by Sophie Green
‘All right, you can have your walk,’ he said, ruffling her head fur. ‘Let me get my hat.’
The phone rang as they got to the door, so urgently that it seemed to rattle with every bell. Abe sighed and turned back. He picked up the receiver. ‘Hello?’
The voice on the other end was deep and measured. ‘That you, Mandrel?’
‘Monbatsu?’
‘You should get down here. Another body has just come in. Same cause of death as the others: white hair, terrified expression.’
‘I appreciate the tip but I’ve got to be somewhere right now.’ Abe looked at his watch.
‘She was holding your business card when they found her.’
Abe let the receiver drop for a second as his face drained of colour. ‘Have you got a name yet?’
‘Stanislav, Yaroslava,’ Monbatsu told him. ‘They called her the toymaker.’
Abe whispered a ‘thanks’ and hung up the phone, chewing his lip, and then he stuffed his torch into his mac pocket and with a look of grim determination he made his way down the stairs and out onto Wilderness Lane, with Margaret hot on his heels. He exchanged his prosthetic hand for his driving attachment and tipped down the brim of his hat against the freezing night air.
The Zodiac was covered with snow and the door was frozen shut, but after a few minutes of grunting and pulling at it he managed to get it open. When he turned the key the engine just gave a chesty groan and died. He tried thumping the steering wheel and growling at it, but its last breath had been final.
Margaret lay down on the front seat with her head between her paws and Abe closed his eyes and clenched his jaw. He was about to get out and walk when his lids burnt orange, and when he opened them he found himself dazzled by the glare of the yellow headlights that had appeared in his rear-view mirror.
Chapter 21
Hide-and-seek
Nedly’s face appeared as a pale smudge, looking out through the dirty glass window of the doll hospital. He glanced up at Lil for just long enough to mouth Almost there! and then went back to glaring and pointing his glowing finger at the window latch.
Lil tried to look patient and encouraging but she was standing atop the curved metal lid of an aluminium bin in the alley outside and the frost had made it slippery so she didn’t dare move her feet.
‘There!’ The latch flew up.
Lil had her penknife ready. She traced the window opening a couple of times, cutting through the paint.
‘Don’t be too long.’ Nedly poked his head through the glass. ‘I don’t like it in here on my own.’
‘I’m being as quick as I can.’ Lil stuck the blade through and levered it a few times until, finally, the long-closed window popped open. She pocketed the knife and pulled herself up quickly in case the frame gave way.
Crouched on the window recess she took her torch out of her mac pocket and shined it below.
‘How did you get up here?’ she whispered.
‘I climbed on those boxes.’
Lil gave the tower of cardboard a cautious poke; it swayed slightly. She didn’t fancy her chances, so with a sigh she repocketed the torch and lowered herself as far as she could until she was hanging by her fingers, and then dropped, further than she would have liked, to the floor. ‘If we have to make a quick getaway, I might have to exit through the door.’
‘Or stack up some more sturdy boxes? There are tonnes here,’ Nedly said, and there were.
Lil let her torch beam follow the toy-covered shelves that lined every inch of the room, right down to the ground where they were partially covered by crates and boxes. She had a creepy feeling they were being watched but that could have been the hundreds of toys lined up on the shelves who all seemed to be looking in their direction. The underlying smell of sawdust, turpentine and paint was comforting; the lingering scent of Hench’s potent aftershave lotion was not.
‘What do you think?’ she asked Nedly. ‘Are you picking anything up? I’m nervous, but I think that’s just because we’ve broken into the lair of a known associate of an evil genius.’
‘Hmmm,’ he agreed. ‘There’s definitely a weird atmosphere in here but I haven’t seen any spooks.’
‘So maybe they’re sleeping.’
Nedly turned to her with an ominous look in his eyes. ‘Or hiding.’
Lil tried to hold the torch beam steady as she surveyed the rest of the workshop. The torch had been the first thing she’d bought with her wages from the Nite Jar, and so far she hadn’t had much chance to use it. She had always imagined that when they finally uncovered Gallows’ trail Abe would be there too and they would seek him out together. It hadn’t crossed her mind that she and Nedly would have to go it alone.
