by Clive Mullis
When he had finished recounting events, the feeler bowed his head and sat back down. He reached out for his mug and brought it to his dry lips, taking a long deep slug. All eyes turned to watch him, and the pressure of the silence lay heavy on his heart.
After a few uncomfortable moments, a scrape of a chair and the shuffling of a bum indicated that a member wanted to speak. He rose slowly and cast a wary eye to the door. ‘Well, I fer one ain’t going to say anyfing against our friend ‘ere.’ He then laid a comforting hand on the shoulder of the failed feeler. ‘It were ‘e who were brave enough to volunteer, and it were ‘e who succeeded once and very nearly succeeded a second time. Who amongst us could say that we would be more successful, given the same circumstances? No,’ he shook his head. ‘I say we should be thankful that we ‘ave such a brave colleague amongst us.’
The chairman cast his eyes around the assembly and could see that everyone agreed, all of them were nodding their heads and a few murmurs of support were heading the feeler’s way. He let out a slow breath of annoyance, a suitable punishment had flashed into his mind, albeit to an important member of the group, but the support given to him now put a spanner into the works. He would have to appear to agree with them.
‘Gentlemen, I wish a show of hands on this. Are we agreed that no further action is required?’
All hands immediately shot up into the air.
‘Then, that is so agreed,’ he announced, with an air of disappointment. We may now move on to the next part of the agenda, gentlemen — our next target.’
He felt concerned that so far no one had claimed responsibility for setting fire to Stackhouse Lane Watch-House. He expected that someone or some group might have issued a statement or something, but there had been nothing, not even a whisper. Why, if someone had an agenda, did they not issue a claim? Could it have something to do with the reforms he’d planned for the Police Force? The new departments he wanted to introduce; women constables? There must be dissenters with such a radical move, and he knew that it involved a feeler somewhere. All those old feelers were used to just one way of working — perhaps that was the true reason.
MacGillicudy sat at the desk in his office and stared at the wall, his mind churning everything over. He’d heard about what had happened last night at Pendon and had seen the results downstairs when he came in this morning: limping and battle-damaged feelers were everywhere. One feeler looked and smelled particularly feminine, with shaved eyebrows and a really strange haircut. Under normal circumstances, he would have found it amusing, but it wasn’t normal now. His lips formed into a snarl as he turned his mind back to where it should be and he picked up the paperweight that kept his papers from blowing away every time the door opened. He pulled his arm back and then hesitated at the point of no return: his meaning to hurl the little lump of glass against the wall opposite, smashing it to smithereens. He didn’t, instead he slowly lowered his arm and replaced it, patting it gently as if a loyal pet. He couldn’t be so mean as to take out his frustrations on an inanimate object, far better to take out his anger on something that deserved to receive his full and undivided attention, namely the perpetrators who were probably sitting downstairs at this very minute discussing their strategy for the next instalment of terrorism.
A feeler with an army background; now, how many of them were in the force? He kept thinking about it, but thinking about it just meant that you were thinking about it, not doing something about it. The time had come to start doing, and he knew where he could start the doing straight away. The personnel files: every feeler had a file, and within the files are background notes, information that might bring him just that little bit closer.
The files were in the cellars, deep in the bowels of Scooters Yard, where very few ventured down. Occasionally, a sergeant would step cautiously into the tomb-like warren to slide a piece of paper into a folder, but the place was silent and dusty with a heavy stillness, indicating something large and dangerous lurking unseen in the shadows. It resembled a crypt, with passages linking like a spider’s web, a veritable maze of tunnels with rooms of varying sizes.
MacGillicudy held up his lantern and entered the cellar, the door behind creaking ominously before dully thudding home. He took a deep breath and then descended the stone steps, the darkness swallowing the light.
The sound of his footfall on the flagstone floor seemed to echo along the passageways, shooting off down one tunnel with the noise returning from an altogether unexpected direction. It was disconcerting to say the least.
