The Empty Grave (Lockwood & Co. #5)(54)

‘George will be at home, I should think,’ Lockwood said easily. ‘Probably making one of his chicken-and-sweetcorn pies. He’s really very domesticated.’

Sir Rupert smiled approvingly. ‘Sounds scrumptious. I must pop round to Portland Row sometime.’

‘Please do,’ Lockwood said. ‘I’d love that.’

‘Goodnight, then.’

‘Goodnight.’

We pattered swiftly down the steps and set off up the Strand.

‘One day,’ Lockwood said, ‘I’m clearly going to have to kill him. Not now, but sometime soon.’

The two Soho jobs turned out to be fairly minor: a Lurker in an apartment above a Chinese restaurant, and a Bone Man in an alley just off Wardour Street. Both were easy to constrain, but it took time to locate the Sources (an antique paper fan and a worn sandstone milepost respectively) and get them safe and sealed. We didn’t get back to Portland Row until shortly before midnight. There was a light showing in the living-room window.

‘Looks like George is waiting up with his results,’ Lockwood said. ‘Told you he wouldn’t be able to hold it in.’

I smiled. ‘Let’s go and put him out of his misery.’

We opened the door. Holly stood in the hall by the coat rack, one hand holding onto the coats as if she needed their support. Her posture was odd, both rigid and subtly out of kilter. She looked at us. She didn’t say anything. Her face was taut, stricken.

We stopped at the threshold. It was suddenly a new night, a different one. We had passed from one to the other, and I didn’t know where I was.

‘Holly?’

‘You need to come. There’s been an incident.’

A dead weight swung from my spine. My legs were water. I knew.

‘George?’ Lockwood said.

‘He was found in the street. He’s been attacked. Hurt.’

Lockwood’s voice didn’t sound like his at all. ‘Is he all right?’

‘No, he isn’t.’ The tiny shake of the head made the world tilt under me. ‘Lockwood,’ Holly said, ‘it’s bad.’





14




Some months before, Lockwood and I had walked together through a gate made of stockpiled Sources, where ghosts screamed in a perpetual whirlwind and the air was deathly cold. We’d stepped through it and out into another world. This was a place superficially the same as ours, but different; a place where normal rules did not apply. The transition had been instant, sickly and disorientating, and the effects were almost fatal.

Those experiences were nothing to the dislocation I felt now.

The hall looked ordinary, but the colours were wrong, and the objects in the room kept slipping out of position. Holly was both close and very far away. She was talking; her voice boomed in my head like a ship’s horn, but it was also too faint to hear.

George.

George.

George.

‘Where is he? What happened?’ Someone else was speaking. I thought it was Lockwood, but the rush of blood in my ears was like a flood tide carrying me elsewhere. I fought against it, paddled furiously back into the present moment. Like Holly, I needed to clutch at something. I jammed my fingers against the wall.

‘St Thomas’s Hospital,’ Holly said. ‘It was a night-cab driver who found him. You know that guy, Jake, who we use a lot? He was turning down the end of Nightingale Walk. Just by chance, Lockwood, he was taking a shortcut. If he hadn’t been, if he hadn’t been there, Lockwood, there’d have been no one with George until dawn. And then—’

‘So Jake found him,’ Lockwood interrupted. ‘I get that. Where was he? What exactly had happened?’

‘He was lying on the edge of the pavement, half in the gutter, and at first Jake thought’ – Holly gulped back tears – ‘thought he was just a pile of old clothes that someone had dumped there, Lockwood. A pile of old clothes! Then he recognized George’s jacket. He said he was sure that George was … At least, there was so much blood, he couldn’t imagine how he could possibly be—’

‘Blood?’ I said. My hand was clamped over my mouth. ‘Blood? Oh no …’

‘How was he lying?’ Lockwood’s voice was unfamiliar; he fired the words out, forcing Holly to speak. ‘Was he face up, face down – what?’

Holly wiped her eyes. ‘He was face down, I think.’

‘He’d been beaten?’

‘I – I think so—’

‘He wasn’t conscious?’

‘No.’

‘Did he regain consciousness at any time?’

‘No. He was taken to the hospital. Jake called a night ambulance. Luckily there was one nearby. He went with them. George is there now.’

‘Any word on how he is?’

‘No.’

Lockwood was moving down the hallway. His face was stricken, his jaw clamped tight. He brushed past Holly like she wasn’t there. Then he stopped. ‘How did you hear about it?’ he said. ‘I thought you’d gone home.’

‘I had. Jake knows where I live; he’s driven me home before. He tried here first, then stopped by my place. I came back, waited for you—’

‘All right. I’m going to make some calls.’ Lockwood headed towards the kitchen.