Friends of the Dusk

by Phil Rickman

  Jane lifted up the book. The cover print was easier: Katharine Briggs. A Dictionary of Fairies. Merrily looked at Jane.

  ‘Really?’

  ‘Just a medical term now, for a seizure that leaves part of you paralysed. There’s probably a long name for it somewhere, but nobody uses it.’ Jane sat down. ‘Funny thing, I’ve started to envy you lately. Who else has a job which allows them to delve into this stuff with a real sense of purpose?’

  ‘Go on.’

  ‘The word ‘stroke’ actually derives directly from British and Irish folklore and means exactly what it sounds like. Fairy-stroke? Elf-stroke?’

  ‘Never heard that.’

  ‘Basically, some unsuspecting human being wanders into a fairy realm – fairy glade, whatever – and the fairies don’t like it. Bastards never do. They despise us. So a miffed fairy might put out a glowing finger and stroke the intruder on the side of the head – or anywhere else – and that part of the body immediately becomes like numbed?’

  ‘That is… really where it came from?’

  ‘I didn’t believe it either.’

  ‘Blimey.’ Merrily recalled Casey Kellow on the phone. Things you’d dismiss as the sheerest lunacy, they come and live with you. ‘You don’t think, do you?’

  ‘These old beliefs,’ Jane said, ‘they’re still with us. They’re like burned into our ethos. It’s all there underneath, just mutates into something that thinks of itself as science.’

  Jane’s expression was almost one of defiance. Merrily’s mouth was dry. Fairy tales. Invented to send children happily to sleep.

  She stood up and walked over to the biggest window. A line of purple made the sky look like a Victorian coffin lining.

  What is it, then? Casey Kellow had said. What is it if not an act of violence?

  The line of purple was in the wrong place. There was no spark of dawn.

  Part Three

  O you who talk so much, instead of so much talking beat your head and search the secrets…

  Farid ud-Din Attar

  The Conference of the Birds

  (trans. C.S. Nott, 1954)

  30

  Dark Net stuff

  IT WAS THE only remaining shop in a cramped little dirty-brick square called, for no apparent reason, Organ Yard, and its contents spilled out like an old-fashioned eviction on the patchwork of concrete and cobbles. The second-hand stuff, this was: rugs and dark-stained furniture from abandoned churches and chapels. Nice and sad on an autumn Sunday morning.

  The shop had a wooden sign swinging from a wrought iron bracket, peeling gilt lettering – probably always been peeling – on matt black.

  It said, The Darkest Corner

  Made Bliss realize all over again what a small city Hereford was. Small but still secretive. It had surely taken him less than five minutes to walk over here from Gaol Street, down an alleyway from Commercial Road, past some shabby warehouses with a view across to the backstreet ruins of the Blackfriars monastery.

  Walking inside, out of the light, Bliss remembered suggesting to Neil Cooper that his missing skull might turn up with a cig in its mouldering teeth at some Hallowe’en party.

  Or somewhere like this shithole.

  As it happened, a human skull was on the counter. Plastic but realistic. You had to look twice, especially in the dim light from a hanging lamp of dirty glass. Bliss tapped a fingernail on the pitted cranium.

  ‘Has a look of you, Jerry.’

  In the dimness behind the counter, Jerry Soffley smiled his diagonal smile. He hadn’t changed. Long straight hair, eyebrows pencilled coal-black against his white face. All shamelessly out of date, looked like a roadie for the Spiders from Mars. Must be at least four years since Bliss had nicked him for dealing ecstasy from these very premises. Even then, Es had been sliding down the cool person’s shopping list.

  ‘Clean as clean, me, now, Mr Bliss,’ Jerry Soffley said in his cindery whisper. ‘Been clean for over two years and anybody tells you otherwise is probably some old fart from the Chamber of Trade.’

  ‘Yeh, I heard you’d joined the Chamber.’

  Soffley sniffed.

  ‘Seemed the thing to do when I yeard we was one of the six oldest surviving businesses in the city.’

  ‘That a fact?’

  ‘I’ll name you the others. There’s Morris’s in Widemarsh Street, there’s… wazzat menswear place—?’

  ‘I believe you, Jez. Just like I believe what I can smell is only incense sticks.’

  ‘I’ll show you the packet!’

