Graveyard Shift Page 15

  “She’ll be a major asset in the field one day,” he said. “We’re still undecided about how to put her talents to best use, but we’ll have a better idea when she learns to distinguish one voice from another.”

  He rifled through the cards, a grave expression deepening the Y on his pirate’s brow until his eyebrows met in the middle.

  “Not good. Very nasty. Oh dear,” he said as he read the last card. “Looks like you’ll have to join me tonight, Ben.”

  “OK. But what about this?”

  The telegraph rocked away, spitting out names and smoke.

  “We’ll draft someone in,” he said. “Don’t worry about it now. Get yourself ready while I talk to dispatch. I’ll meet you outside.”

  Pushing himself off the desk, he went out.

  The noise of the still-working telegraph chased me out a minute later. The smell of stale varnish followed me downstairs. As I stepped outside the main door and started down the steps, a figure moved out of dark cover across the alley, giving me a start when it spoke.

  “Ben? Is that you?”

  She took one tentative step forward, then hurried toward me. Light from the gas lamps fell across her face, but it still took me a second to place her.

  “Becky? What’re you doing here?”

  “What do you think? I followed you.” She looked anxiously around. “Ben, what is this place, and why is it night?”

  “There’s no time to explain. If they see you . . . I don’t know what they’ll do. How long have you been here?”

  “Seems like ages. I’m not sure. I found my way in, but then couldn’t find a way out. Where’d it go, that place between the walls?”

  I shook my head, trying to think. Mr. October would be out any minute.

  “I’ll walk you back,” I said. “The entrance is still there. You just have to know how to look.” We started across the cobbles to the far wall. “Listen. You’ve got to promise not to breathe a word of this. You can’t tell anyone, not even your friends.”

  “I won’t.” She dug in her heels, stopping halfway across the alley. “But I don’t want to leave, either. Now that I’m here, I want to know more.”

  “It isn’t up to me,” I said.

  “Then who?”

  “You should be going.”

  I took her arm, a little more firmly than I meant to. She brushed me away.

  “Becky, I’m serious.”

  “So am I.”

  “Yeah, but —”

  “Why shouldn’t I see?” She looked at the starlit sky, then at me. She wasn’t afraid; she was about to burst with excitement. “Besides, if I leave now, I won’t be able to tell you the news.”

  “It can wait.”

  “No, it can’t.”

  “Then hurry. What news?”

  “Hold on, it’s best if I show you.”

  She rummaged through her bag, picking out loose papers and tissues, pushing them back.

  “Where is it?” she said. “I know it’s here somewhere. You won’t believe it, Ben. I could’ve kicked myself when I found out. It’s all about —”

  The main door thumped behind us. Becky clutched at me, nearly dropping her bag. We turned to see Mr. October coming down the steps, still in the guise of the raggedy man, the pirate.

  Nests of shadows swarmed around his head as he strode toward us. His boots clicked and squeaked on the cobbles. With the streetlamps at his back, I was seeing him as I’d never seen him before: a sinister silhouette. Stopping short of us, he craned his upper body closer, then still closer until we were almost nose to nose.

  “What’s the meaning of this?” he said. His dark gaze skipped between me and Becky. “Shall I call the Vigilants, tell them we have an intruder?”

  “I . . . I can explain,” I mumbled.

  “You’d better. Do you know what happens to uninvited guests here? Can you imagine what happens to those who assist them?”

  My mouth went dry. For the first time ever in Mr. October’s company, I began to feel something like dread.

  Becky shrank from him with a whimper, hiding behind me.

  Mr. October’s eyes burrowed into us, brimming with darkness, unreadable.

  My heart lurched. I tried to inhale but couldn’t.

  Then he threw back his head and roared with laughter, howling at the moon.

  “Gotcha!” he said. “That’s four times now, young man. You fall for it every time, hook, line, and sinker. That’s why it’s so irresistible.”

  “Do that again and I’ll walk. I’ll quit.”

