Oddjobs 2: This Time It's Personnel

by Heide Goody

  “I just signed it,” said Annie. “The man said I needed to, in order to get my discount.”

  “Discount?” said Rod. “What man?”

  “Mr Watts-Mammonson,” said Vivian, “are you aware of the Consular Conventions on Trade and Exchanges?”

  “I am.”

  “We have a clear process of interviews, consultation, assessment and counselling of any individual who wishes to sell their body and slash or soul to another.”

  “It is very clear,” said Watts-Mammonson. “Admirably transparent.”

  “Thank you. This woman has not been given access to any of the above. She is not on our records.”

  “No,” the Mammonite agreed. “But the convention is merely a convention. It is not legally binding.”

  “No,” Vivian conceded, “but if this woman signed the agreement with a registered human agent then they themselves have to agree to abide by our conventions.”

  “And that’s an issue for you and the human agent. I’m merely in retrievals, Mrs Grey.” The Mammonite smiled smugly. Mammonites did smug well. A smug smile on this one made him look like a toad who had caught all the flies.

  “This is legally binding?” Rod asked Vivian.

  “It is,” she said.

  “But I didn’t know,” Annie pleaded. “I don’t understand.”

  “But you signed to say you did understand,” said Vivian.

  “But I didn’t understand that bit either. I didn’t read it.”

  “Ignorance is no excuse,” said Watts-Mammonson.

  “Come on,” said one of the detectives. “We all do it. Click next, next, next, accept terms and conditions.”

  The Mammonite gave the detective a most curious look, disdainful yet avaricious. The creature’s fingers twitched over its clipboard as though it longed to get the detective’s signature on a contract there and then.

  “Okay,” said Rod. “Is there anything we can do to resolve this? Vivian?”

  “It’s entirely legal and above board,” she replied. “Our best hope is to take it up with Ms Castleton’s creditor, Mammon-Mammonson Investments.”

  “I’ll be heading back there once I’ve got this one in the van. I’ll be full up then,” said Watts-Mammonson.

  “Van?” said Annie.

  “Full?” said Rod.

  Nina did a drum tattoo on the edge of Morag Senior’s office desk and blew an imaginary trumpet.

  “Black Barge!”

  Morag looked at her. “Um…?”

  Nina blew her pretend trumpet again and even did some finger wiggling.

  “Black Barge!”

  “Ye-es. You said.”

  “Just heard it’s arriving today,” said Nina.

  Morag turned to Nina.

  “Yes. Now, either you’re referring to some racially-dubious form of Sumo wrestling or –”

  “It’s the Black Barge. It’s here. Didn’t you have Black Barge up in Scotland?”

  “Clearly not.”

  “Oh,” said Nina, surprised. “Well, it’s this barge and it’s black.”

  “Yes, I had decoded that aspect of the name.”

  “And it turns up, whenever it likes, to resupply and trade at the canalside. Usually once or twice a year.”

  “Ah, okay. We had the Penury Market. Maybe a similar thing. And whose barge is it?”

  Nina opened the fruit salad Morag was going to have for lunch and stole one of the grapes.

  “It’s dedicated to Yoth-Qahake-Pysh, Goddess of the Deep. The barge comes with Yo-Morgantus’ permission but it isn’t under his jurisdiction.”

  “Like an embassy?”

  “Perhaps. It means that local chancers and bell-ends flock to it in the hope of buying items that are strictly non-legit.”

  Morag gave this some thought.

  “You want to go down there and try to bust Professor Sheikh Omar for buying illegal shit,” she said.

  Nina gave her a spooky look and waved her hands in a witchy fashion.

  “Psychic! It’s true what they say about the gingers: cursed and blessed in equal measure.” She grinned. “Also, there’s a nice pub near to where it moors up and we can probably put the drinks on expenses.”

  Watts-Mammonson flung open the rear doors of the nondescript van he had parked outside the apartment block. One of the detectives swore colourfully.

  The interior of the van had been partitioned into cages, ten of them, and all but one of them were occupied. In spaces that were too narrow to sit in and too short to stand in, men and women squatted in shackles. They were of various ages and a range of ethnicities, almost as though he was aiming for demographic diversity. Some were in their night clothes, one was in a business suit, another in his lollipop man jacket. All were gagged, but that didn’t stop them crying out and pleading wordlessly.

