Oddjobs

by Heide Goody

  “Enough,” said Omar.

  Rod shook away the pain in his hand. “You’ve thrown the game,” he said with a vicious grin.

  “You’ve wrecked my office,” offered Omar by reply.

  Richard bounced off stage to as rapturous a round of applause as could be given by six people. Morag was distracted by the text she had just received from Vivian:

  NAMIBIAN SUBDUED. PRAYER WORKED.

  Morag assumed the word ‘Nadirian’ had been mangled by Vivian’s autocorrect into ‘Namibian’.

  “So?” he said.

  “Um,” she said, thoughts still on the text.

  “That bad?”

  “No. It was good.” She did a little mental reboot. “Richard, it was really good. You were actually funny.”

  He smiled — a toothy flash of childlike happiness in a forest of beard.

  “You didn’t play your bagpipes though.”

  “You want me to play the bagpipes?” he said.

  “I didn’t say that.”

  “I’m sure I wouldn’t be up to the exacting standards of a Scot.”

  “You know we Scottish don’t all play bagpipes, wear kilts and know Nessie on first name terms. I think drinks are deserved all round. You were amazing up there and I’ve just had some good news from my Aunt Vivian.”

  Before she could react, Richard had angled his head and looked at her upturned phone.

  “The Namibian?”

  “Sorry, er, yes. It’s the name I give a… particularly nasty stain on the living room carpet. I call it the Namibian.”

  “Why?” said Richard.

  Morag thought quickly. “It’s in the shape of Namibia,” she said. “You know, all…” She drew an intentionally vague outline in the air, given that she had no idea what Namibia looked like.

  “And your aunt has eradicated it with prayer,” said Richard, his tone even and non-judgemental.

  “And elbow grease,” said Morag. “Prayer and elbow grease. She’s a very religious woman. Now, did I mention that you deserve a beer?”

  Maurice went round the office on hands and knees, picking up scattered Scrabble tiles.

  Professor Sheikh Omar had the notes for the nine stolen items before him. He looked from each to the next and only occasionally glanced at the splinter-edged hole Rod had punched in his desk. Rod stood over him, flexing and inspecting the grazes on his left hand knuckles and the shiny pink burn marks on his right hand fingertips. Nina sat on a chair in the corner and quietly demolished the box of Milk Tray chocolates.

  “This one,” said Omar, tapping the paper. “Is it meant to be a pottery cat or a Chinaman?”

  “Good question,” said Nina.

  “It’s a bit non-PC if it’s the latter,” said Omar.

  “Just identify them,” said Rod. “We need to know why someone might want to steal them.”

  “I’d steal this one in order to destroy it,” said Omar. “For offences against political correctness.”

  Nina’s phone rang. Rod looked at her.

  “Yo,” she said. “Evening, Glynn. What’s that?”

  She shot Rod a look. It was not a reassuring look.

  “Gone where? Last weekend? But you didn’t check.”

  She pursed her lips unhappily as Glynn spoke.

  “Swapped container numbers. Who? Ah. Gary Bark. Yes, we know him. But Birmingham have no record of receiving it. Shit.”

  “A problem?” asked Omar politely.

  “Get on with your job,” said Rod tersely.

  “No. Thanks for telling me,” said Nina. “This could be very bad. Phone me if you find out anything else.”

  She ended the call.

  “Zildrohar-Cqulu is not in Hull,” she said. “The container was removed without authorisation last weekend by our haulier friend, Gary Bark. They’ve only just noticed.”

  “So, Zildrohar-thingy is in Birmingham,” said Rod.

  “We can only assume.”

  “Is the crisis back on?” said Omar. “Maurice. Time to fire up the jalopy, dear.”

  “You have work to do,” said Nina. “Do it.”

  “Someone stole the sleeping body of a god and has had it brought here,” said Rod.

  “Gary stole it and brought it to his partners or masters or buyers,” said Nina.

  “And his death. Either an accident…”

  “Or the tying up of loose ends.”

  “We have to find that cargo container.”

  “He could have taken it to the Dumping Ground,” suggested Rod.