  “That’ll be the day.” Now he turned his eyes on Becky, studying her as if she were some strange undiscovered species. “So who’ve we got here?”

  “It’s my fault,” I interrupted. “Don’t be angry with her.”

  “Have you ever seen me angry?” He still looked more amused than anything. “Well, yes, fair enough, there are times when the work’s so intense I lose my temper. I’ve been known to hurl the odd fireball in anger . . . but my argument’s with others, not you.”

  “I know this man,” Becky whispered. Slowly loosening her hold on my arm, she straightened herself up to face him. “I’ve seen him before. I’d know him anywhere.” She was watching him with bewildered eyes. “But he didn’t look anything like this last time. He looked like . . .”

  “Very perceptive,” Mr. October said. “My, Ben, there’s so much talent at your school.”

  “You remember him from your great-gran’s funeral?” I said to Becky. “How come?”

  “Her gift isn’t like yours,” Mr. October said. “She senses but doesn’t see so clearly.” To Becky, he said, “It was a long time ago. In your case half a lifetime ago, in mine just a heartbeat. I stood with your grandmother at her burial service. And yes, I looked different then. I had on my mourning clothes.”

  “How . . . I mean, why . . .” Becky looked at me for answers, but she hadn’t fathomed the questions yet. “I mean . . . what were you doing there with my great-gran?”

  “Helping,” I said. “This is Mr. October, and that’s what he does. He helps — we help — the dead.”

  It took her a moment to absorb what I’d said. She fell back a couple of paces, openmouthed, and I could all but see the cogs turning behind her eyes.

  She recovered quickly, though, taking a breath before she spoke. “So you help them how?”

  “We provide for them, help them along to the next stage,” Mr. October said. “Some are ready as soon as the life force leaves them. Others, like your great-grandmother and Ben’s aunt, hide away and don’t come out until the very last minute. In fact, your great-gran was so late, she only just made the funeral, but it ended well.”

  The stunned look faded from Becky’s face. She nodded to herself, as if weighing everything up, coming to a decision.

  “OK,” she said, reaching back inside her bag. “In that case, if that’s the truth about what you do, you really have to see this.”

  “Sorry, there’s no time,” Mr. October said. “We’re already behind schedule. You’ll have to wait till later. Lu, where’s our transport?”

  I hadn’t seen Lu follow him out, but now she appeared behind him, hauling her rickshaw from its cover of shadows in front of HQ and pulling up alongside us.

  “Hi, Lu,” I said.

  “Hi, Wonder Boy.”

  “Is there room for three inside?”

  “Room for as many as you like,” she said. “Bigger, smaller, any size.”

  Becky looked at me askance. “What’s going on? What’s she mean?”

  “You’ll see. Lu used to be a contortionist. This vehicle was part of her act.”

  We scrambled inside under the canopy and squeezed shoulder to shoulder, Mr. October to my right and Becky to my left.

  “Wait a minute,” Becky said. “How’s this possible? It’s a single-seater, isn’t it? And what am I doing sitting in a rickshaw, anyway?”

  “Watch,” I said. “You wanted to know everything, so here’s your cha
nce. Just wait till she gets going — it’s a sight to see.”

  “Ready?” Mr. October called.

  “Ready,” Lu answered.

  “Then take it away!”

  And, gathering speed as she went, Lu ran straight for the wall, steering us toward the invisible gap.

  Well . . . if moving from daylight into nighttime in just a few steps seemed incredible, what happened next boggled my mind. It always did.

  “Oh my God,” Becky gasped, squashed tightly against me.

  It wasn’t the first time Lu had taken us from HQ. Mr. October called on her whenever the workload grew heavy, so I knew what to expect. But each time was as thrilling as the first, and when she hit the gap at full speed, I couldn’t help punching my knee and stifling a cry: Geronimo!

  From the alley, viewed from a certain angle, the space between the walls appeared nothing more than a paper-thin slit. From other angles you couldn’t see it at all. For the next few seconds it was like passing through the cool brickwork itself. There was only a drip-drip-drip and its echo and a narrow slice of brightness waiting straight ahead.

