Under Gornstock

by Clive Mullis

  ‘Let’s go now,’ said Cornwallis. ‘We need to put a stop to anything that’s happening.’

  Three detectives and two police officers set off in determined fashion, each of them eyeing up any potential threat as they closed on the throng.

  ‘Jack,’ said Rose. ‘Look.’

  A scuffle had broken out amongst the crowd, then a gap appeared and Dewdrop emerged from the mob with a big grin on his face and the two yobs handcuffed together. Fluffy followed close behind, spitting out bits of trouser. Both appeared a little battered but triumphant.

  Chapter 19

  ‘Arson? Definitely. Criminal damage? Yes. Attempted murder? No. Not unless you’re referring to the transfer of the subjects to this here establishment and the treatment they received on the way, Frankie. I understand that one of them may have trouble begetting children in the future and the other can only look at a steak from now on, knowing that the wherewithal for chewing is lying somewhere on the streets of Gornstock.’

  Frankie grinned. ‘Yeah, and given a bit more time, they would’ve matched injuries too.’

  ‘Yes, but the trouble is neither of them are in a fit state to talk.’

  ‘Oh, they’ll talk all right,’ countered Frankie. ‘Just give me a few more minutes.’

  MacGillicudy sighed, wiped his forehead with his hand and cast a withering look at both Cornwallis and Frankie who were sitting on the opposite side of his desk. ‘I’m surprised at the pair of you.’

  ‘They resisted arrest,’ explained Frankie.

  ‘They did not,’ replied MacGillicudy. ‘Dewdrop had already arrested them.’

  ‘Well, they looked like they were going to resist again. I just pre-empted it.’

  ‘Jack, help me out here.’

  Cornwallis took a deep breath. ‘We’re talking about Tulip, Jethro, and what they nearly did to her.’

  ‘Yes, I know. But there are rules.’

  ‘There never used to be.’

  ‘But there are now.’

  ‘Perhaps Frankie forgot them for a moment. He only hit them once.’

  ‘Yes, once too often. Oh, well, perhaps nothing will come of it. I’ll suggest that Dewdrop forgets that bit in his report.’

  ‘No need,’ said Cornwallis. ‘So too with Tiffany and Felicity. They didn’t see a thing.’

  ‘Really? You surprise me with those girls.’

  ‘Actually, they didn’t see it, neither did Dewdrop.’

  ‘What?’

  ‘Yes. The girls were tending Dewdrop’s cuts and bruises at the time, so I had the privilege of looking after the, er… suspects,’ admitted Frankie

  ‘So technically, my feelers are in the clear?’

  ‘Yep,’ replied Frankie.

  ‘That’s all right then,’ said a relieved commander. ‘You two are big enough to look after yourselves if the shit ever hit the fan. What about Rose?’

  ‘Same as the others; Dewdrop being the centre of attention of course,’ said Cornwallis.

  ‘The cat?’

  ‘Buggered off; think he was hungry.’

  ‘Then all the boxes have been ticked.’

  ‘Apart from the one telling us who hired those louts to do what they did.’

  ‘Should have thought of that before you did what you did.’

  ‘Yes, all right, I’ll grant you that one,’ said Cornwallis with a frown. ‘But you know what Frankie’s like when he gets the urge.’

  ‘Don’t I just.’

  Frankie grinned.

  A knock at the door interrupted the conversation.

  ‘Come,’ yelled MacGillicudy.

  The door swung open and a feeler appeared carrying a tray with three mugs of coffee on it.

  ‘Thank you, Constable,’ said MacGillicudy.

  ‘Pleasure, sir. Er… them prisoners that were brought in; I thought you’d like to know they’s stopped screaming now, just whimpering a bit.’

  ‘Oh, that’s good.’

  ‘Custody sergeant asks if you would be kind enough to do them over a bit more, as they is encouraging the other prisoners to be a bit talkative, like.’

  ‘Every cloud, eh?’ said MacGillicudy, breaking into a grin. ‘Toenail Teddy?’

  ‘Yep.’

  ‘Good.’

  ‘Toenail Teddy?’ asked Cornwallis. ‘Haven’t heard of him.’