She let the beam trace the shelves opposite. Every type of doll was lined up there in battalions. They looked abandoned, maybe forgotten.
Pale-faced china dolls with soft bodies and sticky hair, teddies, tin soldiers and plastic action figures, waxy-looking toys with bendy rubber limbs and clockwork mechanicals … a particular shiver crept over her skin when she saw the moth-eaten knitted animals.
‘It’s going to take hours to check all of these.’
To their right was a huge and heavy workbench with an Anglepoise lamp crooked over it. The surface was covered in a chaos of fur, tiny scattered nails that looked like iron filings and metal implements of the kind you might find in an unlicensed operating theatre. A row of vices were clamped onto one side and there was a little wooden stool that was fastened to the bench by a sturdy hinge and polished to a high shine by the seat of someone’s trousers.
Behind it were free-standing shelves filled with everything you would need to fix things. Coils of wire, bobbins, dried-up pots of glue with gummy, balding brushes stuck in them, unlabelled bottles of solvents in various colours, oil cans and tiny rusted tins of paint with battered lids.
Past the workbench and shelves was a doorway without a door that led to a small back room. Lil began walking towards it when she saw something move out of the corner of her eye, a pale flash; she back-tracked quietly, stifling a gasp as a distorted version of her own face appeared in the dirty glass door of a wall cabinet right in front of her. Lil pulled her jumper over her sleeve to wipe it and then lifted her torch to look through the darkened glass.
‘Lil!’ Nedly called to her.
‘What?’ she hissed, following him. In the back room was the toymaker’s bed: an old armchair with a knitted blanket draped across it, a pot-bellied stove and a little white sink with a grimy curtain that hung down from the bowl. A portable TV sat on top of a big wooden bookcase that was stuffed with paperback novels. Lil accidently kicked over a mug that had been left on the floor with a thin layer of fossilised tea at the bottom of it. It rolled over to where Nedly was standing, passed through him and bounced off the skirting board on the other side.
‘There’s another floor,’ he said. ‘A basement.’ He nodded towards an open door that led to a stairwell.
As Lil made her way down the concrete steps, following the spot of her torch as it was swallowed up in the gloom, the hair on the back of her neck was prickling. From deep inside the basement there was a low roaring sound. At the end of a short corridor a door was ajar and Lil could see a light flickering softly behind it, like a candle.
She nodded to Nedly to go first. He shook his head. Go on – she nodded more vigorously. No way! he mouthed back. Lil rolled her eyes. Mouthing ‘fine’ and then ‘whatever’, she pushed up her sleeves, took a deep breath and then continued on alone. The dancing orange light on the basement wall made her draw back for a second, as she cautiously pushed the door open, but it was just the firelight from the window of a large cylinder-shaped furnace, with wide copper pipes that sprung from it like legs and plunged into the floor and ceiling. That was where all the noise was coming from.
Nedly peered over Lil’s shoulder. ‘You know what this means?’
She pointed upwards. ‘That must be where Delilah’s old pitch is.’
/> ‘I didn’t think of that,’ Nedly admitted. ‘Yes, but also it means we have a way to destroy the toys – when we find them we can burn them up right here.’
‘Good plan.’ Lil grinned at him, her face lit by the orange flames. ‘Come on, we better get to work.’
They backed out of the furnace room. Lil was about to put her foot on the first step of the stairwell when they heard the sound of the shop bell ringing
Chapter 22
Deal or No Deal
Alone in his office, in the Secure Wing for the Criminally Insane, Cornelius Gallows was challenging himself to a fifth game of Scrabble.
Oblivious to the din from the frightened inmates, who were running their tin bowls along the bars of their cells, trying in vain to get someone’s attention, he picked up the letter ‘X’ and turned it thoughtfully in his long, delicate fingers, pondering his next move. He had beaten himself in every game he had played that evening, in every game he had ever played. He always won in the end.
