With his free hand he pointed to a shovel decorating the wall behind the bar, a keepsake from our previous altercation with a surly gnome.
‘That won’t be necessary, Lenny,’ I said. ‘Kat, put it away and I’ll explain everything.’
Once the taser was back in its holster and Lenny was satisfied that we weren’t about to kick off again, I sat Stronge down and gave her the whole saga. Shift, too, who arrived in female form not long after Lenny had installed himself back behind the taps. I told them about the star-crossed lovers and the forces that stood in their way, about the Vengari and the Arcadians and the arranged marriage that could change everything in this town. I told them how this case wasn’t a murder, that it was a different kind of Shakesperean tragedy.
‘And you couldn’t have picked up the blower and let me in on this earlier?’ said Stronge, peering evilly at me over the rim of her pint glass, livid that I hadn’t given her the courtesy of a phone call in all the time I’d been on the lam.
‘You know me, Kat, I’m a people person. I like the face-to-face.’
‘If it’s any consolation,’ said the Arcadian, ‘I told him he should have given you a call.’
Kat turned her flinty gaze his way. ‘You can stay out of this, sunshine. You might have passed his smell test, but you still stink to me.’
‘I get it, Kat,’ I said. ‘Given the bullshit my client spun me, I half-expected to see devil horns poking out of his head, but I’m telling you he’s a good guy. Matter of fact, he’s a lot like me, only bluer.’
‘...And finer,’ Shift purred, biting her bottom lip.
‘Thank you,’ replied the Arcadian.
‘But I don’t know,’ said Shift, eyes narrowing as she turned to me, ‘how can we be sure he’s on the up-and-up?’
Frank placed an arm around the Arcadian’s shoulder and leaned forward. ‘Gooood maaaan,’ he said, his face the very picture of sincerity.
‘Well, that does it for me,’ said Shift.
‘Yeah, me too,’ Stronge agreed, unfolding her arms and leaning back in her chair, defences lowered. ‘He’s no killer.’
‘Oh, sure, him you listen to!’ I cried, but it was for nothing. It was clear from the way things were going that no one cared a jot what I thought about any of this.
Stronge took a sip of her drink. ‘Just so I know we’re all on the same page here, am I right in thinking that instead of avenging a murdered girl, we’re now trying to stop a wedding?’
‘And your client, Tali—she’s the real baddie in this picture?’ added Shift.
‘Yes,’ I sighed.
Stronge rolled her eyes. ‘Well, I hate to tell you, “I told you so”, Fletcher, so I’ll scream it in your face instead: I TOLD YOU SO.’
‘Don’t be like that, Kat.’
‘I’ll be any way I want after you spent the last bloody day ghosting me.’
‘I am a ghost,’ I protested. ‘It’s what we do.’
We were losing focus (another thing ghosts are fond of doing). Still, Stronge wouldn’t let it lie.
‘Forget about the wedding for now. Shouldn’t our next step be to deal with the person who sent you on this wild goose chase in the first place?’
‘What’s the point? I’m the only weapon in Tali’s arsenal, and since I’m not doing her dirty work anymore, she’s harmless. Let her fester for a bit while we figure out how to get the kid in the clear.’
Shift gave a half-shrug.
‘What’s the matter?’ I asked.
‘Sorry, but I’m finding it hard to get excited about this,’ she replied. ‘I mean, he made his bed, right? Isn’t this his mess to fix, even if he is an absolute snack?’ She gave the kid a wink.
‘You’re not seeing the big picture here,’ I said. ‘Neither of you are. If this marriage goes ahead, the effect will be catastrophic. A couple of generations of breeding and the mongrels they spit out will have this city in the palms of their hands. After that, the whole country. Ain’t that right, Your Majesty?’
I swung my head in his direction, only to find him gazing off into space. No, not space—at something across the far end of the saloon.
‘Oi,’ I said, snapping my fingers.
He looked about like a startled meerkat before realising I was the one after his attention.
‘I’m sorry,’ he said, eyes glossy, lower lip a-wobble. ‘I was just… I was thinking of better times.’
That’s when I realised what it was he’d been fixated upon.
