The Empty Grave (Lockwood & Co. #5)(23)

We stood at the door, looking in. George indicated a row of dusty-looking green-glass bottles set out inside the chains. ‘These are what I found yesterday,’ he said. ‘Spirit-bottles to trap annoying or unwelcome ancestors. The old shaman would pop a Source inside – it was generally a bit of bone – seal it up, and – presto! – the ghost’s contained. The interior’s lined with iron, of course, to stop them getting out.’

Lockwood nodded. ‘Same sort of thing as the skull’s jar, then?’

‘Pretty much,’ George said, ‘only these are superior in a way, because you don’t get the horrid visuals. You know, I’m beginning to think that everything your parents brought back has some kind of psychic significance, Lockwood. Even the stuff hanging up downstairs. They were very good researchers. I think I would have liked them.’

‘I’m sure you would have.’

I was watching Lockwood’s face. As always when his family was mentioned, he remained outwardly calm. But his eyes lost focus for a moment; he was staring out at nothing, or perhaps into the past.

Celia and Donald Lockwood had been researchers into the folklore of ghosts, and their speciality had been the beliefs of far-off countries. Not only had they travelled to exotic locales, they had also shipped home many items of interest in giant crates. Some of this material had ended up decorating the walls of 35 Portland Row, but much of it was still in boxes, having arrived in Britain after the Lockwoods’ unexpected deaths.

When we began unpacking these boxes, we had at once unearthed two marvellous feathered cloaks, or spirit-capes, that had been worn by Indonesian shamans while conversing with their ancestors. Lockwood and I had discovered that the protective properties of these capes were not mere legend. They had shielded us when we walked the icy paths of the Other Side. Without them, we would certainly have died. One of these original capes was lost; the other remained with us, hidden in the storeroom in our basement, next to our supplies of Coke and beans and crisps.

‘The thing is,’ George went on, ‘half these bottles are cracked. We need to be very careful with them, for obvious reasons.’ He glanced at Lockwood. ‘If you want, we could take them to the furnaces. Might be the safest thing to do.’

‘No …’ Lockwood said. ‘They may come in useful. If they’re kept inside the chains, they should be safe enough.’

‘Well, don’t sneeze near them,’ George said. ‘That’s my advice. When you take all these objects together, it’s a cluster of spirits we’ve got right here. Imagine if they all got out.’

‘Yes, imagine …’ Lockwood’s glance lingered on his sister’s death-glow, hovering above the bed as it had for so many years. Then he turned off the light and closed the door.

We didn’t have any jobs scheduled for that evening. This was a good thing, as we needed to get ready for the La Belle Dame case the next day. During the afternoon Holly and I completed paperwork for our recent cases. Lockwood rang Mullet’s, and ordered a new rapier and chains. He seemed quieter and more subdued than usual; I thought our visit to Jessica’s room had perhaps affected him. George was off at the Archives and didn’t return. At supper time I fixed a hurried meal, re-heating one of George’s old stews from the freezer, and we ate it in the office.

I was tidying up in the kitchen when Lockwood peered round the door. George was still out. Holly had gone home. It was just Lockwood and me at Portland Row.

‘I was just heading out, Lucy. I wondered if you’d like to come along.’

‘On a case?’

‘Of a kind.’

‘You want to go now?’

‘If you’re not doing anything important.’

I so wasn’t. In seconds I’d joined him at the door. ‘You want me to get my rucksack?’ I said. ‘I can easily nip down.’

‘It’s OK. Your rapier should be fine. I’ll take my second-best one.’

So it wasn’t a tough ghost, then. We set off up Portland Row. ‘Are we going far?’

‘No. Not far.’

We walked east for a couple of blocks in the gathering dusk, then turned north towards the Marylebone Road. I wondered if we were going to hail a cab at the depot there, but before we reached the intersection Lockwood halted beside the rusted girdle of iron panelling that surrounded the Marylebone Cemetery.

‘Here?’ I said. It was a small abandoned cemetery, heavily salted and well-encased in iron.

‘Yes.’

‘I hadn’t heard about trouble here.’

He smiled slightly. ‘If you put your boot in the ivy just beside you, you’ll find a post you can stand on. Then you can catch hold of the top of the panels and swing yourself up. There’s a brick wall behind the iron. Look – I’ll show you.’

In moments he was standing, crouched and cat-like, just beyond the top of the panelling. ‘Think you can do that? If you reach out, I can help pull you over.’

My only reply was a snort. And I may not have been quite as nimble, and my scrambling may have been accompanied by a tad more swearing, but I was soon beside him, ten feet above the pavement, looking down into the dark-green amphitheatre of the overgrown cemetery.

We were standing on top of the cemetery’s original stone wall, concealed from outside by the iron panels. Away to our right burned the dull lights of the Marylebone Road. Below us, silence and shadow held sway. It was an old-style inner-city graveyard, where space had been at a premium. The headstones were set almost on top of each other, and were largely submerged beneath a thicket of brambles, with the tallest urns and angels cresting the foliage like boats on a turbulent green sea. Fingers of ivy clung to the inside of the boundary wall. Here and there old yews emerged like melting candles, joined to the thicket below by strings of ivy and trailing vines. The ground was choked. The cemetery had evidently been abandoned for some time.