The Amulet

by William Meikle

  "Well, Dunlop, we have our treasure," Johnson said.

  I fought down an urge to punch the man, and hurried to the rest of the sarcophagi. There was much to preserve before the desert air did its work.

  * * *

  The phone rang, and I jumped. The book dropped to the floor and I soaked my left leg with spilt whisky.

  It was my client.

  "Mrs. Dunlop. Is something wrong?" I asked.

  "I wondered if you had made any progress," she said. This time I didn't need to see her eyes-I heard the lie. She wanted to ask me something else entirely, and my clients were not in the habit of calling me after midnight. I started to pay attention. This case had depths I hadn't started to fathom.

  "I've been doing some background work," I said. "I'll know more tomorrow."

  "And everything is okay?" she asked. "Nothing out of the ordinary?"

  Strangely I thought of the typewriter in my office. She had known of that.

  Did she also know about the presence that I had felt in the bedroom?

  "No," I said, then a thought struck me. "But if any ancient Arab sorcerers turn up I'll be sure to let you know."

  There was a sharp intake of breath at the other end of the line.

  "Tread carefully, Mr. Adams. We'll do what we can to help you, but we're relying on you to find the amulet for us."

  "We," I said. "You and Mr. Dunlop?"

  She cleared her throat.

  "Yes. Arthur is here. I couldn't lie to him, and I told him about the burglary."

  Another lie. She was storing them up.

  "I'll phone you tomorrow," I said.

  "I'll look forward to it," she said, and hung up on me.

  After that the book didn't appeal. I turned on the television and watched a very old hospital drama while smoking cigarettes, drinking whisky, and trying not to think about Mrs. Dunlop. After a while the weeping and wailing from the television forced me to get up to turn it off, and I stood by the window, watching the raindrops find their way down the glass and not seeing the life in the city beyond.

  * * *

  I nearly had a life once. It was back when Doug and I were just getting to know each other, and Liz was still alive.

  I was a student-Organic Chemistry and Molecular Biology with a view to majoring in the biochemistry of cancerous cells. I managed to hold down the studies, and had plenty of fun between all the work. Liz and I had met the previous summer...one of those thunderbolt things that blew us both together. We were living together within a week, and had been inseparable ever since. We studied together, discussed our studies together, and partied together.

  That all changed during my third year of studies. Although marriage had never been mentioned, we were pretty much a couple, and my old bed was seeing plenty of action. The night my life changed-the 30th of January-started like many others. Doug and I left another dull chemistry lecture and had a few pints in the Student Union. I was several sheets into the wind when I got back to the flat, and that was always a recipe for disaster.

  She wanted to talk, I didn't want to listen, and a blazing row ended as it usually did...I slammed the door behind me as I went back to the bar.

  I got involved in a darts match against a team from Edinburgh University, and I was having fun, even although I was so bad at the game that I was the one who ended up buying most of the drinks. At some point in the evening the barman called me over and offered me the phone handset.

  "It's your girlfriend," he said. "She says she needs you right now."

  The drink had spoken for me.

  "Tell her she needs her head examined. I'll be back when I'm good and ready."

  And so help me, I'd enjoyed myself. While she sat in an empty flat and decided on the future course of our lives, I enjoyed myself. I drank a lot of beer, I sang bawdy songs about the Mayor of Bayswater's daughter-and the hairs on her dickie-die-doh-and only have a vague memory of getting back to the flat.

  I'll never forget the next hour, though.

  I wandered into the kitchen, bumping into tables and knocking over chairs. That took a minute.

  I put on the kettle, and stood beside it while it boiled. That took three minutes.

  I took the coffee into the front room and watched the end of the late night news. Ten minutes.

  The beer told my bladder it needed to get out. I put down my coffee and got out of the chair-slowly-I wasn't very steady. One minute.

  She was in the bath, and she had used my razor on her wrists, her ankles and her throat. She hadn't wanted to make any mistakes. This wasn't a cry for help-she'd tried that earlier and I hadn't answered. For the past fifteen minutes she'd been dying.