From somewhere in the wing he heard a door slam but ignored it. The life that went on outside his office didn’t interest him. The men in the cells were no more than fuel for his ghost-generating machine. He had no fear of them – they relied on him for food, heating, water – without him they would have none of it. He was the only one that mattered to the outside world. The Brave Dr Lankin.
Gallows afforded himself a thin-lipped laugh, which caught somewhere in his bony chest and rattled it.
The cells had fallen silent. Gallows wound his scarf closer round his neck. It was certainly chillier than normal, although cold lurked permanently in the stones of the prison. He glanced at the thermometer on the wall behind him: it was four degrees. Significantly colder than normal. Now it was three degrees, two … one. The mercury dropped further and the air around him began to freeze.
‘Who is there?’ he snapped, and his breath curled out in a fog.
In response the Scrabble board leapt off the desk, flipping the tiles upwards like tiny pancakes, where they hung in mid-air, floating before his eyes.
Gallows let one hairless brow arch slightly.
‘Impressive. Who sent you?’
Four of the letters dropped onto the board and began coalescing into words.
I DID.
Gallows’ deep-set eyes narrowed. ‘Clever boy. I presume I’m talking to Mr Grip.’
There was a pause, and then more letters rained down. They slid around the board until they spelled the word GRAINNE.
Gallows snatched tiles out of the air and placed them against the word to spell out:
GRAINNE IS DEAD.
The word DEAD was swiped instantly from the board. They hit the wall and dropped to the floor and in their place came the word HERE.
The vein in Gallows’ forehead began to visibly pulse. ‘Very well. I imagine you’ve gone to some lengths for an audience with me, your maker. What is it that you want?’
TROUBLE. The word appeared on the board and then dispersed and another was formed, BOY.
‘Trouble with a boy! Why don’t you just kill him?’
ALREADY DEAD
‘One of your victims?’
There was another pause and then a flurry of activity as letters swam together.
ONE OF YOURS
Gallows rolled his eyes. ‘You, the most vicious and feared serial killer Peligan City has ever known, afraid of a boy?
Mr Grip stayed silent for a moment while a feeling of menace spread through the room, making even Gallows give a small shudder.
STRONGER
‘How can the ghost of a boy possibly be stronger than that of a grown man?’
HE IS FREE
Gallows gave a theatrical sigh and and ran his hand lightly over his fine spray of hair.
‘So that’s what you want.’ There was a pause. ‘What possible benefit would that be to me?’
I WILL DESTROY HIM
Gallows considered the letter tiles irritably for a moment. ‘If I were to free you, how could I be sure you will come back?’
The letters were still, and then they moved.
PARTNERS
Gallows inadvertently let out a snort of disbelief, which caused the temperature to drop another two degrees; nevertheless nostalgia began to cloud his eyes. ‘I had a partner in crime once.’ And then they hardened again. ‘It didn’t end well for me. But then he never took me seriously, not until it was too late.’ Gallows rubbed his smooth chin thoughtfully. ‘Genius that I am, I don’t even know if I can free you.’
TRY
Gallows’ face turned very pale pink, and a blue vein twitched at his temple. ‘If you lose your binding, I’ll have no way to call you back. If you pass over, that’s it.’
The letters remained still but the crushing feeling of dread was making the air thick.Gallows’ breaths were becoming shallow and his narrow shoulders shook slightly.
‘Fine,’ he agreed begrudgingly. ‘But as soon as you’ve beaten the boy I want you back here.
‘I must admit that with your exceptional ghoulish powers it would be handy to have you as my new goon. And it’s true that of late Hench has let his fear get the better of him, plus he has no real sense of loyalty, whereas you … I made you who you are today. With my calculating genius and your bloodcurdling psychopathy we would make quite the pair.’ Gallows’ fingers fluttered excitedly, and then they were still. ‘But you must agree – you will be second in command. I am the boss. Swear it. Swear you won’t betray me.’
I SWEAR
‘Let me think a moment.’
