by Kim Newman
‘Steady on, luv,’ he said.
‘You’ve made a conquest, Fred,’ commented Richard, slyly.
Fred took the girl’s fingers off his shoulders and gave them back to her. She waved them about in the region of her brass bra, then put them behind her. He had an idea she was a bit embarrassed by her hands, which were large for her size.
‘You’re the ghost-exterminators,’ she said, in broad Sarf Lahndahn tones. ‘Thank Gawd you’re here.’
Richard reached behind her, took one of her hands, turned it over and kissed her palm dead-centre.
‘And you must be the Mysterious Zarana, Queen of the Nile.’
Her eyes widened, cracking a black bar of eyeshadow.
‘Lumme, you really are psychic.’
Richard smiled. ‘Your picture is outside,’ he said.
She was a bit disappointed. ‘It’s Zarana Roberts, really. Dad was out in Egypt during the War.’
‘Pleased to meet you. I’m Richard Jeperson, and the fellow you’ve enraptured is Fred Regent.’
Fred wondered if he was blushing. It’d be too dim in here to tell.
Zarana did something like a curtsey, with a little eyelash-fluttering smile like the one in her mug-shot.
Then she was serious.
‘Busy Boddey’s goin’ spare,’ she said. ‘Ever since the thing happened. He’s been on the blower to half the town…’
Which meant there should be more police here.
‘Now he’s up outside Boot Boy’s office, keepin’ guard. None of the girls wanted to go up there. Not even before the thing. I mean, taking your knickers off in public for a livin’ is one thing, but Boot Boy Booth is another, if you know what I mean.’
Fred had heard a few things about DI Booth.
‘We should take a look-see,’ said Fred, trying to sound more casual than he felt.
‘Rather you than me, ducks,’ said Zarana. ‘Fancy a cuppa? Typhoo’s two pound to the customers, but I can get you sorted complements of the management.’
‘That would be most welcome, Miss Roberts,’ said Richard.
‘Zarana, please. No need to be formal.’
‘Thank you, Zarana.’
‘You too, Freddy Friday,’ she said, prodding him in the ribs with a knuckle-ring, finding a soft spot close to his heart and grinding it. ‘Come on.’
‘Zarana,’ he said.
‘Not so difficult, is it?’
It wasn’t, but he thought she’d left her mark on him.
She bustled off, ‘backstage’ – which might have been called a cupboard anywhere else. The walls, floor and ceiling were covered with brown shagpile. At the end of the corridor was a bar-theatre space, where a Chinese girl, spotlit on a dais, peeled a cheongsam off her shoulders. A sparse audience kept to the shadows. Fred wondered who these folk were – it was half past three in the afternoon, didn’t they have jobs to go to? Mechanical moaning and oom-pah muzak seeped from an alcove under the stairs. The basement screening room was probably a fire-trap. Booth should at least have made sure the place was up to public safety specifications.
A proper staircase led upwards. Serried beside it were framed posters of strippers.
‘There’s your ghosts,’ said Zarana, returning with tea-bag teas in an ‘I’m Backing Britain’ mug and a breast-shaped tankard. She gave Richard the Union Jack and Fred the pewter tit.
The posters were in different styles, going back through the years – Sunday supplement full-colour and psychedelic design giving way to black-and-white and blocky red lettering. It was like a reverse strip: the older the picture, the more clothed the girls. Over the years, standards had changed – at least insofar as what could be shown on the street.
‘Tiger Sharkey, also known as Theresa D’Arbanvilliers-Holmes,’ said Zarana, in gossipy museum-guide tones, indicating a wild-haired blonde in a Jungle Jillian leather bikini. ‘Married a Tory MP, she did, and pays Boot Boy a fair slice of cake every month not to have the “glamour films” she used to make sent to the News of the World. I hope you don’t count that as a motive, since she’s a love, honestly. Felicity Mane, the Flickering Flayme. On the game in Huddersfield, poor dear. Trixie Truelove. Her proper name’s Mavis Jones and she’s still here, doin’ make-up and costumes. She knitted my snake-wig. Put on a bit of weight since that photo was taken.’
Zarana had accompanied them to a landing, where she paused.