  ‘Chiropodist,’ explained MacGillicudy. ‘Cuts toenails and then steals the old folks’ money when they ain’t looking.’

  ‘Nice.’

  ‘Mind, have you seen the state of some peoples’ feet? Part of me feels like he deserves a bit of extra for the trouble.’

  With the coffee finished, the three ambled down from the relative peace of upstairs to the hustle, bustle and confusion of downstairs. They headed for the canteen at the back of the building where they found Rose and the three feelers huddled around a table and cradling hot mugs.

  ‘Go home and get some sleep,’ ordered MacGillicudy to his three feelers. ‘You can finish off your reports later.’

  Three pairs of bleary eyes looked up in gratitude; the only thing keeping them going now was the thick black concoction that the feelers called coffee.

  ‘Thank you, Commander,’ said Tiffany giving a jaw-cracking yawn. ‘I’m looking forward to seeing the inside of my bed.’

  ‘Then be off with you; and you two…’ He paused as he looked at Dewdrop and Felicity. ‘Stick to sleeping.’

  ‘Don’t worry, Commander,’ replied Felicity. ‘I’m too bloody knackered for anything else.’

  Dewdrop flashed a disappointed look, hope disappearing like a wisp on the wind.

  As the three feelers disappeared through the door, Frankie turned to MacGillicudy. ‘Well?’

  MacGillicudy nodded. ‘Yes, but later; give the prisoners a bit of time to recover first. Technically speaking, Frankie, you shouldn’t even be here, seeing as you are, as it were, pertinent to the case.’

  ‘Pertinent, my arse: they nearly did for Tulip.’

  ‘My point exactly. You’ve already given them a tap and we don’t want your enthusiasm to get the better of you again.’

  ‘How about if I promise not to be enthusiastic?’

  MacGillicudy shook his head. ‘It’s hands-off, Frankie.’

  Frankie’s face took on the lost boy look.

  MacGillicudy eventually relented. ‘All right, we’ll go for the subtle approach and you can come in with me. Any trouble and you’re out of it; agreed?’

  Frankie reluctantly agreed, with the proviso that if the subtle approach didn’t work, then he could help when they used the unsubtle approach.

  The two louts were waiting for them, each in their own little interview room; separated by another room which was kitted out with a punch-bag, a wooden bench, a whip and a couple of solid truncheons. Two grinning feelers were waiting to get stuck in.

  MacGillicudy strode up to the door and flicked the handle, the door swinging open silently and ominously; he looked in, winked and gave a thumbs up to the two feelers, who got to work.

  A rhythmic series of noises began to permeate the corridor of rooms. Thumps and scrapes, cracks and snaps were intermingled with groans and yelps and screams and sobs as the two feelers laid into their imaginary suspects.

  MacGillicudy waited for a few minutes and then signalled for them to stop.

  A pause as the commander waited for the display to take effect. He looked along the corridor at Cornwallis and Rose and then nodded and then each pair went into their designated room.

  ‘Bring it in,’ ordered MacGillicudy to the feeler standing guard in the interview room.

  ‘Yes, sir,’ replied the feeler.

  Two doors down, Cornwallis and Rose followed the same process.

  The commander and Frankie stood silently contemplating their suspect who looked up, the concern and apprehension etched on his features as he looked from one to the other while still protecting his gonads after Frankie’s little tap earlier. Frankie flexed his hands making the knuckles of
his fingers crack and grinned evilly. The consternation cranked up a gear as the feeler returned, pushing a trolley with a squeaky wheel, a crisp white sheet covering the contents. The bumps and indentations looked anything but innocent.

  ‘Name?’ barked MacGillicudy.

  The lout looked from the trolley back to the commander, his mind realising that it really didn’t want to know what the cover hid.

  ‘Er…’

  ‘S’not a difficult question,’ growled Frankie.

  The lout hung his head after looking at the trolley again. ‘Herbert,’ he replied quietly. ‘Herbert Wince.’

  ‘Good, now we’re getting somewhere. And his?’ asked the commander throwing a thumb at the wall.

  Herbert looked up and cast a glance where MacGillicudy’s thumb indicated.

