Lockwood & Co: The Screaming Staircase (11 page)

This store was the only separate portion of the basement – a small, windowless room filled with shelves and boxes. It was here that all the most essential equipment was kept – the range of silver seals, the iron chains, the flares and canisters ordered direct from the Sunrise Corporation. Right now, it was also where the ghost-jar, with its clamped brown skull and ectoplasmic host, was stored, concealed beneath its spotted cloth.

‘George gets it out to do experiments sometimes,’ Lockwood said. ‘He wants to observe how ghosts respond to different stimuli. Personally I’d rather he destroyed the thing, but he’s got attached to it, somehow.’

I eyed the cloth doubtfully. Just as during the interview, I thought I could
almost
hear a psychic noise, a delicate hum on the fringes of perception. ‘So . . . where
did
he get it from?’ I asked.

‘Oh, he stole it. I expect he’ll tell you about it sometime. But actually it’s not the only trophy we’ve got down here. Come and see.’

In the back wall of the basement a modern glass door, fortified with iron ghost-bars, led out into the garden. Alongside it, four shelves had been riveted to the brickwork: they housed a collection of silver-glass cases, with objects
inside each one. Some of these were old, others very modern. I noticed, among them, a set of playing cards; a lock of long blonde hair; a lady’s bloodstained glove; three human teeth; a gentleman’s folded necktie. The most splendid case of all contained a mummified hand, black and shrivelled as a rotten banana, sitting on a red silk cushion.

‘That’s a pirate’s,’ Lockwood said. ‘Seventeen-hundreds, probably. Belonged to a fellow who was strung up and sun-dried on Execution Dock, where the Mouse and Musket Inn stands now. His spirit was a Lurker; he’d given the barmaids a lot of trouble by the time I dug that up. Well, this is all stuff George and I have collected over our careers so far. Some are actual Sources, and very dangerous: they’ve got to be kept locked up, particularly at night. Others just need to be treated with caution – if you’re a Sensitive – like the three I gave you in the interview.’

I’d seen them on the bottom shelf: the knife, the ribbon, the unspeakable watch.

‘Yeah . . .’ I said. ‘You never told me what they were.’

Lockwood nodded. ‘I’m sorry the impressions you got were so gruelling, but I didn’t expect you to experience them so strongly. Well, the knife belonged to my uncle, who lived out in the country. He took it with him on walks and hunting expeditions. Had it with him when he dropped dead from a heart attack during a shoot. He was a kind man; from what you said the knife still had something of his personality.’

I thought back to the peaceful sensations I’d picked up from the knife. ‘It did.’

‘The ribbon came from a grave they opened in Kensal Green Cemetery, when they were building one of the iron barriers around the perimeter last year. Coffin had a woman in it – and a little child. The ribbon was in the woman’s hair.’

The memory of my feelings as I’d held the slip of silk returned; my eyes filled with tears. I cleared my throat and made a big business of studying the nearest boxes. It wouldn’t do to show weakness to Lockwood. Frailty was what Visitors fed on; frailty and loose emotions. Good agents needed the opposite: firm control and strength of nerve. My old leader Jacobs had lost his nerve. And what had happened? I had nearly died.

I spoke in a cool, matter-of-fact voice. ‘And the watch?’

Lockwood had been observing me closely. ‘Yes . . . the watch. You were right to sense its sinister residue. It’s actually a memento of my first successful case.’ He paused significantly. ‘No doubt you’ve heard of the murderer Harry Crisp?’

My eyes grew round. ‘Not the coin-in-the-slot killer?’

‘Er, no. That was Clive Dilson.’

‘Oh! You mean the one who kept heads in the fridge?’

‘No . . . that was Colin Buchanan-Prescott.’

I scratched my chin. ‘In that case, I’ve never heard of him.’

‘Oh.’ Lockwood seemed slightly deflated. ‘I’m a little surprised. Do they
have
papers in the north of England? Well, it was thanks to me that Harry Crisp got put away. I was doing a sweep of the neighbourhood in Tooting, out hunting Type Twos, you see, and I noticed all the death-glows in his garden. They’d been missed because he’d cunningly scattered iron filings everywhere after the killings, to suppress the ghosts. And it turned out later that, while wearing that watch, it had been his beastly habit to lure—’

‘Dinner!’ George was leaning over the top of the spiral stairs, a ladle in his hand.

‘I’ll tell you about it another time,’ Lockwood said. ‘We’d better go. George gets tetchy if we let the food get cold.’

If I knew straight away that I liked the oddities of my new home, I soon formed opinions about my fellow agents too. And right from the outset these opinions diverged markedly. Lockwood, I already liked. He seemed a world away from the remote and treacherous Agent Jacobs; his zest and personal commitment were clear. Here was someone I felt I could follow; someone perhaps to trust.

But George Cubbins? No. He bothered me. I made heroic efforts not to get annoyed with him that first day, but it wasn’t humanly possible.

Take his appearance. There was something about it that acted as a trigger to one’s worst instincts. His face was
uniquely slappable – a nun would have ached to punch him – while his backside cried out to heaven for a well-placed kick. He slouched, he slumped, he scuffed his way about the house like something soft about to melt. His shirt was always untucked, his trainers extra-big, the laces trailing. I’ve seen reanimated corpses with better deportment than George.

And that flop of hair! And those silly glasses!
Everything
about him irritated me.

He also had a particular trick of staring at me in a blank, expressionless sort of way that was somehow also rudely contemplative. It was like he was analysing all my faults, and simply wondering which I was going to display next. For my part I did my best to be polite during the first evening meal, and restrained my basic instincts, which were to hit him over the head with a spade.