He eased forward and headed directly to the chambers where the current files were stored. The chambers where they kept the paperwork were, in the bad old days of the Morris Council, more of the torture variety. Old records had indicated that some very unsavoury activities had once taken place down here. Scooters Yard had been built on the foundations of the previous law enforcement agency, the basement and cellars being the only thing left of the dreaded building once known as “The Jiggery-Pokery” — certainly some jiggery occurred, but an awful lot more pokery.
MacGillicudy looked at the files with dismay. There were just too many for him to go through on his own. Stacks of files, all of them with tan coloured covers and all piled on top of one another. He looked closer and found an element of organisation, each roughly in alphabetical order. He remembered the days when he had to come down here to slip the bits of paper between the covers and he came to the conclusion that his system had been much better. He sniffed. In truth, his system was much the same and as he really couldn’t be bothered to spend the time going through everything, his filing system resulted in a lot of bits of paper finding their way into the wrong files. Now he would have to think. Somebody would soon notice if he came down here every day; it would raise suspicions and then the tongues would surely wag. Pretty soon, everyone in Scooters Yard would know he came down to search for something. His mind slipped into another gear. The cellars were underground, deep underground, and there happened to be a minority group within the city who liked being deep underground. Nobody except the sergeant responsible ever came down, and, now being Commander MacGillicudy, he could stop the said sergeant from coming down. He smiled. The place was a risk, a danger to health and nobody should be exposed to the dangers until it had been properly checked out; and as in all the cities in all the universes, bureaucracy meant that it could take months to set the ball rolling.
He would have to speak to Cornwallis: as a member of the Assembly and part of the bureaucracy, he would know who to speak to, to not set the bureaucratic wheels in motion, so to speak. He would know the person who would not get off their arse even though the Commander of the Police asked him to shift his bloody arse. Appearances were everything. The added advantage being that Cornwallis had become really friendly with the dwarfs. Now, where would Cornwallis be at this time of day?
MacGillicudy strode through the door of the Stoat which appeared to be bursting at the seams. It may have been chilly outside but a nice warm feeling enveloped him like a soft overcoat of the fur variety as soon as he entered the establishment: soft and snuggly and very very comfortable. Eddie the landlord tried to organise the serving-girls as the bar became overcrowded with punters, eager to partake of the delights on offer.
The commander looked around and then elbowed his way through the throng. Someone at the back had a fiddle and played a catchy little ditty accompanied by an expert on the tin whistle. Without knowing why, MacGillicudy’s foot started tapping out the rhythm and he began to dance. He had an awkward moment when he lost his balance, his feet deciding to do one thing while his mind did something else; the power of the music: a jig from Aerlonde, the green isle across the water way out west, did that to most people. The Morris couldn’t come close to this music, theirs being banal and boring and so tedious as to make anyone hearing it reach for the nearest noose in which to hang themselves. This jig had elbows, this jig could sharpen knives — this jig had soul.
He spotted Frankie first as the music fo
rced those nearest to get to their feet and start dancing in a most peculiar way, arms held rigidly down by their sides while their legs and feet turned into a blur of movement. Everyone got into the swing of it, with each individual doing his or her own version of the strange dancing style, nobody could do otherwise and nobody cared that you looked a complete twonk doing it.
Rose got up next and joined some of the other women as they all started bouncing on their toes, all in a line, which became disconcerting to say the least — because, even though they were lost to the music, they initiated a chest-high wave effect which had a very interesting effect on many of the patrons.
MacGillicudy found Cornwallis talking to Isabella, who had decided, despite her impending descent into motherhood, that she wanted to have some fun too.
‘Afternoon, Isabella, Jack,’ he yelled above the noise. ‘Must say that the music brings the place alive.’
‘It certainly does, Jethro,’ replied Cornwallis, indicating a chair. ‘Nothing like a bit of a hooley to get things going.’