  “Hiding a needle in a haystack,” Nina agreed.

  Omar whistled softly to himself, a strange little melody. “Ah,” he said.

  “What?” Rod and Nina chorussed.

  “This,” he said and turned one of the papers around to face them.

  “The sheet music,” said Nina.

  Omar indicated the fragment of music in the photocopied image on the cover.

  “Simple Tunes for Little Hands,” read Rod.

  “It’s nothing of the sort,” said Omar. “It’s incomplete but this is one of the five pieces that make up Eliphas Levi’s Invertible Hymn of Sanq’hu.”

  “Which is?” said Nina.

  “A spell. To awaken gods.”

  “Bugger,” said Rod.

  “Crisis definitely back on,” said Nina.

  Rod drove at speed through the evening traffic. Much of it was going the other way, heading out of the city, but he still had to weave between the lanes and beep and flash the odd vehicle out of the way.

  “And I’ll say it again,” said Nina. “This is why we need blue flashing lights.”

  “It’s not a problem,” said Rod, steering sharply to cut between two lorries.

  “Flashing lights say we’re ‘important people dealing with an emergency’. These people just think you’re a wanker in a hurry to get home for his tea.”

  Rod circled a roundabout in the wrong lane, earning several angry honks for doing so, and then slid, tyres squealing, into the Dumping Ground yard. Nina had phoned ahead and the stockyard manager was waiting.

  “We’ve looked,” he said. “The cargo container Gary Bark brought in on Saturday was, as the manifest said, filled with Whurrikin casings.”

  There was a tone in his voice, a tone of disbelief and annoyance, a tone that suggested it was out of line for anyone to even suggest that a slumbering god had been snuck into his yard without his knowledge.

  “So, they switched it,” said Nina. “He bribed a crane operator or something. Containers were switched.”

  “No,” said the stockyard manager. “You can’t accuse our men willy-nilly. And, besides, all the containers are marked. They’re numbered.”

  Rod stood stock still, one hand on the roof of the car, the other on the open door. “Four-seven-four,” he said.

  “What’s that?” said the stockyard manager.

  “Container four-seven-four,” said Rod. “Where is it?”

  “I’d have to check.”

  Rod waved for him to do so and hurry. Rod and Nina followed the man to the pre-fab office in the centre of the yard.

  “Four-seven-four,” said Rod.

  “The number Gary Bark had written on his fridge door to remind himself,” said Nina.

  “Exactly.”

  In the office, the stockyard manager ran through a wad of dockets and notes on a clipboard. “Four-seven-four,” he said to himself as he riffled through. “Here. Oh. Whurrikin casings. Again. Arrived Saturday.”

  “Where is it?” demanded Rod.

  “It should be…” The man stopped himself on the way to the door. “No. It’s already been loaded. On a train bound for Cardiff tomorrow.”

  “So where is it now? Is it on a flatbed?”

  The stockyard manager bent and whispered to the only other man in the room. Rod tolerated the hushed back-and-forth for approximately five seconds.

  “Where is it?” he said loudly.

  The stockyard manager straightened up. “
It’s on the train. It’s on a layover in a siding.”

  “Where?”

  “Beneath New Street station.”

  Rod nodded. Rhythms of the universe, he thought. You lost something, it was always in the last place you looked. You lost something hideously evil and dangerous, it was always in the worst place it could possibly be.

  “Zildrohar-Cqulu is under New Street station,” he said. “Right in the middle of the city.”

  “On a busy Friday night,” said Nina.

  “This has become a lot worse than I feared,” said Rod as they hurried back to the car.

  “Shit just got real.”

  He looked at her. “Seriously, Nina. I don’t even know what that phrase means.”

  “It’s from that movie.”

  “I’m aware it’s from Bad Boys, Nina. You made me watch it.”

  “Bad Boys 2, actually.”

  “Bad Boys 2? They made two of them? I can’t believe they made one of them and then thought making another one would be a good idea.”

  “I can’t believe you’re discussing the merits of movies when there’s a world-devouring god from beyond about to throw his shit down on New Street!”