  By the time the police arrived I was nearly sober, but after they found her note and showed it to me, I got drunk again quickly. She had been three months pregnant.

  Doug took me in that night. It was he who cleared out the flat and got me somewhere new to live, and it was he I leaned on through the funeral as I tried to avoid the tear-stained eyes of Liz's family. But he couldn't persuade me to stay on in my studies.

  The road from there to here was long, and well traveled. I stood by the window and let self-pity take over, pity for lost opportunities and lost loves. I was still there when the sun started to come up.

  * * *

  It was too early to start hitting the streets. I made some coffee and went back to Dunlop's book. Old Joe had opened up the paper shop downstairs, and it was only a matter of time before the strains of 'Just one Cornetto' wafted my way again. But the coffee revived my spirits, and the book stole my thoughts away again, this time to the Mediterranean and a stifling hot day eighty years before.

  * * *

  It was nearly a fortnight before I saw the old Arab again, and then it was in a place where I never expected him.

  Things had been hectic since Johnson's find. Young Campbell and I had worked non-stop; cataloguing sarcophagi, desiccated bodies, and more golden statuary than even Carter had managed. Johnson had somehow magicked up a coterie of journalists, and even the London Times had managed to get a representative on site.

  Johnson was desperate to get his 'trophies' back to Glasgow, and some items were being boxed and shipped even as we catalogued them. As I said, we were very busy, so it was some time before I noticed that the amulet I had seen was nowhere on the manifests. It wasn't until we were on the boat and leaving the docks at Alexandria that I managed to catch up with Johnson.

  He laughed when I asked for the piece.

  "Oh no. Not that one. That's my reward for my patronage, and my promise for the future."

  "I'll expose you when we get home," I said, but even as I said it I knew that it was an empty threat. Johnson was not going to worry about the opinions of some old archaeologist. Not when he was going to be front-page news.

  Young Campbell was enraged when I told him. I found him pouring over the large collection of gold serpents we had found.

  "Professor," he said to me, "I think we have something here. I think there was a serpent cult. Not just that, I think their main god was serpentine."

  I had to agree with him. Too much of what we had found pointed in that direction. There was one particularly squamous sculpture with a multitude of snake-like heads that made my skin crawl just to think about it. That thought also brought to mind the shadows that had seemed to follow the old Arab. I told Campbell about my conversation with our sponsor.

  "It cannot be allowed," he said, his face flushed. The bruising around his head was only now beginning to fade, but it still lent a yellow cast to his skin. "It clearly says in the contract for the dig that all finds will be the property of the museum."

  "Aye," I said. "But what can I do?"

  A sly look came over the young man's face.

  "Don't worry, Professor," he said. "I think I know what needs to be done."

  Would that I had stopped him there, I might have saved him. But if truth be told, I didn't think he would cause any mischief.

  I had mi
scalculated the desire for revenge brought on by the blow to the head.

  We spent the next hours going over the manifest and checking that all the boxes were secure before Campbell professed himself tired. He took his leave, and I wandered up to the foredeck to watch the sunset and smoke a last cigar of the day.

  There was a slight coolness in the air, a hint of the welcome awaiting us back in Glasgow. I was actually looking forward to a slate-gray sky and endless drizzle. I could think of nothing finer than a walk through Kelvingrove Park in the rain with my lovely wife. It was while I was in this reverie that I heard the first scream.

  I dropped the cigar overboard and ran down the inner stairs to the lower decks, taking three at a time.

  The screams came from the vicinity of my own cabin, and they rose louder, then suddenly cut off. I turned a corner a bit too sharpish and barreled into a figure coming the other way. We raised our heads at the same time, and I found myself staring into the smiling eyes of the old Arab. He pushed me away and left at a run. I considered following, but it hadn't looked like he was the source of the screams. I turned and headed towards the cabins.