  “Oh, God,” said Annie.

  “Get them out,” said the detective.

  “Be quiet,” said Vivian.

  “Get them out! Now!”

  Watts-Mammonson bristled. Vivian was sure the Mammonite carried a weapon about him somewhere and would use it if he was prevented from carrying out his lawful business.

  Vivian turned on the detective. “You will be silent or you will leave.”

  Rod stepped in. “This is above our pay grade, yours and mine,” he said calmly to the detective and, by extension, to all the police officers. “Let’s give them some space while Vivian deals with this.”

  Rod ushered them back a few paces. Vivian had little respect for Rod’s skills beyond the merely practical but he seemed to have the common touch with a certain type of person. It might be his background as soldier of the lower ranks. It might be his unsophisticated northern manner. She neither knew nor really cared, so long as the big lummox stopped the police officers from doing anything foolish.

  “The paperwork’s all here,” said Watts-Mammonson. “You’re free to check it.”

  “I shall,” said Vivian. “I will take copies of it all when we are back at your office. We will follow you there.”

  Watts-Mammonson shrugged. It was an odd-looking gesture, as though his shoulders weren’t quite in the right place.

  “We’ll just get this one loaded up.”

  With snake-strike speed, Watts-Mammonson grabbed Annie’s wrist and pulled her towards the last cage. She shrieked.

  “Don’t let him do this!”

  “You will need to comply, Miss Castleton,” said Vivian firmly. “For the time being.”

  “No!”

  Clothed though he might have been in a human body, the Mammonite was much more powerful than Annie and a palm to her stomach lifted her up bodily into the van and the cage. Annie screamed.

  “Fuck’s sake,” muttered one of the police, sickened.

  “It’s okay, Annie,” said Rod, which Vivian knew to be a pointless and bare-faced lie. “We’ll do all we can.”

  Watts-Mammonson effortlessly tucked her kicking feet into the cage and closed the grille.

  “Bastard!” the woman screamed. The scream was utterly cut off by the shutting of the door. The soundproofing was more than good; it was uncanny.

  Watts-Mammonson inspected a scratch that had appeared on the back of his hand.

  Vivian turned to Rod. “We will accompany Mr Watts-Mammonson to his offices. We will need to discover who has duped all these foolish people.”

  “You don’t think it’s these guys?” he said, jerking an angry thumb at the Mammonite.

  “No,” said Vivian. “This all seems too… dishonest. The Mammonites are many things but they are truthful in their dealings.”

  Watts-Mammonson held his phone over his scratched hand and took a picture.

  “I will need the pair of you to sign statements,” he said.

  “What for?” said Rod.

  “There’s a claim to be made. You witnessed that woman assaulting me.”

  “As you forced her into your van,” Rod pointed out coldly.

  “Our staff should never
have to tolerate abuse from clients or property.”

  “Can you believe this bastard?” muttered Rod.

  “Yes, I can,” said Vivian.

  “You’re not coming with me,” said Morag Junior.

  “But it is dark in there,” said Steve the Destroyer. “I do not like it.”

  “It’s better than what I’m going to have to put myself through. Trust me.”

  “You are a shat-qoi fiend, fleshlet!”

  “Look, there’s half a garibaldi in there. You can have that while I’m gone.”

  “What is garibaldi?”

  Junior popped the doll in the biscuit tin, sealed the lid tightly and with the heavy heart of a woman going to the gallows, walked upstairs to the second floor and flat three, the home of Mrs Atraxas. Mrs Atraxas was just an old woman, perfectly harmless and hospitable. At the same time, having spent too long in her own company and that of her cats, she was sufficiently peculiar that, before meeting her, Morag had been convinced she had a Venislarn god for an upstairs neighbour. Morag had, in truth, put off this neighbourly visit far too long but that didn’t stop Morag Junior despising Morag Senior for putting it on today’s to-do list.

  A huge black log of a cat by the name of Pascal lay across the landing in front of the door to flat three. He opened one evil eye and within the mass of black fur, white claws slowly slid out.