A dart board. The dart board.
The poor, heartbroken bastard was remembering the night he and Tali first met. The night she became his fiancée. The last scrap of happiness in his otherwise miserable life.
When I turned back to Stronge and Shift I could tell the mood had altered. When I told them the story before, it was academic. The look in the kid’s eyes had changed that. Made it real. There was no way they were tossing him to the wind now. Not this broken doll.
‘So you’ll do it?’ I asked. ‘You’ll help us get him out of the city?’
‘Landlord.’ Stronge raised her hand and called for a round of shots.
I smiled. Or smirked. Probably smirked knowing me. ‘Is that a yes?’
‘Yes, it’s a bloody yes.’
I looked to Shift, who rolled her eyes and nodded in agreement. ‘Yes.’
‘Yeeeees,’ said Frank, so happy.
‘Thank you,’ said the Arcadian, brimming with gratitude. ‘Thank you all so much.’
What a team: a ghost, a walking corpse, a clued-in copper, a shapeshifter, and a fairy. The broken biscuits of the Uncanny Kingdom.
Lenny ambled over on his telegraph pole legs and set down a tray of whiskies. Stronge bolted hers like her life depended on it.
‘I thought you weren’t supposed to drink on duty,’ I noted.
‘Yeah. But then I’m not supposed to aid and abet fairies, either.’
‘Cheers,’ said Shift, raising her shot and slamming it down.
The rest of us threw back our whiskies and made that gasping sound you’re obliged to make.
‘So,’ said Stronge, ‘how exactly are you planning on getting His Royal Highness out of this wedding?’
I told the gang about Other London. About the hidden city Jazz Hands had informed us of, and the portal that led there.
Stronge placed an elbow on the table and rested her chin on her palm. ‘I don’t like it. Too many unknowns. Why not hole the kid up here? There’s a magic-dampening bubble, right? Stick him in a room upstairs and he’ll be safe as houses.’
Overhearing our conversation, Lenny came by and loomed over our table like an Easter Island statue. ‘The Beehive don’t provide lodging, Miss. When the bell rings at the end of the day, it’s fucking-off time.’
He scooped up the tray, loaded it with our empties, and sloped off to the kitchen.
‘Okay then,’ said the detective. ‘Other London it is.’
‘You mentioned a portal before,’ Shift noted. ‘Would I be right in saying that getting to it ain’t gonna be a piece of cake? That, in actual fact, it’s gonna be—as you Brits like to put it—a major ball-ache?’
Frank offered a wonky grin. ‘Biiiiingo,’ he drawled, neatly managing all of our expectations.
Chapter Thirty-Nine: Little Man, Big Problem
I laid it out as it was explained to me: the portal to Other London was situated on private property, so if we were going to send the Arcadian on his way, we had a spot of trespassing ahead of us.
It could have been a doddle, but since the kid had lost the ability to turn invisible and my possession powers were on the blink, we had no way of bypassing any gatekeepers we might run into. Well, short of giving them a good kicking, but that wasn’t going to help me balance my books with the Big Kahuna. No, if we were going to blag our way inside and give the kid the old heave-ho, it was going to mean all hands on deck.
The five of us were packed into Stronge’s squad car, pedal down, blazing our way to SW1. The night had
rolled in a few hours ago, and we were already edging towards the Cinderella hour.
‘I wonder what it’s like, this Other London,’ said the Arcadian.
All we knew was what Jazz had told us: that it was an adjunct reality only a handful of people in the Uncanny Kingdom were aware of, a pre-industrial parallel dimension free of modern pollution. The perfect place to hide a fae.
There are lots of secret places hidden within London, linked together by a system of hidden doorways and pathways threaded throughout the city, invisible to those without the eyes to see them but there all the same. A blind alley like the one that leads to the London Coven is one example, as is the one outside The Beehive. But there are other streets, other places that exist beyond the city you know, aside from it, on top of it, underlying and overlying. Some of these places are hidden so well that they’re all but impossible to find. Others are only buried skin deep, all but scratching the surface. Those sensitive enough can sometimes hear the call of such places, bleeding into the mundane world like a dubbed-over scrap of music seeping through a new recording on an old cassette. A haunting melody sweating through the humdrum warble that masks it. Some have been driven mad by such music. Others, like me, are drawn to it. They seek it out, they make it their business to uncover that hidden melody and dance to its merry tune.