  My cabin door was open and Johnson was on his knees beside a body. As I entered he took something from the body's hand and secreted it in his suit jacket pocket. But I had no time to consider that.

  Young Campbell was not going to get time to prove his serpent theory.

  He lay in a crumpled heap, and his body looked strangely deflated. It was only when I turned him over that I could see the extent of the damage that had been done. He had been eaten. Eaten by something with a very small bite. A lot of very small bites.

  After confirming the lad had passed on, I raised the alarm. The ship was scoured, but no old Arab was ever found.

  2

  I woke, having slept all night upright in the armchair. It took me several seconds to realize that the phone was ringing, and several seconds more to answer it.

  "Is this Adams Detective Agency?" a young voice asked. They sounded far away, and their accent was more California than Glasgow.

  "Yes," I said, warily...I got my fair share of crank calls.

  "I think I'm being followed," the voice said. "And I'd like you to find out who it is."

  "You mean you don't know?" I asked.

  "No. I sometimes catch a glimpse of him, but they're too good at what they do and I can never catch them at it."

  I thought about my caseload. The amulet case was all I had-it wouldn't hurt to take on another.

  "Where are you?" I said. "I'll come and have a chat."

  "Just off the San Diego turnpike," he said. "It's...."

  I stopped him.

  "I'm not an American," I said.

  "That's okay," he replied. "Nobody's perfect."

  I laughed.

  "No," I said, "I mean I'm not even based in the US. You've got a number in Glasgow, Scotland."

  There was a silence at the other end of the line, then he hung up without saying anything else.

  It was to be the start of a day when everything was slightly off-kilter, a day I never got the hang of.

  * * *

  Dunlop's story still resonated in my head an hour later as I made my way to Maryhill. It was obvious that the archaeologist believed that the amulet was in some way involved in Campbell's death-what else could Johnson have put in his pocket? But if a search of the boat hadn't found any old Arab, maybe he had never been there at all? Maybe Doug was right-the old man had caught too much sun out in the desert. All the same, I hadn't taken the picture from my pocket yet, and the thought of just looking at it again made me uneasy.

  The walk up Byres Road didn't help any. Besides thinking about Dunlop's book, I just couldn't get Liz, and the past, out of my head. Every shop I passed, every pub, reminded me of that time. The facades might have changed, and students were certainly better dressed now than then, but the mood of the street stayed the same.

  Liz had called it "Urban Bohemian". Charity shops and batik specialists, vegetarian cafes and art-house bookshops, you'll find them all in most University towns. It's just that in Glasgow they're concentrated in one street, a street that's shared with bookmakers, drinking men's pubs and off-licenses. The non-academics and the students share an uneasy existence that sometimes breaks out into acts of sudden violence, but this morning, with the sun shining and the wind only a breeze, all was quiet.

  I walked quickly until I reached the Botanic Gardens at the north end of the road, and took the path down to the side of the Kelvin where I stopped and lit a cigarette. I didn't tarry long, though. Liz and I had spent a lot of time in this area, and I'd done enough wallowing for one day. I followed the footpath up into Maryhill.

  As I climbed away from Byres Road, the houses became more rundown, and the shops started to sport graffiti and metal shutters. Rubbish lay exposed in thick black plastic bags that had been ripped by dogs, seagulls, desperate drunks and drug-addicts. The faces of the people were more pinched, more pockmarked, and young people loitered in packs, daring me to look at them the wrong way.

  Yet even here reminded me of Liz. Where I had seen losers and down-and-outs, she had seen poverty and the downside of the class system. She had nearly brought me round to her way of thinking, but her death had brought my education to a halt.

  There, I'd done it. I'd thought about her again.

  Maybe wee Jimmy Allen would improve my mood.

  * * *

  I had lied yesterday when I told Mrs. Dunlop about the phone book. Jimmy and I had been playing a game for nearly five years now.

