The Explosionist

by Jenny Davidson

  A person who wore something like that on the beach at North Berwick, Sophie thought sourly, would surely be arrested. That was to say, if she didn’t freeze to death first! But she decided not to say anything in case Mikael thought she was jealous.

  Closer up, the two girls looked older and less pretty, their long slim legs and acrobatic torsos belied by the wrinkles on their faces and the ropy skin of their necks.

  As they got close enough to see inside the glass case, Sophie craned forward to read the label below.

  Mikael suddenly clutched Sophie’s arm.

  “Tell me those aren’t real babies,” he said.

  Sophie looked at him with surprise.

  “Of course they’re real!” she said, laughing at his expression. “If they were just dolls, what kind of a demonstration would it be?”

  Six tiny babies lay almost motionless in the incubator. The legend below told the history of the artificial incubator, known to the ancient world in primitive versions but refined over the nineteenth century for hatching chicken eggs. At the turn of the century, the Irish obstetrician Oscar Wilde saw one of these chicken incubators in the Edinburgh Zoological Garden and realized it could be adapted for the care of babies delivered before the full term. The incubator box’s double walls were filled with hot water for insulation, its lower half a reservoir containing roughly sixty liters of warm water. The preterm babies lay in the top of the box, where a thermometer kept track to make sure the temperature never fell beneath thirty degrees centigrade, a miracle of technology that Wilde and his colleagues had popularized by sending incubators to expositions throughout the Hanseatic states.

  “Does it really seem a good idea to exhibit live babies like this?” Mikael said. “It’s like an agricultural show! Whose babies are they, anyway?”

  “I don’t know,” Sophie said curtly. If one had any choice, of course, one wouldn’t let one’s own baby be put on display like this. But Sophie didn’t like it when Mikael criticized Scotland. “Probably babies born at the Lying-In Hospital for the Poor.”

  “Sophie, let’s get out of here,” said Mikael. “This place is too horrible for words.”

  They hurried out of the tent and back into the daylight. As they left the park and cut through the grounds of the Infirmary north toward Lauriston Place, Sophie couldn’t get the sight of the infants out of her head. The rational part of her brain knew they wouldn’t have been put there if the incubator hadn’t represented their best, perhaps their only, chance of survival. But to be exposed in public like that would surely haunt one’s dreams in later life, assuming one survived.

  “Sophie?” Mikael said, sounding odd.

  “What’s the matter?” she said, stopping and turning to look at him. He grabbed her arm and hustled her onward.

  “Hey, that hurts!” Sophie protested, trying to loosen his bruising grip.

  “I don’t want to frighten you, but I think we’re being followed,” Mikael said. Then, as Sophie reflexively began to turn her head to look in back of her: “No! Don’t look. I don’t want him tipped off that we’ve spotted him.”

  They sped up, Sophie soon gasping and frightened, despite herself, by Mikael’s grim expression.

  “This area’s no good for losing him,” Mikael said. “Anywhere that’s public enough for us to be allowed in, he’ll be able to follow us.”

  “Who is he, do you think?” Sophie ventured, hoping Mikael wouldn’t be angry with her for asking. It was difficult enough just to talk at all, at this speed, and the leg on the side of her slight limp was already throbbing.

  “Do you remember that beggar you gave a shilling to, back at the Meadows?”

  Sophie remembered, though it was almost impossible not to look around and confirm it with her own eyes.

  Something occurred to her and she let out a short sharp exclamation. “Mikael, I’ve just thought of something. What if the man following us is a kind of colleague of the Veteran? What if this man’s working for the same person that hired the Veteran to murder Mrs. Tansy?”

  What if he’d been hired to kill them?

  “I think it’s very likely he’s working for the same person,” Mikael said, speeding up again so that Sophie had to break into a jog. “It’s possible that the true murderer has a whole pack of veterans working for him. If that’s so, it might be another clue we can use to figure out who he really is.”

  Sophie hadn’t breath enough to fill him in on her current state of thinking concerning the minister; it would have to wait till later.

