Lockwood & Co: The Screaming Staircase

by Jonathan Stroud

  ‘I see it.’ Yes, he was looking up, head tilted, as if his neck were already broken.

  ‘Don’t look at his face,’ George said.

  ‘OK, I’m going in close,’ Lockwood said. ‘Let’s all keep calm. Aaah! Something’s got me!’

  Twin squeals of iron: George and I had drawn our rapiers. I flicked my torch-beam onto Lockwood, who was frozen beside me, staring.

  I flicked it off again.

  ‘Nothing’s got you,’ I said. ‘Your coat-tail’s caught on a gooseberry bush.’

  ‘Oh, fine. Thanks.’

  A snort from George. ‘That coat! It’s too long! It almost killed you the other night as well.’

  Small sounds followed as Lockwood prised his coat clear of the gooseberries. Below the willow tree, the shape had still not moved.

  ‘Keep me covered,’ Lockwood said.

  He drew his rapier and stole past, moving towards the tree. Ghost-fog clung about his calves and churned in milky eddies as he took each cautious stride. George and I kept pace behind him, salt bombs ready in our hands.

  We drew near the willow’s outer fronds.

  ‘OK . . .’ Lockwood breathed. ‘I’m close, but it’s not reacted. It’s just a Shade.’

  I could see it better now: the rudimentary outlines of a man in shirt-sleeves, high-waisted trousers, braces . . . A pale face tilted upwards. I kept my eyes averted from that face, but I felt the echoes of an ancient grief, a loved one lost, despair beyond enduring . . . I sensed a man’s deep-throated groan.

  All at once the shape moved; I saw a flash of rope, a coil flung high into the branches—

  At which a small, pale missile shot past and burst upon the tree. A shower of salt cascaded out, cut through the shape. It writhed and vanished. Salt grains ignited with green fire. They pattered down like emerald snow.

  I turned to George. ‘What did you do that for?’

  ‘Keep your hair on. It moved. Lockwood was right there. I’m not taking chances.’

  ‘He wasn’t attacking,’ I said. ‘He was too busy thinking about his wife.’

  ‘His wife? How do you know that? Did you hear him speak?’ George said.

  ‘No . . .’

  ‘So how—’

  ‘It doesn’t matter.’ Lockwood pushed the willow twigs aside. Around his boots, green sparks winked and faded into nothing. ‘He’s gone. Let’s lace the ground with iron, and get back in the warm.’

  Some cases are like that – quick and easy, over in a trice. For what it’s worth, the following day an ancient ring of rope, deeply embedded in a high branch, was discovered directly above the place where the apparition had been. The rope was fused to the wood and could not be removed, so the whole branch was sawn off and burned in a salt fire. Three days later, the owners had the tree cut down.

  Arriving back at Portland Row after our vigil in the garden, we were surprised to find a police car parked outside our house, with the lights on and the engine running. A DEPRAC officer got out as we approached: a big fellow, shaven-headed, all muscle and no neck. He wore the usual night-blue uniform.

  He regarded us unsmilingly. ‘Lockwood and Co.? At bloody last. You’re to come to Scotland Yard.’

  Lockwood frowned. ‘Now? It’s late. We’ve just been on a case.’

  ‘That’s nothing to me. Barnes wants you. He wanted you two hours ago.’

  ‘Could it wait until tomorrow?’

  The policeman’s hand, pink and massive as a ham joint, alighted slowly on the iron truncheon at his belt. ‘No.’

  Lockwood’s eyes flashed. ‘Eloquently put,’ he said. ‘All right, Sergeant. Let’s go.’

  Scotland Yard, the headquarters of London’s conventional police force, and also of the DEPRAC units that served the city in the grim night hours, was a wedge-shaped block of steel and glass halfway up Victoria Street in the middle of the city. Close by stood the Gravediggers’ Guild and the Union of Undertakers; also the Fairfax Iron Company, United Salts and, above all, the vast Sunrise Corporation, which manufactured kit for most agencies in the country. On the opposite side of the road stood the offices for most of the major religions. Each one of these powerful organizations was at the heart of the ongoing war against the Problem.

  Outside the Yard, lavender fires smouldered in metal tubs, and runnels of fresh water gushed across the pavement. Two red-nosed night-watch kids stood near the doors, keeping guard against supernatural threat. They drew back their sticks and stood to attention as the officer led us past, and up some stairs to DEPRAC’s centre of operations.