  “A world where there’s two Bad Boy movies? Frankly, I think he’s welcome to it.”

  Moving quietly so as to avoid accidentally reawakening the now-dormant Nadirian, Vivian had managed to drag her feline ankle-warmer to the door where another challenge lay before her, literally.

  The draught excluder cat had moved to the entrance door and lay stretched out in front of it.

  Vivian bent over to pick it up. The draught excluder opened one eye and swiped at her. Vivian snatched her hand back. There were now two long red scratches in the back of her hand. Vivian considered what to do. She gave some serious thought to kicking the beast.

  There was a vase of flowers on the sideboard beside the door. The flowers were dead but there was water in the vase. Vivian slipped her slender hand into the vase until her fingers were wet and then flicked the water at the cat on the floor. The draught excluder writhed unhappily but didn’t move.

  Stubborn, thought Vivian. Vivian had little time for stubbornness in others.

  She slid her foot (the one not already carrying a cat) under the draught excluder’s body. It swiped at her angrily but refused to move. Vivian wiggled her foot under further and then, standing on the other foot, lifted the draught excluder away.

  It was at that instant that her phone rang. Vivian growled inwardly and shot a glance back at the Nadirian. The alien god was still asleep. With a cat on each foot — and one of those in the air — Vivian clumsily pulled the phone from her pocket. She fumbled at the End Call button but the phone rang on.

  Thinking quickly but not necessarily wisely, Vivian dropped the phone into the flower vase, where it burbled for a second and then went silent. She looked at the Nadirian again. It remained still.

  Vivian put her foot down. The angry draught excluder had wrapped itself around her ankle and she now wore two cat-shaped slippers. Vivian reached for the door catch, opened it slowly and waddled silently out of the flat, pulling the door to behind her. The cats were still attached.

  They were certainly persistently single-minded. It was almost admirable. Of course, that didn’t mean Vivian wasn’t going to beat them off with a stick the moment they were out of earshot of the sleeping god.

  Rod accelerated along a bus lane at seventy miles an hour, clipped a pedestrian barrier at the top of Moor Street and won a game of chicken against a bus coming through the tunnel under the Selfridges building.

  “Vivian’s not picking up,” said Nina as Rod handbrake-turned the car onto the pavement beside New Street station.

  “You get hold of Vaughn yet?” said Rod.

  “Are we trusting other people now?”

  He shoulder-barged his dented door to get it open. Nina joined him on the pavement.

  To Nina’s mind, New Street station had been originally built sometime in the Dark Ages and deliberately modelled on a Nazi bunker. It had been all concrete blocks and creaking escalators and sinister subterranean platforms. Then, some years back, the forces of newness and shininess had swooped in, ripped out the old evil concrete heart of the monster and replaced it with glass and light and sushi bars and a John Lewis. However, the forces of newness and shininess had not penetrated below ground level and the station still sat on a maze of subterranean platforms.

  Next to where Rod had abandoned the car, a four-foot-high wall ran around one of the wide light shafts that allowed daylight and trainspotters to peer onto the tracks thirty feet below the street.

  “There,” said Rod and pointed.

  Nina squinted through the night-time gloom. Beside a static passenger train, the corrugated roof of a freight train was just about visible. “What’s the plan?”

  “We get down there,” said Rod. “We stop it. Or we get that train out of the city.”

  With barely any effort, he swung his legs up so that he was perched on the edge of the wall.

  “I’m not jumping down there,” she said. “My ankles will snap.”

  “Then run,” he said and dropped off the wall and down into the pit.

  Nina saw him land on a carriage roof, roll, jump again and come down on a platform. Apart from a minor stumble at the end it was Olympic standard stuff.

  “Muda.” Nina jealously sprinted for the pedestrian entrance to the station, phone in hand.

