by Clive Mullis
‘Crinning will tell you where on yer way out. Yeah, nasty bit o’work you’ve picked up there.’
‘Thanks, Gerald. Frankie told me what you know about Maxwell, and you’re right, he isn’t very nice.’
‘Did you know you’ve been followed ‘ere too?’
Cornwallis nodded. ‘I expect a Mr Sparrow; works for the Bagman.’
Gerald shook his head and corrected him. ‘A Mr Magpie in fact, who works for the Bagman. There is also a Mr Scrivey, who don’t work for the Bagman, ‘e works for your Mr Maxwell, or ‘e did until a few moments ago.’ He turned to Rose and mimed a hand cutting his throat. ‘Keeps on at this rate an’ ‘e ain’t going to ‘ave anyone left to work fer ‘im.’
Rose’s eyes widened in shock.
‘Um,’ began Cornwallis hesitantly, equally shocked, ‘er, thanks.’
‘No need to thank me, Cornwallis, just keeping the place tidy. Anyway, ‘e was one of ‘em ‘o did fer Freddie the Weasel.’ Gerald smiled again, pleased at the reaction. ‘Now, where the hell is that coffee? Crinning,’ he yelled.
Crinning appeared with a tray and another flunkey came behind carrying a small table. The man put the table down and the tray went on top. Gerald rubbed his hands together and then began to offer each of them a mug. Cornwallis took a few moments to get himself together after the revelation — would it have been another attempt on his life?
‘Now,’ said Gerald, settling back into his chair. ‘Miss Morant, or can I calls yer Rose?’
Rose nodded that he could.
‘Good. Word on the street is you is now working fer Cornwallis ‘ere.’
Rose nodded again, not quite sure yet about Gerald; there was something not quite right.
‘I suspects that ‘e brought you ‘ere to get to know me as yer needs to know the rules.’
‘Er, yes. I think so.’
‘Well, the rules is simple ‘ereabouts. Yer don’t mess with the Brews, yer don’t go a thieving or a murdering wivout my say so; but yer can investigate all yer like, an’ you can arrest if yer need to as well. No one will touch yer if yer keep to the rules, it’s a case of you scratch my back an’ I’ll scratch yours. Cornwallis and me made up the rules so’s that ‘e could investigate freely, as there are some ‘ere ‘oo like to play away. To my mind, it’s their lookout if they go a thieving or somesuch outside of ‘ere. But inside the Brews, it’s my business.’
‘Sounds simple enough,’ responded Rose, with a degree of hesitation. There was still something about Gerald that she couldn’t put her finger on. She looked across to Cornwallis and Frankie, but they just sipped at their mugs. ‘Er, can I ask you something, um… Gerald?’
Gerald relaxed back, nodded that she could, and beamed. ‘Of course yer can my darling, harsk away.’
She wasn’t sure how to ask what she wanted to know, she just wished that Cornwallis had told her more about this man than he had; in any event, she’d started, and now she had to go through with it. ‘Who are you?’ she asked, quietly. ‘I mean, I don’t mean to be rude, but I’m struggling to come to terms with the fact that you rule here. You don’t seem to be like the others.’
Gerald didn’t turn a hair, he just laughed. ‘Yer mean a little fella like me, ‘ow can ‘e control it all, eh?’
Cornwallis thought he’d better intervene. ‘I’m sorry, Rose, but I haven’t told you very much about Gerald; things seemed to get in the way. Gerald has some special talents— ’
Gerald leant forward and held his hand up. ‘Yer can stop right there, Cornwallis,’ he said with a frown. ‘It’s only right that I answer ‘er. After all, you’ve ‘ad your chance.’
Cornwallis opened his mouth to say some more, but then thought better of it. He settled back into his chair and waited for Gerald to continue; in any event, both he and Frankie had gone through something very similar in the past, and it would be interesting to see how Rose reacted.
Gerald got up and stepped down, coming to stand in front of Rose. ‘Up yer get, my girl, I ‘ere’s your pretty ‘andy in a scrap. Now we’ll see just 'ow ‘andy.’
Rose looked across at Cornwallis who sighed. Frankie jabbed her in the ribs with his elbow and indicated that she should do as Gerald asked.