  ‘Never mind.’

  Bliss’s senses were adjusting to the darkness. To his left was the door to the vinyl room, full of death-metal LPs in gatefold sleeves and a hanging rope with a noose which, if he remembered right, Jerry Soffley used to claim was from a prison in Australia. At the bottom of the vinyl room, he recalled, was a stairwell leading to a small cellar containing an Egyptian stone coffin and part of a guillotine.

  Behind Soffley’s counter, there was a rack of dusty robes and dark dresses, stickers for brands like Sinister and Necessary Evil. Above them, shelves of wide hats and masks and display cases containing the vicious rings worn by Hell’s Angels. If nothing had changed, the rubber kit, chains and stuff were in the cellar.

  ‘Quite quaint in here now, Jerry. You thought of applying for a grant from English Heritage?’

  ‘You laugh, Mr Bliss, but Gothic culture don’t go away, look. This is English heritage. Art, architecture, literature…’

  ‘Tristram Greenaway,’ Bliss said. ‘Go on… tell me you don’t know who I’m talking about.’

  Soffley’s eyebrows narrowed, making a black bridge over his thin nose. Weighing up his options, probably realizing he didn’t have too many.

  ‘All right, yeah, I yeard. Who en’t? Come on, Sarge, couldn’t be more sorry about what happened to that boy, but I en’t seen him in years. Not since he was a boy. Fifteen, sixteen?’

  ‘It’s “inspector”.’

  ‘What is?’

  ‘Me. Got promoted.’

  ‘Nice one. Congratulations. Well deserved. You was always a smart little bastard.’

  ‘Thank you. That was quick, wasn’t it?’

  ‘What?’

  ‘You remembering Tristram Greenaway. Just like that. After all these years. If it was years. And not days.’

  ‘Aw, fuck off, his picture was on the box! Ole picture, from when he was at the Cathedral School. That’s how come I knowed who he was. Used to come in regular, with his mates, school uniforms, and I en’t seen him since, swearda God.’

  ‘What did he come in for?’

  ‘I dunno, it was a long time ago. All sorts. CDs, books – we did more second-hand books, them days. Gothic novels. Bram Stoker, Sheridan le Fanu, Anne Rice. I do remember he’d buy old LPs. He liked the covers. Triple gatefold sleeves. I don’t remember what else, but he must’ve come in a lot, else I wouldn’t’ve remembered his face, would I?’

  ‘So you’ve had no contact with him since he was a lad.’

  Bliss watched Jerry Soffley doing some rapid blinking.

  ‘I never said that. Just I en’t seen him. His name’s on my mailing list. People who buys from us and sells through us, mail order. I’m saying he just din’t come in no more, thassall.’

  Bliss looked around at the black and white stills from Nosferatu the Vampyre, the framed LP sleeves for Nico and Siouxsie Sioux and other stuff he preferred to think of as before his time. He’d come here on his own, because he was the only one of them who’d ever nicked Jerry Soffley, a trader more streetwise and sly than he looked.

  ‘You doing much business on the Net these days, Jerry?’

  ‘Well, aye. Half my trade’s on the Net. Way it goes, now – eBay, specialist goth sites.’

  ‘What about Neogoth dot net?’

  Soffley didn’t blink.

  ‘Well, yeah, that’s us.’

  ‘Us?’

  ‘Me. No secret. Mabbe not the biggest goth ring in the w
orld, but we holds our own. Scores of clients worldwide, different interest groups, public and private, sharing info, what have you.’

  ‘Let’s start with the basics,’ Bliss said. ‘It’s a website, is it?’

  ‘Messageboard kinder thing. Special interest. If you’re looking for a book or a document or an album or a DVD, souvenir, memento, whatever, you posts your request on the site, and anybody who’s got one they want to sell… you know? Was a private thing, but it started to fade off, look. We took it over, in the end, for commercial reasons. Made sense.’

  ‘People buy and sell through you? Gothic kit.’

  ‘Everything. For which I gets commission. Or it might be some’ing I can obtain. Could be anything from a holy relic to a signed copy of Interview with the Vampire.’

  ‘What kind of people?’

  ‘All kinds. Groups, individuals…’

  ‘But it’s a closed ring.’ Bliss drawing on what Karen had told him. ‘Is that the right terminology? Membership only? That’s usually heavy porn, Jezza. Dark Net stuff.’