As Gallows closed his eyes and turned his brilliant mind to calculating just how he could reverse his experimental procedure and sever the connection that Mr Grip had with the material world without destroying his ghost completely, it occurred to him that it wouldn’t matter too much if the operation did end badly for Mr Grip. After all, he could be so very disobedient. No, on reflection Gallows couldn’t lose. He made a mental note of the equation needed and then opened his eyes and with a lifeless smile he said, ‘Eureka.’
Chapter 23
Nothing But Creepy Toys
A dark figure stood in the doorway of the doll hospital, backlit by the street lamp outside. Lil and Nedly swapped anxious glances and then they heard the click of a switch and the room was awash with the unforgiving glare of the strip light.
It was Abe.
‘So you came?’ Lil bent down to scratch Margaret’s ears and hide the smile that betrayed her relief. Abe stepped awkwardly to one side to reveal Naomi standing behind him and Lil’s smile vanished.
‘You! You followed me?’
‘No,’ Naomi replied honestly.
‘She followed me,’ Abe confessed.
‘Great, some detective you are.’
Abe took that one on the chin. He gave her a sombre look. ‘I just took a call from Monbatsu at the Morgue – the toymaker is dead.’
‘We’re too late,’ Nedly whispered.
Lil laid her hand on Margaret’s tufty head. The little dog met her gaze with sorrowful eyes.
Naomi bobbed down beside them. Her glasses had fogged up in the warm workshop. She peeled off a glove and wiped her finger over the lenses. ‘You’re supposed to be at home.’
Lil dipped her eyes and muttered. ‘So are you.’
They crouched in silence while Naomi tugged off the other glove finger by finger and then she tilted her head down low, until she was in Lil’s sightline. ‘I figured I’d come by and find out what was so important that you had to give me the slip.’
Lil got to her feet. ‘You wouldn’t understand.’ She walked over to where Nedly stood and opened a random drawer that turned out to be full of patched-up dolls’ clothes and pretended to sort through them.
‘Try me.’
Nedly raised his eyebrows hopefully, but Lil murmured, ‘She doesn’t know anything about this. She’ll just get in the way.’
‘Give her a chance,’ said Nedly.
Lil blew out her cheeks and turned
to face her mother. ‘We’re looking for some toys.’
‘Looks like you came to the right place.’ A smile crinkled Naomi’s eyes.
‘This is serious. They’re very dangerous toys –’
The crinkle straightened. ‘How are they “dangerous”?’
‘They’ve been tampered with and now we have to destroy them.’ She steeled herself. ‘It has something to do with the ghosts that are terrorising the city.’
Naomi started to speak but Lil interrupted her. ‘I know. I know you don’t believe in it. But if you’re going to stay here and help you’re going to have to trust me. We’re not here for the scoop; we’ve got work to do.’
Abe moved away from the doorway. He trod heavily as he crossed the room as if he were weighing every step, until he was standing beside Lil. He took a deep breath and squared his shoulders. ‘It is true, Naomi. Lil knows her onions. I’ll vouch for that. Quake’s story, the haunting of Peligan City. We knew all about it, before it broke, I mean. We’ve known for a while and –’ He cleared his throat. ‘I don’t have time to explain right now – but we do have a pretty tight theory that the person controlling the ghosts is doing it by means of some objects that we think he’s keeping here.’
Lil gulped in the silence that followed. Her eyes slid sideways to Abe, who was trying to hold his chin up at a dignified angle while maintaining Naomi’s troubled gaze.
‘So,’ he continued, ‘we aim to destroy them before he catches on, wakes them up and sends them after us.’ He nodded gravely at her. ‘I know how it sounds, but that’s the tall and short of it.’
‘O-K,’ Naomi said uncertainly, with a look of someone who’s wondering whether she’s dreaming or everyone else is. ‘Don’t take this the wrong way, either of you, but how is it that you know so much about it?’
Lil couldn’t stop herself executing an almost-perfect Cryptic Eyebrow raise at her mum. ‘We’ve seen this sort of thing before.’