  ‘Yes, we already know, but we want you to confirm it.’

  A few cogs clicked into place having heard the noises a few minutes ago and his eyes widened considerably. ‘Norris, sir. Norris Hangweight.’

  MacGillicudy smiled grimly. ‘Well done, Herbert. Young Norris there thought that he could keep his mouth shut, and he did for a while, but we showed him the error of his ways, didn’t we, Mr Kandalwick?’

  ‘We did indeed, Commander. You might of heard young Norris, Herbert, as he realised his error.’

  Herbert gulped as he cast another look at the wall.

  ‘You tell us what we want to know, Herbert, and the trolley can be wheeled back out, unused. Do you want to tell us what we want to know?’

  Herbert nodded, vigorously. Whatever had happened to his friend, he certainly didn’t want it happening to him.

  Frankie scowled in disappointment. ‘Any chance of ignoring that, Commander?’

  MacGillicudy hesitated, and as the commander hesitated, Herbert took full advantage of the lull. His mouth opened and he didn’t stop talking until he had talked himself dry.

  ‘That went better than I expected,’ said MacGillicudy as he sat back down on his chair. ‘Criminal damage, arson, incitement to riot, aggravated assault. He ticked off each charge on his fingers as he spoke. ‘Those two won’t see the light of day for a while.’

  ‘It’s a shame,’ said Rose sadly. ‘They’re very young.’

  ‘They may be young but they knew what they were doing,’ replied the commander. ‘More than knew, they actually relished causing trouble.’

  Frankie nodded. ‘A spell in the pokey will do them a world of good, and I reckon they’ll know what pokey is all about within a couple of days.’

  Rose raised a questioning eyebrow.

  ‘You don’t need me to spell it out, surely, Rose? Deep dark cells, no women, incarcerated lags, no women, few guards, no women.’

  ‘Oh,’ said Rose raising a hand to her mouth. ‘I’d forgotten that sort of thing happens there.’

  ‘They won’t. It serves them right for lobbing bricks at Tulip.’

  ‘That’s going to be their problem,’ said Cornwallis. ‘Our problem is going to be finding this man they mentioned.’

  ‘What about their families?’ asked Rose. ‘Perhaps they said something at home.’

  ‘Unlikely,’ replied Cornwallis. ‘But we’ll have to speak to them anyway, let them know where the fruit of their loins have ended up.’

  ‘Another trip to The Brews then: half of our investigations seem to draw us to that slum, and we always have to go and see Gerald.

  ‘It’ll make his day, Rose. I swear he instigates most of it, just so you can visit him.’

  ‘Sometimes I think you’re right.’

  ‘And we’ve still got to go to the Ironworkers Guild, but I’m sure they’re not involved, seeing as this unknown man gave our yobs the clothes of an ironworker and the keys to ironworkers’ houses and told them to pretend to be ironworkers.’

  ‘A bluff?’

  ‘No, it seems to me someone is telling us to look there, and not somewhere else.’

  MacGillicudy nodded. ‘We were bound to pick them up sooner or later. Scragging the dwarf, even the brick through Frankie’s window and the bricks chucked down the tunnels, they could have got away with all that, but that note told them to send a fireball into the tunnel, which is arson, and in front of all those people too. Now that’s something they had no chance of getting away with.’

  ‘And it’s all to do with The Pipe,’ said Cornwallis ruefully. ‘I’m wondering if someone has decided that these lads have come to the end of their usefulness, get rid of them and plan to do something else.’

  Chapter 20

  The dark, dank streets and alleyways oozed through the slum area known as The Brews. Light rarely filtered down to ground level, making walking a precarious occupation with the pavements hidden under layers of filth and decay: caked in dirt and muck, both animal and human, rancid flesh, rotting veg and last night’s dinner, little streams of gunge, with a piquant waft of ammonia, dribbled its way slowly as it fought its way through the peaks and troughs, making its unerring way towards the river which swallowed it with a noise very much like “Glop”. Occasionally there would be a drift, which meant that an unfortunate tenant would need a bucket and a shovel to reach their front door.