When she reluctantly stood up, she found she could look down on the top of Gerald’s head; he was even smaller than she had first thought, wiry, yes, but she knew she could do some serious damage to him if she really wanted to.
He looked up into her face and grinned. ‘Come on then my girl, try an’ knock seven colours o’shite outta me.’
‘I’m not sure about this,’ she said nervously, already regretting asking the question in the first place. Later on, she intended to really rip into Cornwallis for not saying anything about this man before. Something was going to happen to her, but she hadn’t a clue what. ‘Perhaps it would be better if we just leave it there.’
‘Oh no, Rosie, my luv,’ Gerald sprang back and began to dance about like a prize-fighter. ‘Get stuck into me girl, come on, let rip, gimme yer best shot.’ He sprang forward and shot a hand out to give a playful tap on her arm. ‘Yer don’t react, girl, I’m going to end up ‘urting yer, come on, let an old man ‘ave some fun.’
Rose closed her eyes; she couldn’t back out now, she had to do as Gerald asked, even though she knew she wasn’t going to win, she even suspected that he might be even quicker than her: she should have seen the signs well before this. She opened her eyes again and looked at him, fixing her gaze on his eyes as she tried to gauge his strength and speed. She knew that you could read a lot in the eyes, but she was disconcerted when she found that nothing came back; he appeared to have eyes that were empty, black depths of absolutely nothing. A shiver ran down her spine; and then she went for it.
‘So, my girl, now’s yer understand. Yes?’ asked Gerald, once they had finished.
Rose found herself nodding. She now knew how this little man could control everything about him, how he could have the power of life and death in this slum; she was only grateful that he seemed content to keep it here and not attempt to control the whole city.
She had decided to get it all over with quickly, so let him move a little closer to her as he danced around. He tapped her once again on the arm, but this time as he recovered from the movement, she pounced, spinning around and flicking out with her foot while at the same time bringing her arm scything through the air, aiming for his neck. The feeling as she connected had been unreal; like hitting candyfloss, as if the air had suddenly become sticky and the force of her blows had become bogged down. Her movement had carried on slowly for a microsecond, and then her blows found normal air again and the momentum continued. She finished spinning and then stumbled, losing balance, expecting something to happen, but not this. She sort of lurched into Gerald, and then the feeling became more intense as his head disappeared into her chest as she flung her arms out wide to stop herself falling. She then felt him move through her, straight through her, and then out the other side. She fell to the floor as his body left hers and gasped in shock. She turned and looked up at him as he stood looking down; he was smiling, full of mischief again.
‘Good try, Rosie my darling, nearly got me there.’
‘Wha… wha… what happened?’ she spluttered, totally confused now.
‘Let’s sit yer down and I’ll tell yer,’ he said, offering his hand to help her back up.
As she sat back down her hands began to shake, and she felt a rising nausea in her throat, but slowly, little by little, it all began to subside. Cornwallis and Frankie were grinning from ear to ear while Gerald sat motionless in his chair. She couldn’t comprehend what had just happened, she must be dreaming, it just couldn’t happen.
‘Yer didn’t ‘urt yerself?’ he asked, now a little concerned.
Rose shook her head; this all felt very, very, wrong. Yes, after that, she could understand how he could control everything, the question now was, how did it happen?
‘It’s a long story really,’
he said, when he saw her looking back to normal. ‘I used to be a very good burglar, back in the old days, an’ I made quite a tidy sum. But I got curious one day, because rumour ‘ad it that a lot o’ money could be made at the Collider. So being daring an’ all that, I decides to take a look. There weren’t much in the way of security, as they didn’t expect anyone to try an’ get in. I sort of got through one of the vents that took the air into the building, an’ I crawled through until I found the chamber that ‘oused the Collider. It took some time, I can tell yer, an’ a few wrong turns as well, but eventually I found it. An’ do you know what?’
Rose didn’t, so shook her head.