  Junior realised she should have worn her knee-length boots and immediately wondered if she’d put them on the right clothes pile.

  Junior leaned over Pascal, slowly, gingerly, treating the beast like a furry landmine and knocked. There was a shuffle and a series of clumps from within and then the door was opened by a short, lopsided thing with a head that looked like a giant, polished walnut surmounted by a pile of white cotton-wool.

  “Yes?” said Mrs Atraxas.

  “It’s me, Morag. From downstairs.”

  The woman had to crane her neck up just to meet Junior’s eye.

  “You have come for the hair cutting.”

  “No, Mrs Atraxas. Morag. From downstairs.”

  “Ah. You’ll be wanting to come in for a drink.” Mrs Atraxas’s somewhat unplaceable European accent made the sentence sound like an exercise in grammatical mutilation.

  “A coffee would be lovely,” said Junior.

  “I do coffee,” said Mrs Atraxas.

  “That’s fine.”

  “I don’t do tea.”

  “Okay.”

  “I don’t understand it.”

  “Of course.”

  The old woman wheeled around, pivoting on her walking stick, and led the way into a fusty flat carpeted entirely in cat. Junior eyed Pascal cautiously as she stepped over and followed.

  Jeffney Ray arrived at Gas Street Basin shortly before the Black Barge. The canals leading into Gas Street Basin were a world away from the grim squalor of The Waters. As part of Birmingham’s endless transformation, there had been a spate of redevelopment along the basin in the past couple of decades. New buildings had gone up, old buildings had been refurbished and dour waterside pubs had been abruptly designated as listed buildings and imbued with a hitherto non-existent historical importance and charm. Now, the towpath from Broad Street to the Cube was crowded with bars, gentlemen’s clubs, restaurants and sandwich shops which Ray could not afford to frequent.

  Ray wasn’t interested in such things. He was interested in a short spur of canal across the water, one which was only accessible on foot via a narrow wrought-iron bridge. As he crossed, Ray could see the Black Barge emerging from the Broad Street tunnel.

  The sight of the Black Barge sent a shiver of excitement through Ray. He might tell himself – and rightly so! – that he was a major contender, an occult force to be reckoned with, but sometimes he felt a nagging doubt: a sense of inferiority, that he was nothing but a stupid young man who still lived with his mum and that all this – the soul cash trading, the deals with Venislarn – was just the antics of a toddler paddling around in the shallows of a huge murky pool. The appearance of the Black Barge – invisible to the eyes of many, a mystery to all but a few – proved that Ray was one of the big boys, a true player.

  At a distance, the Black Barge looked like any other boat on the canal. Closer to, it revealed itself to be a drab soot-grey: neither the true black of its name nor jauntily painted like many of the touring barges that moored up at Gas Street. Closer still, and its alien origins became obvious. The beams and uprights around the windows were of no ordinary wood. They looked organic, excreted rather than cut, as if they had been regurgitated layer-by-layer by some nest-building insect. And the windows themselves were translucent but not transparent, as though they were made of paper or a rough membrane.

  As the barge drew up to the towpath, Ray observed other parties moving in. A redheaded couple strolled slowly towards the barge. A bundle of sticks in the shadow of a wall unfolded into a spindle-limbed presz’ling. Something mostly without form pressed itself against a window in the building on top of the Broad Street tunnel and peered down. Ray hung back a little – the early bird catches the worm but the second mouse gets the cheese – and waited for the right moment to go aboard and inspect the wares.

  The bargemaster, a fat slug of a man dressed in little but dirt and leathers (and the fine chain that bound his ankle to the boat), stepped onto the towpath. A tall, willowy figure followed him. This wasn’t one of the crew, Ray could see that. A paying passenger then. The figure’s pale, sand-coloured robes hung about it, crisp and mottled like autumn leaves. Its bald head was as white as candle wax. The creature’s hands, white too, were stained black at the fingertips. The overall impression was of such frailty that Ray was about to dismiss him as some old and useless git, and then he saw the thing’s forehead and the mark upon it, a brand-like indentation in waxy flesh.

  Ray shivered with sudden recognition.