  “This wretch can’t possibly mean to kill us in public, Sophie,” Mikael added, though he didn’t slow down. “If he did, he’d not have a dog’s chance of getting away afterward. He’d have to be a really super marksman to hit either of us with a pistol at this distance, and it’s easy to see he’s not carrying a rifle. Still, I’ll feel a lot better if we can lose him.”

  “Mikael?” Sophie panted.

  “What?”

  “I think he might have followed me from Heriot Row.”

  She had a sketchy memory of seeing a lame figure on the tram. It seemed very likely that it was the same man.

  “We’ll certainly assume that they know who you are and where you live,” Mikael said. “But that doesn’t mean we can’t get some privacy for this evening. We’ll go to the most crowded part of the Old Town and see if we can’t give him the slip there. We’re moving so fast he’ll know that we’ve spotted him, but let’s not slow down—I don’t want him getting too close to us, just in case he’s got a gun after all.”

  Sophie felt calmer because of Mikael having a plan. The most frightening thing was not knowing what was going on; putting even one’s worst fear into words always made it less awful.

  By now they’d reached Grassmarket, and they turned right and hurried toward St. Giles’ Cathedral. They raced up Old Fishmarket Close to the High Street, where they slipped into a draper’s shop. While Mikael peered out the window, Sophie watched a customer give a ten-shilling note to the assistant, who wrapped the money in the customer’s invoice and packed it into an egg-shaped container that she pulled down from a wire hanging above her head. The container shot up and away through pneumatic tubes to the countinghouse, where a boy made the correct change. When the container shot back down, a bell rang and the assistant reached up and pulled out the change from its cocoon.

  “He saw us come in,” Mikael reported, pressing his face up against the window. “He’s lurking now in the area downstairs from the shop across the road. What we need to do is walk out of here, stroll up the High Street, and then make a break for it. We’ll run up one of those little streets and hide before he can follow, and with luck he’ll think we’ve only gone into another shop.”

  “And if he sees us?”

  “Then we split up. You’ll go ahead. I’ll find a way to slow him down, then lead him astray and lose him. I can outrun him if I’m by myself. Then we’ll meet up at the bookstall in Waverley Station.”

  “Good thinking,” said Sophie, glad Mikael hadn’t suggested splitting up as the first line of defense. He could run much faster than she could, but the thought of their being separated made her feel rather ill.

  “Ready?”

  Sophie nodded.

  They pushed open the door and sauntered out into the street.

  They crossed the road, the beggar stuck on the other side behind a line of schoolchildren.

  “Now!” Mikael said.

  They began running.

  “Here!” Sophie grunted.

  They turned into a narrow alley whose name she couldn’t remember, running now through narrow streets of tenements like blond sandstone cliffs.

  “I’ve got an idea,” Sophie said, clutching the stitch in her side as they came out into Market Street. Her hip was pulsing like the devil, a dull pain that was quite tolerable so long as she didn’t think about it. She couldn’t hear the beggar’s footsteps behind them, but that didn’t mean he wasn’t there. “Let’s get a taxi!”

>   “Have you enough money?” Mikael asked.

  “Yes,” she said, grabbing his hand and practically dragging him to the nearest taxi rank. Fortunately there were three cabs waiting for customers—on a nice afternoon like this, a properly frugal citizen wouldn’t waste money on a taxi—and they jumped into the backseat of the first one.

  “What’s all this, then?” said the driver when they asked him to drive in the direction of St. Mary’s. “How am I to know this isn’t just a silly game?”

  Sophie scrabbled through her satchel and dug out a ten-shilling note and two half-crowns.

  “I can’t explain it,” she said, “but it really does matter—we need to leave right now!”

  As the words left her mouth, Mikael jabbed her in the side. The beggar had materialized at the opening into the street.

  Sophie thrust the note into the drawer of the bulletproof plastic partition that separated the driver from his passengers, required by law after a terrible series of murders the year before.

  “Just drive!” she said, almost shrieking in her anxiety to be gone.

  Shaking his head, the driver pulled out into traffic and turned left onto North Bridge.