‘And here’s our founder, bleedin’ Royalty with tassels. If I’d half a crown for every cove who comes in here and says birds today ain’t fit to tie her G-string, I’d have a villa on Capri and be payin’ muscle boys to shake their bums at me.’
The poster showed a slim-hipped blonde posing coyly, Venus-style. Even in faded black-and-white, she was a startler. A platinum rope of hair wound around her neck, across her breasts, about her waist and fanned out to serve as a loincloth. She had huge, sad eyes and a dimple in one cheek.
‘Pony-Tail,’ said Zarana.
Fred knew. Trev Bailey, who sat two desks along from him at school, once had a ‘photography’ magazine with Pony-Tail’s picture on the cover confiscated by a maths master. Later, the offending article was found in the rubbish bin by the bike sheds, crumpled and suspiciously stained. The teacher was called ‘Wanker’ Lewis for the rest of his career.
Zarana considered the poster.
‘You’d think she invented nudity from the way they rabbit on about her.’
During that two-week stint in a porn cinema, the only film that had jolted Fred awake – and even slightly stirred his interest – was Views of Nudes. A scratchy black-and-white 1950s antique about well-spoken naked persons playing volleyball at a Torquay naturist camp, with strategically placed shrubs to save their embarrassment, it was out of place amid the bloodily colourful socks-on couplings of randily joyless Scandinavians as Glenn Miller at the Frug a-Go-Go. Views of Nudes was booed by raincoats, until they were stunned to a hush by Pony-Tail. In a blatantly spliced-in, gloriously faded-to-pink colour sequence, she stripped in a stable, getting out of riding habit and jodhpurs (editing tricks were necessary to manage the boots) and whipping her hair about. She frightened the horses but excited the audience; the tally-ho soundtrack was soon augmented by the chink of spare change in active pockets. Fred had to admit Pony-Tail, who could look young as twelve or old as sin, had something.
‘Where is she now?’ asked Richard.
Zarana made mystic gestures. ‘That’s the ghosty part. Nobody knows. Or is sayin’, if they do. She vanished. She could write her own paycheques if she came out of retirement. Of course, she’ll be a crone now. Bleedin’ Pony-Tail. I bet it wasn’t even her own hair. Nice mince pies, though. I heard she might have been got out of the way, so she could really be a ghost. I think that’s why you’re here. It’s what Busy Boddey’s afraid of.’
They looked upwards, where the stairway narrowed. Bulbs were burned out or broken. The next landing was in deep shadow.
‘I’ll stay here, if you don’t mind,’ said Zarana.
‘Come on, Fred, let’s get on with it,’ said Richard.
Zarana’s fingers touched the lapel of his Crombie jacket, felt the fabric and let him go.
‘Be careful, Freddy,’ she said.
‘Certainly will, Queenie.’
Richard was halfway up, into the dark. Fred left the girl and followed.
III. MR SLUDGE
Fred saw DC Harry ‘Busy’ Boddey was in a right state. When Fred and Richard entered the ante-chamber, Busy jumped off his stool.
The inner door was smashed off its hinges.
The ‘six blokes with sledge-hammers’ theory looked better and better.
Neither Fred nor Richard had so much as sipped their tea, but the stench made them raise cups to their mouths, not so much for the swallow but the strong smell.
‘See,’ said Boddey, nodding at the empty doorway.
Fred got a look into the office beyond. Something limp sat at and over a broken desk. Red splashes Jackson Pollock
ed over strewn papers, abused glossies, demolished furniture and pulled-down posters.
‘Stone the crows,’ said Fred.
Busy whimpered. Fred would have marked him down as one of those joke-over-dismembered-body-parts coppers, but this took things to extremes.
Richard had his feelers out – he called them ‘mentacles’. He stood straight and calm, eyes fluttered shut, nose raised like a wine-taster doing a blind test, fingers waving like fronds.
‘What’s the looney up to?’ asked Busy bitterly.
Fred slapped him.
‘Trying to help,’ he told the shocked policeman. ‘Now shut up, Busy Lizzie!’
Richard snapped out of it.
‘No need for additional ultra-violence,’ he said. ‘There’s been quite enough of that. You, Constable Boddey, give me the court report.’
Busy looked up at Richard. Fred nodded at him.
‘This morning, something came here and did… that… to Booth.’
‘Very concise. Did you find the corpus?’
