over to land on the stone below. At last the figure straightened; she stood in the mud beneath the steps and stared up at us. In the light of the lantern I got a proper look at her for the first time.

The first shock, now that she’d rid herself of her burden, was that she was tall – half a head taller than me. It was hard to tell more about her shape (this was fine by me: no sane person would have wanted to look beneath her clothes). She wore an unutterably foul blue puffa jacket that went down almost to her knees; the lower reaches were dark with moisture, caked with river mud. The zip was open, providing glimpses of a pale expanse of dirty neck, a grimy shirt collar, a patched and shapeless jersey hanging down over ancient and faded jeans. She either had the biggest feet of any female I’d ever met, or was wearing a man’s wellington boots, or both. The boots, which reached her knees, were splayed outwards like a duck’s, and were ripple-stained by muck and water.

A length of rope, tied twice around her waist, served as a makeshift belt. Something hung there in the recesses of the coat. I thought it might have been a sword, which is illegal for a non-agent to wear.

From her hobbling approach and shapeless outline, she might have been very elderly, so the second shock came when she pushed back the broad-brimmed hat. From under it a spray of hair, the colour and stiffness of old straw, radiated outwards from a wide and grubby forehead. Dirt had collected in the creases running across it, and in the lines beside the eyes; in this she was no different from any vagrant queuing for safe quarters overnight. But she was young – still in her teens. She had a small, up-tilted nose, a wide face, pinkish cheeks, smeared with grey, and bright blue eyes that sparkled in the lantern-light. Her mouth was broad and contemptuous, her head jutting forward aggressively. She took me in with a single glance, then focused her attention on Lockwood. ‘Well,
you
haven’t changed,’ she said. ‘Still as lah-di-dah as ever, I see.’

Lockwood grinned. ‘Hello, Flo. Well, you know me.’

‘Yeah. See you still can’t afford a suit that fits. Don’t bend over quick wearing
those
trousers, that’s my advice. I thought I said I never wanted to see you again.’

‘Did you? I don’t remember. Did I say I’d brought liquorice whirls?’

‘Like
that
changes anything. Give them here.’ A paper bag was produced and delivered to a claw-like hand, which stowed it in some unmentionable recess beneath the coat. The girl sniffed. ‘So who’s this trollop?’

‘This is Lucy Carlyle, my associate,’ Lockwood said. ‘I should say at once that she has no connection with DEPRAC or the police, or the Rotwell Agency. She’s an independent operative, working with me, and I trust her with my life. Lucy, this is Flo.’

‘Hello, Flo,’ I said.

‘Florence Bonnard to you, I’m sure,’ the girl said in a hoity-toity voice. ‘See you’ve got another posh ’un here, Lockwood.’

I blinked indignantly. ‘Excuse me, I’m working-class northern. And when you say “another”—’

‘Listen, Flo, I know you’re busy . . .’ It was Lockwood’s emollient voice, the one he used in tough corners – with irritable clients and with angry creditors who came knocking on our door. The full gigawatt smile would be coming next, sure as day. ‘I don’t want to bother you,’ he said, ‘but I need your assistance. Just a little bit of information, then I’ll be gone. A crime’s been committed, a kid’s been hurt. We’ve got a lead on the relic-man who did it, but we don’t know where to find him. And we were wondering if you could help.’

The blue gaze narrowed; the creases around the eyes disappeared into the dirt. ‘Don’t flash that smile at me. This relic-man. He got a name?’

‘Jack Carver.’

A cold breeze blew across the river, rippling the matted stalks of Flo Bones’s hair. ‘Sorry. There’s a code of silence among our kind. We can’t peach on each other. That’s just the way it is.’

‘First I’ve heard of it,’ Lockwood said. ‘I thought you were famous for your cut-throat rivalry, and happy to sell each other’s grandmothers for sixpence.’

The girl shrugged. ‘The two things ain’t mutually exclusive, if you want to stay healthy.’ She grabbed at the neck of the hempen bag. ‘And I don’t want to be washed up by the dawn tide, so that’s the end of it. Goodbye.’

‘Flo, I gave you liquorice whirls.’

‘It’s not enough.’

‘No good, Lockwood,’ I said. ‘She’s scared. Come on.’

I touched his arm, made as if to climb the steps. The girl’s face was a sudden white oval staring up at me. ‘What did you say?’

‘Lucy, it’s probably not wise—’

But I’d had enough of keeping quiet. Flo Bones annoyed me, and I was going to let her know it. Sometimes politeness only gets you so far. ‘It’s all right,’ I said. ‘She can go back to scrabbling gently in the mud, while we get on with hunting the guy who coshed a kid and robbed a grave, and now has a vicious artefact that probably threatens London. Each to their own. Come on.’