Frankie and Rose and all the other dancing punters began to pin-ball into each other; at other times, this would, as sure as eggs is eggs, result in a bar fight of epic proportions, but not when the music played. Everyone laughed and yelled in their carousing, enmity forgotten, as the fiddler and the whistler made the magic together.
Cornwallis caught hold of a serving-girl and ordered the beers, so by the time an exhausted Frankie and Rose returned to their seats, four fresh beers and a lemon soda for Isabella were sitting on the table.
‘You can’t help but go with the flow,’ remarked Frankie, taking a long slurp. ‘Shakes off the dust and gets the heart pumping, does that.’ He put his glass down and patted Isabella’s bump. ‘Hey, the little fella likes the tune; got his own little hooley going on in there.’
Isabella smiled. ‘Do you think I hadn’t noticed? Anyway, it might not be a fella; it might be a little girl.’
‘I don’t care what we get,’ said Frankie, leaning forward and kissing the bump. ‘You having fun in there?’ he yelled into her stomach. ‘We Kandalwick’s have always had a good sense of rhythm, you know… ow! I just got kicked in the fizzog!’
‘Serves you right for yelling at the poor little thing,’ said Isabella, chuckling.
MacGillicudy leant in towards Cornwallis’ ear, cupped his hand and began to talk. Cornwallis pursed his lips and then nodded as the words fed in.
‘It’s the only way to do it without raising suspicion,’ added MacGillicudy.
‘I’m sure Goodhalgan will go along with it, but who’s going to go through the files?’
‘I thought that you, Frankie and Rose might agree to do it. I can’t risk getting a feeler to do it. Ye gods, what’s the world coming to, when you can’t trust a feeler.’ He banged his hand down hard on the table in dismay.
Cornwallis thought for a moment and then turned around to Rose. He spoke into her ear and a grin spread across her face. She nodded vehemently, and then replied, before wrapping her arms around his neck and kissing him hard and long on the lips.
As soon as he disentangled himself from Rose, Cornwallis turned back to MacGillicudy. ‘We might have come up with a better idea, Jethro.’
They talked through the idea between all of them, outlining the pros and the cons. In the background, the music played on, getting louder as the afternoon turned to evening and the beer flowing like a mountain stream, fast and furious as it cascaded down through the rocks. A little drum added to the sound, held in the hand and played by flicking a wrist that held a little stick. The beat seared into the brain and forced the head to nod in accordance with the timing. All it needed now was a dark heavy beer with a foaming head, drawn over minutes instead of seconds. Cornwallis had tasted one once, a long time ago in a pub owned by an immigrant from Aerlonde. It tasted divine, he remembered, and he implored Eddie to start stocking some of it; but Eddie decided that as a Gornstock bred landlord, he would sell only Gornstock beer; a wasted opportunity that indicated a blinkered life. The black stuff was pure gold.
Isabella began to feel tired as the evening wore on, so Frankie reluctantly finished his pint and behaved like the perfect gentleman, helping Isabella on with her coat and escorting her home without even a moan of disappointment. The bump lead the way, still kicking in time to the music.
‘He’s changing,’ observed Rose, as Frankie and Isabella left the Stoat. ‘He’s starting to behave like a proper man.’
Cornwallis gave her a wry look. ‘What do you mean by that?’
‘I mean he’s taking his responsibilities seriously now. The baby’s nearly here so he’s morphing into a father. You wait until he holds the little bundle in his arms; you’ll see the transformation complete then.’
‘Am I not the perfect gentleman, then? I mean: my upbringing, my charm, my intelligence, my undeniable good looks, my money. What’s not to like about me?’
Rose pulled a face. ‘Jack, you know perfectly well that I love you as you are. You’re not perfect, I grant you, but I like your rough edges and when we eventually have a little bundle ourselves, I will be all the more in love with you. Your money doesn’t come into the equation. Just your charm and good looks will do for now — the money will come in handy later though,’ she added playfully.
MacGillicudy finished his pint and stood up too. ‘It’s time I went as well. I’ve got a police force to run and I can’t do that when I’ve got a hangover. I’ll leave that little business with you, then, Jack. See if you can get the little buggers to agree to it.’