  The pressure dropped, making my ears pop the way they might on a train speeding through a tunnel, and then the light flooded over us. We were back in the midafternoon, serpentining between trinket and book stalls and street musicians.

  “What did I just see?” Becky said incredulously. “Did we really shoot through that tiny space at twenty-odd miles an hour?”

  Mr. October nudged my elbow, speaking quietly, for my ears only.

  “What do you think, Ben? Can you vouch for your friend? If not, I can wipe her memory. She’ll forget everything she’s seen and we can drop her off right here.”

  “She’s fine,” I said. “Just think: She found her own way to HQ, and not everyone can do that. And she remembered you from the funeral even though you had a different appearance then. She’s gifted that way. She’s OK, really she is.”

  That seemed to satisfy him and he settled back for the journey. Lu slowed as she turned onto Upper Street, awaiting instructions.

  “It’s a 19127, Lu,” he called. “Camden, and sharpish.”

  “OK!”

  A 19127, as Mr. October often said, wasn’t good. None of the numbers were good, exactly, but this wasn’t the easiest way to introduce Becky to the team, if she was going to be a part of the team from now on.

  At Chalk Farm underground station, Paul Butler, 34, had been hit by an approaching train after dropping his phone on the tracks and jumping down to retrieve it.

  Mr. October made us stay back from the platform edge — “A bit messy down there, don’t look” — while he entered the tunnel in search of Butler. Butler had actually died of shock, but no one besides us would ever know. When he’d seen the lights racing toward him, his heart gave out on the spot. His ghost had leapt clean out of his body and set off running before the train hit his still-standing corpse.

  Two minutes after Mr. October went looking for him, a bright light bloomed in the tunnel, and it wasn’t the light of another incoming train.

  “That means he found him,” I told Becky. “It means he’s OK. You’ll figure it out as you go.”

  The next stop was a nursing home, the first of two natural causes on our shift. Lottie Fraser, 86, had passed away peacefully in her sleep, but you never would’ve guessed by the way her angry soul was carrying on when we got there. She refused to believe it, refused to leave, and had taken to the TV lounge in protest.

  The lounge was as large as a tennis court. All around it, elderly guests slumbered in armchairs with their mouths wide open or nodded in front of game shows while Lottie besieged the place.

  Charging from chair to chair, she scattered magazines and newspapers to the floor, swatted teacups from saucers, tugged at the curtains and switched TV channels, which brought moans of protest from anyone still awake enough to notice. Nurses chased the trail of disorder back and forth, unable to fathom what was happening or where the poltergeist would strike next.

  “I ain’t going,” Lottie said fiercely to Mr. October. “I ain’t ready. My family’s visiting Sunday and I ain’t seen my granddaughter yet. Can I have one more week?”

  “You could if it were up to me,” Mr. October said. “Unfortunately, it’s not up to me. Let’s have a little chat about this, shall we?”

  While he escorted Lottie back to her room, I took Becky to wait outside where we wouldn’t attract attention.

  “He’s changed,” she said. “Now he looks like the old guy I remember with Gran. He’s got the same shabby suit and everything. What is he, a master of disguise?”

  “You’ll get used to that too. He changes all the time. Different personas for different occasions.”

  “So this is what you’ve been doing all this time?” She looked back at the home. “Can’t say I saw the old woman too clearly. I could see what she was doing in the lounge and I heard her well enough, but she looked a bit fuzzy round the edges.”

  “Things make more sense over time,” I said. “I didn’t see much myself until I met Mr. October. This probably seems a bit freaky to you.”

  “Not freaky exactly. It’s sad when people don’t know how to let go. Makes you want to help, and I can see why you do. You could’ve told me, though. I would’ve understood. You could’ve trusted me.”

  I knew that now even if I hadn’t before. “About this news you wanted to tell me . . .”

  “Oh yeah, hang on to your hat. You’ll never believe it, but —”

  She was interrupted by Mr. October bursting out through the doors, rubbing his hands together.