A hop, a skip; a stench that made my toenails curl. A puffa jacket crackling against my coat, a jutting face pressed into mine. I was thrust back against the stonework of the steps. ‘I don’t like what you’re saying,’ Flo Bones said.

‘It’s OK,’ I said sweetly. ‘I’m not blaming you. People have to know their limitations. Most avoid danger, no matter what. It’s just the way things are. Now, I don’t want you to scuff your coat—’

‘You think I avoid danger? You think there’s no danger in what I do?’ A series of emotions probably passed across the girl’s face at this point – anger, outrage, followed by a long slow dawn of cunning realization – but what with all the darkness and the dirt, and her sheer stomach-turning proximity, it was impossible to be sure. ‘Tell you what,’ she said, and suddenly she was away from me and dancing down the steps again, light-footed and nimble beneath her cumbersome boots and coat. ‘Tell you what, I’ll make you a deal. You do something for me,
I’ll
do something for you.’ With a crunch, she landed back on the shingle and took up the lantern. ‘Come out onto the reaches with me, unless you’re ’fraid of getting your feet wet. Afterwards I’ll tell you all about him.’

‘You know Jack Carver, then?’ Lockwood said. ‘You’ll tell us what you know?’

‘Yes.’ Her eyes glittered; her mouth grinned broadly. ‘First just a little gentle scrabbling in the mud. Something you can help me with, what I ain’t been able to do.’

Lockwood and I glanced at each other. Speaking personally, the girl’s insane grin didn’t inspire enormous confidence. But we didn’t have much choice, if this line of enquiry was to proceed. We jumped down onto the sand.

Twenty minutes later my boots were sopping, my leggings soaked as high as my calves. Three times I’d stumbled, and the side of one arm was caked in mud and sand. Lockwood was in a similar state, but he bore it without complaint. We followed Flo Bones’s lantern as it leaped and swung ahead of us like a will-o’-the-wisp, darting from side to side as she picked her way across the mire. Under the sodden blackness beneath the bridge we went, and out onto the Southwark Reaches, with the tide-wall of the embankment curling steadily away from us to the right. River mists had risen. On the opposite bank, the wharfs rose from the water like rotting black cliffs, soft and formless. Faint red and orange lights pulsed on the tips of the crane masts and the jib ends.

‘Here we are,’ Flo Bones said.

She raised the lantern. Two rows of great black wooden posts emerged from the muck, twelve feet tall or more, tracing the line of a long-lost wharf or pier. Their sides were thick with weed, mostly black, in places faintly luminous; barnacles and shells clung to them too, rising above our heads to the high-tideline. In places, rotten spars still spanned between the posts. To our left the furthest posts rose from the water, but where we stood the muck was soft and granular with millions of tiny stones.

Flo Bones seemed energized; she tossed her sack aside and bounded up to us. ‘Here,’ she said again. ‘There’s something here I want, only I’ve never been able to get it.’

Lockwood took his torch out and shone it around. ‘Show us where. If it’s heavy, I’ve got rope in my pack.’

Flo chuckled. ‘Oh, it’s not
heavy
. I’m sure it’s very small. No, right now you got to wait. Stand tight. We won’t be long.’

With this, she skipped away towards the nearest post, rounded it, and zigzagged to another, chuckling throatily the while.

I leaned in close to Lockwood. ‘You realize,’ I whispered, ‘that she’s
completely
mad.’

‘She’s certainly a bit odd.’

‘And
so
disgusting. Gaaah! Have you got
close
to her? That smell . . .’

‘I know,’ Lockwood said mildly. ‘It’s a little intense.’

‘Intense? I can feel my nose hairs shrivelling. And if—’ I stopped, suddenly alert.

‘What is it, Lucy?’

‘Do you feel that?’ I said. ‘Something’s starting.’ I pulled up my sleeve: the skin was peppered with goose pimples. My heart had given a double beat; the back of my neck was tingling. As an agent, you learn to listen to these signs: early warnings of a manifestation. ‘Creeping fear,’ I said, ‘and chill. Also’ – I wrinkled my nose – ‘you smell that? There’s a miasma building.’

Lockwood sniffed. ‘To be frank, I thought that was Flo.’

‘No. It’s Visitors . . .’

As one, we drew our swords, stood watchful and alert. Away among the posts, Flo’s bobbing light became still; we heard her fretful crooning. Mists swirled, the new night darkened round us. Ghosts came.

Lockwood saw the apparition first; he’s got better Sight than me.

‘Over there,’ he breathed. ‘See that post on the other side, the second one along?’

I squinted through the darkness and the swirling river mist. If I stared directly at the spot he indicated, I saw nothing. If I looked slightly away from it, out towards the middle of the river, I could just make out something whitish hanging high in the air beside the post. It was extremely frail; it hung there bothersomely, like a smudge on a lens, a trick of the eyes.