by Sophie Green
Gallows’ colourless eyes observed him. ‘I thought you would be used to this by now, Hench.’ Then he plucked the poppet from the dead man and gave it a shake. The little bell tinkled softly.
‘Here, boy,’ he murmured, watching the mercury in the thermometer fall. Tinkle tinkle.
‘Here, boy,’ Hench repeated, smirking but only half-heartedly, because although he couldn’t see Mr Dose, he knew he was there, a newly arrived presence full of brooding malice and dark thoughts, and it made his skin crawl.
By the time Lil and Nedly emerged from the Limelight Picture House the sky was blue and slightly luminous, but with the bruised look that the snow brought. They heard the metallic scrape of the grille being pulled down over the kiosk as soon as their feet hit the pavement. It wasn’t even that late but things didn’t seem to stay open like they used to.
A gust blew in and with a sudden rustling sound something pale flew out from the shadows. Lil stepped back out of its path but the discarded newspaper wrapped itself over her boot. She tried to kick it off but it clung on like a wet flannel. The cheap ink had already bled but she could just make out the headline from the previous day’s edition of the Herald: ‘Gordian Vows to Clean Up Peligan!’ before it vanished into a grey smudge.
She looked at the rubbish bagged up on the street corner, split and spilling its insides all over the pavement, and the tins and papers blowing with the wind. Maybe the streets were getting cleaner in the city centre; here in the old town they looked just the same as always. And alongside the grime and the disrepair an uneasy feeling had started to grow. It grated like a melody played off-key in a cheap piano bar. Things were out of tune. Lil could sense a story building, and if she was going to bag the scoop this time, she knew she had to get a clue before it broke.
They stopped at the corner to wait for a break in the slow procession of traffic. Taxi cabs with their headlights on cut streaks in the dark as they crawled by. Snow started to fall more heavily, the large flakes like feathers from exploded pillows.
Across the road a soft glow emanated from the Nite Jar Cafe; it was the sort of joint where the coffee was always hot and the juke box played nothing but jazz. Lil and Nedly headed towards it.
Inside, the coffee maker was blowing out steam that clung to the cold glass of the windows, and a few of the regulars were holed up in the red-leather booths, glad to be off the street for a few hours.
As soon as she stepped over the threshold all the snow that had landed on Lil began to melt and she raced to peel off her mac and unravel her scarf.
The waitress, in black slacks and a mint-green polo shirt with ‘Nite Jar Cafe’ embroidered on the pocket, took the mac and shook the snow out of it.
‘You’re early.’
‘Hi, Velma!’ Lil glanced admiringly at Velma’s backcombed and smoothed cone-shaped hair-do. ‘I was in town already so I thought maybe I’d just come straight over. Can I get my tea here again tonight?’
‘Yoshi?’ Velma called out to the short-order cook through the hatch. ‘Can I get a cheese on toast for our young pot-washer here, please?’
‘Coming up!’ the voice called back.
‘Yoshi?’ Lil called. ‘Can you make that with extra pickle?’ She paused and then added causally, ‘and why don’t you throw a couple of olives on there too?’
Yoshi stuck his head round the kitchen door and smiled. His dark hair was sweated into points along his forehead and his ‘Nite Jar Cafe’ polo shirt was customised with greasy handprints. ‘Olives on grilled cheese? You know, no one has asked for that since …’ He and Velma exchanged a look. ‘Well, a long time ago. Take a seat and I’ll bring it over.’
Nedly snorted a ‘Really?’ as they made their way to the booth at the far end of the cafe.
‘It’s no big deal.’ Lil sat down with her back to the counter.
‘Didn’t the intrepid reporter A. J. McNair used to have olives on his cheese on toast?’
Lil gave Nedly her trademark Penetrating Squint. ‘Have you been reading my book?’
Nedly grinned. ‘Just been practising turning the pages and happened to see that bit.’
‘Maybe McNair and I have similar taste. Who knows.’
Lil rubbed a porthole in the steamed-up window. On the other side of the road the newsagent was changing the sodden newspaper on the A-board. She watched him slide the evening edition of the Herald into place. Its headline was: ‘Fellgate Epidemic Killing Off Prisoners Saves Peligan City Thousands’.