  As always after dark, the room was a hive of activity. On the back wall a giant street-map of London was dotted with dozens of tiny lights, some green, some yellow, each marking the night’s emergencies. Men and women in sober uniforms bustled back and forth below it, carrying sheaves of paper, talking loudly on telephones, giving orders to team leaders from the Rotwell and Fittes agencies, which often helped DEPRAC in its work. A young agent ran past us, carrying a bundle of rapiers in his arms; beyond, two policemen stood drinking coffee, their body-armour steaming from ectoplasm burns.

  The officer showed us into a waiting room and left us. It was quieter here. Above our heads iron mobiles moved in the breeze from hidden fans. Air-conditioning thrummed.

  ‘What do you think he wants?’ I asked. ‘Something more about the fire?’

  Lockwood shrugged. ‘I hope it’s news about Blake. Maybe they’ve got him. Maybe he’s confessed.’

  ‘Speaking of which . . .’ George foraged in his bag. ‘While we’re waiting, you might take a look at these cuttings from the Archives. I’ve found out more about Annie Ward. Seems that, fifty years ago, she was part of a glitzy set – mostly rich kids, but not all – who hung out in the swankiest bars in London. A year before she died London Society did a photo piece on them. Check it out. She’s not the only name you’ll recognize.’

  The pictures, photocopied from the originals, were in black and white. They were mostly of balls and parties, but of casinos and card games too. Young, glamorous people clustered in every shot. Apart from the dress styles (and the lack of colour) they were little different from those in the modern magazines that Lockwood read, and just about as dull – but on the third or fourth sheet I was suddenly brought up short. There were two photos on this page. The first was a studio shot of a sleek young man, smiling at the camera. He wore a black top hat, a black bow tie, a jet-black jacket. There was probably a frilly shirt as well, but that was mercifully hidden behind the cane in his hand. He had white gloves too. His hair was long, dark and luxuriant; his face handsome in a fleshy way. The smile was confident and ingratiating. It said it knew how much you’d like him, if you’d only take the chance.

  Underneath, a caption: Mr Hugo Blake: Today’s Man About Town.

  ‘There he is,’ Lockwood breathed.

  I stared at the glossy, self-satisfied face. As I did so, another face – laced with dust and cobwebs – came into my mind.

  ‘And he’s in this one too,’ George said.

  Directly below it, another picture. This was a group photo, taken from some high vantage. Young men and women standing by a fountain. It must have been some tedious summer gala because all the men were in white tie and tails, while the girls wore full ball dresses. There were straps and sequins and ruched shoulders and I don’t know what else. Dresses aren’t my thing. It was a black-and-white shot, but those dresses had beautiful colours, you could just tell. The girls were arranged mostly at the front, with the men crowding in behind. They were all grinning up at the camera like they owned the world, which some of them maybe did. And right in the centre was Annie Ward. She was so radiant it was like the other-light was already on her. The women standing next to her wore resigned smiles, as if they knew they were being put in the shade.

  ‘Here’s Blake,’ George said, pointing to a tall figure grinning in the row behind. ‘Right at her shoulder. It’s like he’s stalking her even here.’

  ‘And look . . .’ Wi
th a jolt I noticed a tiny oval smudge just visible beneath the girl’s white throat. I felt my own throat tightening. ‘She’s got the necklace on.’

  ‘Oh, you’ve all come, have you?’ Inspector Barnes stood in the doorway, glaring down at us. He looked weary; even his moustache had a slightly mournful droop. He carried a file of reports in one hand and a polystyrene cup of coffee in the other. ‘What joy. Going to make me spill my drink again?’

  Lockwood stood. ‘We’ve come at your request, Mr Barnes,’ he said coolly. ‘How can we be of service to you?’

  ‘Well, not all of you can. Some are definitely surplus to requirements.’ Barnes looked particularly at George. ‘You got rid of that ghost-jar yet, Cubbins?’

  ‘Certainly have, Mr Barnes,’ said George.

  ‘Mm. Well, as it happens I don’t need you tonight – nor you either, Lockwood. It’s Miss Carlyle I want to speak to.’ The hangdog eyes appraised me; I felt the keenness of his stare. ‘Please come with me now, miss. You others wait here.’

  A pang of fright speared through my chest; I looked anxiously at Lockwood, who’d stepped forward, frowning. ‘Nothing doing, Inspector,’ he said. ‘She’s my employee. I insist on being present whatever you’re—’

  ‘If you want to be charged with obstructing an investigation,’ Barnes growled, ‘keep right on talking. I’ve had enough of you this week. Well? Anything more to say?’