Later that night, coming down from my bedroom, I lingered for a moment on the first-floor landing. I glanced through the bookshelves, inspected the Polynesian ghost-chaser . . . and suddenly found myself standing outside the
other
bedroom door, the one Lockwood had said was private. It was a very ordinary-looking door. There was a faint pale rectangle marked on the wood grain, just below head height, where a sign or sticker had been removed. Otherwise it was entirely blank. It didn’t seem to have a lock.

It would have been easy to peep inside, but clearly that would have been wrong. I was just regarding the door
speculatively when George Cubbins emerged from his room, a folded newspaper under his arm. He glanced across. ‘I know what you’re thinking, but that’s the forbidden room.’

‘Oh – the door?’ I stepped away from it casually. ‘Yes . . . Why does he keep it shut?’

‘I don’t know.’

‘Have you ever looked in?’

‘No.’ The spectacles regarded me. ‘Course not. He asked me not to.’

‘Of course, of course. Quite right. So . . .’ I smiled as amiably as I could. ‘How long have you lived here?’

‘About a year.’

‘So you obviously know Anthony well?’

The plump boy pushed his glasses briskly up his nose. ‘What is this? Another interview? It had better be a quickie. I’m on my way to the bathroom here.’

‘Sorry, yes. I was just wondering about the house and how he came to have it. I mean, it’s got all this stuff in it, and yet Lockwood’s here on his own. I mean, I don’t see how—’

‘What you
mean
,’ George interrupted, ‘is: where are the parents? Correct?’

I nodded. ‘Yes.’

‘He doesn’t like to talk about them – as you’ll find out, if you last long enough to ask him. I think they were psychical researchers of some kind: you can tell that from all the objects on the walls. They were rich too: you can tell that from the
house. Anyway, they’re long gone. I believe Lockwood was in care for years with a relative of some kind. Then he trained as an agent with “Gravedigger” Sykes, and got the house back somehow.’ He adjusted his newspaper and marched across the landing. ‘No doubt you can use your psychic sensitivity to find out more.’

But I was frowning after him. ‘Into care? So does that mean his parents—’

‘One way or another, I should think it means they’re dead.’ And with that he closed the bathroom door.

Well, it isn’t hard to guess which colleague I favoured, as I lay awake that night under the attic eaves. On the one hand: Anthony Lockwood – vigorous and energetic, eager to throw himself into each new mystery; a boy who was clearly never happier than when walking into a haunted room, his hand resting lightly on his sword hilt. On the other: George Cubbins, handsome as a freshly opened tub of margarine, as charismatic as a wet tea towel lying scrumpled on the floor. I guessed he was never happier than when surrounded by dusty files and piled plates of food, and – since he was prickly with it, and seemed to find me irksome – I resolved to keep away from him as far as I could. But it already pleased me to think of walking into darkness with Lockwood at my side.

Late morning was Lockwood’s favourite time for meeting new clients. It gave him a chance to recover from any expeditions of the night before. He always received his guests in the same living room where I’d had my interview, probably because its friendly sofas and displays of oriental ghost-catchers provided an appropriate atmosphere for discussions that bridged the banal and the strange.

On my first full day at Portland Row a single new client came by appointment at eleven o’clock: a gentleman in his early sixties, puffy-faced and plaintive, a few thin strands of hair slicked despondently across his skull. Lockwood sat with him at the coffee table. George was positioned some way off at a slope-sided writing desk, taking notes from the meeting
in the big black casebook. I had no part in the conversation. I sat in a chair at the back of the room, listening to what went on.

The gentleman had a problem with his garage. His grand-daughter refused to go in, he said. She claimed she’d seen things, but she was a hysterical girl and he hardly knew whether to believe her. Still, against his better judgement (here he blew out his cheeks to emphasize his extreme reluctance), he’d come to us for a consultation.

Lockwood was politeness itself. ‘How old is your grand-daughter, Mr Potter?’

‘Six. She’s a silly little minx at the best of times.’

‘And what does she say she’s seen?’

‘I can’t get any sense out of her. A young man, standing at the far end of the garage, beside the tea crates. Says he’s very thin.’

‘I see. And is he always in the same place, or does he move at all?’

‘Just stands there, she says. First time out, she reckons she spoke to him, but he never answered her, only stared. I don’t know as she’s making it up. She hears enough about Visitors in the playground.’

‘Possibly, Mr Potter, possibly. And you’ve never noticed anything odd in the garage yourself? It’s not unreasonably cold, for example?’

A shake of the head. ‘It’s chilly . . . but it’s a garage, so
what do you expect? And before you ask me: nothing’s
happened
there. No one’s . . . you know –
died
or anything. It’s a new-build, only five years old, and I always keep it safely locked.’

‘I see . . .’ Lockwood clasped his hands together. ‘Do you keep pets, Mr Potter?’

The man blinked; with a stubby finger he encouraged a long droop of hair back onto his forehead. ‘I don’t see what
that’s
got to do with anything.’

‘I just wondered if you had a dog, perhaps, or cats.’

‘The wife’s got two cats. Milk-white Siamese. Stuck-up, bony little things.’

‘And do they often go into the garage?’

The man considered. ‘No. They don’t like it there. Give it a wide berth. I’ve always thought it’s because they don’t like getting their precious little coats dirty, what with all the dust and cobwebs everywhere.’

Lockwood looked up. ‘Ah, you have a problem with garage spiders, Mr Potter?’