‘That’s a pretty sour way to look at it.’
Lil could see Fellgate Prison, known to all as ‘the Needle’, from her house. It took the shape of a long, thin tower that broke the horizon, forever lit up by search beams that arced across the sky.
A few minutes later Yoshi came out with her food. ‘So, you hear the news?’
Lil raised her eyebrows. ‘Maybe, what gives?’
‘The latest news, just happened. About Silverman, financial adviser over at Peligan Savings and Loans. Very big mystery, lots of intrigue.’
‘What do you know?’ Lil picked an olive from the molten cheese and casually popped it into her mouth. Her face stiffened as she got a taste of the unexpectedly briny pellet.
‘Caretaker came in for a strong tea one hour ago; rumour is that Silverman fell off the roof of the building.’ Lil choked on the olive as she tried to swallow it. Yoshi gave her a restorative thump on the back. ‘He’s dead.’
Chapter 3
These Pots Aren’t Going to Wash Themselves
‘Silverman … dead? Was it … suicide?’ Lil’s voice was strained as she held another cough at bay.
‘Caretaker thought maybe Silverman didn’t jump,’ said Yoshi. ‘Maybe he was pushed.’
‘But,’ Velma added, joining them, ‘the police who came in after to pick up their donuts for the evening shift said that he definitely did. He was all by himself up there.’
‘Not what the caretaker said,’ Yoshi countered.
Velma sighed and planted a frosted-pink lipstick kiss on Yoshi’s cheek ‘I don’t expect we’ll ever know what really happened.’ She nodded at Lil’s plate. ‘Have you changed your mind about the olives?’
‘No, I’m just saving them ’til last. They’re my favourite bit.’ Lil didn’t even want to look at them.
Velma shrugged and she and Yoshi left them to it.
‘I actually do like olives,’ Nedly said and tried to pick one up. With a good deal of effort he floated it unsteadily above his head and then, positioning himself directly below, let it drop into his mouth, through his body, and onto the floor.
Lil pulled out a pencil, scribbled the Silverman details down on a serviette, stuffed it in her pocket and then chewed the end of the pencil excitedly. ‘What do you think, Nedly?’ she whispered. ‘Murder? Maybe the caretaker was right; Silverman was pushed, maybe by an invisible hand. We’ve been waiting for weeks for Gallows to put another spook into play. This could finally be it.’
‘Sounds like nobody knows for sure,’ Nedly said uncertainly.
‘But it’s worth looking into, right?’
He shrugged. ‘OK. We better go and tell Abe.’
Lil chewed on a chunk of pencil woodpulp. ‘Maybe.’
‘He said if we heard anything we should let him know right away.’ Nedly blew another olive into the air. It missed his open mouth and fell through his eyeball instead. He blinked, disconcerted.
‘I don’t see why we should do all the talking.’ Lil slumped down in her seat. ‘If he has anything, he’s not letting on.’ She twirled the pencil expertly for two turns and then dropped it on the floor.
‘Maybe he doesn’t have anything?’
‘Then what’s keeping him so busy?’ She reached down for the pencil, patting the tiles blindly until she made contact. ‘I know he’s got to make ends meet but he can’t be that tied up with bread-and-butter cases.’ She made a grab for the pencil, stuck it back in her mouth and then took it out again quickly. It was a different pencil. ‘It’s just, the G
allows case, it’s all we’ve got now and I thought we were going to try to track him down together …’
Nedly nodded.
Lil let her head fall back with a disappointed huff. ‘What I mean is, for a while, it was like we were a proper investigative team, me, you and Abe and now it’s just …’
‘You and me.’
Lil winced. ‘I didn’t mean it like that.’
‘I know. It’s OK – I miss him too.’
‘I know you do.’ Her face brightened. ‘Hey, maybe you should drop by later and see what he’s up to – I mean, check he’s OK.’
‘Abe doesn’t really like me going to his office without you.’
‘I know, and I respect that. That’s why it will be better if you arrive later when he has gone. Say, ten-thirty p.m.?’
‘But what if he’s still there?’
‘Nobody works that late, and even if he is, he won’t know that you’re there too.’