  ‘Yeah, well, it’s not. That’s balls, that is. This is just people who wanner talk to each other, rather than the world, about dark and spooky things. Some are quite well known. Experts, celebs. Actors, musicians. Private people.’

  ‘And maybe some of things they’re selling they wouldn’t want to see on the open market?’

  ‘Long as they en’t doing nothing illegal, that’s none of my business. Or yours, I reckon.’

  ‘Or what they want to talk about isn’t talked about in what you might call polite society?’

  ‘Well, so what? Fetish stuff. Fantasy. Fifty Shades of Shit. Long as no children or animals is harmed, it en’t illegal.’

  ‘And you’re sure, are you, that this is always the case? Like, if we were to have a poke around…’

  ‘Aw come on.’

  Jerry Soffley spreading his hands, looking pained.

  ‘So,’ Bliss said. ‘Tristram Greenaway posted stuff on Neogoth.’

  ‘Not often.’

  ‘Few days ago, he sent you a picture of a human skull.’

  ‘Did he?’

  Bliss did a long sigh.

  ‘I’m giving you some leeway here, Jerry. Don’t piss me about. When you heard he’d been murdered, the first thing you’d do would be to go into your data and refresh your memory.’

  ‘All right, yeah. He sent me a picture of a manky ole skull. Loads of ’em about. Nobody was interested.’

  ‘How d’you know?’

  ‘’Cos nobody come back to me about it, did they?’

  ‘However, that could be because they decided to go and talk to him directly. And wound up killing him.’

  ‘No. Wasn’t posted under his name, was it? That’s one of the advantages of Neogoth. It goes through me.’

  ‘Exactly. You could tell them.’

  ‘Yeah, well, I didn’t.’

  ‘There was an email message with it, right? Indicating that someone out there might be interested to know about the skull. Greenaway saying that if they wanted to know where he found it he could draw them a map.’

  ‘Some’ing like that.’

  ‘Mean anything to you?’

  ‘Nothing.’

  Bliss looked down for a few moments at the black tiles on the floor, the ones at the front with vinyl LPs set into them. Then he looked up, hands behind his back.

  ‘Tell you what I’ll do, Jerry. You lend me your computer and write down all the passwords and things—’

  ‘No way!’

  ‘Would save a lorra time, pal, and also, if I have to go to extra trouble to get access, I’m not gonna be well disposed towards—’

  ‘You—’ Soffley’s forefinger came up. ‘You think it’s easy making a living in Hereford nowadays, you go and count the fucking charity shops. And check out the business rates we pays to them Tory fuckers on the council. I lose people’s trust, they stop dealing with me, and word gets round in no time. And anyway…’

  ‘What?’

  ‘It wouldn’t help you. Very few of them posts under their real names. They don’t want their names all over the Net as lovers of what other folks thinks is weirdo stuff.’ Soffley sniffed. ‘Anyway, I don’t keep my computer yere.’

  ‘I’ll expect it here by lunchtime. And if you’ve tampered at all with any files, my expert will know.’

  ‘This could mess me up bigtime, Frank,’ Soffley said sulkily. ‘This could make me persona not gratis kind o’ thing.’

  ‘We’ll bear that in mind. Say two o’clock? I’ll send somebody round to pick it up.’

  ‘No! Shit… wait.’ Soffley was halfway round the counter. ‘How about I just brings it in? Only a laptop. Don’t want no bloody coppers strolling in and out like I’m some fucking fence.’

  ‘Perish the thought, pal. I’ll tell the desk to expect you by close of play. And don’t piss about with the contents because my techie will know, and I’ll be very cross.’

  He was on his way out when Soffley called him back. Bliss stood still for a moment then turned back to the counter.

  ‘This might sound a bit callous, look,’ Soffley said. ‘But we all gotter live, right? This boy Greenaway, he have any old vinyl at his place?’

  ‘Vinyl.’

  ‘Only I was thinking, if there’s a house clearance, look, I wouldn’t mind sifting through any stuff, no obligation.’

  ‘No obligation.’ Bliss nodded slowly. ‘Very charitable of you, Jerry. I’ll see your thoughtful offer is conveyed to Tristram’s nearest and dearest. I’m sure they’ll be in touch.’