‘You’re being species now, Jethro, referring to them as little buggers. You may be right, but at the end of the day you need their help.’
‘I do, and I will appreciate it. All I’m doing is having a little fun at my expense. I have more respect for dwarfs than most of the bastards I meet that call themselves human. Most of them are untrustworthy shits. You know where you are with dwarfs, they call a spade a spade and not a flat-bladed device with a wooden handle that can be inserted into the ground with a tap on the rim with a stoutly booted foot to integrate it within the soil for the purposes of cultivation.’
Cornwallis nodded in agreement. ‘I know just what you mean.’
Rose rose and planted a kiss on the cheek of MacGillicudy. ‘I’ll speak with you tomorrow when I’ve sorted everything out. I’m really looking forward to this.’
MacGillicudy couldn’t do anything but smile, a kiss and a promise from Rose that she would see him tomorrow; if only he was younger, and better looking, and had more money — and if Cornwallis wasn’t in the picture…
CHAPTER 12
Mags and Hobs were brewing up another cup of tea when the door opened and in walked Dewdrop and Beryl. The two ambulance men smiled at one another: they knew they would go home later with more money in their pockets than when they arrived at work. Cards became a habit, and then before long, a drug: these feelers just wouldn’t admit that they were crap at cards and addicted just the same.
‘Come on,’ said Dewdrop impatiently. ‘I need to get my money back. What’s the game today, boys?’
‘Same as always,’ replied Mags, walking into the crew-room and grinning. ‘You ready for some more punishment?’
‘What’s the limit?’
‘Whatever you’ve got in yer pocket, laddie.’
Dewdrop grinned; he reckoned he knew Mags and Hobs’ game now. He’d brought nine dollars with him today, and he knew that Beryl had another wad on him. ‘Only if you can match it.’
‘Oh, we can match it, whatever it is. Ain’t that right, Hobs?’
Hobs walked into the crew-room with a couple of mugs and placed them down on the table; he straightened, and then re-lit the rollie stuck on his lip, coughing as the smoke hit the lungs, a big long rattling cough in an attempt to clear the gunge. The two feelers watched in trepidation as Hobs cleared his chest, just in case a bit of green came flying out. ‘I reckon so, Mags. Even though we get piss poor pay, I reckon we can just
about scrimp enough together.’
Beryl looked askance at Hobs. Dewdrop and he had been discussing their game as they walked the streets and felt that they should work together, secret signals and such. Their big mistake was to play as individuals the last few times. This time they agreed that they would do the same as Mags and Hobs, and play together, sharing the winnings out between them. They had worked out various little signals so they could get some idea of each other’s hand. It had worked in practise, but now they were to use it for the first time in earnest. But, looking at their adversaries, he wasn’t quite so sure that it was such a good idea after all.
‘You want tea? You know where the kettle is, if yer do,’ said Mags.
Dewdrop and Beryl hurried to get their brew and when they returned, Hobs leant forward and grabbed the grubby cards, shuffling them expertly before dealing out the hands. Dewdrop and Beryl exchanged knowing glances and then sat down too. They each rolled a ciggie and then took a slurp of tea. They were ready now; let the game begin.
An hour later, they left the ambulance depot and began walking down the street. Neither of them said a word as they got into step, each of them lost in his own thoughts. They turned a corner and looked at each other, sighed, and then continued. When they entered the depot, they had fifteen dollars between them — now they had nothing. Cleaned out yet again, and the greed did it. At one point, they were three dollars up and knew they should have called it a day, but they went for the big one, and, not surprisingly, it went. Fifteen dollars! Nearly a week’s pay — gone in a flash.
They had entered the ambulance depot at dusk, but now the only light emanated from the street lamps lining the road, an eerie glow, rendered even more eerie as fingers of mist swirled around like a ghostly cloak waving in the air — what made it worse, in order to save money, only every third lamp had been lit.