  Sophie shuddered. They were going to pass the Balmoral Hotel once again.

  “No need for hysterics,” the driver said reproachfully as the car surged ahead of a bus and took them up Leith Street and into the New Town. “All you need to do is ask nicely, miss, and I’ll take you wherever you like.”

  “Is he behind us still?” Sophie said to Mikael, speaking quietly to avoid attracting the driver’s attention.

  “No sign of him,” Mikael reported. “This was a prime idea, Sophie. He wasn’t dressed respectably enough to hail a taxi himself, even if he had the cash. Why, we’re barely respectable enough ourselves!”

  “It’s quite true,” said Sophie, looking herself and Mikael up and down and starting to laugh. They clutched at each other in a near frenzy when they saw how hot and dirty they were. Then a trickle of cold perspiration ran down into the small of Sophie’s back; she broke off laughing, and caught her breath in something like a sob.

  The driver let them off in Gayfield Walk, only five minutes from Broughton Street Lane. Sophie did not have the courage to ask for change back from her note; it was an awfully expensive cab ride, but then again it had possibly saved their lives.

  TWENTY-EIGHT

  OUTSIDE THE PHOTOGRAPHY shop, Mikael paused.

  “Must we really do this, Sophie?” he asked.

  “We have to,” she said. “It’s our best chance. We must learn what happened to the medium; we can’t go around like this forever, with our lives perhaps in danger and not even knowing whom to suspect.”

  “All right, then,” said Mikael, breathing hard and running a hand through his hair. “What are we waiting for?”

  They pushed open the door and walked into the shop, the electronic chime sounding its welcome.

  At first Mikael and Keith acted like two dogs circling around and deciding whether they’re going to fight. But once Keith had locked the front door and drawn the blinds and rather stiffly offered the visitors a hot drink, Mikael unbent enough to accept a cup of coffee, and after that the obligations of the guest-host relationship forestalled any direct hostilities.

  Sophie cupped her hands around a mug sporting a patchy image of a black standard poodle. The warmth of it in her hand was a comfort. Taking a sip, she thought what a good thing it was that Sir Humphry Davy had put aside his chemical experiments long enough to invent the dehydrated coffee sachet. Instant coffee was far nicer than the real coffee in Italian sandwich shops, especially with lots of condensed milk, which made it taste almost like cocoa.

  “So what exactly have you two got planned?” Mikael asked.

  Keith didn’t seem to notice the edge to his words.

  “We’re going to test a new camera I’ve developed,” he said. “Well, to be strictly accurate, it’s not really a new camera, just a modification of an existing one. Its purpose, as I’ve designed it, is to capture the images seen by a dead person.”

  Seeing Mikael about to snort, Sophie kicked him in the ankle.

  “So, Keith,” Mikael said, glancing sideways at Sophie and rolling his eyes, “what parts do we play?”

  “I’m going to look on,” Keith said, ignoring Mikael’s rudeness. “That may sound lazy, but in spirit photography the photographer’s own memories and desires tend to interfere with things. We can’t do anything with the results of this evening’s experiment unless we know I haven’t affected the images we receive, either by accident or by fraud.”

  “Fair enough,” Mikael said. “What do you need me to do?”

  “Mikael, you’ll operate the camera,” Keith said. “It’ll be mounted on a tripod, so you won’t need to point it in any particular direction, but the machinery needs a human hand to advance the film to the next exposure. Don’t worry if you don’t have much experience with a camera, any old idiot can do it.”

  “What about me?” Sophie asked, putting her hand on Mikael’s arm to stop him from reacting badly to Keith’s tactlessness.

  “You’ve got the toughest job,” Keith said. “All I have to do is document everything I see in writing, and your friend here will simply advance to the next frame each time one or the other of us gives him the go-ahead. You’re the one who has to find the spirit we want and shape the series of questions. It’s best to be as specific as possible: requests like ‘show me your loved one’ are liable to backfire.”