  Lockwood fell silent. I smiled as best I could at him. ‘It’s fine,’ I said. ‘I’ll be OK.’

  ‘Of course she will.’ Barnes pulled the door open and ushered me past. ‘Don’t fret. We won’t be long.’

  He led me out and across the operations room to a smooth steel door on the far side. Here he keyed in a number on a pad; the door slid open, revealing a quiet corridor lit by neon strip-lights.

  ‘Your friend Lockwood tells me,’ Barnes said, as we set off down the corridor, ‘that you achieved a psychic connection with the ghost of Annie Ward. Is that true?’

  ‘Yes, sir. I heard her voice.’

  ‘He also says you gained an important insight about her death – that she was killed by a man she’d once loved.’

  ‘Yes, sir.’ Well, that was true too – up to a point. I’d had that insight when I touched the necklace. I hadn’t learned it from the ghost-girl herself.

  Barnes looked at me sidelong. ‘When she spoke to you, did she give you his name?’

  ‘No, sir. It was just . . . random fragments. You know what Visitors are like.’

  He grunted. ‘They say Marissa Fittes held whole conversations with Type Three ghosts back in the old days, and so learned many things. But that’s a rare power, and those are rare ghosts. The rest of us have to make do with whatever pathetic scraps we can get. OK . . . this is the High Security Zone. We’re almost there.’

  We had taken a concrete staircase to a lower level. The doors around us were heavier now, and made of banded iron. Several of them had black-rimmed warning signs fixed against the wall: yellow triangles showing a single grinning skull, red triangles showing two. The air had grown cool; I guessed we were now underground.

  ‘Now listen,’ Barnes said. ‘Thanks to your discoveries, I’ve reopened the Annabel Ward case.’ He glared at me askance. ‘Don’t think we weren’t close to figuring out her identity too. You may have got there quicker, but that’s because you’re three kids messing about, who have nothing better to do. Be that as it may, I’ve looked into the connection with this Hugo Blake and I think he’s guilty. I arrested him today.’

  My heart leaped. ‘Good!’

  ‘However’ – Barnes had stopped outside a plain iron door – ‘fifty years on, Blake still denies it all. He says he dropped the girl off at the house and never went inside.’

  ‘He’s lying,’ I said.

  ‘I’m sure he is, but I’d like more evidence. And that’s where you come in. All right, in you go, please.’

  Before I could speak he had ushered me past the door and into a small dark room, empty except for two steel-and-leather chairs and a little table. The chairs faced the opposite wall, which consisted of a single pane of fogged grey glass. There was a switch built into the table, and also a black telephone receiver.

  ‘Sit down, Miss Carlyle.’ Barnes picked up the receiver and spoke into it. ‘OK? Is he there? That’s fine.’

  I stared at him. ‘What are you talking about? Please tell me what’s going on.’

  ‘Psychic links like you had with the dead girl,’ Barnes said, ‘are very subjective things. Hard to put into words. You remember some things and forget others. Basically, they mess with your mind. So it’s possible that the ghost did communicate more about her killing than you recall. The face of her murderer, for instance.’

  I shook my head, suddenly understanding. ‘You mean Blake? No. I just saw a photo of him now. It didn’t mean a thing to me.’

  ‘It may be different in the flesh,’ Barnes said. ‘We’ll see, shall we?’

  Panic filled me. ‘Mr Barnes, I really don’t want to do this. I’ve told you everything.’

  ‘Just take a look. He won’t be able to see you. It’s one-way glass. He won’t even know you’re there.’

  ‘No, please, Mr Barnes . . .’

  The inspector ignored me. He pressed the switch on the table. In front of us, bright light split the centre of the pane of glass. The brightness widened. Internal shutters drew aside like curtains to reveal a spot-lit room.

  A man sat on a metal chair in the centre of that room, facing towards us. If you disregarded the one-way glass, he was about two or three metres away.

  He was an elderly gentleman in a smart suit, black with a thin pink pinstripe. His shoes were brightly polished, his tie bright pink; a crush-pink handkerchief erupted from his breast pocket like a flame. Hugo Blake clearly retained the dandyish taste that he’d displayed in that black-and-white photo, fifty years before. The hair was slate-grey, but still long and still luxuriant; it brushed against his shoulders with soft, indulgent curls.