Busy shook his head. ‘No, it was Brie. One of the girls. Massive knockers. Does secretarial stuff too. She’s scarpered. You won’t see her Bristols round here again in a hurry.’
‘Was anything seen of the assailant or assailants?’
Busy shut up.
‘Now, now, come, come. You called Fred for a reason. The Diogenes Club has a reputation. We don’t involve ourselves in gangland feuds or routine police-work. We’re here for more arcane matters.’
Busy tried hard to stop shaking. ‘I saw it,’ he said.
‘The murder?’ prompted Richard.
‘The murderer.’
‘It?’
‘Him, I suppose. When Brie screamed, I came upstairs. It was still here, standing in that doorway. It had done its business, just like that, in seconds, I reckon. Thump thump thump and the show’s over, folks, haven’t you got homes to go to? It had a big coat, like a flasher, a dirty mac, and a hat, old-fashioned…’
‘Tricorn, shako, topper…’
‘No, one of those movie-gangster jobs. Trilby.’
‘So, we have his clothes described. What about the rest? Size?’
Busy held his hands apart, like a fisherman telling a whopper.
‘Huge, giant, wide, thick…’
‘Face?’
‘No.’
‘No, you can’t bear to remember? Or no, no face?’
Busy shook his head.
‘What you said second. Just greyey white, sludge-features. With eyes, though – like poached eggs.’
‘A mask,’ suggested Fred.
‘Don’t think so. Masks can’t change expressions. Can’t smile. It did. It saw me and Brie, and it smiled. How can something with no mouth to speak of smile? Well, it was bloody managing, that’s all I can say. God, that smile!’
Busy covered his face again.
Richard looked about the ante-chamber. Spots of blood and something like mud dotted about the doorway, but this room was clean. Floor-to-ceiling shelves held box-files with faded ink dates on their spines. A coffee-table by Busy’s stool had a neatly arranged fan of girlie magazines – Knight, Whoops!, Big and Bouncy, Strict, Cherry, Exclusive. An undisturbed coat-tree bore a mohair topcoat, a bowler hat and an umbrella. Savile Row, definitely. Better quality than anyone on a Scotland Yard wage could afford without going into debt.
There was a clear demarcation line. The devastation was confined to the inner office.
‘Your Mr Sludge made quite an entrance,’ said Richard. ‘Splashy, in fact. But the exit was more discreet.’
Busy nodded.
Fred took the constable’s chin and forced him to look at Richard.
Busy swallowed.
‘It emptied out somehow,’ he said, making a swirling gesture, ‘as if going down a plughole, then it was just gone, coat and hat and all.’
‘Intriguing.’ Richard took another gulp of tea, and put his mug down on the cover of Knight, blotting the chest of a girl wearing parts of a suit of armour. ‘So we have something here substantial enough to wreak considerable damage but capable of, as it were, evaporating. You were quite right to call us, Constable Boddey. If there’s a phantasm, golem or afrit in the case, it falls under our purview.’
Fred let Busy go.
He was surprised to find he felt a sympathy twinge for Busy. He wasn’t a chancer any more, just a shell-shocked survivor who’d have to live with bad dreams.
Richard produced a scraper from a flapped side-pocket. He ventured gingerly into the office, careful not to brush against anything dripping. He took a sample of something congealed and sticky.
‘Sludge, indeed,’ he said. ‘Plasm of some specie. Ecto-, perhaps. Or psycho-, eroto- or haemo-. Then again, it could just be gunk.’
He scraped it back onto the door-jamb.
‘I just need to know one more thing,’ said Richard, addressing Busy. ‘Who else have you told?’
Busy looked up, a sparkle of the old cunning reminding Fred he was still the same flash git he’d known at Hendon.
‘Um,’ began Busy.
There was a commotion downstairs. People arriving.
‘Not the police,’ Richard observed, instantly.
His hawkish brows narrowed. Busy shrank, trying to slip back into shivering wreck status to avoid answering for his actions.
A yelping and ouching indicated someone was being dragged upstairs.
Zarana was pushed into the room. This time Fred caught hold of her. She put her face to his chest so as not to look into Booth’s office.