‘And you’re sure the portal’s in there?’ asked Stronge, bringing the car to a stop and setting the handbrake.
We were parked outside of Tate Britain, the world-famous art gallery in Millbank. To our left was the Thames, moonlight playing upon its black, wind-rippled water. On our right was a wide flight of stone steps that led up to the gallery’s grand porticoed entrance. Its towering pediment was topped by a statue of Britannia with her Union Jack shield and flanked by a unicorn and a lion, just in case anyone forgot which country Tate Britain was in.
‘This is the place,’ I said. ‘All we need to do is find our way there, say the right words at the right time, and presto-change-o: a doorway to another world.’
Trouble was, the gallery was closed and we needed to get the kid out of London right away, no hanging about. Vampires thrived at this hour, and the morning was a lifetime away. The longer we waited, the greater the chance of running into a pack of Vengari and bungling this whole getaway.
We scouted the perimeter of the building until we found a possible entry point, a fire exit manned by a security guard taking a smoke break. Hanging back in a huddle across the opposite side of the street, we watched and considered our options.
‘So what do we reckon?’ I asked.
‘Here’s the plan,’ said Stronge. ‘I’m going to go over there, show the guard my ID, and get him to let me inside. Once I’ve done that, you and the kid can sneak in and do your thing.’
I looked to Frank. He shrugged as if to say, Let the lady do her job.
‘All right then,’ I said. ‘Let’s get a shimmy on.’
‘Aren’t you forgetting something?’ said Stronge, barring my way with her arm as if that would ever stop me. ‘Detectives come in twos, and since you’re invisible, you don’t fit the bill.’
‘Take Frank then.’
‘If it’s all the same with you, I’m going to leave your better half over here. Shift, you up to this?’
‘Yes, ma’am,’ she replied.
A backpack was emptied, a swift change of clothes made, then Shift transformed into a feller. The Arcadian was surprised, but not in the way you might expect.
‘I don’t get it. Why not just stay a woman?’
Stronge let out a dry chuckle. ‘Two female detectives in the same department?’
Shift shook his head in weary agreement. ‘You’ve got a lot to learn about this world, Cookie.’
They headed across the street and I followed, to all intents and purposes not there. Frank stayed behind and didn’t pout about it. He knew there was too much at stake here to involve him in this—he wouldn’t risk jeopardising this mission just for the sake of being included.
I followed Stronge as she approached the night guard, badge in hand. Shift kept in step with her, doing a pretty decent impression of a law man, right down to the cocky stroll.
The guard, who still had a fag on the go, was dressed in a black jacket with the word SECURITY printed across the back in bold white letters. Perched on his head was a flat black cap with a short plastic visor, the kind worn by Yank cops. It didn’t strike me as being standard issue. In fact, it made me wonder if he’d bought the thing off eBay to accessorise the outfit he was given and give himself a touch of extra gravitas. Fuck knows he needed it, standing at the low end of five foot and wearing a wispy little moustache that looked as if it had been stuck on crooked a second before we arrived. Honestly, I wouldn’t have left this bloke guarding my pint, let alone a priceless art collection.
‘Good evening, sir. I’m Detective Stronge and this is my partner—’
‘Detective Spade,’ Shift cut in, shaking the guard’s hand.
‘Yes, Detective Spade,’ Stronge confirmed, suppressing an eye-roll.
‘What can I do for you?’ asked the guard, taking a drag on his ciggie.
Stronge made sure he got a look at her ID and spoke in hushed tones. ‘We received a report of an attempted break-in and we’ve come to check it out.’
The guard looked flummoxed. ‘Break-in? Don’t know what you’re talking about, Detective. I’ve been here all night and everything’s in order. Sounds like someone’s on the wind-up to me.’
‘Either way, we’ve got to file a report, which means we’re going to need you to show us inside so we can tick the right boxes and be on our way. That all right with you, sir?’