  “No dillydallying, you two. Took me so long to make the old girl see sense that we’re even further behind schedule now. All aboard the rickshaw!”

  “Later,” Becky said as we ran for our seats.

  Our next stop was Hyde Park.

  The homeless man had been dead a few minutes when we found him. Even when you had a name and reference number, tracking people of no fixed abode was never easy. They didn’t often show up in hospitals — most often we found them under bridges and inside shop doorways.

  His scraggy hair was plastered across his face and there were holes in the knees and elbows of his clothes. He wore one black shoe, one brown, and no socks. A yellow dog ran around the body, yapping at his ghost, which sat on the back-rest of a bench, looking down.

  “8364, hypothermia,” Mr. October read from his card. “Are you Judd Gardner, sir?”

  The man didn’t look up when he answered. “I used to be, mate, but that was a long time ago.”

  In Hampstead we visited the home of a former TV personality, a stocky man with a chubby joker’s face and a badly fitting toupee. You got the impression he meant everything he said to be funny. He’d spent the afternoon drinking alone, and after one martini too many he’d decided to take a dip in his swimming pool, climbing the high diving board fully clothed, forgetting the pool had been drained for cleaning.

  He was in a quandary when we turned up, unable to believe what he’d done. He’d had a comeback planned for next year, a stand-up tour and a new game show. He insisted on showing us highlights from the TV programs that had made him famous. He had them all on DVD, but his disembodied hands couldn’t pick up the remote.

  It took all of Mr. October’s powers of persuasion to convince the man his career was over. There’d be no show and no tour dates next year after all. While they talked things over in the space-age kitchen of his luxury house, Lu and Becky and I flopped on the sofa in his living room and watched his old programs. They were pretty good all in all, but some of his jokes weren’t as funny as he seemed to think, and Lu didn’t get them at all.

  After ten minutes, a wave of phosphorescence flashed down the hall, startling Becky out of her seat and prompting Lu to run out to ready the transport.

  “I suppose he’ll be in all the papers tomorrow,” Becky said as we settled into the rickshaw again. “Maybe even on the news tonight.”

  “He l
ived alone and didn’t have many visitors,” Mr. October said. “He won’t be found for another three days when they come to clean the pool.”

  Becky was horrified. “Shouldn’t we call and report it?”

  “I’m afraid we can’t. We’re not allowed to interfere with what’s written.”

  “But that’s terrible. . . .”

  She stared straight ahead as Lu steered us up the driveway and out into traffic. Not everything about the job sat easily with her, then. She didn’t speak for a long while after that.

  When we answered a 3626 on Edgware Road, she remained seated while we ran inside an Indian restaurant off the main street. Darren Hayes, 23, had staggered inside clutching his chest after an incident with a knife two blocks away. We led him quietly through the kitchen and out to the alley while the team of paramedics who’d arrived just after us went to work on his body on the restaurant floor.

  After that, a natural causes in Stepney, another at Homerton Hospital (technically speaking, a disconnected life support machine), and an incident in Walthamstow involving a burglar, a rottweiler, a rolling pin, a frying pan, and a marble chopping board.

  We were nearing the end of the shift now. Darkness had settled over the city. After our last call, a 7325 in Hoxton, Lu pulled to the curb alongside a brightly lit grocery store on Essex Road. They were dropping us off before returning to HQ, and I was climbing out when Becky pulled me back.

  “Hang on a minute,” she said. “Can I have my say now? I’ve been trying to tell you since before we set off. Will you listen this time?”

  She took a newspaper clipping from her bag and smoothed it out on her knee.

  “I don’t know how I missed this,” Becky said. “It’s been under our noses all this time.” Her urgent look traveled back and forth between Mr. October and me. “Ben, it’s about Mitch and Molly, the fire children. I think I know where they are.”

  The clipping came from the paper she’d shown me at the crypt the previous week. Molly and Mitch stared out from the photograph, and beneath the headline, the story ran:

  A house fire in Hackney in which two young children died is not being treated as suspicious, police have confirmed.