  When I started out, it was as 'Adam's Detective Services'. Jimmy was running a 'cat and wife finding' service called 'Allen's Detective Services'. He rang me up to complain that I'd usurped his position in the phone book. We'd met for a drink, got on well together, then I found he had become 'Adams Detection Services'. I countered with 'Adams Detection Outsourcing', and we were off and running.

  I'd given up early last year at "Adams Detective Agency", but Jimmy had got the bug. He got fed up explaining to everybody why he was using the name 'Adams', and started working his way down the 'Acs', then the 'Abs'. I noticed as I approached his 'office'-the end block of a Victorian warehouse-that 'Abracadabra-we can do magic' had already been badly painted out and replaced by 'Abacus Detection-let us add it up for you'. I rang his doorbell and waited while he closed down his extensive security systems. Eventually the door opened and his small head poked through as small a gap as he would allow.

  "Oh. It's you, Derek. I wondered when I'd see you."

  He opened the door to let me in. By the time I had locked the door behind me and turned round he was already halfway across the barn towards his 'office'.

  Jimmy wasn't a private detective, or rather, he wasn't just a private detective. He was an antique dealer, a pawnbroker on the grand scale, and, rumor had it, a part-time fence for anything that wouldn't draw too much heat. He had been doing them all for more than fifty years, and his 'collection' had never stopped growing.

  Above me in the rafters hung musical instruments, stuffed animals, shop mannequins and fur coats. The floor area was a series of aisles: white goods and televisions to my left, books on shelves along all four walls, modern sofas and chairs to my right, and antique furniture ahead of me. I also knew that there was a hidden cellar where Jimmy kept gold watches, rings, gemstones, and enough diamonds to keep an Amsterdam jeweler happy for decades.

  Jimmy himself looked even more bent than usual. A chronic back problem had got worse over the last few years so that he now seemed to be permanently staring at the floor. He must have been in his late eighties, but he hadn't slowed down any. In fact, if you believed him, he still participated in a full and very imaginative sex life.

  If that was true, it had more to do with his chat and his easy way of making you laugh than his physical attributes. He was about five-two, and seven stone soaking wet. He had a hooked nose of which an eagle would have been proud, a liver-spotted scalp that resembled a
map of the Hebridean Islands, and a grey goatee beard that looked like each hair had been glued on individually. He reminded me of a gnome from one of the Old Norse tales, or a leprechaun that had gone to seed. I laughed at that thought, and the sound echoed around me, causing sympathetic noises from the vibrating instruments overhead.

  "What's so funny?" Jimmy called back at me.

  "This," I said, waving my arms around. "Your cavern of delights. It's like something from a fairy tale."

  "Grimm or Anderson?" he asked.

  "Oh, Grimm," I said. "Definitely Grimm."

  He laughed this time.

  "Rumpelstiltskin?" he said.

  "Yep. Where's all the spun gold?"

  "Wouldn't you like to know," he said, and laughed again. I don't think I've ever known a man who laughed quite so much.

  "Are you coming or not?" he called out at me. "Or will we just stand here and shout at each other a bit?"

  As I walked towards his office I noticed that he had come into possession of some new items. A French bedroom set-three-door wardrobe and two huge tallboys-dominated the left side of the aisle. They looked expensive.

  Jimmy saw me looking.

  "Got it from a City councilor. On his uppers. Needed some quick cash. Something to do with his wife, a prostitute, and a newspaper. I gave him a couple of grand." He cackled that high, almost girl-like giggle that I had come to know so well.

  "Anybody I know?" I asked.

  "No," he said. "But you will...you will."

  "If you get any more stuff you're going to have to get a bigger place," I said.

  "No, they'll only take me out of here in a coffin," he said, and laughed. But this time the echo sounded flat and hollow.

  "I've got someone coming to take away all the washing machines," he said, "Some kind of artist-he says he's going to make a giant model of a housewife out of them. Says it'll win him the Turner prize."

  "The council will probably buy it, and put it on a hill somewhere," I said. "I can see it now-'The cleaner of the north' or some such shit."