  Frankie and Rose squelched along, keeping a beady eye aloft in case of airborne deposits, heading for two addresses deep in the bowels of The Brews. Normally, outsiders were quickly relieved of their valuables and many a curious, and sometimes lost, tourist had reappeared at the edge of the slum devoid of everything apart from their skin, modesty preserved by a well-placed bag previously containing something with special fried rice.

  The two detectives were safe from interference due to the arrangement with Gerald. The King of The Brews and Cornwallis had a long-standing understanding that what happened in the slum, stayed in the slum and only that which happened outside of the slum, where leads pointed to the perpetrator living within the slum, could be investigated in the slum. MacGillicudy had reached a similar agreement, but only for a few named officers.

  Gerald liked to keep things nice and tidy and always kept the slum on a tight leash. A few years ago, Gerald tried to burgle the Universal Collider — a device for seeing into other universes, a rent in the fabric of time and space which manifested in a kind of portal, now contained in a building just outside the city. Very rich people could pay a lot of money just to see what was happening somewhere else; with a bit more money, more levers and knobs allowed the possibility of seeing into a potential future. Gerald had fallen into the Collider but unlike most people who fell in, he managed to get back out. It changed him, because now, when the mood took him, he could manipulate his atoms and kid them that he wasn’t really there. People found it very difficult to cause Gerald harm so consequently, they generally did as he demanded, especially when he demonstrated his party trick.

  Frankie and Rose knew that they had to pay him a visit, but only after they had seen the two families of the accused and informed them of their present situation. It probably wouldn’t come as much of a surprise, considering the general lawlessness of most of the slum’s inhabitants.

  ‘Ain’t been down this way for quite a while,’ said Frankie as they took a left into a particularly noxious alleyway.

  ‘I’ve never been here,’ replied Rose, wrinkling her nostrils. ‘It looks worse than the rest of the place.’

  ‘It is. This is the slum of the slum. They call it The Palace.’

  ‘Bit of irony going on?’

  Frankie shook his head. ‘Legend has it that the old Morris built a palace here to get away from the scum of the old city across the river. Fell into wrack and ruin, then the roof fell in. We are supposedly walking along the palace’s corridors and the houses here are where the old rooms once were with various additions and roofs.’

  ‘Some palace,’ said Rose as she stepped over a particularly nasty looking pile which appeared to be steaming.

  ‘Yeah, nice, innit.’

  They turned right into an even narrower tunnel-like alleyway, with only a slim slithe
r of light visible from above.

  ‘Here we is,’ said Frankie stopping at a door. He pointed a digit. ‘Look at the lintel.’

  Rose did. A mason must have carved the ornate lintel long ago, a talented man, according to the evidence before her eyes. However, the rest of it paled into insignificance, a mish-mash, hastily put together. The walls crumbled and the door, if you could call it a door, was several strips of leather nailed to a manky wooden frame. Frankie tapped on the frame.

  ‘Don’t knock too hard or the whole thing’ll fall down.’

  They waited for a few moments and then some shuffling noises from beyond the leather indicated that someone had heard the knock. A few moments later, the door scraped open and a screwed up face appeared.

  ‘Whatyouwan’?’ barked the face.

  Rose recoiled from the stench escaping the confines of the room inside as she stared at the visage, having difficulty in determining whether it was male or female.

  ‘We’re here about Norris,’ said Frankie, ignoring the smell.

  ‘Oh, yeah? Wot about ‘im?’

  ‘He’s at Scooters Yard. Been nicked.’

  ‘His own fault then. Sod off.’

  The wonky door rammed shut in their faces and the scuffling noises behind it returned. The smell began to dissipate in the already fetid air.

  ‘Good start,’ observed Rose, wafting as much good air as she could under her nose.

  ‘Much as expected,’ said Frankie. ‘Let’s try Herbert’s; his is just a couple of doors down.’

  This time a proper door confronted them in that it was made of wood and filled the aperture, but the outside of the house appeared just as run down and decrepit as the other.

  Frankie knocked again and they waited patiently until the door clicked open. A face appeared, which to Rose’s relief, was definitely female, with the bonus that no extra smell came with it.

  ‘Come about Herbert,’ said Frankie.

  ‘Who are you?’

  ‘Detectives.’