‘There were nobody there, the whole place empty. No people, no guards, no keepers, no nobody. I thinks, I’m on to a good ‘un ‘ere, as I looked through the grate. I lifted it up an’ dropped down, an’ then the Collider were there in front of me, all these little desks an’ toggles an’ things, all lined up in front. It looked like a great big mirror, it did, but it sort of hummed, an’ I goes up to it to take a look. It were the strangest thing yer could ever imagine, there were me looking back, but it weren’t me, an’ behind the other me, I could see loads o’ people running. What’s going on ‘ere? I says to myself, an’ I pushes a finger towards the Collider. The other me did the same, an’ our fingers sort of touched. It went even weirder then as my hand got sort of drawn in; the next thing I knew, all o’ me got sucked in, an’ suddenly I were on the other side, an’ I wasn’t in the Collider anymore. I were in a strange looking street, an’ all these people were running towards me. They didn’t look too friendly like, so I wanted to get back. Fortunately, I still had a foot on this side, so I tries to back into it again. Just then, these people stops, an’ one of them points a sort of pipe thing at me. Next thing I know the pipe thing explodes, it goes bang, just as I manage to get back again. I felt something ‘it me, an’ I thought, that’s me gorn; I should’ve been dead, but I wasn’t.’
Rose looked at Gerald in disbelief; she’d never heard a tale as strange as this. ‘But how…?’
Gerald chuckled. ‘Ow did I do that?’ He sort of mimed going through a body and Rose nodded. ‘It were explained a while later. I sort of noticed that I weren’t the same anymore, a bit like a ghost, but not a ghost. Sometimes I were real an’ other times I weren’t. Just think what it felt like, not knowing what you is. I found I could pass through things when I wanted, but could be solid too, when I wanted. Weird didn’t come close to ‘ow I felt. So I harsked. Found a keeper willing to talk an’ I harsks him some questions. ‘E said that if someone did fall into the Collider then they would probably cease to exist; not so much die as not exist anymore, as yer would just disappear into yerself on the other side, sort of fall between the universes. But I didn’t, I got back, an’ ‘e reckoned that if someone did that, then they was here an’ between at the same time. That’s why I can pass through things, an’ why things pass through me — because sometimes, I ain’t ‘ere. Over time I’ve learnt to control it.’
‘That’s incredible,’ exclaimed Rose; she looked to Cornwallis who just finished draining his mug. ‘It beggars belief.’
‘It does, but it’s true enough,’ said Frankie instead. ‘Now you know why Gerald has so much power, it sort of makes it difficult to hurt him.’
‘But what happened to the other you?’ she asked.
‘Don’t rightly know, but I suspect that I died when that pipe thing went off. Whatever ‘it me stung a bit, I can tell yer.’
Rose looked crest fallen, ‘I find that very sad,’ she said. It sort of made real the knowledge that there are countless you’s out there, all having different things happen to them. Her mind spun with the possibilities, some of which she didn’t really want to contemplate. All of them: living, breathing, walking, talking, doing all the things that she could do, all in the other worlds. How did her life measure up against theirs? ‘Very sad,’ she said again; and really meaning it.
CHAPTER 9
The events of last night were still having their effect on Rose as they sat in the office. All three were trying to think of a way of taking the investigation forward and they sat staring into space until one of them could come up with an idea. Rose couldn’t help but let her mind stray back to what Gerald had described the night before, she felt somewhat depressed as she had been thinking of it all night and had hardly got a wink of sleep. Cornwallis and Frankie had not comprehended the enormity of it all, despite having known about Gerald for some time. They seemed to treat it as just something that had happened, something that really didn’t affect either of them; perhaps as a female, she could think on a wider level to them. There were also many Cornwallis’ and Frankie’s out there too, so she turned her mind and wondered what would be happening to them.
‘We do need to know more about Kintersbury and Dumchuck,’ opined Frankie, after some thought, ‘I mean, after what the Bagman told you, we really don’t have an option.’
‘Yes, but only if the Bagman told me the truth. I wouldn’t put it past him at all to spread a few false leads,’ replied Cornwallis, tapping his teeth with a pencil. ‘We also need to keep a tab on Maxwell as well; carries on like this, then we’re going to need a bigger department than the police.’
‘Hmmm, Maxwell, now he’s a bit of a thorn in our side. It seems like he has got a tab on us, if what Gerald said was true, which means he knows we are investigating. It strikes me as a good idea to do something about him before he can do something about us, the other two can wait a while. What do you think, Rose?’ asked Frankie, turning his head towards her.
‘Huh?’ answered Rose, coming back to the reality she knew. ‘Sorry, didn’t hear you.’