Nedly shifted uncomfortably in his seat. ‘What if I give him the creeps? Anyway, Margaret will know.’
‘Margaret wouldn’t give you away; she loves you.’
‘Do you think so?’
The look of almost tearful joy in his eyes made Lil bury hers in the melted cheese. ‘Of course she does.’
‘She always peels her lips back when she sees me, and her eyes sort of glare.’
‘That’s just how she smiles.’
Nedly pulled his neck in shyly. ‘All right then. I’ll go.’
‘I don’t know why you asked for olives if you were just going to throw them on the floor.’ Velma had suddenly appeared, looking cross.
‘But I … Sorry, I dropped them,’ Lil mumbled, shooting a glance at Nedly.
‘I would believe that if I hadn’t seen you throw one up in the air first.’
‘I didn’t throw it in the air.’
‘Then who did?’
Lil gritted her teeth. ‘OK, it was me. Sorry.’
Nedly had been stationed at the window for twenty minutes before he saw the old brown Datsun pull up outside, its yellow headlights scouring the snow.
‘Your mum’s here!’ he yelled to Lil. ‘I’ll meet you in the car!’
Lil ran to get her coat and scarf and Yoshi loaded her up with a box of that day’s unwanted pastries and yesterday’s muffins. Velma looked in the till, then took out the cash drawer, looked under it and sighed.
‘Here.’ She pushed a fiver into Lil’s hand. ‘We’re a bit short tonight. It must be the snow, no one wants to come out in the evenings. Can we owe you?’
‘The amount I’ve eaten tonight, I should probably be paying you,’ Lil confessed. ‘Things will pick up. I know they will.’
She paused at the door, looking out into the snowy street at her mother’s profile in the car, and Nedly sitting behind her, looking contented. There was something wonderful and ordinary about the scene. Even though Naomi didn’t know he was there.
‘Did you forget something?’ Velma called out.
‘No, it’s OK. Goodnight!’
Hench unlocked a door in the old town, using a dirty handkerchief to silence the bell. Under his arm he gripped a rolled-up towel. In his other hand was a torch. Sweat clung to the dark stubble on his bulky jaw.
As he entered the workshop he was met by an icy draught. Whispers floated on the night air, floorboards creaked and his torch flickered to a dim glow. He hurried past the rows of shelves crowded with dismembered plastic body parts, lines of china heads with unblinking eyes, and pots of dried-up glue.
He placed the towel on the heavy wooden workbench and carefully unrolled it. The small cloth poppet had turned grey and mouldy-looking.
Hench carried it to a glass-fronted display cabinet. Inside, the other poppets were lined up on the shelf, each made of the same cloth and yarn. One had black beads instead of crosses for its eyes.
He added the new poppet to the end of the line-up.
‘There you go, Mr Dose,’ he sniggered nervously, propping it up at the end of the shelf. ‘Welcome home.’
He surveyed the line of poppets. ‘Poisoner, swindler, mugger …’ His eyes lingered on the overly wide stitched mouth and the black-beaded eyes of the first poppet in the row. ‘Murderer.’
The poppet fell sideways and its bell tinkled softly. Hench’s hand began to shake as he carefully righted it.
A door slammed somewhere behind him.
‘Stay back,’ he growled, and then he heard a noise from outside, the soft flumping sound of something taking a tumble in the snow. Hench left the cabinet door open and moved towards the window to have a look. He was almost there when the telephone rang out.
He picked up the receiver with sweaty palms.
‘Yes, boss?’
Gallows’ high voice came over the line. ‘Mr Crank managed to convince Silverman to end it all?’
Hench gave a dutiful chuckle. ‘He needed a bit of encouragement but Crank got right under his skin, so to speak. He can be very persuasive, am I right?’ His gaze strayed to the deadpan face of the third poppet in the row and then fled down to the safety of the floor. ‘I bribed the cops for the CCTV tape and dropped it off at the Herald offices, just like you said. This one will give them the heebies and no mistake.’
‘Excellent. Now, who’s next on my list? Ah yes, I suspect that our friend at the top here is going to sing. Maybe he didn’t take my threat seriously?’
‘Put the frighteners on him?’ Hench said eagerly.