  “Fuck,” he whispered.

  “You talking to me?” said a man who happened to be passing.

  Ray looked at the guy in the broad-brimmed hat. He was another dealer. Strange Ken or Mystic Trevor or some name like that.

  “You know who that is?” said Ray, gesturing subtly at the robed figure now walking slowly along the towpath.

  Mystic Trevor (or was it Magic Ian?) squinted. “No.”

  “Oh. Me neither,” said Ray with his best smile.

  “Fucktard,” said the dealer and moved on.

  Ray hadn’t told the man because knowledge had value and shouldn’t be shared for free. But he could have told him. He could have said, “that there is a be’ae tyez, one of the Carcosan word mages, the most powerful casters in existence. And he’s here in Birmingham.”

  Ray moved out of the way as the be’ae tyez shuffled close. Ray looked aside and bowed his head. The creature’s dry, dusty stink filled his nostrils

  Ray held his breath and wondered what he could gain from this new knowledge.

  Mammon-Mammonson Investments occupied a six-storey cuboid building of white stone on Great Charles Street, in that slice of city centre that had once been the city’s pounding financial heart and was now little more than a high-rise buffer between the New Street shopping area and the A38 dual carriageway that split the city from north to south.

  Rod followed Watts-Mammonson’s van down a steep ramp into a basement car park. Rod wasn’t a big car fan – in his book, the pinnacle of vehicle design began and ended with the British Army Land Rover – but he could recognise the level of wealth on display in these parking bays. It wasn’t a large car park but it possibly had the highest cash value of contents of any in the city.

  “Gaudy, isn’t it?” said Vivian, giving an Aston Martin a critical sneer.

  “Aye,” said Rod.

  “Vulgar,” she said.

  “Oh, aye.”

  “I wonder what it’s like to drive one.”

  The van pulled up just beyond a well-lit set of automatic doors. Three Mammonites stood waiting in a perfectly spaced line, hands at their sides, like t
he dullest mannequins at a gentleman’s outfitters.

  “This will be for us,” said Vivian. “Watts-Mammonson will have called ahead.”

  They stopped and got out. The middle suit gave them a big smile. Whatever discrepancy there was in the Mammonite attempts to mimic humans, it was only made worse when they smiled. This one looked like the victim of a botched teeth-whitening procedure.

  “Mrs Vivian Grey,” he said, as though greeting an old friend. “And Mr Rod Campbell. Welcome. Welcome. Strong, manly shake you have there, Rod. I’ve been appointed to show you around and service your needs.”

  “Is that so?” said Rod.

  “My card.” He whipped a business card from his top pocket and passed it to Rod:

  TRUMAN LODGE-MAMMONSON

  MAMMON-MAMMONSON INVESTMENTS

  GREAT CHARLES STREET, BIRMINGHAM

  The card had a surprising weight to it.

  “It’s nice, isn’t it?” said Lodge-Mammonson. “Have them made by a little artisanal printer in Milan.”

  “Right,” said Rod, turning the card over.

  “That font is Silian Rail.”

  Rod ran his finger over the metallic border. “Is that…?”

  “Gold, yes,” said the Mammonite matter-of-factly. “Just a microplating but it makes it look classy. Sharp. Don’t you think? Chet here will park your… vehicle.”

  Rod held out his keys to the Mammonite. Chet looked at them like he was being offered a severed head but took them anyway.

  “Come on in,” said Lodge-Mammonson with a head jiggle. “Let me give you both the grand tour.”

  “We are purely interested in the humans you have captured,” said Vivian.

  “Ah,” said Lodge-Mammonson with a wave of a finger. “Collected. Don’t worry, we’ll get to them soon enough.” He beckoned them into a lift of glass and mirrors. “But let’s go see where the magic happens.”

  The lift took them up to the first floor.

  “Up until 1987 and the computerisation of all trading in the United Kingdom, this building was home to the Birmingham Stock Exchange,” said Lodge-Mammonson. “Stocks and shares in the armouries and engineering works on which Birmingham was built were traded here. We at Mammon-Mammonson Investments have great respect for history and felt that nowhere else would do for our corporate headquarters.”