The Empty Grave (Lockwood & Co. #5)(65)

‘Oh, is that it?’ the skull said. ‘I was enjoying that. Bit of senseless violence does wonders for morale. You should break in somewhere every night. There are heaps of old people’s homes in London. Let’s choose another one tomorrow.’

Kipps and Holly picked their way among the debris in the corridor to join me on the landing. Lockwood had gone downstairs to check on the crumpled body of the secretary. A power pack on the man’s back was spurting intermittent bright blue sparks.

I looked down through the shattered banisters. ‘Is he dead?’

‘No.’

‘Don’t think any of them are,’ Kipps said.

Below me, Lockwood stood up slowly. He nudged a limp hand aside with his boot and stepped past the secretary without another glance. He ascended the stairs, pale-faced, dusty, torn of coat, rapier in hand. Only on reaching the landing did he reattach it to his belt.

‘Can we go now, please?’ Holly asked in a small voice.

Lockwood nodded. ‘Definitely. But first we need to pay another visit to that storeroom upstairs.’

It was shortly after two a.m. when we arrived back at Portland Row. It was silent in the house; nothing could be heard from George or Flo.

Lockwood held a heavy bag containing certain items we’d taken from the storeroom. He lowered it onto the kitchen table, then pulled off his balaclava. There was blood on his face. He scratched at his flop of hair. ‘Check the front, Hol,’ he said. ‘See if anyone’s watching the house. Balaclavas off, everyone. Gloves too. We’ll need to get rid of these.’

We threw the balaclavas and gloves down by the door. Kipps took off his ruined jacket and chucked it on the pile. Holly came back from the living room.

‘Can’t see anyone out there,’ she said.

Lockwood nodded. ‘Good enough.’

We stood in semi-darkness. The smell of smoke rose from our tattered clothes. Our faces and hands were bruised and bloodied, our expressions blank. The same thought was going through all our minds.

‘So … think they recognized us?’ Kipps said at last.

We all looked at Lockwood. He was very pale and there was a cut on one of his cheeks.

‘Probably not,’ he said. ‘But I’m afraid that they – or Fittes, or Sir Rupert Gale – will put two and two together very quickly indeed. They’ll know it was us for sure. And they’ll have to act on it. Which makes it only a matter of time before—’

‘Before what?’ I asked.

Lockwood smiled at me. ‘Before the end. But it’s not going to happen tonight. Which means we should get some sleep. That’s the first rule of any agency – rest when you can.’

All very true, but I didn’t sleep well or long. I was awake at dawn and walking around the quiet house. I thought Lockwood would be sleeping on the sofa in the living room, but the door was open, the room empty.

I looked into the library. The curtains were drawn back and light was coming in, pale white and cold. There was a smell of wood smoke, but the fire had burned out and the air was chilly. Lockwood sat in his favourite chair, his reading light shining over his shoulder. It made a small, harsh circle of brightness on his lap. The other pamphlet we’d stolen from the Orpheus Society lay face down between his hands. He had his eyes half open, and was staring towards the window.

I sat beside him on the arm of the chair and switched off the light. ‘Not been to bed?’ I asked.

He shook his head. ‘I’ve been reading my parents’ last lecture.’

I waited. If he wanted to tell me, he would.

‘Ghost Lore among the Tribes of New Guinea and West Sumatra,’ he said. ‘A presentation given to the members of the Orpheus Society by Celia and Donald Lockwood. That’s what it says on the frontispiece, Lucy. Word for word. Spells it out nice and clear. It was their calling card, if you like. They’d wanted to join the society. That nice man, the secretary, even complimented me on their talk when we went there last year.’

I had a vision of that white-haired thing on stilts, the screaming face, the slashing claws. ‘You know, maybe it’s best they never joined,’ I said. ‘Not sure they’d have fitted in.’

Lockwood picked up the book gently. ‘I should apologize to you,’ he said. ‘To you, Hol and Quill, for what happened back there, just before those idiots attacked us. I’m sorry. I let you down.’

‘Not at all,’ I said. ‘You were—’

‘I was frozen,’ Lockwood said. ‘I went into shut-down. I’m your leader, and that’s not right. But I had an excuse,’ he added, ‘because I was very surprised by something. No, surprised isn’t the word. I suddenly understood a whole lot of things. They came in a rush, and rather overwhelmed me. And … well, I can show you what it was.’ He opened the little book, turned the yellowed pages. ‘It’s two things together, really,’ he said. ‘Most of this lecture is exactly what its title suggests. It gives an account of how the people of those places deal with ancestral spirits. There’s lots about how the bones of the dead are stored in special spirit-houses set away from the village, so they’re kept out of trouble. And how the shamans or witch doctors dress up in spirit-capes like the ones we’ve got upstairs, and go to the houses to consult the ancestors. That’s not so new. They talked about that in other papers, as you know. But then my mother and father home in on what they think is going on in those spirit-houses …’