  Morag and Richard left the pub in good spirits, while the Joni Mitchell-alike was murdering Big Yellow Taxi. The open mic comedy had been a success. Richard had accepted Morag’s praise with humility. They had sunk a handful of drinks between them and had what Morag thought was the nicest and most normal conversation she’d had with anyone for a long time. Richard was easy-going and amiable, showed a genuine interest in her and was a truly great listener. And, possibly best of all, better even than the knowledge they were walking home to a flat in which the Nadirian threat had been neutralised – best of all, it had been one of those rare occasions when evening drinks with a single man didn’t feature him trying to get inside her knickers.

  She breathed deeply and watched the early moon trying to make an appearance between the clouds and the rooftops.

  “That was a big sigh,” said Richard.

  “Contentment,” said Morag.

  “Not boredom?”

  Shadows shifted on high up on the building opposite in the corner of Morag’s eye. She looked properly. The shadow shape was gone, melted into the roof but, for an instant, it had looked like something huge with many spider-like legs. Armoured spider-like legs.

  “No, not bored,” she said.

  “You paused,” said Richard.

  “Distracted,” said Morag.

  She scoured the skyline for signs of the August Handmaiden of Prein and felt anger well inside her because this was turning out to be a perfectly lovely night and she didn’t want it spoiled by a vengeful Venislarn.

  “Morag,” said Richard.

  “Mmmm?”

  “I think we’re being followed.”

  She stopped. “You saw it too?”

  He nodded. “Yeah, it’s right there,” he said and pointed at the taxi that was crawling along the curb ten feet behind them. There was a uCab sticker on the taxi door. Morag’s phone rang. It was Nina.

  “Hello?” It sounded like Nina was talking from a cocktail party being held in a wind tunnel. Nina also sounded out of breath.

  “Zildrohar-Cqulu!” Nina said. “He’s here! New Street station!”

  “But…”

  “I know!”

  “I’m on my way.” Morag hung up.

  She turned to Richard. “Really sorry. A work thing. An emergency.” She hurried to the uCab taxi. “It was a really lovely evening. Really,” she said and got in.

  Morag looked at the taxi driver. “I guess you know where I need to go,” she said. The taxi driver pulled away without a word.

  Nina skid
ded to a stop in the station concourse and looked around. Outside, she had seen where the train was. Right now, she could point to its approximate location below the marble flooring. How to get there and which stairs to take was another matter entirely.

  The station was busy and crowded. Late-working city-types were heading home. Drinkers, clubbers, theatre-goers and the like were pouring in. The cafes, cocktail bars, pizzerias and restaurants on this level and the shopping centre above were doing a brisk trade. And beneath their feet, a giant locust-ape-lizard-prawn was about to go all King Kong if something wasn’t done about it.

  She had almost settled on which stairs to go for when something in the crowd caught her eye. It was a T-shirt. On the back it read ‘Keep Calm and Kill Zombies’. The T-shirt was attached to a blond ponytail Nina thought she recognised. She ran over.

  “Ingrid!”

  Dr Ingrid Spence turned and blinked at Nina in surprise.

  “You’re just the person we need,” said Nina. “Talk about right place, right time.”

  Ingrid shook her head, confused.

  “Someone’s about to perform some summoning-music, ritual thing,” said Nina. “Right here.”

  “Here?” said Ingrid.

  “Yeah. You all better now?” she said. “Rod said you were ill.”

  Nina saw Ingrid had a gnarled and twisted wooden stick in her hand.

  “What’s that?” said Nina.

  An invisible force slammed Nina in the chest, punching the air out of her lungs and sending red spikes up into her vision. She clutched at Ingrid as she fell but her hands didn’t want to work.

  “Yeah. All better now,” said Ingrid.

  Rod had landed on the service platform at what he guessed was a midpoint on the freight train. The nearest cargo containers were marked with Dumping Ground serial numbers. This was the right train.

  He ran up the platform, reading numbers as he went. Even though he was expecting it, seeing container 474 still sent a chilling jolt through him.

  “Bugger,” he whispered.

  He leapt onto the flatbed and took hold of the heavy padlock on the chains around the locking rods. He removed his tie-clip and slipped the two lock picks apart. Then he saw something shiny and glutinous in the lock. He prodded it. Superglue.