‘Take him out of the game. He has exhausted his usefulness to me. Send Mr Bonce.’
Hench’s bright blue eyes drifted back over to the cabinet, to a poppet with a disproportionately large head.
‘Yes, boss.’ He put the receiver down and reached across the poppets. As his hand moved over the first in the row he paused, fingertips trembling.
Hench resisted. ‘Not you.’ He avoided the glare of the poppet’s black-bead eyes. ‘Boss says you have to stay here until you do what you’re told.’
Plucking Mr Bonce from the shelf before carefully closing the cabinet, he turned to the doorway and rattled the poppet three times.
‘Here, boy,’ he said.
Lil poked some apple peel through the bars of her hamster Waldo’s cage and broke him off a bit of the muffin she was eating. The hamster took the offerings solemnly in his little pink paws and stowed them away in his nest, then he took a couple of turns on his wheel to work up an appetite.
‘Lil!’ her mother called from the kitchen. ‘There’s a cup of cocoa in here with your name on it.’
‘Be right there!’ Lil called back. On the way she swiped the pile of junk mail off the side table in the hall and sorted through it until she found the menu for the Black Pug Eatery. She extracted the evening edition of the Klaxon from between its pages and stuffed it into her back pocket.
Lil knew that you could get in a lot of trouble in Peligan City if you were found with a copy of the contraband news pamphlet, but the truth was, Naomi Potkin seemed oblivious to the Klaxon and the real news that its underground network of reporters revealed to its subscribers. She just kept her head down and squirrelled long hours away at the Public Records Department in City Hall. So many hours that Lil had got used to not having her around. So it had been strange when, a few weeks earlier, Naomi had begun to spend more time at home, and ironic that by then Lil was so busy herself that it hadn’t made much difference.
When Lil walked into the kitchen Naomi was sitting at the table, two mugs of steaming cocoa in front of her, hands steepled and head bowed in thought.
‘Thanks, Mum!’ Lil planted a quick kiss on her cheek, took the mug that said ‘Lil’ on it and started making for the door. ‘Goodnight!’
Naomi looked up after her. ‘I thought maybe we could sit and drink it together?’
Lil paused. ‘I was going to take it up with me. I’ve got some study to do, for my correspondence course.’ The former mayor had taken the controversial decision to close Peligan City’s high schools the year
after he closed the public libraries and the only education that Lil had received over the last two years was through the post, and it took all of her pot-washing money to pay for it.
‘Oh, well, of course.’ The disappointment in her mother’s voice was overruled by the sudden breezy smile that followed as she added, ‘Goodnight then, little love.’
Naomi Potkin listened to her daughter’s footsteps as they travelled up two flights of stairs to her attic bedroom. Then she raised her mug at the empty chair beside her, and said: ‘Well, here’s looking at you, kid,’ and took a sip of cocoa. A two-tone horn blared through the darkness and the pans started humming on their hooks, the plates clinked against each other in the cupboards, and then the whole house shook as the train rattled past, its steel heart pounding against the tracks as it sped out of town like it was running for its life.
As the sound of the train faded away, Lil switched on her light, kicked off her shoes, drew the blind and then sat at her desk, flattening the Klaxon out in front of her.
It was too early for the Silverman suicide to appear. That was still breaking news. The centre pages carried a story about the continuation of the prison epidemic and the doctor locked in with the sickly inmates.
Sentenced to Death?
Editorial comment by Randall Collar
The prisoners in the Secure Wing for the Criminally Insane in Fellgate Prison are still in isolation under the instruction of prison doctor Alector Lankin and now it seems the mystery illness has claimed another victim.
With no access to the quarantined area it’s impossible to report accurately on the situation at Fellgate, but one thing is certain – this epidemic shows no signs of going away and although the lockdown may prevent it spreading, this can be no comfort to those trapped inside. Governor Minos should be under increasing pressure to take action and yet the authorities seem to be happy to let it run its course as one by one the inmates succumb.
Perhaps it’s time to think the unthinkable: that Acting Mayor Gordian is reluctant to interfere because it makes financial sense to lessen the burden on the city’s already overcrowded prison by allowing these inmates to die?