  So much, then, was still the same – but not the face.

  The smooth, complacent looks of youth had been replaced by a ravaged expanse, gaunt and grey and lined. Bones jutted like ploughshares beneath the skin. The nose had a net of thick blue veins that had begun to spread across the cheeks and chin. The lips were shrunken – tight and thin and hard. And the eyes—

  The eyes were the worst. Sunk deep in hollow sockets, they were bright and cold, and full of anger and intelligence. They moved ceaselessly, staring all about, scanning the surface of the blank glass wall. The man’s fury was apparent. His hands dug like claws into his knees. He was speaking, but I couldn’t hear the words.

  ‘Blake’s rich,’ Barnes chuckled, ‘and used to getting his own way. He’s not at all happy to be here. But that’s not your problem. Take a good look, Miss Carlyle. Let your mind empty; think back to what you got from the girl. Does this trigger anything?’

  I took a deep breath, squashed my anxiety down. After all, it was going to be OK. He couldn’t actually see me. I’d do what Barnes wanted, then be gone.

  I focused my attention on the face—

  And as I did so, the old man’s eyes locked suddenly into mine. They became quite still. It was as if he saw straight through the barrier and knew that I was there.

  He smiled at me. It was a smile full of teeth.

  I jolted right back in my seat. ‘No!’ I said. ‘That’s enough! I don’t get anything. It’s triggered nothing. Please. Please stop now! That’s enough.’

  Barnes hesitated, then pressed the button. The shutters drew together, unhurriedly blocking out the spot-lit, smiling man.

  15

  ‘Lucy,’ Lockwood said. ‘Stop. You need to talk to me.’

  ‘No. No, I really don’t.’

  ‘Stop going so fast. I understand why you’re angry, but you’ve got to realize – I didn’t know Barnes was going to ask you to do that.’

  ‘No? Maybe you should have guessed. Thanks to
your stupid article this morning, the whole world knows about my psychic link to Annie Ward. I’m suddenly considered central to the case!’

  ‘Lucy, please—’ Lockwood grabbed my sleeve, forced me to stop in the middle of the road. We were in Mayfair somewhere, about halfway home. The mansions were quiet, mostly hidden behind high walls and the swirling mist. It was just gone midnight. Not even the ghosts were around.

  ‘Don’t touch me,’ I said. I shook myself clear. ‘Because of your article, I came face to face with a murderer tonight, and funnily enough, I didn’t enjoy the experience. You didn’t see his eyes, Lockwood. But I saw them – and it felt like he saw me.’

  ‘He can’t have done.’ George’s face was turned away from us; with his hand on his rapier hilt he watched the fog. We’d only seen one Visitor during our walk – in Green Park, a far-off figure drifting along a tree-lined avenue – but it always did to be careful. You could never tell what was round the next corner in London. ‘He can’t have seen you,’ George repeated. ‘You were behind the glass. Obviously he knew someone was there, and he just wanted to freak them out. That’s all there is to it.’

  ‘You’re wrong,’ I said quietly. ‘Blake knew it was me. He’d have seen that article like everybody else. He knows all about Lockwood and Co., and how Lucy “Carlisle” has gained vital evidence against him. He can easily find out where we live too. If he walks free, there’s nothing to stop him coming after us!’

  Lockwood shook his head. ‘Lucy, Blake is not going to come after us.’

  ‘Or if he does,’ George said, ‘it’ll be very, very slowly, hobbling on a stick. He’s over seventy years old.’

  ‘What I mean is, he’s not getting free at all,’ Lockwood went on. ‘He’s going to be charged, found guilty and sent to prison, which serves him right. Meanwhile, so what if he’s got strange eyes? George’s are pretty odd too, and we don’t hold it against him.’

  ‘Thanks for that,’ George said. ‘I thought they were my best feature.’

  ‘They are – that’s the tragedy of it. Listen, Lucy. I can see why you’re mad. I’m furious too. Barnes had no right to put you through that against your will. It’s typical DEPRAC behaviour – they think they rule the show. But they don’t – or, at least, they don’t rule us.’ Lockwood raised his arms and gestured at the swirling fog, the silent road. ‘Look around you now. It’s past midnight. We’re alone in an empty city. Everyone else is asleep, with their doors locked and their charms hanging at the windows. Everyone’s afraid – except for you, me and George. We go wherever we choose, and we’re not beholden to Barnes or DEPRAC or anybody. We’re completely free.’