  “Oh, I’ve already thought of what I want to ask,” Sophie said. The questions had been circulating at the back of her head all day, except for during the chase, when she had been too frightened to think about spirit photography. “But how do I get in touch with the spirit in the first place?”

  “You’ll call it to you, of course,” Keith said. “Don’t worry, it won’t be difficult. It’s often tricky to get spirits to come and let you take pictures of them, but that’s not what you’re asking. You just want to know what they saw. Dead people aren’t so different from living ones, really: even folks who run and hide when there’s any risk of their being photographed are usually quite happy to take a photograph as a favor. I’ve got a good feeling about this, Sophie.”

  “So who exactly are you going to contact, Sophie?” Mikael asked, smirking a little.

  Before Sophie could say, Keith held up one hand, palm toward them.

  “It’s best we watch with an open mind,” he said. “Sophie, don’t tell us a thing until afterward. Are you ready to get started?”

  Sophie and Mikael looked at each other, then nodded.

  They followed Keith from the small lounge to a tiny darkroom at the back of the shop. As Keith switched on the infrared lamp, they looked warily at each other in the spooky orange glow.

  Keith showed Mikael how to operate the camera, then told him to load a clean roll of film; the factory seal was unbroken. He asked Sophie whether she’d rather sit or stand.

  “Stand,” she said.

  She stayed quite still while Keith fastened a blindfold over her eyes.

  “All set,” he said after that. “Mikael, I’ll tell you when it’s time to release the shutter. Sophie, it’s all yours.”

  Sophie took a minute to slow her breathing back down to the normal rate. There was no point being nervous. She was among friends, wasn’t she?

  The room felt small and cramped and airless. Sophie could smell sweat through the photographic chemicals. It was strange having no visual input at all. She put up her hand and tweaked the blindfold into a more natural position. She hoped it would stay properly fastened; Keith hadn’t really tied it tightly enough.

  She had actually worked out her plan the night before in bed. It had to be Mrs. Tansy she would contact, though Sophie was frightened of the medium’s strongly malevolent personality and her almost palpable desire to come back and make somebody pay.

  Sophie focused on breathing in a slow, regular pattern as she
waited for the spirit to find its way to the darkroom.

  “You’re not far away,” she said. “You found me the other day in Miss Botham’s class. You worked out how to speak to me through the Dictaphone. Now I’ve got something different for you, something even easier because you won’t have to put any of it into words. I’m going to ask you some questions. When you answer, I don’t want names, just faces. My friend Keith’s built a special camera and after each question, you’ll picture the face of the person I’ve asked about. Mikael and I will help you print the pictures; together we’ll organize the light so that the image can be laid down on the film in the camera.”

  She stopped to take several deep breaths, then readied herself to begin.

  “I want you to put yourself in a very particular time and place,” she said slowly. “It’s the fifteenth of June—a Wednesday—and you’ve checked into a grand suite at the Balmoral Hotel.”

  Mikael coughed, and Sophie lost her concentration for a second.

  “It’s midday and you’re waiting for your next appointment,” she went on after a minute. “It’s the young man booked by the night receptionist. There’s a knock at the door. You open it and show the boy in. Now, the first thing I want you to give me is a shot of that boy.”

  Sophie squeezed her eyes tightly shut behind the blindfold, wrapping her fingers around her thumbs, and concentrated as hard as she could to help the spirit lay down the memory of Mikael’s face onto the film in the camera. This would be a kind of control for the rest of the experiment. It was a good way of getting a feel for it, and the medium’s experience with this kind of work would surely make everything easier.

  She kept her eyes closed until she felt a kind of sliding-into-place, like the snick when a jigsaw piece slots into the right spot.

  “I think that’s it,” she whispered.

  “Mikael, advance the film, please,” Keith said, sounding quite calm. “From now on, I’ll tap you on the shoulder to let you know when it’s time. Sophie, you’re doing very well.”

  “All right,” Sophie said, speaking not to Keith but to the spirit, who felt very close by. She hoped the medium hadn’t actually materialized: an ectoplasmic embodiment of her too, too solid flesh would be beyond awful.