  ‘Ta,’ Soffley said. ‘Ta very much, Frank.’

  ‘You call me Frank one more friggin’ time, pal,’ Bliss said, ‘and I’ll have some lads with a spaniel turn over this place to track down the precise source of that exotic pong.’

  31

  Unsaid

  IN THE MALIKS’ lofty living room, where the wind sang in irregular, square iron-framed windows, Nadya was saying she didn’t believe in ghosts.

  ‘You think it’s all imagination?’ Merrily said from a cushion in a window seat. ‘Self-delusion?’

  Not sure how much she believed in Nadya Malik or the need for the prim blue headscarf – hijab, right? – in a room full of close relatives and one other woman who, even though it was Sunday, had made a point of coming in plain clothes, no collar, no visible cross. Who came in peace.

  ‘Not necessarily, but I don’t believe it’s anything to do with dead people, either,’ Nadya said.

  ‘You personally don’t believe that? Or doesn’t the Koran…?’

  No, no. Shut up. Don’t go down that road. Leave the Koran on the shelf.

  ‘I think…’ Adam Malik, in a rugby shirt and cream jeans, sat at the other end of the long, cream leather sofa, chin propped up against a fist, looking like he really didn’t want to be here. ‘I think, that whatever the Koran may or may not have to say about unexplained phenomena is hardly relevant to us here and now. As our friend—’ Adam shifted awkwardly to face Merrily. ‘Our friend in Worcester is quite unequivocal that we should put ourselves in your hands.’

  Emphasizing this to his wife, Merrily felt.

  Nadya glared into her hands folded over the long black skirt. Born-again Muslim. To her, at this stage, very little in life would be detachable from what it said in the Koran.

  Silence seemed louder in this room, probably a former barn attached to the original house, high beams and rudimentary trusses exposed. On an end wall, a carpet-sized hanging had minarets against a sunset seen through archways. Dennis Kellow, sharing a brown leather sofa with his wife, had his back to it.

  ‘I’m simply making my own position clear,’ Nadya said. ‘I don’t expect it to affect anything.’

  Merrily suspected that under the scarf her hair was actually very short. Arguably, most men would find Nadya sexier like this, all the emphasis on those full lips, the upturned, very English nose. She wore a high-necked light-blue jumper and she was tall, like her
parents, perhaps taller than her husband.

  ‘So if not spirits of the dead,’ Merrily said, ‘what would be your theory about what might be affecting this place?’

  ‘I would not want to intrude.’

  ‘No, please… it’s your home.’

  ‘All right. We might use the word “djinn”.’

  ‘Defined as…?’

  ‘Well, a djinn is…’

  ‘What might come out at you,’ Dennis said grumpily, ‘if you’re stupid enough to apply Brasso to some antique Arabic teapot-lamp.’

  ‘Dad, stop it.’

  Dennis sat back, feigning chastened. The wind rattled the panes behind Merrily. She could feel a draught on her spine.

  ‘OK, I do know a bit about this. Let me see if I’ve got it right. In Islamic – or Arabic – legend, a djinn is a mischievous entity, perhaps even malevolent, which may assume human form – even the likeness of someone known to be dead – to deceive people. The essential point being that a djinn is not thought to have human origins. It’s a thing of… smokeless fire?’

  ‘Well done,’ Nadya said.

  ‘Or even a thought form.’

  Nadya frowned.

  ‘Now you’re going beyond the teachings. We don’t do that.’

  Merrily said nothing, sliding back into the window recess. The view from here was to the hills behind the house and, beyond them, presumably, the Black Mountains. She’d left Jane out there, exploring the landscape. Hadn’t told anyone that Jane had come with her. Hoped – ridiculous, she wasn’t a kid any more – that Jane would be careful, come back to the car if the weather turned nasty.

  ‘I don’t usually bother my little head about these things.’ Adam Malik sat up, allowing a hint of his Black Country accent to wander in. ‘Being just a mechanic who—’

  ‘Who likes to demean himself,’ Nadya said.

  ‘A mechanic who tries to reassemble people. I often think the reason I drifted into orthopaedics is that it’s the one form of surgery where you’re lucky enough not to see too much of death. Putting people back together and sending them back out into the world, that’s me. Less emotionally-challenging than other areas.’