The guard’s eyelids fell to half-mast. ‘Maybe, maybe not.’
‘Pardon me?’ said Stronge, taken by surprise.
There was a loud fizzing noise from the cherry of the guard’s ciggie as he took another puff. ‘If you want in I’m going to need to see a search warrant.’
‘Are you serious?’ said Shift, or Detective Spade as he was currently answering to.
‘As cancer,’ replied the guard, inhaling another lungful of smoke.
The bloke had no idea what he was protecting, no clue that he was standing between us and a magic portal, but there were plenty of riches in that place besides a gateway to another world.
Stronge straightened up to her full height, towering over the homunculus of a guard by a good six inches. ‘Sir, do you know the penalty for obstructing a police officer?’
He didn’t hesitate. ‘One month's imprisonment and/or a level three fine,’ he replied wearing a shit-eating grin. ‘But that’s not what this is. All I’m doing is asking for proof that you have reasonable grounds to enter the premises.’
That put Stronge on the back foot. I don’t think she expected the bloke to know how to tie his shoelaces, let alone know his rights. But she knew who she was dealing with now. She’d seen plenty of them in her time, I bet: embittered little men who tried out for the force and were shown the door. Petty, grudge-bearing bureaucrats who liked nothing more than to use the smidgen of knowledge they had to stick it to the man, to punish those who’d actually earned their stripes. Okay, in this instance, he was right to be dubious of the detective’s intentions, but that didn’t make him any less of a prick.
‘I’m going to give you one last chance,’ said Stronge. ‘Get out of my way and let me do my job or I’m writing you up.’
The guard gave her a narrow smile. ‘Tell you what, how about instead you show me that ID again so I can take down your badge number? You too, blondie.’
He took another draw on his cigarette and snorted two nostrils of smoke at the detectives. Stronge swiped the acrid fog from her face, one eyelid twitching.
‘Come on,’ said Shift, taking his partner’s arm before she did something drastic.
Stronge shook him off, growled something intelligible, and went stalking off with her fists by her sides.
‘Nothing personal,’ the guard
called after her, thumbing the wheel of his lighter and sparking a fresh cigarette. ‘Just rules and regs.’
That’s the way this job is. Sometimes you’re kicking the Great Beast’s furry underbelly, and sometimes the biggest thing standing in your way is a petty little jobsworth with the world’s worst case of small man syndrome.
Chapter Forty: The Verge of a Breakthrough
Shift and I followed Detective Stronge across the street, where we reconvened privately with my partner and the Arcadian.
Frank stuck up two thumbs, eyebrows riding high. ‘Gooood?’
Sensing trouble brewing, the kid took Frank’s hands and tucked his thumbs away before Stronge snapped them off.
‘Okay, so who’s up for beating him to death?’ asked Shift, registering his vote with a raised hand. When no one else did likewise he said, ‘Oh, come on, people, he’s practically begging for it.’
‘I want this done clean,’ said Stronge. ‘No one gets hurt.’
‘We could knock him out,’ Shift suggested. ‘That’s only a little bit of hurt.’
‘No.’
‘Oh, come on, don’t be such a spoilsport.’
‘Kat’s right,’ I said.
‘Am I?’ said Stronge, surprised to hear the words coming from my mouth.
She was. This was one of those areas where colouring outside of the lines wasn’t going to work.
‘Sparking someone out ain’t like the movies,’ I said. ‘You don’t just judo chop someone in the neck and send them off to the land of Nod. If it’s hard enough to floor someone, it’s hard enough to give them brain damage, and I don’t need any more red in my ledger, thank you very much.’
Shift sighed, pulled a stick of gum from his pocket, and gave it a spirited chew. ‘You’re right. I’m sorry, it’s the testosterone again. Gets me raging.’
Rage I could do without. I already had enough blood on my hands without killing a breather, accidentally or not. Even wrapping a ghostly fist around the guard’s heart and giving it a light squeeze—a method I’ve used to KO people in the past—came with risks I wasn’t prepared to take here.
Deadly Departed: A Supernatural Thriller (Fletcher & Fletcher, Paranormal Investigators Book 2) Page 23