A beef-faced, big-bellied man in a dark suit that had fitted him better in 1965 was at the top of the stairs, wheezing. Charging up two flights was something he hadn’t done in a while. Someone (almost certainly a young woman) had persuaded him that a paisley scarf worn under an open violet shirt would make him look less behind-the-times – the sweaty foulard flopped on his sternum like a dead (but with-it) herring.
A pair of heavy lads backed him up.
The newcomer was so used to being a hard man he hadn’t bothered to keep in shape. People were still afraid of him for things he’d done years ago. If half what Fred had heard about Mickey ‘Burly’ Gates were true, people were right. Gates had apprenticed as a meat-cutter at Smithfield’s before joining the firm. Throughout his career, Gates had been in meat of one sort or another.
Allegedly, he kept his hand in with his old chopper.
Gates took in Richard, from pointed boot-toes to tumble of long hair.
‘Who the bloody hell are you?’ he demanded, ‘and what the bleeding hell do you think you look like?’
Richard shrugged his eyebrows and commented, ‘Charming.’
Then the meat-cutter saw Boot Boy Booth.
‘Jesus wept!’ he said, involuntarily crossing himself.
‘Friend of yours?’ asked Richard, casually.
Gates tore his gaze away from the red ruin in the inner office and looked again at Richard, squinting.
‘This is them, Mickey,’ said Busy Boddey – it didn’t surprise Fred that a DC in the OPS was on first-name terms with Burly Gates. ‘Specialists in ghosties and ghoulies. The Odd Squad.’
Richard cocked an eyebrow. ‘I haven’t heard that one before. Not so sure I care for it.’
‘I understand about specialists,’ said Gates, making an effort to calm down. ‘I use them a lot. Like plumbers. If they do a diamond job, I’m a happy chappie and the packet of notes is nice and thick. If they don’t… well, they forfeit my custom and, as it happens, tend to retire early. Clear?’
‘Crystalline,’ drawled Richard, not really listening.
A framed photograph had caught his attention. Pony-Tail, again – in St Trinian’s uniform, with hockey-stick and straw boater. Ten years gone, and the girl was still all over Soho.
‘Diamond,’ said Gates. ‘So, get on and specialise. I don’t really care what happened, just so long as it don’t happen again on my patch. Track down who—’
‘W
hat, most likely.’
‘…or what did this, and make sure they get put out of business.’
Richard looked at Gates and did something shocking. He giggled.
Gates’s red face shaded towards crimson. Sweat steamed off his forehead.
Richard’s giggle became a full-throated King Laugh. He made gun-fingers and shot off all twelve chambers at Gates. Fred had to swallow a smirk.
Gates searched his waistband for a chopper. Mercifully, he had left it at home.
Richard shut off his laugh. ‘You’ve made a fundamental error in assessing this situation,’ he told Gates. ‘I am not a plumber or a cabbie. I am, as it were, not for hire. I cannot be suborned into serving your interests – or, indeed, any but my own. Call me a dilettante if you wish, but there it is. I am here as a favour to my good friend, Sergeant Regent, and because the matter has features of uncommon interest.’
Gates goggled in amazement.
‘You evidently consider yourself a power in this district,’ observed Richard.
‘I could have Eric and Colin snap you like a twig, sunshine.’
Gates’s heavy lads pricked up their ears. They cracked hairy knuckles.
‘You could have them try,’ said Richard, amused. ‘It wouldn’t advance your cause one whit, but if you feel the need, go ahead. Powerlessness must be a new, disorienting condition for you. I understand your need to attempt to reaffirm yourself. However, if upon second thought you’d rather not annoy me further and leave me to continue my investigations, kindly quit my crime scene. This isn’t your fiefdom any more. This is where the wild things are. Is that, ah, diamond?’
Gates’s mouth opened and closed like a beached fish’s.
He grunted and left. Eric and Colin directed the full frighteners at the room, but only Busy cringed. Richard waved at them, a flutter of farewell and dismissal.
‘Toodle-oo, fellows.’
Eric and Colin vanished.
Fred breathed again. He hoped Zarana hadn’t noticed him trembling.
IV. LOCAL HISTORY
‘Let’s see if I have this straight,’ began Richard, setting his thimble-cup down on the red Formica table, ‘“Skinderella’s” is owned by that irritable gent Gates, but was managed by a serving police officer? Setting aside that puzzle, I understand that Mr Gates is a big fellow around these parts?’
