The Empty Grave (Lockwood & Co. #5)(110)
We headed slowly, painfully, up the road.
The front of 35 Portland Row didn’t look too bad. Aside from the magnesium stains on the path, the brightly coloured DEPRAC tape wound messily across the gate and the CONTAMINATED ZONE warning signs plastered on the old black door, you might almost have thought nothing had happened there.
Lockwood pulled the tape off the gate, crumpled it into a sticky ball and cast it aside. He put his hand on the latch but didn’t push it open.
We stood outside in the street, looking up at the house.
Only one of the windows was obviously broken. But we could see the remains of boarding over the insides, and they all looked dark and hollow. There was salt and iron crusted on the path too, presumably left by Barnes’s team.
How many times in our careers had we stood like this outside a building rendered terrible by a haunting, where some violent incident or trauma had scarred it psychically down the years? How many times had we picked up our equipment bags and strolled purposefully in? We never delayed. Dawdling on the threshold wasn’t our thing.
All through the aftermath in the Strand and Scotland Yard we had maintained our composure and our energies. Now, suddenly, a great weariness descended on us. We stood frozen at the threshold of our own ravaged house.
It was Holly who drew herself up and pushed open the gate. ‘Come on,’ she said briskly. ‘Let’s get it over with.’
28
THE ULTIMATE BETRAYAL
OCCULT EXPERIMENTS IN HEART OF LONDON
PENELOPE FITTES INVOLVEMENT GOES BACK YEARS
Inside today: M. U. Barnes and A. J. Lockwood finally speak out
Extraordinary developments continued yesterday in the Fittes House Scandal, a full week after explosions rocked central London, killing company head Penelope Fittes and many others, and leading to revelations that have turned the psychical defence industry upside down. With Fittes House itself still under quarantine, and many employees remaining under arrest, DEPRAC officials have been slow to provide details of either the hidden laboratories discovered beneath the building or the secret raid that brought them to light. Now, in an exclusive interview with today’s Times of London, two key players in the raid, Mr Montagu Barnes of DEPRAC and Mr Anthony Lockwood of the celebrated Lockwood & Co. Agency, come forward to set the record straight.
‘In the basement levels of Fittes House,’ Mr Lockwood says, ‘we discovered evidence of unnatural occult experiments using forbidden psychic relics. Stockpiles of illegal explosives were also found, some of which were set off in the fighting that followed our arrival. We were attacked by fearsome ghosts – and by dangerous criminals, of whom Penelope Fittes was one.’
After a hurried funeral service yesterday, Ms Fittes’ body was interred in the crypt beneath the Fittes Mausoleum. Meanwhile several of her associates at the Sunrise Corporation and other major companies have been arrested. DEPRAC emphasizes, however, that the public need not fear a breakdown in our national paranormal defences. The Fittes and Rotwell agencies are being reconstituted as the United Psychic Response Agency, under the temporary control of Mr Barnes. ‘Rest assured,’ he says, ‘that this scandal, shocking though it is, will not deter psychical investigation agencies, big and small, from continuing to serve you in our ongoing battle with the Problem.’
According to Mr Lockwood, the scale of the occult activity at Fittes House was enough to threaten everyone in London. ‘I know that DEPRAC is investigating the nature of these wicked experiments,’ he says. ‘There’s no question, however, that Penelope Fittes was orchestrating them, and had been for many years. It’s a grievous betrayal of everything her grandmother stood for. Marissa Fittes will be turning in her grave.’
Full Barnes and Lockwood interviews: see pages 3–6
‘Decline and Fall’ – the Story of the Fittes Dynasty: see pages 7–11
Anthony Lockwood – ‘My Style’: see fashion pull-out, centre pages
‘What amazes me, Lockwood,’ I said, looking at him over the top of the newspaper, ‘is how much you manage to say in this interview, and how little. You and Barnes are as bad as each other now. I’m surprised you’re not growing a little bottle-brush moustache.’
Lockwood grinned at me from over his paint pot. He was standing by the window of our new spare bedroom, applying a top coat to the wall. A patch of sunlight bathed him, and since the paint was white, and he wore a new white shirt, and it was a particularly sunny morning, the effect was enough to make you shield your eyes. ‘I know what you mean, Luce,’ he said. ‘But you’re being harsh. Most of it’s accurate enough, in its way.’
I folded the newspaper neatly (George would want it for our casebook) and went back to my own painting. ‘Oh, it’s all kind of right,’ I said, ‘and yet somehow the truth manages to wriggle out of view. Penelope was bad! Technically true. But no mention of Marissa and how her wicked spirit ran the show. Unnatural experiments! True again. But nothing about the spirit-gate in the basement, or journeys to the Other Side.’
‘That’s the deal we made, Lucy,’ Lockwood said. ‘Barnes was very persuasive. We know the reasons why. Hey, I think this last wall is almost done. How are you getting on outside, George?’
His voice echoed hollowly across the blank, bare walls of the spare room. The brand-new door swung open, and George looked in. His bruises were beginning to fade, but he still bore the marks of his beating and – like all of us who had spent time beyond the spirit-gate – he moved more slowly than usual. He wore the new pair of glasses he had bought that week, slightly smaller and less round than his previous pair. Even I had to admit they were almost stylish. Right now, however, their urbane effect was blunted by his enormous, paint-spattered dungarees. These were of remarkable and sinister bagginess, revealing untold acreages of George whenever he bent over or made sharp turns. He too held a brush; he was in the middle of undercoating the door frame on the landing.