The Empty Grave (Lockwood & Co. #5)(31)

‘Me? No.’

‘Because you haven’t got the relevant permit. Has he, Grieves?’

The officer to his left was particularly large. If you hung a uniform on a section of concrete pipe leaning against an outhouse wall the result would have possessed more intellectual zip. ‘No, sir.’

‘Even Grieves knows,’ Sir Rupert said, ‘and he scarcely recognizes his own name.’

‘I did pop in,’ George said, ‘while researching this Stratford case we’re on tonight, but I was turned away because – as you rightly said – I don’t have the correct permit. Now, though,’ he went on, ‘I’m carrying lots of heavy chains and I’d appreciate getting them to the theatre, rather than being held up talking to flea-bitten chancers like you.’

There was a slight pause in which the hidden mechanics of the afternoon moved slowly, silently towards disaster. ‘Chancer?’ Sir Rupert Gale said. He stepped closer. ‘Flea-bitten? Maybe I’m getting deaf in my old age, but—’

‘Holly,’ I said brightly, ‘wasn’t our appointment in Stratford for five p.m. exactly? We should be going.’

Holly had the jolly tones of a mother who had just discovered her toddler eating cat food on the floor of a friend’s kitchen. ‘Yes! Quite! Come along, George!’

George seemed reluctant to move.

‘Did you want to expand on your statement?’ Rupert Gale said.

‘I could,’ George said, ‘but why expend the energy? We all know what you are. You know it yourself.’ He took off his spectacles and rubbed them on his jumper. ‘Behind all the flounce and swagger, your moral shabbiness fascinates and appals you. You can’t take your eyes off it. Which is why you’re so crashingly dull. Oh, and I know the DEPRAC rules as well as you, and if you pick fights with accredited agents off about their appointed tasks, Barnes will have your tweedy backside hauled over hot cobblestones to Scotland Yard. So why not go off and hassle someone else?’ He held his glasses up towards the sun and tilted them, checking that any conceivable smudge had been removed. ‘Good. Sometimes I see so clearly, it almost frightens me.’ He put them back on and bent to his bag. ‘Lead on, Holly. Stratford, here we come.’

We walked away. The skin on the back of my neck prickled as we went; that was probably Sir Rupert’s gaze brushing against it. I kept expecting him to call out after us to stop, but the order never came.

None of us spoke for a full two blocks. Holly and I walked casually enough, rapiers swinging, but we moved to either side of George, like warders leading a condemned prisoner to a cell. We crossed a silent square, where fallen leaves lay on the paths. When we were in the open, where no one could spy on us, we stopped.

‘What do you think you were doing?’ Holly hissed. ‘Do you want us to be arrested?’

‘Do you want us to be beaten senseless?’

George shrugged. ‘He didn’t arrest us. He didn’t beat us.’

‘No thanks to you!’ I snarled. ‘He’s only looking for the slightest excuse.’

‘Right, and we didn’t give him one,’ George said. ‘What we did do was warn him off, which was something that needed to be done. I’m just alerting him that if he messes with us, he won’t have it all his own way.’ He looked at us as if that settled the matter. ‘Besides, did you hear how he spoke about Flo? That’s not on. Listen, we’re running late. If we hurry, we can just catch the tube.’

Tufnell’s Travelling Fairground was a short walk east of Stratford Station. Five minutes before we got there we could hear faint hurdy-gurdy music and smell hot dogs on the wind.

Perhaps, as Mr Tufnell had asserted, his business was doing well. But in the late afternoon, with the shadows lengthening, it didn’t radiate prosperity. The Palace Theatre itself was a hulking construction, standing alone on the edge of a stretch of waste ground. At one time it must have been impressive: it had a columned front reminiscent of a Roman temple, with carved figures above the pillars depicting tragic and comic scenes. But the concrete in the columns was cracked and broken, and half the carvings had gone. The main doors were boarded up. Entry to the building appeared to be from the field alongside, where many tents of faded colours had been erected, their canvas snapping in the wind. A makeshift iron fence, in which snack-food wrappers fluttered like trapped insects, surrounded the compound. A siren played a chintzy melody; this was the cue for closure of the fair. The last few sad-faced punters, their sticks of candyfloss held out before them like lepers’ bells, were shuffling homewards through the rusty gates.

Lockwood was standing just inside the gates, with Quill Kipps beside him.

‘Isn’t it fabulous?’ Kipps said as we joined them. ‘I’ve seen internment camps that look jollier than this.’

‘Didn’t know you were with us on this one, Quill,’ I said.

‘Nor did I. Bumped into Lockwood at Mullet’s. He said you might need help, and I didn’t have anything particular to do, so …’

I nodded, smiling. ‘Sure.’

Circumstances hadn’t been kind to Kipps, who had been ostracized by some of his former Fittes colleagues for helping us out once too often. This, combined with his naturally downbeat temperament, meant that a thin vein of resentment still ran through him, like a layer of bitter chocolate in one of George’s raspberry cakes. In addition, he had lost his Talents as he crossed into his early twenties. Despite the pair of goggles we’d given him, which allowed him to see ghosts, he knew the deprivations of age. These experiences had mellowed, even humbled him. Which, given that he was still as abrasive as a pair of wire-wool underpants, showed how insufferable he’d once been.