Frankie grinned at Cornwallis. ‘I said; should we do something about Maxwell, as he’s the dangerous one.’
‘You’re asking me? I’ve only been here three days.’
‘Three days? Is that all it is?’ responded Cornwallis with surprise. ‘Seems like you’ve been here forever.’
‘Thanks,’ replied Rose. ‘I’m not sure how to take that.’
‘In the best possible way, Rose,’ said Cornwallis with a smile.
Rose pulled a face, not quite sure whether to believe him or not. ‘In that case then, for what it’s worth, I don’t think we can do much if we’re looking over our shoulders all the time. If Maxwell has his people following us everywhere then he’ll know who we’re talking to, besides, we know he’s involved in murder because of what Gerald said, he could be our way to Kintersbury.’
‘That’s my girl,’ said Frankie, banging his fist on the table. ‘So that’s two of us, Jack. What about you?’
Cornwallis looked from one to the other. ‘I agree. Maxwell would be able to implicate Kintersbury if we exert the right amount of pressure. Perhaps we could get Algernon and some of his friends to keep an eye on Kintersbury and Dumchuck for us, while we deal with Maxwell. With Maxwell out of the way, it might panic the others into doing something stupid anyway. Suggestions then, how do we get him removed from the scene?’
They discussed the best way of getting Maxwell off their backs for the next hour or so. Frankie favoured ripping his head off and stuffing it up his own arse, but Cornwallis, although agreeing with the principle that this would be a fitting result, declined the suggestion on the grounds that it might take a bit of explaining; and how would he be able to talk? He favoured a more prosaic response, and despite Frankie’s protestations, they finally settled on banging him up for the threats made to Brownlow and handling stolen property, leaving the little matter of the drugs and murder to later.
They now had the problem of finding a way to corner him so they could make the arrest. The obvious answer was to go down to the finance house and pick him up there, but he would be surrounded by his own men, and that might prove a problem without enough back up. They would instead have to get in a position so that they could follow him on one of his excursions away, and to do that effectively they would have to deal with the likely tail
that they already had. They didn’t know the Bagman’s Mr Magpie, but they thought that if they were observant enough they should be able to spot him. Maxwell’s man should be equally easy to spot, and they should be able to deal with him too.
It was now mid-morning. Cornwallis left the office to take a walk down to Scooters Yard while Frankie and Rose hung back to observe from the window for a short time. They could see nothing obvious, but Grantby Street was busy with both people and traffic. Failing to spot anyone, Rose left a few minutes after Cornwallis and followed the same route. Frankie would wait a few minutes more then come after her and Cornwallis. It wasn’t a perfect plan, but it was the best they could do, the hope being that one of them should be able to pick out their man.
Cornwallis took a route that led through enough quiet streets to confuse whoever might be following; they wouldn’t know his destination so they would have to keep in touch or risk losing him completely. He took up a nice steady slow pace, but found it very difficult not to keep looking behind, the urge to look, almost impossible to ignore. He would just have to trust to Rose and Frankie and hope that the route they’d chosen would give them the edge they needed.
Rose saw potential candidates everywhere. She kept latching on to people only to be disappointed when they turned into a coffee shop or delivered a parcel or met with a friend and dived into a bar. She didn’t know the rules to this new game and she found it extraordinarily difficult to sort out the wheat from the chaff, and there were plenty of chaffs about. Her mind kept losing concentration as she gazed about; she had never noticed just how many young people there were on the streets just aimlessly wandering around, looking lost and bored. She passed little groups just chatting on street corners, young mothers with their child glued to their hips with half a roll-up dangling from their mouths. These were the real chaffs she thought; they could be whole new underclass of society. Ahead in the distance, she could see Cornwallis as he turned down a side street; there were a few people between him and her and she prayed that one of them would do the decent thing and turn after him. A couple of youngsters hurtled by, each on a homemade contraption of a board on a set of wheels. They were standing up and yelling at people to get out of the way; maliciously, she hoped they would fall off, it would serve them right to have a scrunched up face for a few days. A tingle of excitement ran down her back as a man hesitated at the corner where Cornwallis had turned, he had his hands in his pockets and he seemed to check his step before following after. He seemed to match what she supposed would be one of Maxwell’s cronies, scruffy, large, shaven headed with a hint of violence. She felt certain that this was the one.